“Of course I regretted it,” I tell him. “I regretted it every single day.”
There’s three seconds of silence.
He looks at me and I look right back at him.
Then his fingers curl around the side of my neck and he pulls me to him, our lips crashing together in a torrent of pent-up emotion.
His tongue winds its way around mine and suddenly, abruptly, chaotically, we’re tearing each other’s clothes off.
I know already that this is one of those memories I will look back on and marvel at. How fragmented it is. How beautifully broken.
I know this because even as it’s happening, I can’t hold together the pieces of it.
I don’t remember tearing off Cillian’s shirt or undoing his pants. But suddenly, he’s naked and hard beneath my palm, and I’m just as bare.
I don’t remember getting down onto the grass, but that’s where I find myself.
It doesn’t really matter, though.
Because the things I do process, the moments I do absorb, are so clear and vivid and intense that I know they will last me until the end of my days.
Like the moment he rolls over, forcing me on top of him.
The moment he pushes inside me from below, fusing the two of us together with such force that I gasp so loud it echoes across the wide-open sky.
The moment he grabs my hips and locks eyes with me as I ride him to another orgasm.
I come once with my hands on his chest.
I come the second time with my face pointed towards the sky as an eagle circles overhead.
I’m struck by how opposites can exist in the same breath without competing for space or energy.
Despite the passionate urgency with which we make love, there are moments of quiet, too.
The way Cillian brushes his lips against my nipples.
The way he smiles at me.
The way he encircles my body in his arms just before he finishes.
I want so badly to make this day stretch out into eternity so that we never have to make the journey back down the lonely trail to the car.
But I know it’s not possible. No matter how strong your will is, time is the one thing you can’t bend.
So I give up and give in. Because I’m trying not to be a coward anymore. And that means facing the truth.
That means accepting that Cillian and I… As perfect as it might feel when we’re together, our paths have always diverged.
We’re going in different directions.
But until he disappears from my line of sight, I can cling on.
For as long as he lets me.