Our hands stay linked as we walk back to the car, not full-hand, just pinkies hooked, like a promise we’re not ready to say out loud.
At the car, we don’t talk.
He opens the door for me, waits until I’m in, then circles to the driver’s side.
The ride home is silent, but not empty. I can feel his eyes on me at every red light, every time the headlights pick out a crosswalk or a lost tourist or a stray cat limping down the median.
He drops me at my building. I start to get out, but he catches my wrist, just for a second.
“You want to do this again?” he says.
I nod, afraid to trust my voice.
“Tomorrow?” he says.
I grin. “Tomorrow.”
He lets go, and I walk up the steps, feeling the world tilt with every one.
In my apartment, I stand by the window and look out at the city. My heart is still pounding, my lips still tingling. I touch my mouth, like I’m trying to press the memory deeper.
I taste salt, and wind, and Darius.
I taste the beginning of everything.
GREEN
It takes me all of four hours and seventeen minutes to completely lose my mind.
After I drop Ash at his building, after the silence, after the hooked pinkies and the way his breath caught like maybe he wanted to say something but didn't, I drive home, turn the radio up so loud it could melt the windows, and burn every muscle memory I have into the steering wheel.
It's like my body won't accept it happened, not really, not until I see my own reflection in the car window and notice the red, raw chapping of my lips, the flush still high in my face.
I want to text him before I'm even out of the lot. I want to say, "Are you okay?" or "Did you get inside safe?" or "Did that even mean anything or am I having a very elaborate breakdown?"
But I do none of those things, because the rules are still in effect, and if I'm going to be the anchor, if I'm going to prove to Ash and the world that I'm not just another idiot chasing the next trauma high, then I have to be the one who waits.
It doesn't matter. He texts first.
It comes in at 11:18 p.m., a single period, like he's started and erased the message half a dozen times before giving up.
I stare at it for a full minute. I send back: "?"
He replies, "Just making sure you didn't crash your car thinking about my mouth."
I laugh so hard I almost drop the phone on my face. I type: "Not yet. But the night is young."
There’s a pause. Three dots bubble, vanish, then: "Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," I write, and then because I want him to know I mean it, "Can't wait."
He doesn't reply after that, and neither do I. I lie on my back, arms over my head, and think about the beach, the way our mouths fit together, the way his hand trembled against mine.
I think about the risk, the thousand ways it could go wrong, and realize that not a single one of them scares me as much as the idea that it might stop.
———
We fall into a rhythm, the way people who grew up on routines always do.
