His skin on mine feels hot and raw and urgent. His touch goes from languid to fire. I feel it around us, all around us. I want to scream. I want to tear us apart.
We make love in that bed. That bed that Bella bought. This union that Bella built. He traces his fingers over my shoulders and down my breasts. He kisses my neck, the hollow of my collarbone. His body on top of mine feels heavy and real. He exhales out sharply into my hair, says my name. We’re going to break apart too quickly. I never want this to end.
And then it’s over, and when it is, when he collapses on top of me—kissing, caressing, shuddering—I feel clarity, like it has clobbered me in the back of my head. I see it in the stars. Everywhere. All above us.
I knew it all five years ago; I saw everything. I even saw this moment. But staring at Aaron next to me, now, I realize something I did not know before, not until this very moment: 11:59p.m.
I saw what was coming, but I did not see what it would mean.
I look down at the ring I am wearing. It is on my middle finger, where it has been since I put it on. It is hers, of course, not mine. It is the thing I wear to feel close to her.
The dress, a funeral shroud.
This feeling.
This full, endless, insurmountable feeling. It fills up the apartment. It threatens to break the windows. But it is not love, no. I mistook it. I mistook it because I did not know; I had not seen everything that would get us here. It is not love, this feeling.
It is grief.
The clock turns.
After
Aaron and I lie next to each other, perfectly still. It is not awkward, although we do not talk. I suspect we are, both of us, coming to terms with what we have just discovered: that there is nowhere to hide, not even in each other.
“She’s laughing,” he says, finally. “You know that, right?”
“If she doesn’t kill me first.”
Aaron lifts a hand to my stomach. He chooses, instead, to make contact with my arm. “She knows,” he says.
“I’d imagine, yes.” I roll to the side. We look at each other. Two people bound and tethered by our own grief. “Do you want to stay?” I ask him.
He smiles at me. He reaches over and tucks some hair behind my ear. “I can’t,” he says.
I nod. “I know.”
I want to crawl to him. I want to make my bed in his arms. To stay there until the storm passes. But I can’t, of course. He has his own to weather. We can help each other only in our history, not in our understanding. It is different. It has always been different.
I look around the apartment. This place she built for me. This haven.
“Where will you go?” I ask him.
He has his own place, of course. His own life. The one he was living this time last year. Before the tides of fate swept him up and deposited him here. December 16, 2025.Where do you see yourself in five years?
“You want to have lunch tomorrow?” he asks me. He sits up. Discreetly, under the covers, he pulls his pants back on.
“Yeah,” I say. “That would be nice.”
“Maybe we could make it a weekly thing,” he says, establishing something. Boundaries, maybe friendship.
“I’d like that.”
I look down at my hand. I don’t want to. I want to hold it forever. This promise on my finger. But it is not my promise, of course. It is his.
I take it off.
“Here,” I say. “You should have this.”
