Page 9 of Only After We Met
“I don’t understand. What does it mean?” she asks.
I leaned closer until I touched her ear with my lips. Ginger shuddered when I translated a few sentences for her. The words floated around us: hips, wave, naked island, I love you, you come and go…
I went on whispering the lyrics. Maybe because it was one of the most sensual songs ever written. Or because it was romantic. Special. Or just for her, for that girl. She was different. Unique. I guess that’s why the moment felt more intimate than so many other nights I had spent in bed caressing another person’s body, another person’s skin. I didn’t need to touch Ginger to feel her on my fingertips, as if we were reaching through each other’s clothes, through each other’s skin. Turning the present to a memory.
When the song ended, we parted slowly, but her hands remained around my neck, her lips a few inches from mine.
“How many girls have you done this with?”
“You want me to tell you that you’re the only one?”
“Yeah. That’s what I want.”
“Just with you.”
“I changed my mind. Tell me the truth.”
“Just with you,” I repeated.
“I don’t know you.”
“Ginger, Ginger…” I laughed, reached behind my neck to grab her hands, and held them as we studied each other in silence. Then I cocked my head to one side. “I think I know what your problem is. You think too much. You think all the fucking time. You’re doing it now, aren’t you? I can see the smoke coming out of your ears.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Wait. Let’s try something.”
Before she could put up a fight, I told her to turn toward the Eiffel Tower and just look at it without thinking. I stood behind her. I surrounded her petite body with my arms and rested my hands atop hers on the low wall.
“Just look. Are you doing it? Are you looking at the lights, the way the moon reflects off the water like a mirror, the way the cold makes your skin swell? Do you feel the breeze on your skin? Do you feel me? Enjoy it all. The crisp sounds of the wind. My chest against your back. The mist escaping your lips. You can even touch it if you like.” She laughed and reached out into the nothing. Then she turned.
We were together then, me in front of her. And I wanted to kiss her. Ginger. Her lips were flushed from the cold.
“I was right. You wouldn’t answer, but I hit the nail on the head. You’re a one-night stand kind of guy. Fess up. You’re too good at this.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“The thing is…”
“Nothing’s going to happen.” I was being serious.
“Okay.”
“Okay then.”
“You up for a walk?”
I nodded, smiled, and stepped away, heading down the street the opposite way we’d come. We walked. And talked. And went on walking. And kept talking and had no idea where we were going. Our destination didn’t matter, even if we did cross a few bridges and Ginger stopped on them, needing to think. She chatted away, looked all around, and told me more details about her relationship with Dean, the years they’d spent together and the plans that no longer existed.
“What will you miss most about him?”
“Mmm…our routine?” She bit her lower lip, reticent. “Yeah, that, I guess. Our everyday lives. Him just being there every step of the way, from early morning until sundown.”
I leaned back against the wall of the bridge and crossed my arms, grinning and watching her, I don’t know for how long. “How is it possible he doesn’t miss listening to you?”
“Are you sucking up to me?” She scowled. Angry. Or cautious?
“No. I’m being serious.”