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Even though this is the first time we’ve been together, I don’t feel awkward or worry about what will happen next. When I look at Jack, I don’t worry about a thing. It’s as if nothing else exists.
He rests his weight against mine and kisses me slowly, as if we have all the time in the world. At his touch, the universe in my headis distilled to a single star. Every movement is unhurried and attentive. I delight in every detail of him. The feel of his hair between my fingers. The way he looks at me when he rolls on a condom and pushes into me slowly. The sound of his breath in my ear.
He lingers everywhere, and I think I understand what he was trying to say about not wanting to fuck me, because this doesn’t feel at all like what happened on his couch. I’ve never had sex like this. Like there’s no destination, like every sensation is the whole point. I have been touched in these places but not in this way. I have been a means to an end, but I have never beeneverything. This is what it must feel like for someone to make love to you. It occurs to me that no one ever has.
He stills and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Are you okay, ciaróg? You’re crying.”
“I’m just feeling,” I say. “Good feelings. It’s nice to just feel and not think.” I trace the tattoo of a swallow on his shoulder. “That probably doesn’t make sense.”
“I understand you perfectly. I’m a champion overthinker, after all.”
When I laugh, the tears slip down my cheeks in earnest. “Oh God. This is embarrassing,” I say.
I search his face for any sign of annoyance or disappointment and find none.
“Feel whatever you want to feel,” he says. His voice in my ear is the best kind of secret. One that belongs only to me. “But if something doesn’t feel good you’ll tell me, yeah?”
I nod.
“Good.” He brushes away my tears even as more come. “I love how much you feel. It’s my favorite thing about you.”
“What else do you love about me?” I say, then pull him closer. “Don’t stop. Please.”
He rocks back into me and lowers his head so that his nose touches mine. “I love your freckles,” he says. “I love your voice.” He presses a kiss to my mouth and throat, and then he’s whispering into my ear. “I love the sounds you make. I love the way you look when you come. I love being inside you.”
And me?I think.Do you love me?
I don’t ask, because I think I know. I feel it in the way he kisses me, in how his fingers brush my hair, in the rhythm of his breath and the deliberate, unhurried way he moves with me. I wonder if he can tell I love him, because I do.
Except I’m not sure it matters. Because as much as I love it here, I can’t stay. I already feel the heartache in my chest. It’s tender to the touch, like a bruise you know is coming but can’t yet see.
When I come again, I don’t know if I’m falling apart or being put back together. All the parts of myself that seemed out of tune before find their place. Or maybe they were never out of tune at all. Maybe I’ve been listening for the wrong key—A minor instead of C major. Maybe I’m not playing the wrong notes, but starting in the wrong place. All that dissonance because I’ve been trying to play someone else’s song.
When Jack finds his own release, he buries his face in my neck, and I hold him as close as I can. I hold him and don’t let go when he stills. I hold him and don’t let go as our breathing slows. I hold him and don’t let go as this moment passes into the next.
I don’t want to let go.
Afterward, we lie beside each other in silence. Jack’s gaze follows his finger as it trails along my bare shoulder, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. He mutters something under his breath, as if he’s trying to count the freckles that pass beneath it.
Finally, he lifts his gaze to mine. “Where will you go?”
“Hmm?”
“When you leave Cobh.”
“Oh.” I was wondering when we’d talk about this. “Vienna, I think.”
“Not Galway?”
“I don’t think it could live up to Cobh,” I say.
“Why Vienna?”
Because it’s far from here, and I need to distance myself from you and this place as much as possible, or I won’t be able to at all.“It’s a very musical city,” I say.
“And...whenare you thinking of going?”
“When my twelve weeks are up in April. That’s what we agreed to.”
