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Helena’s lips were cold, tinged with water glasses filled with mostly ice and AC kept at 66 degrees even during the summer. Helena knew death time was determined by body temperature, humans were warm-blooded beings who lived in the hearths of a body. She predicted that if she froze on the side of the road one night, the death time would be off. Helena felt barely alive.
Gemma’s lips were warm, for the first time in a very long time. She sat by hearth in the living room as Devon tells her they all thought she died in a fire. Gemma found her ashes in her husband’s basement. Gemma had flashes of Christmas hearths gone out when she slept, but she couldn’t remember anything else. Gemma missed summer days and a boiling sun, but she found greenhouses full of solar lamps with all the plants nearly dead. Gemma didn’t know what to do with all this heat when the world had been so cold for so long.
Helly’s lips were hot, nearly scorching Mark each time they touched. Helly ran as fast as she could down every hallway. Helly felt the way her body moved and the way she felt so alive in this cold dead place. In an overly sanitized heaven, she would let herself become hell. Brimming with spirit and energy and a hand in her hand, she felt like her skin was electric. Helly couldn’t remember settling down long enough to let any cold seep into her bones. Helly was so alive she couldn’t stop to consider any other way to be.
Helena craved warmth and sweetness, the comfort of lips on hers. She felt something scream and slam buried deep underneath the dirt. A watery grave she learned to live inside. Her lips stung when Mark kissed her, tasting the first bite of fire she had ever had. She couldn’t let go of it. She could almost pretend like the heat came from her when she was pretending. Then her lips met freezing water again and the warmth seeped out yet again.
Gemma missed the warmth for so long. She missed Mark, and Devon, and even Ricken. She missed green trees, bulbs blooming into beautiful flowers, new leaves on fresh spouts. She missed the great outdoors, blue sky, bones aching on long hikes. Gemma felt so close to getting it all back. But when she came up she found the sky grey, greens bathed in a layer of white impossible to distinguish from the rest of it, and without Mark. Gemma knew warmth once, but she wasn’t sure she ever would again.
Helly only remembered the cold, the frigid way she had been greeted into this awful world. Mark’s voice on the end of a speaker with no face attached. The impersonal greetings and the terrifying ways they would prove how stuck she was. The coffee maker which would only make lukewarm coffee. But she was the type of person who knew how to start fires wherever she walked, and start a fire she did. The place they once knew by hospital white walls was painted red by her touch. Helly didn’t know any other way to be then too hot to the touch.
Helena needed Helly to feel complete, to feel balanced, to feel bloody veins and a heart beating too loud. Helly wanted none of the cold, but she couldn’t help but feel empathy for those who had been so touched by it. Gemma couldn’t get the woman made of fire out her mind, how if she were Mark who had only known the cold for so long and she found the heat in the deep winter, she would turn too. How badly Gemma wanted her own fire, one which fueled her to living rather than the one where she had died. Gemma supposed it all felt so cold before the end anyway, how long had they both spent out in the cold?
Helly couldn’t get the woman at the end of hall out of her mind, how she shook with need, how badly Helly wished she could drape a coat over her shoulder and hold her in her arms until the shaking stopped. Helly blamed herself for Gemma, the her who let her be stuck in the basement and the her who stole the comfort away again. Helly could be so selfish sometimes, her hand hovering over knife handles and pushing the thoughts away.
Mark had flashes of three different people all the time, two bodies, two hearts, three brains. He felt their lips all the time, phantoms of loves which had been and loves which still were. He wanted to feel it all at once. Cold lips, warm lips, hot lips. Helena, Gemma, Helly. He searched for a way to focus all of the energy into the person in front of him, but he couldn’t help but get distracted. Kisses from women he once loved were becoming kisses from women he still loved. Mark couldn’t get over any of them. When he thought about any of them all he could find was love, love, love.
Later Helly and Mark would have a conversation about Helena and Gemma, how empty they still felt without them. How cold their absence felt despite all the heat they were putting in their place. Helly supposed she understood this new version of Mark’s love better than anyone, and in some ways she felt the same love within her. In some ways Helly felt they were all the same, but in most they felt like different pieces of the same puzzle. She needed to feel them all to feel complete. All the way down it was just love, love, love.