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I just let a lot of psychological clutter get in the way.
Time to clean house.
The music winds down, the slow melody turning into the opening chords of Nine Inch Nails’ “Closer.”
Ah, irony.
I start to pull away, realizing it’s true.
I don’t care.
I don’t care that Will’s wolf pack group of friends from high school is stuck on standards that never mattered in the first place. I don’t care that half the people in here have graduate degrees and spouses and kids and houses and I don’t. I don’t care that my life’s trajectory has taken me way out of the arc of expectation. I’m not a machine. I’m not an object. The surface of any given scene isn’t all that matters.
I am deep ripples in a glacier-carved lake. Most of these people only care about what that lake’s shining surface mirrors back to them.
Pulling away slightly, I make sure I can see Will’s face. His eyes are unfocused, and he’s watching me with the most bewildered look. As we lock on each other, his attention, well…
Deepens.
And then he goes out of focus as he moves in.
Is he doing what I think he’s doing?
The brush of light stubble on my jawline makes me start and pull back, nerves like skittish horses in a thunderstorm. I’m so alive in his arms, but stuck in the past on the inside, my heart marshaling my internal troops for a long, steady march into the present.
I’m so many different people, all living memories in disparate times.
“Mallory,” he says, pulling me closer until I can’t see him, my glasses making him blur. His scent is so delicious, soap and light cologne, his ever-present scent of lime and mint. The low, anguished tone doesn’t really match the music, and now our feet are barely moving in spite of the insistent beat. I swallow, hard, as all the people inside me suddenly join together as one, fully present, here and watching.
This is it.
This is real life.
And you know what?
I really don’t care.
“I really don’t care,” he says, like he read my mind. His lips are against the soft skin below my earlobe. I shiver.
“Don’t care about–” I hold my breath until I can’t take it anymore. “–me?”
“Don’t care about Osgood. Or Fletch. Or Ramini. They’re all assholes.” His nose rubs against my hair and he inhales slowly, a savoring kind of torture that turns every inch of my skin into fire.
“This isn’t some teen movie, Will. Kissing me in public isn’t going to save the day.”
“No, it won’t. But it will definitely feel good. I’m about to kiss you because I want to feel good with you. I want to make you feel good. And I’m pretty sure that when we kiss, we’ll feel even better.” My hands belie my words as he speaks, the folds of his shirt between my fingers, the tight stretch of the fabric drawing him to me.
“Is that how kisses work? They’re exponential?” I ask, my voice shaking but full of jokes I don’t mean.
“I imagine they are, with you. Now shut up and let’s find out.”
The space between us folds and he’s kissing me, his mouth so perfect, the connection natural and good and how did I ever live without being in his arms? Twenty-eight years without this magic is twenty-eight years of being flat in a world that turns out to be four-dimensional. I didn’t know.
I thought I knew.
But I really didn’t know.
If people notice, I’m not aware of it, spinning and spinning inside. All the parts of me that have wanted this man for so long cling to him. Fingertips dig into his shoulders, brushing against the ends of his dark hair at the edges where they touch his neck. My breasts flatten against his chest as his mouth moves against mine, arms caging me in like this is his one and only chance to kiss me across all the random chances and infinite combinations of our souls being in the same place at the same time under the perfect circumstances.
