He didn’t say anything. He only drew closer until I could feel his breath hitting the top of my head, his chest pressing against my back, his abs moving against my spine, his hips resting against my bottom. He just stood there until I was leaning backward, falling into him.
I laid my head on his shoulder.
Stone removed his hands from his pockets and wrapped them around me, anchoring me to him as we looked past the ocean to Bone Island.
We were quiet for a long time, content.
The sea breeze, the ocean’s waves, the punching of his heart at my back.
At that moment, I knew he could feel the clock ticking, too.
“Ten days,” I whispered.
And then he was turning me in his arms.
Stone was wearing borrowed clothes, black jeans, a Heathen’s boots, with ice from Norse Woods still in the grooves, and his face void. Like he purposely wiped it so I wouldn’t know what he was thinking.
He slipped the cola from my hand, took a few gulps, and bent down to leave it in the sand. On his way back up, he kissed my collarbone, my throat, the places where our secrets were kept, and my jaw. Then he caught my lips in a sweeping kiss, his tongue tasting like vanilla cola.
His hands found my hips, and he dragged me inside the cave where it was warm. Where the cave held us together in its palms. Where the heat from the fire licked our skin. Where the song played on repeat, the lyrics mocking us.
He fell back onto the pile of blankets, taking me on top of him, messy, desperate hands sliding down my body, yanking down my jeans, my red panties with them, like two teenagers in a beat-up car, not bothering to remove shirts or shoes or his jeans all the way. There was no time for that.
Once I was naked from the waist down, he sat up and eagerly pulled me into his lap, and wrapped my legs around his waist. He moved my hair off my shoulder and kissed my neck. When I grabbed his length, his lips dragged lazily across my cheek, and once I sank him inside me, he moaned in my ear.
He took my face and kissed me longer and deeper than usual.
He kissed me with a heart squeezing me tightly.
This time felt different.
This time felt like goodbye.
For good this time.
I tried to look at his face, to look into his eyes, but he wouldn’t let me.
Frustrated with my attempts, he wrapped his arm around my waist and swung us around until I was lying on my back. He locked our fingers together behind his neck, caging my head between his elbows, kissing me and pushing inside me, and I was already thinking about tomorrow without him, and the next day, and the day after that. My chest was burning and my throat was closing up because even though I couldn’t see his face or look into his eyes, I could fuckingfeelhim in his kiss, his thrusts, the way he was holding on. I could feel the misery because he was thinking about life without me too and it was tearing us apart.
I didn’t know why he was doing this to me, why he was holding me under him like this, why he was ending us like this on this night, but it was breaking my fucking heart, and I couldn’t breathe. His movements were passionate, a slow grind, and I found myself crying. And then he was wiping my tears and kissing me and making love to me, and I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I clawed at his shirt and shoved my face into his neck.
Stone dropped his head into the curve of my shoulder, wrapping his arms around me, his thrusts slowing until he came to a stop. And we just stayed like that, clinging to each other.
Neither of us came that night.
But I don’t think that ever really mattered.
And the song was playing, and all I could think of was how this song would always bethatsong. The one that would haunt me for the rest of my life. The one that was the background to our love story, from the moment we first arrived at the lighthouse, and he was watching me from the dusty floor as I swayed, until the moment we said goodbye.
I didn’t know how much time had passed. Eventually he pulled himself away from me, zipped up his jeans, and stood with his back pinned to the wall of the cave.
I stood and yanked my jeans up over my hips, feeling empty as I watched him reach into his pocket and grab a box of crushed cigarettes. Then he lit one, inhaled, his breath shaking.
“And to think this is where our story picked up,” he whispered on exhale, the sounds of the waves crashing onto shore and the wind crying all around us. “I’d saystarted, but we both know this isn’t true.”
It was a goodbye.
