October 2 - Never and Always

He took her hand that night, led her across a lawn damp with the leftover moisture of afternoon rain, a small shower, a respite, a sprinkling for the hungry earth that didn’t last long, was quickly forgotten, if not for that smattering of dew. She let him lead because she preferred to follow, the blades of grass tickling her ankles because she had worn open toe shoes. She never remembered that her toes got cold, nights like this. He wore shorts and a t-shirt, and she wondered how he didn’t shiver in the night when goose flesh pebbled her own thin arms, pockmarks, love marks, marks, anyway. It wasn’t winter anymore, but not quite spring, either, somewhere in between one season and the next so the days carried sun but the nights still nipped like kittens at your toes. A car drifted lazily across the drive that bordered the lawn, but he pulled her to him so they were motionless statues in the dark, no more than another blade of glass, maybe, perhaps, a little taller, and then the car was gone and the headlights dimmed down again and there was just them.

He led her to the building at the back of the campus, unlit at night, but unlocked to those who knew and understood these things, the giddy teenagers who thought it was somehow so much more grown up to wander to these places off limits, off center, off kilter. She bit her lip because she associated this gesture with nervousness, and all the story books said she should be nervous, when all she really felt at this moment was happiness. She wouldn’t let on to that, never. He led her up the stairs, one flight, two flights. She counted the steps and heard his breathing grow heavier, hers likewise, in unison, and she knew it wasn’t from climbing.

It had been that afternoon when he told her to meet him, a note slipped by her elbow, casually falling, casually dropped, furtively read, furtively replied to. A quick note, a note of few words, but they both understood every dissection of those graphite lines, every word unsaid on that one white page.

Meet me after dark.

He took her to an alcove in the stairwell, a small blue-tinged carpet on the floor. Was it a thrill that anyone could have happened by at any moment, always? No one had business here, at this late hour, but then, neither did they, and here they were surely, in the flesh. So should she worry? She decided just to bite her lip again. He laid her down and he began peeling off the strata of clothing that covered her until she wasn’t sure she even had seven layers of skin anymore, each one carefully sifted off like she was flour dusting onto that carpet, sifting, melting. When he was done with his task, she was sure she was more naked than naked, more than just bare flesh but rather bare thoughts, bare intestines spilling open, the lobes of her brain shouting out in electrochemical intensity as if she were a color-coded map. Blue here for the fear, red for the passion, yellow for the nerve endings that were tickling in ways she hadn’t known about when she woke up that morning.

“Only if you want to,” he said, caressing one cheek.

Swallow hard a moment. “Yes,” she heard a voice say.

Yes, on a cold blue-tinged carpet, music drifting to her ears from somewhere far away, or was that her brain, or was that her eyes, or her nose, or her mouth? She wasn’t quite sure anymore where he ended and she began, only that her feet still itched from the memory of those blades of grass, as if imprinted in her flesh always. I will never forget the way this blue carpet feels, she thought, as it scraped against the bare, baby-soft skin of her buttocks.

He held her forever after.

Forever? That’s a long time. Perhaps we are exaggerating here.

“Will you leave me never?” she whispered into his skin, where bone met shoulder, where sweat met tears. She licked at the salt.

“Never,” he assured.

“Will you love me always?” he asked, nuzzling against her ear, where hair curled at nape, where inhale met exhale and wound its way back down his throat. Or her throat. You decide.

“Always,” she swore.

He led her back across the lawn, prickling lawn, tickling lawn, as always, deposited her at her room, where by now the honey lights no longer created watery pools in the darkness because they had been extinguished, blown out, snuffed out, nothingness, neverness. It is not that drastic; it is only that, here, everyone was sleeping, out in a dream world that would be forgotten by morning, ever, always. She was sad to think that this day on the calendar had come to a close, that it would never be livable again.

He walked back across the lawn, leading himself to the place that was his, only it wasn’t his anymore. He felt her under his fingernails, inside his pores, wrapped up around his tongue. He smelled of her, tasted of her, felt of her. His room was quiet, dark; felt barren and empty after the space he had shared. The floor here was wooden and he paused a moment, forgetting already. The carpet was blue? The carpet was green. Surely the carpet was green. He would remember that always, he decided then and there.

He was young; you understand the absurdity of his statement.

She slipped under the sheets of her bed, her flesh slippery on the sheets that felt smooth after what she had endured. Was that her roommate sleeping in the room with her? Was it him? His trace lingered in the room, like a ghost that would haunt the space always, except she knew that by tomorrow it would be never and they’d never speak of it again. Always, she thought. Always it will be this day in my head.