When he finally kisses my mouth, everything goes oddly quiet, like the moment of silence between lightning and thunder. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi. Five Mississippi.
Bang.
We kiss again. This next kiss is the kind that breaks open the sky. It steals my breath and gives it back. It shows me that every other kiss I’ve had in my life has been wrong.
I tangle my hands into that hair of his and pull him toward me. Willem cups the back of my neck, runs his fingers along the little outcroppings of my vertebrae. Ping. Ping. Ping, go the electric shocks.
His hands encircle my waist as he boosts me onto the table, so we are face-to-face, kissing hard now. My cardigan comes off. Then my T-shirt. Then his. His chest is smooth and cut, and I bury my head in it, kissing down the indentation at his centerline. I’m unbuckling his belt, tugging down his jeans with hunger I don’t recognize.
My legs loop around his waist. His hands are all over me, migrating down to the crease of my hip where they’d rested during our nap. I make a sound that doesn’t seem like it could come from me.
A condom materializes. My underwear is shimmied down over my sandaled feet and my skirt is bunched into a petticoat around my waist. Willem’s boxers fall away. Then he lifts me off the table. And then I realize that I was wrong before. Only now is my surrender complete.
After, we fall to the floor, Willem on his back, me resting next to him. His fingers graze my birthmark, which feels like it is flashing heat, and mine tickle his wrist, the hairs so soft against the heavy links of my watch.
“So this is how you’d take care of me?” he jokes, pointing to a red mark on his neck where I think I bit him.
Like with everything, he’s turned my promise into something funny, something to tease me with. But I don’t feel like laughing, not now, not about this, not after that.
“No,” I say. “That’s not how.” Part of me wants to disavow the whole thing. But I won’t. Because he asked me if I’d take care of him, and even if it was a joke, I made a promise that I would, and that wasn’t a joke. When I said I’d be his mountain girl, I knew I wasn’t going to see him again. That wasn’t the point. I wanted him to know that when felt alone out there in the world . . . I was there too.
But that was yesterday. With a clench of my chest that makes me truly understand why it’s called heartbreak, I wonder if it’s not him being alone that I’m worried about.
Willem fingers the fine film of white clay dust that covers my body. “You’re like a ghost,” he says. “Soon you disappear.” His voice is light, but when I try to catch his eye, he won’t meet my gaze.
“I know.” There’s a lump in my throat. If we keep talking about this, it’ll become a sob.
Willem wipes off a bit of the dust and my darker, tour-tanned skin reemerges. But other things, I now realize, won’t come off so readily. I take Willem’s chin in my hands and turn him to face me. In the wispy glow of the streetlamp, his planes and angles are both shadowed and illuminated. And then he looks at me, really looks at me, and the expression on his face is sad and wistful and tender and yearning, and it tells me everything I need to know.
My hand shakes as I raise it to my mouth. I lick my thumb and rub it against my wrist, against my birthmark. Then I rub again. I look up, look him right in his eyes, which are as dark as this night I don’t want to end.
Willem’s face falters for a moment, then he grows solemn, the way he did after we were chased. Then he reaches over and rubs my birthmark. It’s not coming off, is what he is telling me.
“But you leave tomorrow,” he says.
I can hear the drumbeat of my heart echo in my temples. “I don’t have to.”
For a second, he looks confused.
“I can stay for another day,” I explain.
Another day. That’s all I’m asking. Just one more day. I can’t think beyond that. Beyond that things get complicated. Flights get delayed. Parents go ballistic. But one more day. One more day I can swing with minimal hassle, without upsetting anyone but Melanie. Who will understand. Eventually.
Part of me knows one more day won’t do anything except postpone the heartbreak. But another part of me believes differently. We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.
“What do you think?” I ask Willem. “One more day?”
He doesn’t answer. Instead, he flips me under him. I sink into the cement floor, submitting to the weight of him. Until something sharp jabs into my rib cage.
“Ow!”
Willem reaches under me and pulls out a small metal chisel.
“We should find somewhere else to stay,” I say. “Not with Céline.”
“Shh.” Willem quiets me with his lips.
Later, after we have taken our time, exploring every hidden crease of each other’s bodies, after we have kissed and licked and whispered and laughed until our limbs are heavy and the sky outside has started to purple with predawn light, Willem pulls a tarp over us.
“Goeienacht, Lulu,” he says, his eyes fluttering with exhaustion.
I trace the creases of his face with my fingers. “Goeienacht, Willem,” I reply. I lean into his ear, push the messy bramble of his hair aside and whisper, “Allyson. My name is Allyson.” But by then, he is already asleep. I rest my head in the crook between his arm and shoulder, tracing the letters of my true name onto his forearm, where I imagine their outlines will remain until morning.
Thirteen
After a ten-day heat wave, I’m used to waking up sweaty, but I wake up to a cool breeze gusting through an open window. I reach for a blanket, but instead of getting something warm and feathery, I get something hard and crinkly. A tarp. And in that hazy space between wake and sleep, it all comes back to me. Where I am. Who I’m with. The happiness warms me from the inside.
I reach for Willem, but he’s not there. I open my eyes, squinting against the gray light, bouncing off the bright white of the studio walls.
Instinctively, I check my watch, but my wrist is bare. I pad over to the window, pulling my skirt around my naked chest. The streets are still quiet, the stores and cafés still shut. It’s still early.
I want to call to him, but there’s a church-like hush, and to disrupt it feels wrong. He must be downstairs, maybe in the bathroom. I could sort of use it myself. I pull on my clothes and tiptoe down the stairs. But Willem isn’t in the bathroom, either. I quickly pee and throw water on my face and try to drink away the beginnings of my hangover.