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I awoke at my desk on the morning I met you again, for the first time. The babbling spring sun through the crack in the curtains where I’d forgotten to shut them made me realize I’d been a hermit for much too long. My bones creaked: a whole lifetime spent hunched over, looking down. I arched my back and raised my arms and pressed my chest forward and out to meet the crisp golden light where it waited, steady-stanced. Perhaps there was a chance, even for a life defined by self-denial, for something beautiful to bloom.
Stretch, shower: scrub shampoo condition in cold water, towel, skin, hair, eyes, cloth along my glasses, towel again, outfit I hadn’t prepped the night before, four sprays of cologne that smelled like cut grass and concrete, one more pass of the comb. Shoes at the door. Straightening the tie. The tiniest clink of the links of my watch clacking against one another, ringed fingers on the piano. Emerging from the hall into the brightness of a new day on the patio.
You watched your trainees run laps like schoolkids, tapping a metronome tick against your wrist, lips pursed as if caught within a whisper in the dark. I approached you like I would have anyone else. I matched my footsteps to your rhythm. I made small talk, knowing you didn’t want to entertain me, so I regaled you with a story of the army, when I too had once run laps under care of someone stronger. Then I flipped the switch from faux-friendly to faux-flirty and said you could order me to run circles around you and I wouldn’t mind, mademoiselle would you be so kind as to tell me what you’d like to see.
I respect how you hold a grudge, I respect how you listened to your gut and didn’t trust me, how you identified danger. You finally turned away from Neon at the far edge of our view to look me in the eye but your eyes were narrowed, a little tic making one blink shut from time to time. So I’m dangerous to you, I wanted to ask, I did ask in the way I saw into you, don’t you want to confront me? Come taste danger with me. You told me not to get near your wards. I asked if I could get near you instead. When you gave me that look, for the first time in a long time I felt like a lech, and I apologized, and your gaze even in anger became one that recognized my human soul.
By summer already I knew I was in love with you. When had it happened? Oh, between more nights like the first, fitful sleep at my desk, awoken by dreams too hazy to remember, dreams of struggle and loss that became dark specters by the time my eyes adjusted to the humid moonlight. I stretched up into that light. I paced the halls to arrange my thoughts. I imagined setting gemstones into metal at equal intervals. I pondered my choices. There may be pines and oceans and sands to pass through but I knew then and now that I had made the right decision to struggle. Still it kept me up at night. Stones inset in metal like railroad tracks. I trailed my finger along the wall behind me, knowing it would leave the faintest trace of oil and the even fainter scent of summertime greenery. My thumb bumped against the doorposts of each room that I passed and it hurt.
Did the same pine forest keep you up at night too? Did you freeze beneath the shadows of saguaros? You wrapped yourself in the same midsummer cloak that I did, in halls that felt more private than our rooms. At the beginning we didn’t speak, content to let the crickets take charge while you motioned to me to hand you a glass for your water, water that in later nights became wine, just as wordless. You communicated through variations on a face, an eyebrow quirked up became a seductress; down you were my doubter; two canines bared, aggression; only one, fear. Those faded over time, becoming interest, questioning, conversation in the end, in corners and in foyers and at the kitchen counter, until you of all people invited me, in not so clear of terms, to take a walk with you when we didn’t have the night to mask our intentions.
When we walked the path that encircled our island, hanging over open air, open sea, you asked me if I’d gotten bored of Viper, and it was true when I said I only had eyes for you. You blew a strand of hair out of your face and scowled. Flattery didn’t work on you, you told me, and after a breath you asked me to tell you something real. I told you that you were the most beautiful woman in the world. You cackled so the bangles on your arms knocked against each other and told me I was laying it on too thick. I knew my smile was beaming because it was a real smile. Then I said much more quietly that I’d like the chance to really know you. You looked right at me. This time your eyes were wide and unblinking and all-seeing and the purple seemed like that of garden hellebore. If we weren’t careful, you began, sharp teeth, soft lips, we could infatuate ourselves by sharing too much too fast, but it would fall apart as quickly as it came. I had come to know that you were right about whatever you said, so I didn’t even ask another question, just felt the breeze blow between the convex of our hanging hands.
Our nights became a ritual; no longer were our feelings left to chance. We each had a spot in the lounge, I in the armchair, you posed along the couch, no one else awake to break our habits. On our walks, when we’d slow to a stop at the aphelion of our orbit, I’d sit on the remnants of a curb, while you preferred to stand and watch over the horizon. In my room, I paced while you took the stool at the vanity, and we played a game where you picked out the next day’s cologne - you were partial to florals. In your room, we lay next to each other on top of your duvet.
And we spent our nights there, nights that lengthened as we padded towards autumn, nights that gave us the time to soak in one another’s scents and feel the sweet kiss of the darkness between us, for although we were close we were not yet ready for the physical. How can we take it slow when our duty threatens the end every day? But we did, we were slow, had decided that for once we could live without having a goal. I did have a goal, though I kept it a secret: I wanted to kiss the soft patch of skin where you tried out our fragrances, where you had picked out pink petals in a tangle of thorns, where when the night had itself gone to sleep you would still smell faintly of dark purple flowers.
And we were melancholy, often content but still burdened by sadness, especially you when you thought of Lucía whose name you only whispered. It was worst on the coldest night of the season, you in your pajamas, barely that - a sweater and long pants, and I felt guilty at how beautiful you looked in your grief, and your lashes were like butterfly wings and your tears like dewdrops shaken from a flower, how could you be so weak and so strong at the same time. And since we had never truly marked our connection, I didn’t want to take advantage of you when you were addled by pain and uncertainty by planting a kiss on your cheek, and I didn't want to abandon you when you needed something closer than skin. I prayed with you; we touched our foreheads together. Sometimes our noses would brush. But this season was not one for new beginnings, I had believed, I thought we might be frozen like that, icicles beside one another. You looked at me with pained eyes. I went against my better judgment. I told you I didn’t want to be alone any more, I almost cried when I said it and I could barely keep my eyes on you because you always saw my soul. You told me to wait until the morning, to show I could say what I wanted in happiness as well as sorrow. One of my many failures, forcing you to be strong for me. Yet we slept with just a hair’s breadth between us.
In the morning we approached the unstated. Winter was ahead, days away, cold finally wriggling into its burrow, the new year soon after, champagne, rooftop toasts, and we imagined, imagined the two of us there amidst the rest, a bower in the center of the crowd. As we talked, the sheen of tears still on our skin turned to vapor. When it was all gone I asked you again if you would be with me. You answered with a look, calculating, then warm, leer became a small little smile, your hand finding its way to my thigh, and your lips finding their way to the corner of mine.
When it was still evening on the eve of the new year, we met in your room to merge two wide wardrobes into one for one couple. I brought my suit bag and my shoes and the two sleek bottles we had picked for each other the night before, while we’d still been in a sweet reverie. I set them aside to help you instead. You could do it yourself had you wanted to.
I took down the zipper at the back of your neck, all the way down so you could slide from your suit, taking delicate steps out from the legs, leaving yourself utterly gorgeous. You were going to change into your nice lingerie. Unclasping those three sets of hooks between your shoulder blades was more special than sex had ever been. I kissed the spot the latches had covered. You were a bit shy for a siren, your arms crossed before you breathed out, relaxed. It’s okay, I said, I felt shy too. That’s just the effect we have on each other, making us young and virginal again, a different life than the one we lived. I brought you the new top, slid it over your shoulders. Skin warm, still radiant, pinpricks of light through the black lace of the bra, touches chaste and sensual along the soft curve of your stomach down to your hip. The dressing of the bride, I whispered to you, and you huffed like you always did, don’t talk so soon about weddings or you’ll curse what we have; how superstitious, my mystical love. I helped you into your gown. You helped me button my suit. Then you daubed dark honey on my throat and I night blooming jasmine onto yours.
On the rooftop we were, as we had imagined, and in the gold raining light of the fireworks display at the top of the earth, we were two sweet white flowers in the uncold winter, blossoms and nectar and fizzling sweet wine for a year beyond reminiscence, a year for new joys to bloom from the paperbark earth, for the twelve o’clock moon to watch over the spot where my hand was in yours, for our hearts to face forward: two lost loves for the end of the world.