When Morgan handed back the bottle, she took a larger gulp than the previous one, allowing herself to become the story instead of the one who listened. “We should do something crazy tonight, don’t you think?” Lee said, assessing the look on her girlfriend’s face upon presenting the idea. They had already done what was quite possibly the craziest thing two people could ever do, but like a runner's high, Lee had felt the power and euphoria she had once wielded slip from her grasp only days after the fact.
The pearly white teeth of Morgan Finch made themselves known underneath the streetlights above, creating a new warmth inside of Lee that alcohol couldn’t provide. She shook her head as she exhaled a half-attempt at a laugh. “What did you have in mind, Miss Holmes?”
Lee wanted to laugh alongside her, wanted that same release, and yet the truth of her childhood sat at the back of her throat, desperate to be heard. It burned just like the alcohol. After all, the pair of them had exchanged so many truths throughout the past week. Telling Morgan the truth now, particularly about something as trivial as her childhood, paled in comparison. “Idon’t really know what it’s like. To feel like a teenager, I mean. Could you show me?”
When Morgan Finch stopped walking, Lee, in turn, did the same. Morgan placed a hand on Lee’s arm, now, resting it there as she focused her eyes upon her. Something Lee had always loved about Morgan was that she always looked at her, never through her. “I would be delighted,” she said, leaning forward to place a kiss upon Lee’s cheek. “I know just the thing.”
A vague sense of regret seeped into Lee’s headspace upon witnessing the mischievous smile that Morgan was currently adorning, and yet, as her girlfriend took the bottle from her once again, chugging a mouthful as she winked in her direction, the feeling dissipated as quickly as it had arrived.
“I trust you,” Lee said, meaning it more, now, than she had ever meant it for as long as she had known Morgan. Three words that now held a multitude of weight to them, perhaps even heavier than the standard “I love you.” As the words travelled between them, Lee willed for Morgan to receive them in the way that she had intended.
Upon seeing Morgan’s face change ever so slightly as the left side of her lip curled upwards softly, Lee could see that they had landed perfectly.
The fog that had covered the evening in its gentle coat became mixed with Morgan’s smoke as she exhaled her cigarette out into the cold air towards the pavement below. Looking over towards Lee after doing so, currently sipping the cheap whiskey they had purchased earlier, she offered an inquisitive eyebrow and a half-attempt at a grin, exposing her teeth ever so partially. “Well…? Are you going to do it or are we freezing to death for nothing?”
“I’m not doing it alone, Morgan,” Lee said, rather defensively. “I’ll only start taking my clothes off when you do.”
Morgan Finch laughed wholeheartedly, now, one hand on her stomach, stomping out her cigarette onto the ground of Central Park after taking one last puff. “You act like I won’t do it,” she said, already taking off her boots as she bent down, removing them with her hands before kicking them to the side. “Baby, I was born to do reckless things, and I will die doing reckless things.”
“Yes, well,” Lee replied, replicating Morgan’s previous actions by stepping out of her heels, placing the bottle of whiskey on the ground beside them, offering a pleasantclinkupon doing so as it hit the concrete. “I’d prefer if neither of us died tonight by doing something reckless.”
As if searching for a distraction, delaying what they had set out to do, Lee Holmes looked up at the night sky, and found one. In fact, she had unintentionally found two.
The stars above offered her the kind of peace you found in looking at a flock of birds about to take flight. And yet, they were not the same. She hadn’t stared at the same bird as everyone else on this planet, but she had stared at the same set of stars, and there was a sense of comfort in that. The second distraction was a plane flying overhead, much like the birds she envisioned, its destination unknown. She pictured each individual seat, and the people on it. She pictured being one of those people in one of those seats one day. She found peace in that, too.
But right now, she wasn’t looking at birds or sitting in an airplane seat. Right now, she was in Central Park, finding peace in new ways she hadn’t imagined finding peace in before.
Morgan Finch was looking at her now, but Lee Holmes was not looking back. She sensed her girlfriend gazing at her but maintained her own gaze on the sky above. “We don’t have to doit if you don’t want to, Lee,” Morgan said, averting her gaze to the plane that Lee was focused on. “We can go home if you like.”
Lee Holmes put her distraction aside, averting her gaze from the sky and directing it towards Morgan, instead. “No,” she said, plainly, acknowledging the fact that she could be staring at the same sky from another country, or even another park, with another person. She could be, but she wasn’t. She was here, with the woman she loved, and tonight, those stars belonged to them. “I want to.”
The cold air bit at her arms as Lee removed her blazer, discarding it to the floor atop her heels, instinctively rubbing her hands over her skin in a futile effort at warming herself up, the alcohol doing little to maintain her body heat at a comfortable temperature.
Like a strange asynchronous dance routine, Morgan Finch did the same, removing her navy-blue suit jacket and black waistcoat, placing them atop her boots whilst simultaneously placing her pocket watch within the sole of the left shoe.
As she began undoing her shirt buttons, so too did Lee Holmes begin wrapping her arms around the back of her dress in an attempt to unzip it. With the act unfulfilled after approximately sixty seconds, she watched and observed as Morgan Finch made her way over to her in her socks with her shirt newly unbuttoned, revealing a sports bra underneath. “Allow me,” she said, placing two welcomely warm hands across Lee’s back, before unzipping her dress.
Lee Holmes allowed her less-than-appropriate thoughts about Morgan’s attire alongside her delicate touch to warm her body, providing it with the much-needed heat it required. When the dress fell to her ankles, leaving her in nothing but her underwear, she bent over ever so slightly in order to retrieve the half-empty bottle of whiskey beside her heels. Taking a larger gulp than she was accustomed to, she felt it travel down herthroat and into her stomach, setting up home there as it offered a pleasing burning sensation deep inside her, like building a fire underneath her skin.
She missed the feeling of Morgan’s hands upon her back, and yet she was rewarded instead with a beautiful observation. Watching her girlfriend remove her shirt from off her shoulders as it fell to the ground below felt worth the lack of contact. After undoing her belt, her pants shortly followed as they made their way to the concrete in a pile around her ankles.
“You ready?” she said, preparing to take off her socks as she stepped out of her trousers and bent down towards the floor.
“Not particularly,” Lee said, ignoring her own statement by stepping out of her dress. With the pair in nothing but their underwear, she took a deep breath, followed by a final gulp of whiskey, and jumped into the fountain.
Perhaps this is what it feels like to be alive,she thought to herself, as the icy water enveloped her, splashing at her ankles with force as she landed.
As Morgan jumped in beside her, it only occurred to her then that she had gone almost an hour without thinking about the ins-and-outs of what had happened at their apartment, as if the man they had disposed of could be standing in some other fountain, his murder only a distant nightmare that never truly happened.
The recollections of her nightmare somewhat subsided, as Morgan placed an arm around Lee, and then another, pulling her close to her own body, now dripping with cold water as it travelled down her stomach, her thighs, sharing droplets with the woman she was now holding. “Do you feel like a teenager yet?” Morgan whispered, placing a gentle kiss upon Lee’s lips as they shivered against each other's bodies.
Truth be told, Lee Holmes wasn’t sure what, or who she felt like, just as she wasn’t sure who, or perhaps even what, Morganwas. And yet, for now, Morgan was a cold body to latch onto. She was a grin that made her insides warm like a freshly lit cigarette. And perhaps at present time, that was enough.
Chapter Nine
After arriving back at their apartment close to the early hours of the morning, Lee Holmes was both grateful and ungrateful to be in bed. She was grateful in the respect that her body was no longer shivering, having showered prior to getting underneath her heated blanket. And yet, at the same time, she was ungrateful that her mental purgatory had come to an end, and, with the lights off, her mind was allowed to run rampant once again, no longer distracted by bright lights and freezing cold water.
The consistent rhythm of the clock, once unnoticeable, was suddenly all that Lee could hear whilst Morgan slept peacefully beside her. Metronomes were known to allow a person to drift off to the calming pulse, like a familiar heartbeat. A familiar heartbeat lay next to her, her short hair splayed across the pillow, as Lee imagined the gentle thrum of the clock to be her girlfriend breathing in and out, in and out.
