Oh my heart I
Would clap and dance in place
With my friends I have so
Much pleasure to embrace
But my heart is
Returned to sister winter
But my heart is
As cold as ice
- "Sister Winter" by Sufjan Stevens
Cath was in her bedroom at home in Omaha, her and Levi housesitting with the place to themselves on New Year's Eve. They were sitting on top of several balled-up comforters, patterns ranging from tweenaged mid-2000s Simon Snow to faded purple butterflies with Levi sandwiched between them and her poster-covered wall. Cath had always loved New Year's - it felt like a fresh start with endless possibilities, the way she relished opening a blank word doc to begin a new fic. Levi, however, loved early bedtimes and nine nightly hours of sleep before his shifts. He wasn't asleep, but she could tell he was trying before the 11:56 p.m. cell alarm woke him for the countdown.
"Why 11:56, again?" she said.
Levi groaned with irritation, eyes still tightly shut.
"Optimal time to pee, splash water on my face, and be back in time for a countdown kiss," he said.
"God, those really jumbled together in my brain. I'm not sure I want to kiss you now," said Cath, smiling.
Levi opened one eye to stare at her, suppressing a smirk.
"Gross. And no banter until 11:56!"
"Does typing disturb you?"
"It's like white noise to me at this point - kinda comforting. I don't think my brain even registers computer screens as a distraction since we've been together."
Cath repositioned the laptop on her legs and scrunched her toes into two audible cracks.
"Glad to hear. I'm working on a new story, you'll like this one when it's ready," she said, humorously patting Levi's head. "Sleep tight."
He kicked the comforters up to free his feet to wiggle closer to Cath, his head nuzzled into her shirt, comfortably under a breast. Levi stretched his arm across her torso and dug into the curve of her waist. No dice. Cath's (and Wren's) superpower was an inhuman resistance to tickling, something Levi frequently retested by attempting to surprise her with what felt like bony finger jabs.
Jab.
"Nothing?" he said.
Levi moved his hand into the crook of her armpit, making Cath feel self-conscious of the dampness through her shirt there. She pulled his hand unintentionally onto her braless left breast and Levi latched on with a light squeeze.
"Okay, this is good, see you in an hour," he said, eyes closed and grinning.
Levi moved his hand back to her waist and exhaled into rest and Cath felt an overwhelming sadness, separate from him and all of the truly good things in her life. It was like watching scenes happen from outside of her body. On long drives from Lincoln to Omaha she would drift into thought while Levi drove them in the truck, forgetting where she was until being snapped back by his quiet singing to the radio. In summer it was the honeyed gold of wheat fields and open sky she got lost in, while their trip home after Christmas was an uninspiring landscape of white and gray. When they'd got there, her dad was halfway out the door with a duffle bag and tight hug of thanks before leaving for down south, blending his New Year's Eve and an early January business trip and leaving Cath and Levi an empty house with no rules. The last few days had been great - between the bleak gray. It was their last night before heading back to UNL the morning for Levi's afternoon shift at Starbucks.
Nebraska winters went right to the bone, snow drifts and winds so bitter that Cath routinely came inside with whipped red cheeks and cracked skin wherever it had been exposed. Levi had gotten in the habit of holding her face with his warmed hands and moving into a bear hug, towering above her and enveloping her in love. In bed, at 11:01 p.m., Cath moved her fingertips up and down his arm while he rested, pretending to be a blade of grass from the first summer they spent together. She missed it, heat and dust and storms, and the sticky way Levi's thighs attached to leather seats when she pulled down his jean shorts in the back of the truck. She missed the sweaty friction of their skin together - it was weird remembering when she'd been afraid to touch him, because these days she couldn't stop.
11:57 p.m.
"Gaahhhh," said Levi, running awkwardly towards the hallway bathroom, iPhone alarm still chiming and Ryan Seacrest standing in front of a Times Square crowd on TV.
Cath heard a forceful stream of urine hit the toilet bowl (unable to tune it out) and the long splash of tap water. Levi ran back into the bedroom and dove back onto the bed next to Cath.
"Ready for the new year with my girl," he said.
"You're still half-asleep, aren't you?" said Cath
"What? No, I'm here, in this window of time between this year and the next."
Cath laughed, "You always talk like an elderly magician when you're tired."
"There's a dirty Simon Snow joke in there somewhere."
"Again, getting very unfortunate word association from you with 'dirty' and 'elderly.'"
Levi got under the covers and opened his arm for Cath to join him, and she twisted herself between his limbs like two pieces of liquorice, bare calves rubbing against his fuzzier ones. They were both in thin shirts and underwear but as close as they embraced, Cath felt her chest tighten with anxiety.
"I can't breathe, I need out," she said, walking quickly from her bedroom and into the cool darkness of Wren's across the hall.
Cath's muscle memory switched-on the overhead light and she breathed in Wren. Cath's carpeted steps creaked and echoed between the dust and the emptiness of only a dresser and a twin bed - not wanting to share a room with Levi and Jandro so visiting often, Wren had taken the former home office as a sleep space for weekends. Cath liked how it smelled of girly perfume and her dad's old manila files.
"Cather, what's wrong?" said Levi. He had walked up behind her, looking unusually serious.
"Levi, I'm fine," she said, "I just needed some air."
"You can't sprint off with tears in your eyes and expect me to believe that, Cath. I'm not ending the year with you avoiding things, like last fall," he said.
Cath heard the announcement of a minute to go and the crowd cheering as one living thing. She thought of 80s glamor and gold confetti.
"I feel entirely hollow."
"Like, sad hollow?" said Levi.
"I don't know why. Things are going really well with you, with school, with Wren - and my dad is taking his pills... I don't get it."
"Your mom had depression when she was younger, right?" said Levi.
"The only thing Laura had was two kids that she left."
"No, don't play that card, you know I hate her for what she did to you and Wren, but your dad told you guys about her history. It came on in her 20's and maybe it's what's happening now to you. It's at least worth looking into," said Levi.
"I don't want to be like her," said Cath, very frankly.
"You aren't like her. You aren't even like Wren!" he said.
10... 9... 8...
"I don't want to talk right now, I just want to touch you."
3... 2... 1...
The television played a violin-heavy Auld Lang Syne and muffled congratulations of a new year from the hosts. Levi held her face and kissed her deeply, tracing his tongue over her lip and into her mouth. They weren't the same formula of Life Force and Nervous Virgin they had been a year ago. Cath tugged at Levi's t-shirt to bring him down to the floor with her, kissing him and pulling down her own underwear in a kicking shimmy.
Before Levi when she felt sad, she retreated into the world of Watford and Carry On, Simon. Now Cath retreated into loving Levi. Physically being with him began as anxious fondling in freshman year, but had morphed over summer and fall into something intimately familiar and initiated just as much by her. In moments like these where Cath used sex as a way to sidestep difficult conversations, Levi usually pulled back enough to make her talk, but not that night. He grabbed the waistband of her underwear with both hands and yanked it off her feet, spreading her legs to fit his torso between her knees. He kissed up each inner thigh, moving between them, and brushed his thick bottom lip against the chubbiness and straight, bristly hair of where her legs met. He gently parted her outer labia and put his mouth on the tippy top.
Levi slowly rolled his tongue and looked up at her, placing a free hand over hers on the floor. She squeezed his fingers and he changed focus again, kissing the most sensitive parts of her in a silent rhythm, as Cath looked up at the ceiling. Conversation could wait for morning light. Depression could wait. Happy fucking New Year.