“Was it?”
We both knew the answer. We knew it the second we kissed at the airport. We knew it every time our eyes locked. We knew it when he was so deep inside me that he took my breath. Finally I shook my head, and said, “No, but I didn’t see any other way.”
“Let me find one, Lauren. Just let me in and I’ll find one.”
I studied the brain throughout grad school: how it worked, how it stored and organized information, and how teachers could make instruction more accessible for all kids. While my focus was classroom-centric, I also learned how the brain perceived experiences and engaged the senses to form emotions and memories.
I knew the brain decided what it wanted to see. The rods and cones within the eye’s structure transferred images, but in the process, the brain morphed them, shifting and shaping and shading until they aligned with each person’s unique cognitive structures. The hard-wired neural pathways made eyewitness accounts unreliable, and meant we didn’t notice our keys were in their usual spot all along. Sight was belief’s most subjective, manipulative source.
I’d known this yet ranked myself above it. I thought I was the ultimate seer. I thought I could look beneath the layers, understand more than I saw, and read between the lines, but I couldn’t see what was right in front of me.
When had it stopped being just for fun, just for now? When had Matthew and I transitioned from drinking buddies to anus, an entity requiring care and communication? I paged through memories of Matthew while the humid air and rich fragrances of the Quarter rose around us, and realized it had never been casual. Not even once.
It was controlled chaos, and I needed to embrace it. Or running screaming.
Maybe it was the whiskey or the anise-flavored Herbsaint, or maybe just the sharp and sudden realization that I wasn’t in charge now, and perhaps I never was, but I wanted to close the distance between us. I wanted to get back to the place where I knew him, and with my head against his chest and his arms around me, I was close enough.
He pressed his lips to my hair and murmured, “I didn’t fly here for drinks. I flew here for you.”
He tipped my face up, his lips hovering over the corner of my mouth, and in that split second, life was perfect. I was perfect. There were no overdue action plans, no epic strangeness, no failing at entry-level life. Right now, with his hands in my back pockets and his lips on my mouth and those gazelles storming across my lungs,wewere perfect.
And that was all it was—now.
I wanted to step outside of myself and snap a photo of us, and then I’d always be able to find that perfection when everything else fell apart.
Chapter Twenty
MATTHEW
06:58 Lauren:flight officially changed to Fri night.
06:59 Matthew:good. I want you back in my time zone
06:59 Matthew:and bed
07:02 Lauren:your bed misses me now?
07:04 Matthew:every piece of furniture in my loft. shower. dick. hand.
07:04 Matthew:they all miss you
07:05 Matthew:the next time im jerking off in the shower, id really like your tits there so I can come all over them
07:08 Lauren:that’s very specific
07:09 Matthew:you’re all about specific requests, sweetness. I learn from the best
07:22 Matthew:…where’d you go?
07:23 Matthew:I thought you’d be into that. it’s cool if you’re not, it’s fine
07:23 Matthew:I want what you want.
07:25 Lauren:just clearing my weekend schedule. wanted to block time on my calendar for these little shower adventures you’ve described
07:26 Matthew:can I ask what you’ve titled that event?
07:28 Lauren:hydraulics inspection
