septemberist

Sloan wooed me unconventionally by telling me that I was not pretty, really, nor was I beautiful. Still, I had drunk enough that when we escaped from the smoky apartment out onto the balcony, and he traced his fingers around my lips, across my cheek, and into my hair, I leaned into the sensation and into him.

It was one night and probably should have remained so. But months later, when Sloan asked me to drive to Austin for the weekend, I said yes. That first night, we were barely friends. The following morning, we walked through the park, avoiding grackles and kite-fliers, and touch each other lightly, electrically, constantly. We told shy secrets about ourselves, accelerating into the dance of courtship. In the evening, still brushing lightning with fingertips, our secret-telling became bolder.

These encounters are what I page to when re-reading the summer of 1995. Sometimes, I’ll read further, to the night of the fireflies that danced halos over the statue of St. Francis in the garden, or the absolute stillness of him as I traced the back lines of the cross on his back, or even the endless games of Hearts played with Noah and Rebecca as the afternoon sun woke showers of dust in the air. I try to stop before the day that Sloan left or when he came back, when the rhythm of secrets and laughter was broken, and when instead of brushing sparks, our fingers only drummed an ending.