SUNLIGHT SHINES ALL around us as my mouth maps a shady trail over his skin.
Behind his ear, down the tender side of his neck, over the point of his throat. I part my lips and taste the sticky sweetness in the divot where his collarbones meet. A shudder settles over me as I inhale the peppery, intoxicating scent. He’s a dreamy nightcap in the middle of the day. Warmth beats down on my exposed back. My knees chafe from friction with the crisscross embroidery of the picnic blanket. The thread makes little x-shaped indentions on my shins.
Dylan’s chest rises and falls beneath me, leaner than I remember. It’s only been a little more than a week since I’ve seen him, but I’ve somehow forgotten his details. My hair fans over him, trickling over the ridges of his stomach—defined muscles I never bothered to notice or appreciate before. He shivers as my mouth dips further and further south.
It’s different this time.
Long fingers grip the tops of my arms and pull me back up. Even with my eyes closed, my face finds his in an instant. Like an ionic bond, we fit. I smile against his lips.
My fingers draw invisible lines on his collarbones, over the puckered ridge of a scar on the left side of his chest—another detail I’ve somehow forgotten. I linger there, tracing it, trying to remember what it looks like. I can’t process all five senses at once. His hands are everywhere.
My bare thighs slide over the protrusions of his hipbones—skin on slippery, damp skin. Though I know what comes next, for the first time, the curious anticipation of it makes my legs tremble.
I sit up, lashes fluttering against the glittering daylight. Body bared and back arched. I’m not a girl, but a physics lesson: the inevitability of an inclined plane. Our energy is combined at a single meeting point. We are perpendicular lines occupying the same shimmering vibration. Synchronicity in human form.
I balance, fingers stumbling again over the raised scar. I’m drunk on sensation and my eyes can only process color. First the white of the scar, then the flesh surrounding it. The green of our hillside. The endless blue of the sky. The gray stone tower jutting up against the horizon.
His aura bleeds into my vision. It’s not the usual slate, but deepest plum—the exact shade of an African violet. I know a moment before I look at his face that it’s Henry beneath me.
The shock of it changes none of the euphoria I feel.
I trace a thumb over his fleshy bottom lip, breaking its seal with the dramatic cupid’s bow of the top one. My fingertips read the braille of stubble on his jaw. It says don’t stop. His hair is a mess on the ground, and I don’t know how I managed to miss the difference, how something didn’t give this away immediately. Of course everything feels different: because it is.
He is an atlas of perfect destinations. I’m lost in the deep green forests in his eyes as I sail the ocean currents on his hips. Something hazy and inaccessible taunts me from the deepest recesses of my mind. Something about magnets and maps and a mission—the thing we came here to do. Except we ended up doing this instead.
I look down at Henry, and the angles of his jaw clench sharper. The furrow of his brow, deeper. He knows we’ve gone off course. I close my eyes again, trying to hold on. Begging the powers that be for another minute. Thirty seconds, even. But it’s too late, because my brain has identified this for exactly what it is. The moment you realize a dream is just a dream, a cruel breaker trips and it’s gone.
I fling back into my body with a high-voltage jolt. In Patrick’s room. Middle of the night. Curtains blowing. My throat is ragged; I’m panting like I’ve run a race. My hair and t-shirt stick to my skin. I throw the blanket in the floor and peel off my pajama pants. The cool night breeze from the window brushes over my damp knees. I’m a live wire left behind by a storm.
Only a Jack and Jill bathroom separates my room from his. I dart upright. I could walk in there right now, crawl into his bed, whisper this secret to him.
But…
Reality returns to me in degrees. Henry and I are barely even friends. We only just had our first real conversation last night. My heart pounds and I quake with disappointment. That was the way it’s supposed to feel. I don’t know how I know; I just know. The shame I couldn’t feel in the dream submerges me now. Why has it never been like that with Dylan?
Maybe not taking my medication is messing up my perception of things.
Tears well and I cover my face with my hands. My throat aches. I need water.
My feet glide over the smooth floor planks, across the rug at the foot of the bed, over the threshold and onto the cool tile of the bathroom. I paw around in the dark for the light switch. I find the wall, closer than I thought it was, but it gives way and...
“Sorry,” says a startled voice, moments before the light flips on.
Not a wall.
Henry and I freeze, face-to-face in the narrow bathroom. There’s bare skin everywhere. My legs. His chest and arms. We’re immobilized by the exposure, by our eyes adjusting to the light.
His hair sticks to his face the way mine sticks to me. He shimmers with sweat-sheen. He crosses his long arms in front of him, following the v-shaped lines that dip down into his boxers, which I am not looking at. At all.
We stand frozen. Maybe only seconds have passed. I can’t tell.
I feel his eyes all over me, but I avoid them, diverting my gaze to his collarbone. My stomach plummets when I see it there: the déjà vu.
A small, puckered scar glistens white on the left side of his chest. I’ve never touched it, but my index finger twitches with memory. I know what it feels like, even though I’ve never seen Henry with his shirt off until this exact moment.
A drizzle of perspiration rolls between my ribs, down my stomach, into my bellybutton. It shoves me in motion. I dash from the bathroom and shut the door behind me.
“Sorry,” he says again, from the other side of the door. “Was getting a drink of water.”
Instead of replying, I hold the knob in the vise grip of my sweaty palm, praying he won’t turn it. We’re both silent. I wait there until the strip of light under the door disappears and I hear him go back to his room.
He never even turned on the faucet.