His dimples deepen and he leans in, voice curling into my ear. “You want me to.”
deep-sea trenches
Vast, unknowable places where pressure crushes everything.
That silent language. That hum around him. The one around me. It stretches, touches, rubs. It feels like exploration, tastes like him in my mouth, feels like him pushed up against me. It sings so much, it’s a ring in my ears.
It’s... too much. My breath hitches. If I don’t stay something, don’t haul in air, I’ll explode.
A violent shiver rakes through me.
I side-step him and hurry to his truck. Where was his truck?
“It’s near the rose gardens,” he murmurs.
I follow him there, half a step behind.
“Think we can get to Welly by five?” I ask. “Moana’s holding her play at the SWIS school hall.”
Trent only speaks once we’re both settled into our seats. “SWIS?”
“She needed a bigger place so the kids’ parents and grandparents and extended whanau can watch.”
“Can Grandpa come?”
“Sure. All the daycare oldies, if you can swing it.”
Trent keeps the truck in park and makes a couple of calls, and it’s sorted. He side-eyes me, and frowns. “Will you be okay watching?”
It takes me a moment to register what he’s asking. I huff, staring towards the gardens. “Mum never came to these things. She’s not interested. She’ll send Holly there and pick her up after. It’ll be fine. Besides, this time I’m prepared.” I lower my hat and flip up my shirt collar.
Trent passes me his sunglasses.
I slip them on, then nudge them down my nose and look at him over the top, waggling my brows.
He snorts. “Totally inconspicuous. But... if she does come?”
“I’ll have you, Grandpa, and the oldies to hide behind. I’ll crouch between you all and watch Holly through the gaps between your arms.”
His chest puffs out and holds before he exhales slowly, on a chuckle. He turns in his seat and leans over. He’s close, so close his breath tickles. His fingers pinch at the arms of the sunglasses. The shift lifts them up so they knock the underside of my hat.
Then his palms rest on my cheeks, his gaze holds mine and?—
Just a ghost, a tickle of his lips against mine; the barest brush.
There and gone. Like he was testing waters. Or like he’d had a sudden change of mind.
My lips tingle in the widening distance between us. He starts the truck. I’m still frozen, staring at him, his sunglasses blessedly slipping back down to cover my gaze.
shipwreck
The past lying in ruins beneath the surface.
The ghost sits between us, unacknowledged.
I find a fifty-cent coin and fiddle with it. Ship, head, ship, head over my knuckles. We’re talking. Both of us. Back and forth to fill the space, to cram the car full of words like they might shove The Ghost out the vents.
But I still feel her at my lips.
