Rey
Feel good this week. Expect my full-size C-legs Wednesday.
I’m going to stare straight in the Marquis’s eyes and go mano a mano.
The image of grappling with Rey took her back again to the heat of his lips under hers, his hands digging into her shoulders and pulling her into his bed on the last morning together at Walter Reed. Tonight the slightest allusion made her think of their too-brief liplock, memories that were simultaneously not detailed enough to be satisfying, yet too detailed to be ignored. She rolled to her side, but the new position didn’t relieve the fidgety urge to move her legs.
Time to shift to a safe topic like a book.
Did you like Endurance?
Rey
Not as much as Kon-Tiki. You?
She’d fallen asleep over the adventure sailing stories. Rey seemed to read a book a day, a pace she couldn’t match.
Dirty secret: I didn’t get far in that one. Sea air did me in.
Rey
If that’s your dirty secret, you need help.
When do you read?
She almost wanted him to say good-night so she could look at his picture again, which felt like sneaking candy.
Don’t you ever sleep?
Rey
Still wake up at 4, so I read then.
He’d explained his phantom leg pains, but she wondered if he also had nightmares.
Rey
You in your bunk?
This must be the night for personal questions. She and Rey texted every night, but neither of them had mentioned seeing each other again, nor had they ever referred to their goodbye kisses. The brief question heightened her awareness that he was a man, a man with whom she talked every day and with whom she’d once exchanged a handful of searing kisses. The ship’s surging movements amplified the vibrations in her fingers as she typed her answer in equally short words, but she suspected they would open a new door.
Yes. You too?
Rey
In my bed. Remember?
The single word, which must refer to their last minutes together at Walter Reed, knocked a giant hole in the invisible barrier between them. Given that the calendar said August and the interlude on his hospital bed had been in April, she thought about the feel of his lips often enough to earn the label frequent. Or maybe desperate.
Rey
Can you send a photo with your hair loose? That’s how I think of you.
She read his request twice before she remembered to breathe.
Rey
Sorry if that was out of line.
