Five Kisses
1.
She's waiting for him on Tuesday morning. Standing outside his door when he opens it for the newspaper. He can't decide whether or not he's surprised; he might have known all along. But then she's never ceased to amaze him.
"Hi," she whispers, her voice hoarse from the cold or the waiting. Always the waiting, it seems.
He can't say anything, but he stares at her, this unholy apparition, angel of his destruction. He's nervous; she can read it in his eyes. And so she steps closer as his arms circle her waist, and even his kiss is a homecoming.
2.
"It'll be all right," he says harshly, his arms around her so tight it's almost like she can't breathe, like he's taken up all the oxygen that was ever hers.
"It can't be," she says, and does not struggle. Knowing it to be useless. "It's already fallen apart."
"How can you say that?" he asks, incredulous. She presses her hands against his shoulders. "You can't – you don't know. You can't see the future."
"I do know," she says softly, "I have to go." And when he kisses her, desperate, it seems even her lips have dissolved into tears: silent, salt.
3.
He steps inside and doesn't have a chance to think before she reaches for him, runs her hands down his sides. Kissing him so hard that he thinks he might be bruised in the morning (though in truth it doesn't matter; he's already bruised in too many ways to count), but he doesn't care, he tangles his fingers in her hair; he's open-mouthed and gaping. It's this second that he would die a thousand times just to remember.
And the next moment she's pulling away, breathless.
Shall we eat?
No wine, he says, because he's already entirely drunk on her.
4.
"This can't ever happen again," she says after she steps away.
He's quiet a moment, contemplative. "You're right," he whispers. They're standing on the roof; the sun is setting. It's a perfect moment in all respects, but it can't have happened.
She turns away and shades her eyes. Wants him to think she's looking at the sunset. It's just that if he looks at her now, he'll know everything.
"Do you really think it won't?" he asks finally. Honestly.
She sighs and studies the bricks under her hands, then kisses him fiercely, because she knows what's true, if not right.
5.
Manhattan is never quiet; something she's grown used to over the years, but tonight everything else has fallen so silent around her and this man walking beside her that the sound of her own breathing is magnified almost unbearably. They hadn't drunk much; maybe it would've been easier if they had. A conversation that shouldn't have happened, but how can they go back?
Then, "Liv," stopping dead and shattering air. Eyes burning.
A city sidewalk, underneath what is surely the brightest streetlight for miles: her mind screams a million reasons no. And she closes her eyes and kisses him anyway.