“Can I kiss you?” you asked, as if you even needed to. So instead, I turned to kiss you. I let you turn my lips black and blue on that brown eyed afternoon, hearts singing a song you can’t sing along to. We kissed until we were old and new - like we meant something, even though I didn’t to you.
You broke off and your head tottered. Sun beat on our backs as we climbed back into your barely propped up pick up truck, and his hands graced my hands.
“I want to take you to a party,” he said.
“A party? I’ve been to parties.”
“No, a real party.” His eyes flashed with amusement, dazzling the dense air.
“I don’t know,” I tell him, fear bubbling in my throat. “I don’t drink. And I don’t do well with people.”
“You don’t have to. You don’t have to.” His smile flittered. “It’ll be just me and you.”
“Me and you?”
“Me and you.”
I considered.
“How can it be just me and you? It’s a party. It can’t be just me and you.”
“We don’t have to talk to other people.”
My heart skipped and my throat choked. It sputtered and choked, as in wild murmur I whispered “I guess.”
He smiled that smile that could make you comfortable in the very unknown. Then he staggered his head in to kiss me again.
“Let’s get moving,” he coughed, jerking the car into gear shift and pulling from the pavement. We rushed through the umber sky - fading from brown to blue. Suddenly, sky dimmed into driveway as we tugged down a neighborhood road.
“You look so pretty with the wind in your hair.”
I laughed, and brushed it back. I could feel my heart thumping to bass bleeding from a house we were approaching. My head lurched - the loudness ached in my lungs. But he leaned in to kiss me, and it felt pretty. I felt pretty. The air felt pretty. It was all pretty.
He hopped out of the car and pulled me from the passenger seat. Yanking my hand, he dragged me towards the party. I could smell the tequila from the doorway, and a blonde stumbled forward to exclaim his name. My stomach pulled with jealousy, but his arm around me calmed the anxiety. He chased me through the hallway, collapsing on the ground, where we sat among standing figures. We already felt separate. This party was not pretty, but he was. He was not pretty - but he was.

Come 2 am, or 10 pm, or sometime in between, I had lost sense of everything. I was drunk, and you drinking, on lemonade over whiskey - but we were well more aware than those shadows circling our fantasy. They danced, as we danced, to unexpected song. But our song was so different - more unreal than the reality those around us had sipped away.
We’d stolen tequila limes and were sucking the life from them, as we built our own paradise from pillows and comforters from unsuspecting beds. Taking turns trading rinds, we giggled as we tasted each other’s breath. It was sour and sweet - like lime and confetti - but that suited me just fine. He wasn’t all sweet, just all parties and life and every beautiful girl you’d ever meet.
I could still paint the ecstasy of that wild sense of something replaced by better. I could tell stories of stumbling over my own feet, tripping so often he thought it proper to carry me to adventures unknown. He was comfort - old and new - the old smell of spearmint, kisses, and shampoo. He lifted me and told me stories anew - things I couldn’t imagine - with the trace of amusement on his tongue.
“Hannah,” he drew me nearer, “you’ll never believe”, urging me to listen with promises he’d done exciting things and more were to come.
And there were exciting things to come. Podding across the indigo sky as starlight panted on concrete, we traveled miles into the unknown, but it didn’t need to be known. It was rousing and that was that. I felt like I could love you until my fingers turned blue, or not love, just feel an attachment to.
I felt an attachment to you. I let light crash over you as dusk turned to dawn, and dark burned up like a fever. So we crashed with bodies strewn, and he drew me in, and I felt like something had been born in me again. It felt like everything inside me had been rearranged to make more sense. And nothing happened between us. But everything happened at once.
And God, who would have it undone.