when i was lonely

07

He didn’t ask me to join him and didn’t have to. Before going in we shared the exhaustion of keeping up with each other and relief of endorphins for forty-five minutes. He threw his shirt on the ground and walked to the bank. Instinctively I followed, not remembering how pathetic my body was compared to his.

Moonlight splashed our reflections against the rippled water. It was midnight and we were in our basketball shorts, torsos still sweaty from a four-mile jog, legs in cold water. In the night he was even more beautiful when my eyes couldn’t fully absorb him and my mind tried to extract different parts of him from half-decent memories: the heart shape birthmark on his underarm; lone freckle on his neck; how tightly his skin wrapped around his well defined chest; those piercing almond-shaped and -colored eyes.

“You see that?” he asked. He pressed his face to the sky.

“Yeah,” I looked at him.

“Those three stars,” he pointed somewhere, “are always aligned like that, all over the world.” When he spoke his words changed the air, the way a lit candle changed a dark room.  

“When I’d visit my father in the city we would go to the roof and stay up all night. He’d bring a heavy purple quilt and we’d just lie there, naming stars.”

My right hand moved to his lips of its own volition. His eyes widened with epiphany.“Come on, loser,” I snapped my hand back and waded deep into the river, “Technically you got here first, so I still have a bone to pick with you.”

“Wait.” He said. He didn’t move. “Wait.” I waded faster. “Wait!” he yelled.

I stayed still and the water calmed. My back faced his. He waded until he reached me.

His fingers traced lines on my back.

“You have a scar here,” he breathed. I shivered.

“And here. And here.”

“Stop,” I said. “Don’t look.” Not even the night covered them and the shame floored me. I couldn’t ever run away from them.

“Just like the three stars,” his voice told me he was smiling