Cheat

It was the first day of summer. We lay on my front lawn; our bodies close but not quite touching. Every strand of fuzzy hair on my arm stood on end from the proximity of his presence as we counted the stars that speckled the sky above us. It was late, the summer days already growing long in response to the tilt of the Earth’s axis. My heart beat to the sound of his name, the same steady syllable over and over and over – Reed, Reed, Reed.

“Cath,” he hummed as his pinky grazed mine, sending my synapses into a frenzy. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I replied. In a bold moment, I caught his hand with mine. Now we were touching, now we were hopeful, now we were kinetic.

“Do you listen to Leonard Cohen?”

“No, not really. Why?”

“I’m laying here thinking about this quote of his,” Reed replied. I allowed my head to roll lazily towards his. His chrysochlorous eyes were fixated on Queen Cassiopeia, upside down on her throne just above the horizon.

“We are so lightly here,” he quoted, the pink curves of his lips bowing like a sailboat on the Themes. “It is in love that we are made / in love we disappear.”

We were quiet for a moment, the only sound among us the sound of the cicadas – it was a debut year for them. My heart pounded against my ribcage like a thousand angry fists, pleading and hopeful and so in love.

“I’m disappearing in you Cath, and I want to make you mine.”

The pounding grew unbearable and I nodded hungrily in response, throwing myself to him, a leaf in the wind. And in a mess of limbs and lips and language untranslatable, I fell in love with Reed Owen, the boy with two first names.