Wednesday, January 4

You have got the voice, my love
To melt a lake of ice-
Imagine me.

"But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance," Emily continued, adjusting slightly. Her palm splayed and pressed against my belly, pushing harder with every word she spoke because of her chin. I didn't move. "Which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to reside there."

My eyes stayed shut when she folded the book over my ribs like a sternal bookmark. Her lips kissed my skin where her chin had just bruised. Her arms moved to hug my waist. I felt her breathe, warm and soft on the sensitive skin on my stomach; I felt her inhale me absently. Her cheek was warm and soft on my skin.

"Quite an optimistic and uplifting read," she sighed, turning her head. "Are you planning on taking over a small country?" Her fingers toyed with the joint of my thigh. "Is that your final assessment? What are they teaching you over there in that crazy European school?"

"I'm going to be prince of this apartment," I informed her, stretching a bit. Slowly, Emily lifted herself. I felt her move around me, over me, hovering like a film or smear on glass. So close, but not there exactly. A mirage, but better. Skin and bones and mine. "I will make it Naomiland." I earned a small laugh and I smiled so my eyes stayed shut.

"So are you going to destroy me or reside here?" she asked, laughing quiet and secretly, trying to regain and maintain. I kept my eyes closed but I could hear it in her voice. I knew her. I'd earned the right to know her, somehow.

The window had applauded our efforts with little raindrop hands all day. Thunder and lightning harmonized with us throughout the night. In flashes I had mental polaroids of her arching back and clenching fists pulling at the sheets. For moments, the room would be bright and I couldn't see anything else. I'd keep them in a shoebox under the bed in my frontal lobe. The thunder took away the noise of the city for moments, leaving us deaf for instants until her breathing and murmuring were all that I could decipher. We pulled and clung to each other despite the deafness, bringing us back to the moment. Now the drizzle and the cold were lapping at the window, and the city was a muted grey that mumbled in the evening hours, indifferent to us at all. It made me lean into the bed more. It made me want to become part of it.

"Both," I decided. "This place is too small for two people. I obviously must slay you, or take you prisoner and keep you in the bathroom."

"What?" she recoiled, appalled at the insinuation. "What more could you need in a flat? There's a bed, and a fridge, and a shower. But, Naomiland will be missing the best part-" The Prince flopped its way onto the floor as she moved. It was a soft thud, padded by discarded clothes. "Me." Her weight settled on me. I shivered in the cold that came outside of sheets and on the tips of her skin.

"Your flat is safe. I'd cramp your style here, love," I promised. When I opened my eyes they only saw eyes, big and curious and full of something I never wanted to understand. I was afraid to move. "You're a fancy intern, I'm a shitty student. You have artsy friends. I have friends who chain themselves to bulldozers. We're practically ships in the night at this point."

"Such a shame," she mocked me. "We had so much promise."

"Well, that's just the breaks, kid," I shrugged, smiling as she scrunched her face and shook her head in a laugh. "It was good while it lasted, right?"

"Meh..." she giggled when I squeezed her.

"You're a lovely student, for the record," she corrected me after a small kiss on my chin. "And my friends here adore you."

"Maybe a few might," I conceded.

We'd fought about her friends here. We fought loud and hard about a few in particular. We fought about her lack of disclosure and we fought about my dog-like need to mark my territory and growl at other dogs who sniffed around. It'd been an epic that lasted a week and involved a plethora of missed or neglected skype calls, texts, and emails. It solidified us. It was the moment of walking away or staying. Her acknowledging that her friend from the internship might have a crush on her didn't make me less jealous. But her awareness of it made me more at ease because she made the effort not to be in situations with her. She told me to trust her and I had to do that. Jealous or not. I trusted her because I cheated on her once, and I knew she'd never do that to me. That was a selfish knowledge, but I think that's the truest form.

"All of them," she decided for me. "Or they did, until I tell them that you're just a ship in the night who takes advantage of her girlfriend- making her read her Machiavelli like a servant or something."

"I like your voice," I told her. I touched her cheek and I touched her ear, and I ran my hand along her forehead. My fingers mapped her and felt her and made her real again and again and again. "I miss it all of the time."

"Now you're just being charming," she smiled, though relaxed into me more. "That wasn't in the book."

"You've spoiled me. How will I read for myself back home?"

"I can read to you still," she promised. "I will find the books here and leave you voicemails."

I liked her eyes. I liked how hopeful and big they were at all times, as if they were innocently seeing the world for the first time, every minute. Possibility sat there like a monument, rooted and firm and strong, unwavering in the face of reality, unapologetic in its need to believe in better. I could never really tell her that. I could just keep trying to give her reasons to look at me.

She didn't know it, but her gaze was a driving force behind my need to be better because when they looked at me they saw only the good I was capable of, and that was a lot to live up to sometimes. But I couldn't imagine anyone looking at me like that ever again in my life, and I craved it like the sun. Most of the time when I looked at them, I still couldn't speak and forgot what she said. I'd never tell her that. I couldn't ever tell her that. I fell in love with her eyes when we were seventeen. I couldn't tell her that either. It'd give her too much power. I couldn't. There were many things I'd never tell her with words.

"Don't go," she whispered, settling down and deep into me. I kissed her head. I let my nose warm itself in her hair. Her arms dug into the bed and around my back.

"Just a few more months. You'll be done, I'll be graduated and back for summer," I sighed. My fingers ghosted along her spine, across her back. I tried to memorize the shape of her, so it would travel with me. "And then you'll come home with me. We'll work shitty jobs and have dinner together and live in a flat smaller than this."

"Did you ever think we'd get this far? Do you think we'll make it that far?" she asked, sitting up again. The sheet I'd pulled over us fell to her hips with my hands. I wanted to tell her how much she'd grown up and how impressive it was to watch her become herself, but she looked at me, and I wasn't brave enough. I ran my hands along her thighs and smiled at her in the cloudy evening and streetlight composed light. The room was that dull gray that was just enough light to see, but not enough to feel lit. I could see her, but almost couldn't. She was a figment of my imagination come to realization, made of smoke and mirrors and impossible.

"Honestly?" I asked, seeing her. I wondered if she saw herself like I saw her. She nodded. Her hair was messy from the past sixteen hours we'd spent in this bed without moving except for snacks or drinks. That was part of our saying goodbye. We did the same thing when I visited in the fall, and when she came home for Christmas. There was a need we both didn't acknowledge to curl up into a ball and ignore the impending outside world. New Years had come and gone, and I was due to leave shortly. Our world was barricaded, for the moment though, and I had a naked, smiling girl on top of me. "Did I think I'd be with you in a small, shitty, overpriced apartment in New York?" She nodded. "Did I think we'd be together nearly five years later?" She nodded again.

"Did you think about any of it, for us?" she stopped me from buying more time. She moved her hair that'd fallen in her face. I was busy trying to memorize this moment. I had to make this last until May.

"I'd hoped it. I wanted to be here," I decided. "Some days I remember thinking, there's no way she's going to want to keep me around. I'm a twat..." she laughed a bit. I would keep trying to do that too. "It's true. I was a twat. And I'm trying to grow out of it." I squirmed under her. She made me honest, even if I hadn't been honest yet. I was quiet and she let me be. Her fingers folded and her palms mimicked where The Prince had just been. She held herself up and pressed on my ribs. I heard car horns and sirens a few blocks over, because the apartment was so quiet with just our thoughts swirling about tirelessly. "But I knew I wanted to be here. I knew I wanted you, wherever that led."

"You're my twat," she finally decided, quite seriously. I smiled and watched my fingers touching her hips. I pressed them into her flesh slightly.

"There was a moment," I swallowed. I could be a bit more honest for her. That was how I kept her- surprising her with moments of honest in my sarcasm-laden natural register. "There was a moment. It was a Thursday. You were wearing my old shirt, the one with the bleach stain and tear in the collar. And you were curled up in my chair, and didn't know that I was looking at you. And I was so tired from working in that shitty restaurant," she nodded and smiled, remembering my stories and rants. "And you were furrowed and bothered and biting your lip with this concentration... And I couldn't move for a moment. It just made sense. I was exhausted and I'd been stiffed and we'd already spent a semester apart and I was scared out of my mind. I don't understand it, but it made perfect sense," I laughed because that was all I could do when she was so intently looking at me. "I knew that I wanted something. I knew I wanted you and I wasn't going to let anything get in the way of it. I wouldn't let myself want it, but I wanted it anyway-"

Emily leaned forward and kissed me. Her hands clamped on my cheeks and held me fast while she kissed me breathless. I grabbed her harder, thankful she didn't make me keep trying to explain. Thankful she probably didn't need that long to decide that she wanted me. She was better than me in that way.

"You are such a twat," she pulled away. I was canopied in her her hair and it blocked the world around us.

"I knew we'd be here," I promised. "I'm so proud of you. So so so proud of you."

"Ah geeze," she burned crimson. It fogged up our little nest.

I kissed her like a fiend. I kissed her because the clock said we'd have to head to the airport soon enough and I wouldn't be able to kiss her like that in just a few hours. I kissed her because she made me laugh when I didn't want to and despite myself. I kissed her because she read my book to me. I kissed her because I was in awe of her and she didn't even know that and I couldn't even tell her. I kissed for a lot of reasons I was too distracted to think of as the kiss wore on. And she scratched at my shoulders and kept me close with her lips and her teeth. That told me I was hers. She clawed me to pieces. Her back flexed and moved, graceful and smothering. I rolled her and pinned her and made her mine. Right there on her foreign bed in her foreign city with foreign rain beating a foreign beat, I carved out a place for myself in her world still. I wanted to leave bits of us on the sheets. I wanted her to crawl in her bed alone later in the night and never forget I could do this to her.

The same happened in the shower when we regained the ability to walk and the alarm went off for us to get up. She slapped my butt and laughed. I pinched her sides and tickled her until she got shampoo in her eyes. Time continued to squeeze us and impose itself. But for a few shining moments, she made clocks obsolete.

I cleaned as best I could when I sent her down the block to get us some food and coffee. She went to her shop. Her apartment was small. I hadn't exaggerated that. But it was cozy enough for her. I made the bed and put her clothes in the hamper. I washed a few of our dishes and cleaned up a bit of the residual mess and took out the trash. I left one of my shirts and stole one of hers. My suitcase somehow packed itself and slept imposingly by the door, both with souvenirs and dirty clothes and pictures inside, waiting to join my collection back home.

I tried not to spend too much time looking at her pictures. They covered her wall by the small desk in the corner. They were all so beautiful and reminded me that she was here, and should be here. The ones that were ours though, those were my favorites. That was a biased opinion. Us at the Empire State Building. Near the Statue of Liberty. At a bar with her friends. In Times' Square. She covered the tourist side of things for me between working and keeping me locked in her bed. Those pictures, those were my favorites. Emily liked the others. She liked the ones of me, drunk in the middle of the street. And the one of my back in the sunlight in her bed. And the ones I never knew she was taking. The ones of back home. The ones of all of us from when we were younger. The ones of us in London. The ones of us in Manchester. The ones of us everywhere. I could read our history like hieroglyphics on a cave wall. It felt as primal.

"It is dreadful out there," Emily came in with a flurry. New York looked good on her. She knew her neighborhood, she knew the subway, she had her own set of locations. She bloomed here. "We're going to have to leave early for the airport. The bridge will be a disaster."

I sat on the edge of the bed while she pulled up her desk chair and we made our own table on the edges of whatever we could reach.

"You never told me which ones your boss liked," I observed the wall again as I picked at my sandwich.

"I'm not sure," she shrugged. "We were working on this set before the holidays, of this expensive editorial, and I couldn't take anything from it. I got some, he liked. But for my portfolio, I'm just... I don't know..."

"Have you decided which ones you'll hang in our flat?"

"Obviously all of the naked ones," she smiled into her cup, giving me a mischievous glance.

"Right, can you imagine, giant vaginas and tits on the wall when my mum visits, or yours!" We both laughed too hard at it. Maybe desperately. Maybe because the truth of it was too stark.

"I have to find something, though," she sighed, gazing at her wall. "I have to do something that will make this internship worth it all. If I can't get a quality connection back home, I'm back where I started when I was in school."

"You can't rush art. It's not in a rush to be made," I reminded her. "I think some pretentious girl once told me that when she was nervously applying for a fancy internship."

"I'm going to have to rush it," she leaned back, still fixated on the wall. "I'm not top of my class." She threw it like an accusation. I've never heard a compliment used like that before, or quite so well.

"You should hire someone to read you important philosophical treatises," I explained, obviously.

"Don't go," she asked again, finally turning to me. Her eyes made me hurt this time. Mostly because they were the same as before, and the possibility of hiding away with her sounded so reasonable and was just a bit farther away.

"Come here," I sighed, putting down my cup. Slowly she slipped into my lap. "We both have to do this. This year is us, growing up, I guess. We can't go anywhere together unless we do this year apart, chasing dreams and such."

"I know," she agreed. "I miss you, though."

"Yeah, me too," I agreed. I dug my nose into her shoulder. I took a big breath. "We're almost there though."

"Okay, okay," she steeled herself. I tried to follow suit. She hugged my neck and kissed my head. "I'm done, I promise."

"We should head out, yeah?" She nodded and we took a moment before standing and gathering my bag.

The ride to the airport was quiet. We'd gotten quite good at this whole routine. It didn't make it easier, we just got more experienced.

She went as far as she could with me and we stood like statues, neither willing to crumble first.

"Have a safe flight," she fretted with my collar. "Let me know when you make it, okay?" I nodded. She was clutch in these moments. I was not. "Please don't be sassy with the agents this time at security." She was joking but worried at the same time. I smiled and nodded. "I will see you soon," she promised, leaning her forehead against my nose. I kissed her and hugged her. "In May, you'll have a bigger bag, and this is the last time we have to do this, actually," she realized. "I'll be going back with you next time." She was smiling wildly now. "Well that's good news." I agreed.

Emily kissed me as hard as she could, tiptoes and clutching fingers included. I melted and gave myself one more minute of being lost, even if that meant I'd be last on the plane.

"I love you," I sighed, eyes still shut.

"I know," she smiled and re-straightened my collar.

"Get back safe. You have enough for the cab?" she nodded. "Any other words you'd like me to pass along to your sister or our friends?" She shook her head this time. "I should go." I swallowed.

"I love you," she smiled. I kissed her one more time and gathered my things. It was a slow walk, but I only turned around when they checked my passport. She waved, leaning over to see me behind the line. I blew her a kiss and left her standing there.

I wasn't sure which I liked being more, the one left or the one leaving. Both were shitty. But the ridiculously long flight was definitely the losing side. If I knew Emily, she'd go home and clean her already clean apartment, to keep busy. She'd return emails and work from her desk for as long as she could sit still, and then she would debate what to do, stuck between wanting to take a walk and wanting to never move. She'd elect to return to the bed, and search for bits of me there. My coffee cup might sit on the counter for a few days. My book would remain on the floor.

"How was your trip? First time to New York?" the polite gentleman beside me asked as we leveled off in the air. I absently drummed my fingers along the book in my lap.

"Second, actually," I nodded, nervously looking out the window, as if I'd see down into Emily's apartment, as if I'd be able to differentiate it from anything else in the garbled net of dark streets and illuminated buildings in the city. "It's not so bad. Big, but most cities are in their own way."

"That's generous," he smiled. "What brought you to town? Business or pleasure?" I tried not to laugh.

"I was visiting my girlfriend, so definitely pleasure."

"She's American?" he asked. He seemed interested. He seemed nice enough.

"No, she's British as well. She's just got an internship with this photographer she loves and she couldn't pass up. And I wouldn't let her."

"And what is it that you do?" he adjusted and waited for me to continue.

"I'm just a student in London. I study political science and history."

"Two impressive sounding young women," he decided.

"We try," I smiled. I was proud for a moment, because to this perfectly nice stranger, we were impressive and we had the world spread wide and waiting for us to conquer. "You'd never believe that we were once punk kids who had no idea where they were going."

"I believe it," he chuckled. "Everyone has been that at one point." He was gracious.

"And you? Business or pleasure?"

"I went to meet my first grandson," he smiled. "Would you like to see pictures?" I didn't, but I nodded anyway because he was nice and thought we were impressive and renewed my faith in my decision. He was a cute enough kid. Babies were all pretty much undistinguishable blobs to me at that point anyway.

"He looks lovely," I offered, hoping it was the proper thing to say.

"He's magnificent," the man smiled, staring at the picture again.

I spent a good portion of my flight speaking with my neighbor. It made it easier, as opposed to the wallowing I was prone to taking part in on the red eyes. He gave me his card as we departed, and he wished me well. I wished him better, and apologized for not being important enough to have a card yet. He told me it wouldn't be long, he wagered. That was nice.

"Hello, stranger," Effy greeted me with a large hug when I found her outside of immigration.

"You're a sight," I sighed, tired and weak, it finally catching up to me that Emily wasn't here.

"How was it?"

"Perfect."

"You still in love with her, then?" she asked, following me towards the baggage pick up area.

"Unfortunately." She smirked.

"You're not going to be those college sweethearts, are you?"

"Hopefully."

"Well," she sighed, squinting against the sunlight of the early morning and pushing the sunglasses onto her nose. "What did you bring me then?"

I filled Effy in on my week in New York, and she filled me in on what I'd missed. London woke up as we took the taxi to our flat. The day was the opposite of what I left Emily in, and it felt wrong. But we rode along and got to our flat, and I felt like I'd only told Effy about a fraction of what I saw and what happened. She listened attentively, though I knew it bored her greatly. Being happy and functioning and resigned to a future was foreign for myself and downright insane for Effy. She spurred me too, though. Motivated and self-assured, she grew up and she made me grow up in different ways.

The flat was the same as when I left it. Effy was good at barely existing and leaving no footprint. I was tired, but I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to spend the day doing nothing. But I had classes starting in a few days. So I did the wash and I gave Effy her souvenirs, and I hung more of the pictures Emily took on my wall. I wanted to call Emily, but instead sent her a response to the email she left me, and resigned myself to wait until she woke up to go to work.

The first day back was always so strange for me. I was suddenly alone again, and I did my chores and I tried to keep busy. It's always weird though, to get back to normal. I kept waiting to see Emily in my flat. We'd been spoiled. Even though she went to university in Manchester and I went to London, we saw each other every weekend. In two hours, I could surprise her for the day whenever I wanted. In two hours she could appear in my flat. If I wanted to see her, I could. It worked. We worked. This year I felt so far removed. I was just sad.

Time wasn't stuck anymore, so much as it was lethargic and unyielding. I wanted it to pick up, I wanted five months to pass and be on a plane again. Instead I was stuck in this mock normalcy of chores and daily activities that made my head explode. I was waiting for life to start.

Eventually the busy work and my buzz from being home wore off, and I slumped into my bed. It didn't smell like Emily's bed, and it didn't feel as nice. The sun was deceptive in my window. I craved the rain that had been blurring her windows.

It still wasn't a reasonable hour to consider waking her, so I settled with my book. Slipped in as a bookmark was a picture of us that I'd forgotten about, with my hand holding the sheet over my face and her eyes peeking over my head and laughing. I could practically hear her laughing with the picture. It was blurry and so wonderfully alive. I searched ever millimeter of it, trying to find every bit of us in it. Sometimes I didn't think I could ever be as happy as her pictures made me look. And then I realized that they couldn't capture half of it. I held it above my head, mimicking what she'd done with her camera, and I stared at it from varying distances until I found the back, in her short, sweet little scrawl.

There was a moment. It was a Thursday. You we wearing that cute little apron and you smelled like smoke and coffee. And you closed my computer before I realized you were there, and you kissed me so sweetly and told me you loved me with a sureness I'd never heard before. We'd spent a semester apart already and I knew you were scared, and I was scared, I still am scared. But I knew you were mine. I knew you were mine forever.

The picture fell to my chest and sat there while my arms fell to my sides.

"Fuck."