It wasn’t supposed to be. Yet, it was inevitable.
It was just-noon and there was nothing to do and no one to do nothing with. Only he was there. He was nice and handsome and smart and friendly. I was bored and bored and bored. So I asked him if he would like to go on a walk with me. I don’t know if he was just as bored, but he said yes.
We walked together, talking the whole time. Then, we sat, our words unceasing. He looked at his watch. It’d been hours. I didn’t believe him. I insisted it had only been minutes. But after a while, I had to believe the three different clocks we checked. It’d been hours. I looked at him in amazement and thought, "I think there’s something here."
This time it was he who asked and I who said yes. The path of after-midnight was foreign compared to its just-noon counterpart. We felt like intrepid explorers: isolated, excited, new.
There was no awkwardness, no fumbling or nervous sweat-stained advances. Just a slow rightness and yessssss. As we walked side-by-side, our hands swayed and brushed and touched and slid together. We thought nothing of it until we reached the edge of the grass, that invisible line that separated us from the reality that we shouldn’t be. Our hands slid away from each other. Not yet.
Sometimes I asked and sometimes he did. Sometimes we tried to stay away from each other but it never lasted long. When we were apart, there was only not-right, that ache of not-happy only relieved when our hands found its partner. We would walk for hours in the middle of the night until our eyes grew sore and our voices raspy from use, so long our feet had mapped out the whole path after a hundred tracings. And every time we reached that invisible line, our hands would naturally separate. Not yet, the night air whispered to us.
Sometimes neither of us asked, just let our feet take us outside to each other.
Each night, our connections grew stronger, more entwined. When our eyes met, it was harder to look away. When we stood next to each other, it was harder for our hands not to seek each other out, to pull away again and pretend we had nothing when really, we had almost-everything. It was getting harder to hear, "Not yet."
One night, he pulled me away from our usual path. We laughed our way up a hundred concrete stairs. He held out his hand and together we swayed on the roof of the parking structure to music only we could hear, all alone in our concrete hideaway. Above us, dark violet bled into blues. When the palest pinks and yellows leaked into the sky, we knew it was time to go.
When he went to let go of my hand, I held on for just a little longer. He turned, confused. I leaned close. There was no fear, no doubt, no confusion or regret when I whispered, "I think I love you." He said nothing, just squeezed my hand and let go. Not yet, and I let his hand slip away.
Ten minutes later, the small message box blinked in the glare of the computer screen. It said, "Meet me downstairs." He was already waiting, dark skin half-hidden in the shadows, eyes glinting white and serious. When I was close enough, he held my hands in his and said, "I think I love you too."
We walked back together hand-in-hand and as we crossed that invisible line, our feet faltered and our hands clenched but we held on for just a little longer, grinning so hard our cheeks hurt. When we finally let go, as the skin of our palms slid slowly away from one another, we heard the word drifting in the light of the dawn. Forever.
