I shrug. “I try.”
She’s still now, and her eyes are glassy. “I feel… I feel like we’ve been here before somehow,” she murmurs. And she’s confused.
“Déjà vu?” I suggest.
She ponders that. “I don’t know.”
“Do you feel this way often?”
She doesn’t answer. Instead she says, “I hate this feeling.”
I so want to take away her confusion and her displeasure that I do the only thing I can think of.
I kiss her.
Her lips are soft and they mold with mine, and her hands… they come up and grasp my back, her fingers digging into my ribs. She clings to me like I’m a life-raft, and maybe I am. She sighs into my mouth, and this is what I live for.
She folds into me, and I’m holding her up, and we kiss and kiss in the morning sun.
And then, we’re pulled apart by orderlies and nurses, because kissing is against the rules.
She’s bustled out by nurses, and she looks over her shoulder at me and her eyes are so big and so familiar.
Her gaze meets mine, and we’re connected.
They can’t keep us apart.
I hope she knows that.
Four
“When you smile at me, I feel like you’re daring me to do something,” Calla says, and her words are so rhythmic, so soft.
We’re sitting in her room again, both of us on the floor. Our legs are both in a V, our feet touching. We listen for the nurses as we quietly talk.
“Maybe I am.”
She pauses. “What are you daring me to do?”
I lean toward her, my hand on her knee. “Everything.”
She draws back, as she pulls a breath in over her lips.
“There’s something about you…” she whispers. “I know you. But I don’t. I feel like I should trust you, but I also feel like I shouldn’t. It’s… you’re an enigma.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“You are,” she insists.
Her hand clutches at mine now, and I love everything about it. I love the warmth of it, the shape of it, the strength of her fingers. I know these fingers like I know my own.
I raise her hand to my mouth.
She blinks, and her skin is alabaster.
She keeps her hand there, her fingers trembling as she outlines my lips. I close my eyes, and her touch is electric.
“Can I?” she whispers, and before I can say anything, her warm lips cover my own.