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All the unspoken things build higher, hotter and hotter, until I feel like as long as August holds me, takes me, finds his way so deep inside me, I’ll be home.
With him, I’ll never be cold or lonely again.
XVI
WASH US CLEAN
(AUGUST)
I’m making a colossal mistake.
If this were a corporate contract, I would halt it immediately, figure out where things derailed, and correct course.
But Elle isn’t a damned project.
I can’t rewind time.
And I still can’t call this something that went wrong.
Rather, it’s the setup for something terrible later on, when Elle either betrays me—or I betray her warmth and trust when I can’t accept the honest sweetness she gives me.
Right now, though, my mind is somewhere else as I lick the water away from her skin and she wraps her legs around my waist and buries her face in my throat with soft cries of August, August, August.
How can a mistake feel like it’s the only truth I’ve ever known?
This feels more right than anything I’ve ever known in my life.
Like she’s the only good, true thing I’ve ever known.
When we come down from our high, we stay silent under the shower spray with my lips pressed to her brow. It’s hard as hell to pull away from her.
Hard to want to move at all, but we can’t stay like this forever.
Slow kisses and light touches become murmurs, soap, all warmth and lazy caresses with warm towels until I’m not sure if this is bathing or foreplay.
Later, when we’re clean and tired and sated, I wrap her in my robe and carry her to bed.
Not the guest room tonight.
I can’t stand more space between us.
Tonight, I need to hold on to this messy thing of ours like it’s something I want to cherish for the rest of my life.
Elle forms a small bundle against me, sleepy and soft and just right, her head pillowed against my stomach as I turn on the bedside lamp and open an old leatherbound copy of Robinson Crusoe.
I barely manage to read I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York before she’s gone.
This strange, quiet angel rests against me with her starry lashes trembling against her cheeks and her lips parted.
I turn the light off, but I don’t sleep.
I’m still a nocturnal animal, and tonight I’ve captured the sun.
I just watch Elle dream, clasping her tight until the hours run long and the morning comes to steal her away.
Unfortunately, morning does come.
And with it, an absolute brat of a morning lark that’s been cursed upon my life.
