There’s the smoke of my cigarette, and the image of your widening smile as my hands unbutton your shirt. There’s the smell of my boozy breath and the glisten of your lips as my fingers fiddle and play until you’re right where I want you. There are the memories of several hundred nights where I stabbed myself in the chest trying to feel something other than the sense of numbness that had me in its arms for so long. And there are the scars of each failed attempt at being real that haunt me like awkward teenage romance. You with those knowing eyes, somehow they make everything seem okay. You with that smile even when I’m in one of my moods and am barely coherent. It’s just before midnight. We are here, but a short time ago, we were someplace else. There was pizza and ice cream in a restaurant packed with people looking regular, but we didn’t pay much attention to them at all. Holding hands over the table, we silently mouthed what we were going to do to each other once we got home. We giggled and laughed, and when I fed you scoops of chocolate mint, I smeared it on your chin and licked it off even though the waitress didn’t like it one bit. Leaving the lights behind, I’m nibbling your ear and spinning you around in the middle of the road, and then I take your hand and lead you to the doorway of a launderette down some back alley by the park. Unzipping myself, I show you what I’ve got, and you grip it tightly before pulling me close. What follows is a blur until I’m singing near a block of garages with you trying so hard to get me to be quiet. And then I’m falling up the stairs with you behind tripping over my feet, and then I’m rolling around on the floor of your bedroom demanding beer and wine until you give me a cigarette instead. And now here we are with me looking down on you wishing to taste something exotic, and you digging your fingers in thirsty for a feeling that will place us both among the stars.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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