I brush the metal, warm from sitting next to Eitan’s skin. “Just admiring this.”
“It was my dad’s.” Our eyes meet, the moment still with loss. One word sitting steadfastly at the center of it.Life.
We come back together, two oceans meeting in the center of the world.
The rest of our clothes come off easily. Eitan has the foresight to turn off the lamp so that our silhouettes aren’t projected onto the side of the tent. Our momentum has slowed by the time we’re fully undressed, but not for lack of interest. I’m savoring this,marveling at it in light of three months of resisting and lying to myself about how drawn to him I’ve been. It’s so easy, the switch that flips when you finally let yourself want something. Kind of like switching between inhale and exhale. It’s all breathing.
There’s nothing between us now. Eitan leans over me, his chain swaying, his chest a sunkissed olive, sculpted softly like he’s carved from marble. He is a revelation.
There are some things you can dream about, can stare at sexyCosmopolitanspreads as a twelve-year-old in anticipation of, but never be fully prepared for. There’s something alchemical in the broad expanse of Eitan’s chest, flushed and glowing. Something divine in the small, soft tuft of hair in the center. Something sublime in the stretch of his shoulders, the way they always curl inward, toward me.
Veins pulse beneath his skin, a map to the heart I misunderstood so deeply. His lips quirk in that perfectly asymmetrical way, and his hair is a ruffled mess like he’s the star of a nineties music video.
It’s almost hard to look at him. A bit like looking into the sun.
Eitan kisses me, warm and wet, and my heart is thawing. I drift backwards, laying myself across the tent’s floor, barely noticing the hard ground or rustle of the tarp. He moves from my lips to my jaw to my neck, then down my chest. He kisses a pathway down, between my breasts, and he seems to know without being told that this is the highway of my sensation: the straight line down the center of my chest. The only place uninterrupted by scars. His lips skate over my stomach and his hands wrap around my thighs. The sight of him is surreal and intoxicating. His dark lashes blink, his eyes glowing. It’s one of those moments that ossifies into a memory around you. One that will replay when you’re not long for the world, and all you can remember is that one time in your youth when a dangerously handsome man buried his face between your legs.
The first sensation of his tongue parting my center is almost too much. Eitan’s hands hold me open like a personal feast. I gasp and moan and have trouble deciding between marveling that this is happening and sinking into the sensation. I haven’t been a nun for the last year, but it’s just different when it’s someone else. And it’s clear that Eitan doesn’t look at this like a chore. He’s making his own symphony of noises, his tongue carving a fervent path over my most sensitive spots.
I run my finger indulgently through his hair, and it takes a few seconds before his head raises, his eyes glazed, lost in my taste.
“Sex?”
“I want to make you come.” He squeezes my thighs.
I blush. “It’s hard for me the first time with a new partner.” I bite my lip and his eyes drop. “But I promise that was really good, likereallygood.” Eitan smiles, and I think I’ll commission an oil painting of the sight.
“Finally figured out how to make you be nice to me,” he jokes.
“Don’t push it,” I say, but it’s an empty threat. I am a vessel Eitan has cracked open, the bitterness exposed to the air. To the sunshine. To a soothing rush of water in the form of a grinning, bedheaded best man.
He climbs his way up my body and kisses me without hesitation, the taste of me passing between us like wine.
“Do you want to?” he asks against my cheek. It’s a heavy question, buzzing in the air. Of course I want to. But my hormonal therapy has changed things for me, physically. Spontaneity is all but dead. Condoms have lube, right? Maybe that could be enough. I want this so badly, maybe I can make it be enough.
I nod, still finding words difficult. “Protection?” I ask.
“Don’t read into this,” he murmurs, “but I have a condom.” He shifts to reach into his bag.
“Expecting to get lucky this weekend?” I tease.
“I knew you’d read into it.” He sighs. “These have been in my bag for six months.” His eyes flick to mine, perhaps looking for approval. “Better to be prepared. Which is why I also packed this.” Sheepish, he holds up a small bottle of clear gel.
“Is that…lube?” I ask, dumbfounded. Did he remember that from a conversation two months ago?
“I just wanted to make sure I had everything.” He bites his lip, nervous. “You know, in case anything—I wanted you to be comfortable?—”
I pull his face to mine, relief sapping the remaining tension from my shoulders. He listened, and he remembered. He sees me.
“Preparation is sexy,” I say against his lips.
He smiles and coats two fingers generously with lube to work them inside me.
In some ways, I’ve become a stranger to my own body. Splintering from it was a way to survive what I had to go through, but it’s difficult restarting that connection now that the dust has settled. As Eitan’s lips skate over my skin, his hands undoing me, pulling me up the hill of desire, my body and I are fused into one being. We feel and experience simultaneously. I breathe slowly, stretched physically and emotionally, until Ineedmore.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod, delirious.
