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  “Yes.”

  “Okay.” He smirked and shrugged, closing the door.

  “I don't want to get my boots dirty, and if sand got into my socks it would be gross.”

  “You realize it's still very cold outside.” I looked him up and down.

  “You realize you're not wearing a jacket at all, and you’re the one who took us to the beach in November.” He smirked at me again, and it lingered on his cheeks as I walked away. We went through a set of gates, we had to climb a fence to get closer to the water. The beach was technically closed because of the season, but it was dark and no one would be there to tell us to go home.

  “This is my favorite spot in Boston.” His eyes focused on the dark horizon. The sound of the waves was different on a beach, than on a cliff. It was softer, more delicate and euphonious.

  “It's the first place I came to outside of the school campus when I got here." The subdued yellow glow of the full moon lay across the sand hitting our bodies. I watched his features shift in the light, dancing in and out of shadows and light.

  “I always had a pull toward the water.” He looked out at the ocean while we walked in a shallow diagonal, across the cold sandy ground.

  “One of my favorite places back home, in Chicago, was the Lake Front Trail.”

  The towering brown grass swayed in the light breeze, throwing slim shadows across the ground. It lined the side of the sand closer to the parking lot like a barrier. The sand was still smooth from high tide, untouched by human feet, except for ours creating a trail behind us. The texture crunched beneath my toes, rather than flowing smoothly because it had gotten wet and started to freeze a little bit.

  We got a bit closer to the edge of the water where I could feel the tiny droplets of water, sprinkle my bare feet. It stung a little bit because the water was much colder than the air around us.

  It was dark, but the moon was full so it served as a worthy substitute for the sun's brightness. He smiled at me, and closed his eyes stopping where he stood. He looked so good in the dim scene. The light made an outline of his face, strong…familiar still. He took another deep breath, and peaked at me with one eye.

  “Why aren't you taking it all in?” He had a crooked smile on his face.

  “I'm just admiring you.” How had such a perfect man come into my life? There were so many times I had taken chances that weren’t meant for me. I did so many things so boldly in my life, I couldn’t believe I was hesitating. There was something so different about him. There was something so real about the connection we had.

  I thought about it for too long and almost missed my chance.

  “Can I kiss you?” He flickered his eyes open, turning his body facing me. He stood there for a long moment, watching my expression change from hopeful, to hopeless. For a split second I doubted whether or not my advance would be reciprocated.

  Instead of answering he turned, leaning into me, grabbing my hips and laid his soft lips on mine. I was lifted above myself and thrown into another plane. We were out of our bodies because we had been filled, so full of each other that we erupted and spilled all over the sand.

  He tasted sweet, a bit like the cigarette he smoked on the way here. I tasted it on his tongue as it slipped it into my mouth, meeting mine. I could feel everything he ever felt. Every high, every low. I felt every bit of heat he ever felt in the last twenty-four years break. He monopolized both my love and my despondency. Then he pulled away slightly, our lips still almost touching. He smiled holding me close. I pushed forward to kiss him again, with less pressure than the first.

  He brushed my stray hairs behind my ear, moving my head slightly to kiss my forehead. My lips felt betrayed. I craved the taste of him again, and again, and again. Forever. He relaxed his back and dropped his hands down to my lower back. I buried my head in his chest, taking in his scent of peppermint and the lingering smoke. He buried his face in my hair, inhaling lungfuls of lavender. It was the only scent that I could stand, of course before I met Alex.

  We stood like that for a moment, then turned to look at the ocean again. The kiss replayed like a CD stuck on repeat, all of the tension I felt in the past hour was gone. My anxiety started to dissipate. It was rearranging, being replaced with contentment.

  “You know, now we're going to have to walk all the way back, right?”

  We had been walking for at least half an hour but I didn't mind, because it just meant I could spend more time with him. By the time we got to the parking lot, I was frozen to my bones. I climbed in awkwardly again. Not because I underestimated the height that time, but because I mostly couldn't feel my thighs or my toes. Even the car with no heat on, felt warmer than outside.

  He jumped in a few seconds after me and started the engine. It took a minute but the car got warm, and I defrosted my fingers and feet on the vent. I felt like my blood had turned to ice, and was being melted. There was a slight burning sensation as I was able to move my fingers and toes again. But, I knew it would go away quickly.

  My body started to relax with the heat. I wiggled my fingers to ensure I could still move them. Alex did the same but had his shoes off, and shoved his feet under the steering wheel to defrost them. We were silent in those minutes, basking in the feeling of the kiss still. We hadn’t touched again beside our hands, and I wanted to explore his entire body. I wanted more than a kiss. It could have been my slight addiction to sex that was triggering, but with him it was an attraction that not only lingered between my legs, but also in my chest.

  It was the first time I looked at someone and wanted all of them, not just what they had to offer underneath their clothes. He looked at me ardently and pulled his lips into his teeth, lifting his hand to scratch his head.

  “I don’t want to take you home yet.”

  “Okay.”

  I thought about kissing him again. He scrunched his eyebrows together and gripped the steering wheel with both hands flexing the veins in his forearms. He reached his hand for the gear shift but retracted it right before it got to it. I'd known what he was thinking because I'd seen that a hundred of times in different faces.

  He was motivated by the same feeling that I had. It was the instant connection that made him want to take my body, too.

  He turned to me, pressing his lips on mine dramatically. It was sharp and hard, but so full of passion. He kissed me with a fierce force that radiated through my entire body. It was so different from the first kiss on the beach, which was motivated by curiosity and emotions.

  For some reason, somehow, love had manifested itself into my life. I didn't get to watch it grow slowly. It had to come like that, mysterious and magnetic. Unmoving, before I even knew him. He kissed me faster, and harder. He opened his mouth slightly to let my tongue in again. It felt like every nerve in my body was on fire. I've never wanted someone so bad before.

  “Let's go into the back seat.” He whispered it to me, like it was a secret and someone would hear us. I agreed without words, crawling into the spacious area behind us. He sat down behind the driver's seat and I climbed onto him, pushing my hips into his. He ran his hands up the back of my shirt and unhooked my bra. He then pulled up my shirt and bra, up over my head at the same time.

  His hands took their time back down my sides and I put my arms around his neck. He moved from kissing my lips, to kissing my neck. I let out a gasp, curling my hands around the back of his neck. The windows fogged up quickly.

  I looked out the rear window, worried we would get caught. The fear swiftly faded as he slipped his hands down the back of my pants. His fingers tightened, as he squeezed my ass cheeks and pulled up slightly.

  He was back to kissing my mouth and I could feel his teeth through both of our lips. My hands moved from behind his neck, to the top of his shoulders and down his well-built arms. He tugged at the top of the pants I was wearing. I readjusted myself next to him, so I could get them off leaving me in my underwear. I pulled on his pants to be taken off too.

  I touched the top of his jean
s where the button pressed against his stomach. Pulling the button away so that I could get my finger behind it, and moved it out of the hole. The way he was sitting made it impossible to slide the jeans off on my own. He lifted himself up and we pulled them down together.

  Before I could sit back down on him, he grabbed my arm and turned me around so I was on the seat next to him, facing toward the other door. He had my arm tight against my back, with my knees lifted up so that my feet sat in front of me.

  My hair was still piled on top of my head in a bun and he pulled out the pony tail holder, letting my knotted curls bounce down my back. He moved my hair out of the way and kissed the back of my neck down to the middle of my shoulder blades.

  He wrapped his free hand around the front of me, gently closing his fingers around my breast. He continued to kiss around my neck and slid his hand down my stomach.

  He toyed with the top of my underwear, teasing me. Then he shoved his hand into the front, letting go of my arm.

  The car windows were entirely opaque by the time we were done. I wouldn't shift my weight off of him yet, so I stayed like that with him inside me until I gathered the energy to slide off of him.

  I never felt something so full and intimate. It felt like more than sex, it was like both of our bodies emptied into a container where our souls lived at the same time for eternity. I felt so connected to him, sitting like that in the back seat out of breath. I felt the sweat from his skin mix with mine, our bodies in sync. Moving together like the crashing waves of the ocean. It was meant to be, and all-consuming.

  Our energies connected somewhere else, and then settled back into our earth dwelling bodies. I climbed back into the front seat, half clothed. I decided not to put my bra back on, and sat in my underwear watching Alex climb forward and slip his shirt back on. I didn't want to go back home, even though the sky started to become lighter. It wasn't quite dawn, but close enough.

  I could still feel his touch lingering on my skin, something I would miss when the sensation went away. I closed my eyes imagining where his hands touched me, trying to memorize it. I could feel his ghost kisses tickling my neck, and my shoulders. I tried to harbor that feeling too. I threw my hair back up into a knot on top of my head.

  He looked at me for a long while, so I left my pants off a bit longer. I liked the way his eyes grazed my body. Somehow I wanted more. I didn't want that to be the only time we fucked like that.

  “I still don't want to go home.” I knew he didn't either by the way he was looking at me. I sprawled out in the passenger seat, with my thighs slightly open to keep his eyes where I wanted them.

  “Where do we go?" His eyes flickered away.

  I found my shirt in the back seat. I had to lean over while he was speeding toward our destination and slipped it over my head. Just as we passed another car, I realized that we had been out all night. We had lost track of time to the point where the sun started to rise in the distance.

  “I don't know what it is about you, that makes me feel like this." He used his blinker to turn the car into the parking lot of a small cafe in Brighton. We had been driving in silence for a while and I hadn’t noticed that we drove so far from where we were.

  “It's like I've known you my whole life. I feel like I've been missing you, until now. Twenty-four years, and here you are just now. But when I kiss you-" he slid his hand up my thigh not caring who saw it.

  “-it's like I've kissed you one-thousand times before that.” I almost gave in to the tension, allowing him to violate me in the car again, but this time with eyes watching from other cars in the lot.

  I slid my hand into the handle and jolted the car open, slipping out and jumping onto the asphalt.

  “I’m hungry, then I want to go to sleep.”

  He watched me walk around the vehicle and into the cafe without him. Soon after I touched the door he followed me, sliding his arm around my waist claiming me after only one night. My eyes felt heavy with exhaustion. I knew as soon as I climbed in my bed I would fall asleep instantly. It was uncomfortable, but worth it because I got to be with Alex.

  Everything was pulling me to him, I wanted to spend forever with him.

  5

  I always thought of myself as a loner, someone who couldn’t fully love, or be loved at all. I was a mess who couldn’t see straight most of the time because of my dependence on something, to continuously alter my state of mind. It wasn’t something I disliked about myself, but I knew it was an unlovable trait. Alex would love me for the person that I was and not the fantasy of who I could be.

  He was very much like me, a person shattered and glued back together more times than either of us could count. I was infatuated with every wrong doing, every mistake he’d ever made, up until he had met me. It made him more interesting.

  We’d spent so much time together, everything started to blur together like the pages of a good book. I was consumed by his overwhelming presence and didn’t care much about anything else. All I wanted was him. We were brimming to the edges with each other, so pregnant with our pasts it was as if we’d known each other our entire lives. We could see beyond the vast vacancies within both ourselves and each other, yet chose them anyway. It was so hard to mediate my time with him, and my time with my responsibilities.

  I showed up for my classes still, passing my midterms which made Fiona furious. She knew that I could pass exams without much effort, and was jealous of that. I had always gone along with her intense study sessions just to satisfy her ego.

  We didn’t have to leave either apartments very much after the exams were over, because school was out and Alex worked from home. He spent most of the days, sitting at his large drawing desk which sat in the middle of his living room. He didn’t have any other furniture in that room beside his massive, custom built bookshelves housing his impressive collection of comic books and a TV. But I put that there, because I couldn’t take the deafening silence in his apartment.

  Alex's apartment was tiny, but airy. It had one bedroom, a living room/dining room, and a kitchen. The kitchen was to the right of the entryway. It was narrow, but big enough for him to cook. Through the kitchen was the nook that I helped him turn into a dining room. He didn't have a table the first time I came over and said that he mostly ate at his desk.

  He loved superheroes in an appealing, nerdy kind of way. When he talked about them his face lit up, he was so warm and full of information. I asked him a thousand questions a day about them, because it was never something I was interested in, until then.

  His bedroom wasn't quite as plain as the rest of his apartment. The walls were painted white with a messy grey comforter sprawled on his bed, crumpled from waiting until the last minute to get up.

  There were glass display cases with lego models, hanging in between the wooden shelves which held figurines from different kinds of comics. He had two more smaller bookshelves against the back wall. The sides of the window, also filled with comic books that fit perfectly in their space on the shelf. He had other posters of his favorite hero's scattered across the walls, and on the back of his door like a teenage boy.

  After a few weeks Fiona stopped badgering me about when I was going to stop spending the night with Alex, to hang out with her. She got preoccupied with Jennie, her new girlfriend. I was surprised at first that she had moved on from Cameron, but it had been about time. They met through a mutual friend that went to Harvard. She was the same age as us, in the third year of her J.D program and planned on staying in Boston for the rest of her schooling. She had many years ahead of her, but was able to work as a Paralegal in the city.

  She made good money and offered to let Fiona live there rent free until she graduated. Fiona said she would till the end of the summer so she could finish up her lease, but I suspected they would break up by then.

  She didn't understand how I felt about Alex. I'd never seen Fiona have intense feelings about anything, except when she didn't get her way. Even with Cameron. She even asked me if I had gotten s
ick of him yet, to which I humorously replied ‘no’.

  I couldn't get enough of Alex. She was the most wrong she’d ever been, when she assumed I'd be done fucking around with him quickly. It actually pissed me off. I'd finally been able to confide in her about someone that I liked, and she blew me off. Every touch with him was a spark, a movement that was made up by the atoms, molecules and ions. So deeply ingrained into the matter that makes up who we are, that it just made sense. When we were together I felt as though, we were one whole soul.

  We'd found each other in that poetic wasteland, and she couldn’t stand it. I felt as though I’d lived many other lives with him. We connected and flowed too well for that to be not true. I spent so many years feeling empty and emotionless to the point where death barely bothered me. How could I suddenly feel connected and attached to a man I saw across a cafe? It was stupid. I was stupid for believing I could fall in love with someone so hastily.

  Our eyes locked as I lifted the lighter. I flicked the metal piece, making a spark, then a flame and lit the tip. I gently pulled the smoke down into my lungs. I brought it back for another long pull, lifting my head to exhale. The smoke cloud lingered on the ceiling and the room was swiftly engulfed in a strong odor of cigarettes.

  He slumped back a little bit defeated, then got up to open the large creaky window. A gush of cold air swooped into the room. December in Boston was freezing, so I got up to get a sweatshirt and a warmer pair of socks.

  My bare feet slapping against the wood, toward the door where my overnight bag was.

  “Do you think we knew each other in another life?” I walked back over to my spot on the ground, pulling a small blanket out of the closet. Sitting down, I turned to look at him. He had lit the cigarette that he took from my mouth and ashed it into his dirty paint cup.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don't know. Don't you think it's weird how fast everything is going?”

  “No.”

  “But it's not normal.” He peaked over his shoulder to look at me.