The difference between the temperature of our skin was apparent to both of us. It wasn't just the fact that I was touching Julie with bloody fingers those first two times that made her flinch and cringe away from me. There was no true blood pumping through my arteries, no warmth in my sluggish limbs. The Dead don't need heat. When I brushed my hand over her face to smear the lifesaving blood onto her skin, I know she felt the dead coldness of my touch, and it was just another reminder of what I was.

To me, she felt like... I wouldn't know how to explain it. I've got nothing to compare her warmth to.

She felt like life.

I remember the first time she willingly touched me. The revulsion she felt for me had faded in the wake of the second time I'd saved her from the others. Ever capable and practical, she had accepted that she would be spending "a few days" with me. Finding her food had been the first major step, and I must have won major points with the beer - but then, she had been careful not to let her hand touch mine as she accepted the bottle. It was a good thing I'd had the beer left, recalling the awful moment she'd asked me my name and as usual, I couldn't remember it.

It had been the following day, after our drive and Julie's lunch. I was showing her images in... I've got no idea what to call them, another thing I don't have a name for... passing her cards, and her fingers grazed mine when she took the third one.

If she noticed, she hid it well. She surely felt the same freezing skin as she had before. I however, felt like I did some days when I stepped outside and felt the breeze ruffling my already untidy hair.

Refreshed. Alive.

I had felt human skin plenty of times when I fed. But this wasn't like that. I could never imagine hurting Julie now. I couldn't yet put a label on the emotion I'd felt that night when I first saw her, but it had grown stronger. The closest I could get to understanding it was the same words that I told her. Keep you safe.

I desperately longed for her to touch me again.

I began to keep a mental tally of the times our skin came into contact. I couldn't remember how to count anymore, how to read or assign meaning to numbers. But each brush of her hand became ingrained in my hazy memory. I could only hope that I wouldn't forget these precious moments the way I'd forgotten everything else.

She touched me three times when we tried glasses on - which was, in truth, the only reason I didn't protest the whole exercise. Surely my face was repulsive to her, with its pale pallor and the rough ridges of scars that couldn't heal? She didn't act like it was. Her fingers brushed my nose and cheeks as she took one pair from me, and then reached right back to replace them speculatively with another.

The next morning, she decided to teach me the game red hands. Red hands... should it have been called grey hands in my case?

It wasn't that I couldn't understood the rules. But when her hands slapped mine there could be no escaping it - she was deliberately choosing to touch me. It wasn't accidental, like the other times could have been. She could have stayed away from me, explored my 747 without choosing the play a game that involved touch.

I was so overwhelmed, I couldn't make myself try to tag her hands back. I wanted to feel that fleeting touch of hers, of her choosing, again and again.

At dusk, she the took my hand and explained the wave - I was so distracted by her soft fingers around mine I couldn't get the other arm to lift higher than my waist.

On the third day, after we talked about Perry, I tried to show her my understanding. I couldn't do it with words, so I put on Bob Dylan in my attempt to express hope.

If my heart had still been beating, it would have been deafening when I sat back down beside her. I pressed my hand over my chest, then reached out to lay it upon hers, just above the top of her blouse.

She didn't flinch, or scream, or even seem that bothered by my cold skin. Not only would she touch me willingly now, but she allowed me to touch her. The steady timbre of her heart under my hand was soothing, and I found myself taking as much comfort from her as I'd intended to give to her.

She held my gaze with something like wonder, peering into my grey eyes in an attempt to decipher me. For the second time, she asked;

"What are you?"

How I wish I knew.