Alone With It

He was alone with it more than he told her.

Nights when the wanting was so specific it felt like a toothache. He would lie in bed and close his eyes and build her in his mind. Not just her body, though that was part of it. The curve of her waist in the second photo. The strip of skin in the first. The way her hair fell. The way her mouth might look if she were close enough to kiss.

But also her hands. He thought about her hands constantly. The way she described holding a coffee cup. The way she talked about drawing. The way her fingers moved when she was high and typing long messages that ran into each other. He thought about what her hands would feel like on his face. On his chest. On the back of his neck.

He thought about her voice. Not through a phone. Close. Right there. The low raspy quality of it in his ear. The way it would sound if she were lying next to him in the dark and saying his name. Not the name on the forum. His real name. The one she had started using in month six when she finally asked what it was.

He thought about touching her slowly. With attention. The way he wanted to. Not rushed. Not desperate. Patient. The way everything between them had been patient. He thought about running his hands down her sides and feeling her breathe. He thought about kissing her collarbone. He thought about her hips and the small of her back and the inside of her thighs.

He thought about going down on her for a long time without expectation. Just that. Just his mouth on her because he wanted to. Because she deserved to know what that felt like when someone actually cared. Because the thought of making her feel good was more compelling to him than his own release.

He finished with her name in his mouth, silent, and then he lay there in the dark feeling both close to her and impossibly far away.

She captivated him in ways he couldn't explain to anyone who hadn't experienced it.

It wasn't just that she was beautiful or funny or sharp. It was that she moved through his consciousness like weather. She was there in the morning when he woke up and he would check his phone before he was fully conscious, looking for a message from her, and finding one was like sunlight through a window. Small but warm. Enough to start the day.

She was there in the afternoon when the flat was quiet and the work was slow and he would think about what she was doing. Whether she was at the restaurant. Whether she was home with the kids. Whether she was drawing something. Whether she was okay. The not knowing was its own kind of ache. He wanted to be part of her days, not just the edges of them. Not just the windows she gave him. All of it. The boring parts. The hard parts. The parts where nothing happened and they were just two people in a room existing near each other.

She was there at night. Always at night. The night was hers. The night was when he felt her absence most acutely because the night was when they talked and when they didn't talk the silence was loud. He would lie in bed and imagine her in her bed, half a world away, and the distance would press against him like something physical. Like a hand on his chest. Not hurting. Just pressing. Reminding him that she was real and far and his and not his all at once.

He tried to explain it to her once. Late at night. Three in the morning his time. Her voice soft and blurred with sleep.

He said: You're in my head all the time. I don't mean that in a scary way. I mean it in a way where I can't remember what it was like before you were there. The flat feels different now. Quieter but in a better way. Like the silence has a shape to it and the shape is you.

She didn't say anything for a while.

Then she said: You say things that I don't know how to hold. They're too big and I don't have anywhere to put them.

He said: You don't have to put them anywhere. Just let them be there.

She said: That's the thing. They are there. They've been there for a while. I just don't know what to call them.

He said: You don't have to call them anything.

She said: I know. But I want to. One day. When I'm ready.

He said: I'll wait.

She said: I know you will. That's the terrifying part.