With each kiss and each giggle that followed, my perceptions waffled between the familiar and the surreal. Yes, I knew the sound of her laughter. Yes, I knew the face of the woman who was laughing. I knew her body well enough to draw the giggles out, and yet…
When she turned me over, holding my hands against my own chest; when she looked down at me, her hair falling over her face; when she sat up with her legs on either side of my waist, panting like a happy animal; I saw that old, familiar, unknowable thing.
"I can't believe you're here," I said. "I see you, and I feel you, but somehow I still can't believe it."
"I'm here," she said quietly, raising my hands to her mouth.
"I know, but, you know what I mean," I said.
"Can you feel this?" she said, kissing the backs of my hands. Her lips were chapped and warm.
"Oui," I said.
"Can you feel this?" she said, kissing my wrists - once on each arm - sending shivers down my spine.
"Oui," I said, my hips moving on their own.
"And this?" she said, placing my hands on her breasts.
"Oui," I said, feeling her nipples harden in my palms.
"Well, the empirical evidence would suggest that I am, in fact, physically present," she said, grinding her hips in circles.
"Yes," I said. "But I feel like, once I finally get used to the idea of you being here, then you are just going to leave."
Cosima didn't frown at the thought, nor did she stop the circular motion of her hips over mine. Instead, she leaned over and started kissing my neck and shoulders.
"That might be true..." she said, adjusting her weight until she was laying down next to me with her thigh slug over the top of my leg.
Then she moved her hand down the front of my belly, lingering, her index finger making lazy circles just over my pubic bone.
"But...you're going to have so many more orgasms before that happens," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice.
Oh, yes, I thought. I know this cocky little jerk.
/
But even still, even as the morning came and I watched Cosima drift off to sleep in the gray morning light, I stared at her face, as if trying to figure out the secret code to her existence. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was open slightly, and her shoulders moved gently up and down with her breath.
I stared at her face, and I stared at it hard. She looked the same as the first time I had met her in that aquarium. And, at the same time, she looked different. She was paler, her face thinner. I wondered if it was just from the traveling, or if the last months had been as hard for her as they had been for me.
Laurent is right, I thought. It would be foolish to leave this morning. How could I? As if I even have a choice?
A few moments later, my phone vibrated against the desk. It was the alarm I had set for myself. I hurried out of bed and shut it off. It was already five. It was already decision time.
I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think of what to say to my professor. My stomach turned, just thinking about it. I was never good at that sort of thing; I was never good at lying.
But Laurent is, I thought.
I snuck out into the living room.
"Laurent," I said, trying not to startle him. "Laurent, wake up!"
"What?" he said, startled anyway. "Are you leaving now?"
"No, no," I said. "I need your help."
"What?" he said, sitting up immediately. "What is it?"
"I need your help calling out," I said. "I don't think I can do it. I'm no good at lying. I feel sick."
"Just text," he said.
"Text?" I said, having not previously considering it an option.
"Yeah," he said. "What time is it?"
"Five," I said.
"Okay, then just text, and apologize that you are bothering him so early."
"I see," I said. I stared down at my phone keyboard.
Then I looked up at Laurent. "Can you do it?"
"Jesus, Delphine," he said. "When did you become such a wimp?"
"Just do it for me, please!" I said. "I'm begging you. I'm begging you!"
"Alright, fine, but I get to stay here for a few more days," he said. "No questions asked."
"Fine," I said. "Whatever you want."
"And breakfast," he said.
"Deal," I said. "Just do it. You're wasting time."
I handed Laurent my phone and ran away to the kitchen. I brewed coffee as he typed like a madman with his thumbs.
"What are you writing? A dissertation?" I asked from the kitchen.
"Shhh," he said. "Let the master work."
After a moment, he tossed the phone onto the table and plopped his head back down onto the couch cushion.
"It's done," he said.
"Yeah?" I said.
"Yeah," he said. "I told him you'd contact him with your new flight information as soon as you had it."
"You're the best!" I said.
Those weren't words I had said to my brother very often in the last few years. I almost ran to the couch to hug him, but instead I jumped up in the air and spun around, hugging myself and squealing.
"Stay as long as you like," I said, running back to the bedroom, hoping to tell Cosima the good news.
/
But when I opened the door, I couldn't bring myself to wake her. She was sleeping on her side as the new day's sun peeked into the room and over the bed sheets. I sat next to her and stared at her face again. Her eyelashes were fluttering and I could see her irises moving back and forth beneath her eyelids. She was dreaming. Her expression was calm and sweet, and her mouth was still open, letting out heavy breaths that were now on the verge of snores.
She must be exhausted, I thought, reaching my hand out.
But then, I resisted the urge to touch her face.
She will probably sleep all day, I thought.
I slid into bed next to her, curling up behind her back - the obvious big spoon.
Not that, that is a bad thing.
I slid right up behind her, just close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her skin, but not touching, because I didn't want to wake her, not even for a second. Instead, I laid there, staring at her back; at the space between her shoulder blades; the valley that formed between them, and the shadows that fell across her skin as the room grew brighter and brighter.
I counted the beauty marks on her back - the ones I could see. I connected them like dots into different patterns and shapes. I used them as a scale to measure the distance she had overcome to get to me. If that one - the one on her lower left rib - was San Francisco; and this one - the one on the tippy-top of her right shoulder - was Paris; then her spine ran right down the middle of the Atlantic, like some sort of misplaced Greenwich Meridian. I wanted to touch her so bad, but I hugged my arms around myself instead.
The world is unbearably big, I thought. And yet, the world is incredibly small...so small that it can be encompassed in the beauty marks on Cosima's back.
And that was my last coherent thought before I, too, drifted off to sleep.