“Okay,” he told me softly, like I was some wild animal that needed to be lulled back into its cage. “Okay, Angel. I understand, alright? I’ll respect that. Just…come back to bed. You’ve had a lot to drink, and you’re tired. I won’t overstep my boundaries again. I promise. Just… come here.”

I eyed him carefully, saw the pleading look in his eyes. My shoulders sagged and I walked back to the bed. I collapsed back next to him, and we didn’t speak. The silence returned, and this time it was heavy and uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry I pushed you,” he then apologized, contritely.

“You didn’t,” I murmured. “I did that to myself.”

More silence.

Then, “If it makes you feel better, your lips are better than I remember, and I want to thank you for giving me the privilege of kissing them again.”

I was about to laugh at his drivel, until I turned my head and saw how breathless and honest he was. My heart burst, and tears welled in my eyes.

Jesus Christ, he was actually being serious.

He thought kissing me was a… privilege.

“You’re tired,” he then stated.

“Yeah,” I forced out in a tremble.

“Can I hold you? Not kiss you or anything. I just want to hold you.”

“I don’t think that’s wise.”

“But we’ve never fallen asleep together before, so you can’t really know. Besides, what’s one night hugging you? I won’t see you for a very long time afterwards.”

I paused. He had a point there, and I was still weak. “Okay.”

The mattress shifted as he got closer to me. He didn’t speak, not once. Not when he wrapped his arm around me, and not when he pulled me into his embrace. My head nestled against his neck as he bathed me with his warmth. It was undeniably comfortable, and I didn’t want to move.

This was our little bubble we’d just formed, and nothing outside of it was going to change anything. We’d forget about this come morning, and all would be fine again. I reassured myself of this, and it was sad because he was doing what I’d been dreaming of for so long, and it was too late.

He rubbed my back tenderly, and I sighed into his chest.

Slowly my eyes grew heavier, and I fell into a deep sleep in the comfort of his arms.

Nine

Carter

There comes a physical pain in wanting what you can’t have. It’s a lot like a dagger that’s been plunged into your chest, twisting its way into your soul.

I thought being near to Leah would help me, but it was just hurting me instead. It hurt to refrain from wanting to touch her, be with her, and even open my mouth to tell her I wanted more a second time.

I knew she thought I was crazy. It came out of nowhere to her, but she didn’t know about the countless hours I spent revisiting our time together, realizing how fickle life was. In one blink of an eye, it would be over. We were just dust at the end of the day. One day nobody would remember us treading the earth, leaving footprints among a muddled sea of others.

We were unmemorable creatures. Fleeting little monsters, born one morning, dead the next. And while it was a depressing as fuck thought to have, it actually put things in perspective. I wanted to grow old, sharing memories with someone that knew me before I got famous. Someone that didn’t look at me like I was a fucking god. Someone that made me feel like what we had was real.

There was only one person that could do that, and that was Leah. It would always be Leah. She knew me inside and out. Had put up with me even when I lived in my denial, hiding my love for her because I was terrified of what it meant. Terrified of fucking it up. Terrified that I’d lose her because broken love was all I came to know as a kid.

I felt like the clock was ticking. She was going to slip through my grasp, fall for someone better, someone more deserving. They would have a relationship born from promises and commitment. Nothing like the past we shared.

The thought made me squeeze her to me as she lay asleep in my arms.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” I whispered, helplessly. But come morning, I would go back to my empty life and fill it with distractions.

Distractions that were meaningless, surrounded by equally meaningless people.

I held her to me tight. She was my distraction for tonight. The perfect kind.

I could face her rejection, but I couldn’t face her moving on from me entirely. I didn’t want her to fall in love with someone else.

Maybe it was too late and my hopes were futile.

Maybe it was over before it began.

So I just held her to me, and pretended it was us against the world. Tonight she was mine, forever and always. And in some higher dimension, we would always exist like this, with her in my arms, breathing my air, making me feel whole again.

It was strangely uplifting.

10 years old

“I’m sorry I ruined your guitar,” she said to me, tearfully.

I swallowed back the lump in my throat and looked up at her standing in front of me. “It’s okay, Mom.”

She sat down next to me on the bed, and I gripped Dad’s guitar with all my strength. It was old and dusty, but it worked nonetheless, and I didn’t want her to take it off me.
She eyed the way my body tensed as I cradled the guitar to me.

“I won’t touch it,” she reassured me, calmly. I stared at her for a while, assessing her. Was she the mom I loved? Or was she the mean one that wanted to destroy everything around her?

“Then why are you here?” She wasn’t around often. She’d been at the hospital for a couple weeks, and Dad said they were making her feel better. She seemed to be better now, but I knew how fast her moods could change.

“Daddy says you have a beautiful voice,” she said, quietly, running her hand down my back in an affectionate manner that had me cringing. She never touched me anymore. Not for a few years. I wasn’t used to it, especially after witnessing all the destruction that had come out of those very same hands.

“So?” I replied on a shrug.

“So I want to teach you how to sing.”

“You can sing?”

She nodded with a smile. “Yeah, darling, I can. That’s how I met your father. I used to sing at a bar, and he approached me after I finished one day.”

“She was beautiful,” Dad suddenly cut her off to say. I looked over her shoulder and saw him standing in the doorway, staring at her with love pouring out of his eyes. “I couldn’t resist. I knew if I didn’t ask her to dance with me, I might never get the courage again.”