If ever I needed a harsh reminder of the importance of keeping ones feelings and emotions securely under wraps, it is this very moment. I feel appallingly exposed and every muscle in my body tenses with dread. Even though Chris is probably the only person in the world that I would consider a friend, it makes little difference to my state of alarm, and I experience a rush of adrenalin so intense that my breathing becomes shallow and rapid, and my limbs twitch involuntarily.
Louisa seems to sense my unease and I feel her fingers squeeze mine as if she means to reassure me but I can't help myself and I relinquish my hold on her, quickly withdrawing my arm and sliding it back toward me. Oblivious, with a smirk on his face as wide as the Humber Bridge, and his eyes gleaming with merriment, Chris steps closer to our table and extends his hand out toward me.
"Mart!" He says, raising his eyebrows at me knowingly.
I glance across at Louisa apologetically but she isn't looking at me; instead she is smiling radiantly up at Chris, apparently untroubled by either the unwanted interruption or the fact that I have pulled away from her. I stand up and we shake hands; My grip is rather more forceful than usual, and I notice him wince. I just hope he understands the cautionary glance I give him as our eyes meet.
"Chris." I reply, uttering his name in such a low growl that he must only hear it as a warning.
Ever affable, however, Chris continues to smile, his shiny round cheeks pink with barely concealed amusement.
"Good to see you, mate. Hope I'm not interrupting anything?"
"Umm, no, we were just leaving actually..." I say quickly and I notice a flicker of confusion pass across Louisa's face. She opens her mouth to say something but, mercifully, Chris interrupts.
"Aren't you going to introduce us?" He chirps with surprising enthusiasm, even going so far as to remove his glasses and clean them on his handkerchief, as if he can't quite believe his eyes.
Again I look at Louisa and she gives me an encouraging smile and an almost imperceptible nod of her head.
"Ah, yes. Of course...Louisa, this is Doctor Chris Parsons, ummm... Chris, this is, ahh, Louisa Glasson."
I watch as she bestows a dazzling smile upon him and I can't help but note his reaction with some annoyance. He slips his glasses into his pocket and he assumes a slightly swaggering air, putting both hands on the back of the spare chair and leaning toward her.
I've seen him behave like this before and, frankly, I've always found it annoying and rather demeaning but, now, for some reason, watching him almost flirting with Louisa, aggravates me intensely.
"Lovely to meet you, Chris." She says breathlessly and it strikes me that she probably means it.
"Likewise!" He replies, a little too eagerly for my liking. "I was going to invite Mart to join me today, but he did say that he had something that needed seeing to urgently."
Chris glances at me sideways, and I cringe as he quotes, verbatim, the message I left him earlier in the week. He is enjoying himself far too much at my expense but, despite my overwhelming desire to flee, Louisa is smiling patiently back at him; never impolite or socially awkward, she seems to even be genuinely interested in the waffling drivel Chris is spouting.
For a moment I am content to stand and observe her until I suddenly realise that it's highly improbable that he is lunching alone, which causes yet another pang of anxiety.
"Ummm, yes, well, we've got to go." I say hastily. "Umm, Louisa, are you... ahh..yes? Then we will leave you to it, Chris."
Louisa looks at me, clearly bemused, but she nods and gestures awkwardly in the direction of the lavatories.
"Yes, I'll just, umm. Won't be a moment" she says brightly, and we both watch her walk away. Chris lets out a quiet whistle from between his teeth and, though we are possibly thinking exactly the same thing, I find his ogling aggravating and I glare at him until she disappears from sight and he finally turns back to face me, shaking his head.
"Mart!" He says incredulously. "Martin Bloody Sly Dog Ellingham. I honestly didn't think you had it in you."
"Shut up Chris, not another word." I growl at him but he continues to laugh, and stare at me disbelievingly.
"Are you?...I mean, god, if I were in your shoes...Mart!"
"Shut up and mind your own business Chris Engaged To Be Married Parsons." I snap back at him. "What are you doing here anyway?"
"Well, I bumped into Robert Dashwood yesterday, and he, on the other hand, didn't have anything that urgently needed seeing to, so we are lunching together." Chris said, chortling to himself. "Do you mind if I ask how old she is?"
"Shut up!" I growl again but Chris is enjoying himself far too much to either notice or care. "Why here? Why this restaurant?"
"Haha, Mart, the perils of you being nothing if not a creature of habit! Plus, you've brought me here twice yourself and directed me to accomodation less than half a mile away, so the fact you've been discovered in the company of a rather delectable, sweet, young thing is rather your own fault, don't you think?"
Chris' continued reference to Louisa's age strikes an uncomfortable note with me and my mood is already darkening. However, the thought of Robert Dashwood, the noted Lothario, with his floppy hair and his polished manners, turning his intense, smouldering gaze onto Louisa, horrifies me to an even greater degree. I realise that my fists are clenched at my sides and I slip them behind my back in an effort to regain my composure.
"So, where are you two off to now?" Chris asks innocently, the hint of a smirk about his mouth. "Or shouldn't I ask, you lucky old devil?"
It's finally too much. I gather up Louisa's jacket and inform Chris, rather tersely, that it's time Louisa and I left and, as I stride angrily toward the register, in an effort to calm myself, I fold and refold her jacket several times before placing it neatly across my arm. It's black and constructed of a very soft and supple leather; warm and tactile, and exuding a very comforting scent.
As the maître d hands me the bill, Chris wanders over and mumbles a genial apology at me. I see that he is wearing his glasses again so at least one of us has got themselves under control. He chuckles as he mutters something about being jealous and I am taken aback. To my relief, before the conversation can take any more awkward turns, Louisa emerges from the door of the ladies, which is appropriately adorned with the silhouette of a regency woman.
She looks at me shyly but my urgency to depart must be obvious because, as our eyes lock, she frowns slightly and holds my gaze intently as she walks towards us. I only look away when I am required to provide my signature, which I scrawl hastily because, by now, I am desperate to escape; both for my own sake and because I don't think I can any longer bear to see Louisa ogled by all and sundry.
Even as Chris says goodbye, I can see the gleam in his eye as he leans in toward her, and it bothers me so irrationally that I want to force myself between them and usher her rapidly away. I mutter a terse farewell and walk towards the door, staring at Louisa pointedly as I hold it open, willing her desperately to follow. We haven't made any further plans but she seems to be happy to join me, walking briskly alongside me on the footpath wordlessly until we reach a quiet side street that will take me toward my flat. Immediately, I feel myself relax and I slow my pace.
"Where are we going?" She asks eventually. "Is everything okay, Martin? You seem a bit upset?"
I turn to look at her. She looks flushed, and there is a slightly confused frown on her face. It dawns on me that I don't know where I'm going either.
"Ummm, I just...I don't want to see...people, umm, colleagues, I suppose, on my day off." I say finally, a little sheepishly, and I'm rewarded by a gentle sympathetic smile. She reaches up and pulls her ponytail around under her chin, clasping it thoughtfully for a moment before letting it go.
"So, do you have things to do this afternoon?" She asks tentatively. "I mean, it's fine if you do, but, you know, if you don't..."
I feel an alarming rush of blood as Chris' suggestion of how he'd be spending the afternoon if he were in my shoes flashes through my mind and, instantly, I berate myself. She's gazing at me so hopefully, and with such an air of innocence, that I am momentarily appalled at myself.
"No, I don't." I say hurriedly, "Umm, I mean, I have nothing important planned...what about you?"
She seems to be smiling with relief, and she shakes her head gently.
"It's a beautiful day." She says, and I nod and glance at my watch.
I have a vision of my usual quiet weekend afternoons at home alone and, instead of the anticipation I usually feel for this time, as if it is my hard-earned reward, I realise with shock that it suddenly seems to have lost its appeal if the alternative is prolonging my time spent with Louisa. It seems to take me a few seconds to process that idea and I'm momentarily stunned. I don't want her to go.
"We could...umm, we could go somewhere. It's still early. Is there anywhere you'd like to go?" I say after a moment.
"Have you still got your car then?" She asks and I detect excitement in her voice.
I cast my mind back to the last time I drove her anywhere; her appalling taste in music and her endless adolescent mirth at my expense. I look at her and briefly wonder if it's simply just maturity that has made her seem so much less exuberant or whether she might still be unwell. I open my mouth to again ask her about her iron levels but I close it again rapidly and remind myself to ask her later, when we are not on the street.
She laughs at me and I realise I haven't answered her question.
"Umm, yes, I do, just not the same one." I say quickly. "Why? Does having a car make a difference to where you'd like to go?"
"Well, yes, sort of. I mean, it makes it a bit easier...it's just that last year I spent Christmas with Libby's family and we went to Richmond Park. I'd never been there before and I sort of wondered..you know, what it would be like in summer..." she trailed off hopefully and I noticed she was biting her lip as if she were concerned.
I'm not particularly fond of the place but it's not exactly a long and onerous journey and, if that's where she wants to go, I will take her. For some reason, having her to myself for the duration of the drive, without any interruption or prying eyes, seems like a very appealing option. I am encouraged by previous experience; Louisa doesn't seem to mind if I don't say much; she seems happy just to talk to me, and I am content to listen.
"Ummm, yes." I reply and l am instantly rewarded with a dazzling smile that makes my stomach lurch. I know that it must be a physical sensation resulting from elevation in sympathetic activity in the autonomic nervous system, but it is highly disconcerting nevertheless. I swallow hard and start to walk back toward my flat as Chris' untimely interruption rapidly disappears from my consciousness and the feeling of Louisa's hand in mine seems to return to me as some sort of involuntary muscle memory.
"I'm just letting you know though, Martin, if there's a kiosk, I'm going to insist on an ice cream." She says resolutely, and she starts to laugh. "And, actually, probably even one with a flake in it too, so you better start preparing yourself."
I glance at her sideways but I don't respond. She, however, notices my reproachful look and her face takes on a self-satisfied smirk for the remainder of the short distance back to where I park my car. For a disconcerting moment we are back in Port Wenn and, not for the first time, my brain struggles to meld the two contrasting Louisas into one and the same person. This time around, at least, I am a bit more sure of my manners, as I hold the door open for her, and wait until she is comfortably seated before closing it firmly. As I walk around to my side, I am suddenly cognisant of my own, improbable behaviour and the unlikely circumstances I now find myself in. I slip into the drivers seat and wait, momentarily, as she focuses on adjusting her seatbelt. Louisa may think we are driving to Richmond but, for me, I am embarking on a far more terrifying journey into the unknown.
Every glance, every touch, every smile she sends my way; each is a tiny, little, incremental atom of hope, like water on a stone, breaking down my resolve, and chipping away at my hard, cold almost impenetrable shell. She lets out a throaty giggle as she adjusts the seat mechanism, and stretches her bare legs out before her. I'm momentarily distracted and, as I pull out from the kerb, I probably hit the accelerator rather harder than I should have, throwing her backwards into her seat and causing her to squeak with laughter, as she reclines rather further than she intended.
"Go on." I say after a moment, as we wait to turn right into Cromwell Road.
She turns and looks at me quizzically.
"What?"
I reach down into the pocket of my door and pass her the book of compact discs I keep in the car.
"Oh that's, right, I remember: your car, your rules." She says good humouredly as she unzips the wallet and begins to idly flip through the contents. "Anyway, you can't scare me now. Don't forget the three hundred and thirty three minutes of listening pleasure you left under my pillow in the village."
"Umm, yes, I do remember. And you expressly wrote to me to thank me, do you remember, because it helped you? Hmm?"
She gives a short bark of laughter but doesn't say anything and, after a few moments, the car is filled with Rossini's string sonatas. I glance across at her in mild surprise but she's waiting for me, with an innocent smile on her face, challenging me to say anything so that she can pounce on me, like a cat playing with its half-stunned prey. I decide to call her bluff and I reach up and open the sun roof, flooding the vehicle with sunlight and, somewhat serendipitously, illuminating her and making her hair shine with an impossible lustre.
Without looking at me, she reaches over and tweaks the volume upwards, a sly smirk on her face as she leans her elbow on the window frame and rests her chin on her hand peaceably. She crosses her legs lazily, absently smoothing her skirt across her thighs as I can't help myself and glance across. With each minute that passes, everything feels somehow so different, somehow more and more unreal.
How can I want to be with her so vehemently when the concept of companionship has always been so completely foreign to me? Of course, I understand that, prehistorically, existing as part of a group obviously provided valuable survival advantages. I understand the science and the psychology, I just never felt it applied to me. In fact, the idea has always been anathema to me and I have always failed to see how sharing an experience could possibly improve ones enjoyment of it, especially as I have invariably found the opposite to be true. For me, a companion has always been at best a distraction, usually a hinderance, and even, sometimes, completely deleterious to any experience or undertaking that I have been forced to share.
I always assume it to be yet another of my faults; an inability to understand the complex needs of another individual inevitably leading to discomfort, aggravation and, as a result, a lessening of my own enjoyment. Simply put, I suppose I learned from an early age that the only safe and pleasant place is alone and, if I am honest, as an adult, nothing has really occurred to make me reevaluate my position. Even my own parents found me bothersome and tedious to have around and I grimace when I think of what Louisa and her psychology classes would make of that particularly galling and humiliating gem.
It's always been abundantly clear to me that, unless I'm in scrubs with a scalpel in my hand, I can't make anyone happy and I'm better off in my own company. When I reflect on this, I can't help but wonder why Louisa would possibly want to spend time with me and that's enough for the voices of derision in my mind to start to clamour for attention. I can't help but repeatedly glance across at my passenger, waiting for signs of emergent discontent that I know must be imminent. But Louisa seems, as ever, to take a great deal of pleasure just from being driven along in a car and gazing happily out of the window. She even seems excited just to be crossing the Putney Bridge, swivelling in her seat to gaze down at the unappealing brown water of the Thames.
"I miss the sea." She says, a little sadly, and I don't know how to respond. Her hand rests on the edge of her seat and I could possibly reach over and give it a comforting pat but, as usual, I can't seem to summon the confidence. I know that the situation calls for a response but my mind seems unconnected to my voice. Say something, Ellingham, you idiot!
"Umm, yes, I'm sure you will be." I hear myself say, and I sound hollow and unconvincing. "I know that I, ahh, I used to enjoy poking about in the the rock pools when I was a child."
She seems to perk up suddenly and she turns to look at me, smiling, her eyes so large and bright at the mention of her village.
"When you weren't fishing abandoned children out of ditches..."
"Very very dirty and extremely dishevelled children from what I recall.."
"Mmm." She replies and I hear a note of caution in her tone.
"Possibly the filthiest face, I've ever seen." I add, warming to my subject. "You looked like someone had..."
"Yes, thank you, Martin!" She says quickly but, to my relief, she is still smiling at me. "Anyway, we need to shut up now, because Number Six is my favourite and it's not very long."
As we turn into Priory Lane, I'm still reflecting, with more than a little amazement, on the process of maturity in the human adolescent; more specifically, on the fact that scruffy, callow, naive, Port Wenn Louisa now has a favourite Rossini string sonata, and the physiognomy that would put Aphrodite in the shade.
It's a large park and Louisa directs me, giggling, to Spankers Hill Woods, where we find the car park surprisingly empty. She insists she won't need her jacket, tossing it onto the back seat in a crumpled heap, and I'm concerned about the amount of unprotected skin she is exposing on what has turned out to be a sunny, pleasantly warm day. I manage to hold my tongue and decide that, instead, I will try and keep our walk to the more shady paths.
She seems exuberant and she explains, without being asked, that she is thrilled to be out of the city at last. While that sentiment is completely beyond my understanding, I'm not above appreciating the effect of the delight she obviously feels. She is filled with an excited energy that would be almost contagious if I didn't dislike this place so intently. Why she expects that I might have a picnic rug in the boot of my car is totally mystifying but my lack of preparedness doesn't seem to be impacting on her joyous excitement at the simple prospect of a walk in the woods.
She tells me the spot she'd like to walk to, on the side of the hill, with a view for miles, and I know exactly where she means. I hesitate and suggest staying away from the more populated areas and heading into the more densely forested area. I don't know what we will find, I just have a deep seated need to avoid King Henry's walk and, more especially, the ponds. She stops in her tracks and frowns at me, once again, she bites her lip thoughtfully.
"Please, Louisa." I ask as gently as I can, hoping she will just accept my request without the need for me to explain. I feel huge relief when she nods thoughtfully and seems content to head in the other direction. She scrambles down a bank below the track and I follow her, as we seem to be following some sort of trail made by animals. The shade is quite dense and the air smells of leaf mould and, faintly, of dung. I open my mouth to object but she is oblivious, striding ahead excitedly, and I have to trust that she knows where she is going. Eventually we emerge into the sun again, onto a large, south facing incline, well-grassed and heavily ringed by trees.
"Isn't this lovely?" She gushes breathlessly tilting her head back and looking up at the patch of blue sky that sits above our heads, like some impossibly high ceiling on a small, secret room.
"Mmm." I reply, unconvinced. "How did you know this was here?"
"Libby." She says simply. "Didn't like to ask how she knew."
"Right." I probably don't want to know either, if I am honest but, as far as a grassy knoll goes, surrounded by ubiquitous old oak trees, it seems pleasant enough. At least I can't smell deer faeces quite so pungently now.
"Shall we go over and look at the ponds now?" She asks and smiles enquiringly at me. She looks so lovely, standing in the sun, looking as if she will burst with excitement at the prospect of looking at a couple of dismal grey, mosquito infested bodies of water. For the life of me, I don't want to disappoint her but I can't help my hesitation. I open my mouth to say something, but no words come and I find myself staring at her helplessly, as a familiar wave of humiliation passes over me.
"Are you okay?" She says, and I hear concern in her voice which only seems to add to my feeling of discomfort.
"Umm, I don't...really...want...to go to the ponds. Couldn't we just stay here for a while? It's, umm, it's quite nice, isn't it?"
She frowns and takes a couple of steps back toward me. There is a little eroded piece of ground that the deer have created, and she sits down on it as if it is a chair, dangling her legs over the edge and staring up at me, a curious expression on her face.
"It's lovely. It reminds me a bit of Treraven Woods. We went there a few times from college. It was heavenly." She smiled at the memory. "Did you like playing in the woods when you were a kid? Cowboys and Indians, Robin Hood and all that?"
"No." I say honestly. Even if I'd even been granted permission, I probably wouldn't have wanted to get dirty. I remember those ponds again and I feel myself flinch.
"That's a shame." She says and she smiles mischievously. "Be quite fun to build a fort, maybe dam a creek."
I can't help but stare at her. She's wearing a dress and while it's very pretty, and modest enough, from the angle I am looking from, all I can see are her exquisite neck and shoulders, lithe, bare and totally captivating. I hear myself sigh and I realise it's my body reminding me to breathe.
Skin. I've seen more than my fair share. Exposed flesh. Prepped and spread out before me. I have pressed needles through it, wielded a blade across it, swabbed it and sutured it. Yet here I am, transfixed by a particular shade of alabaster; call it porcelain, call it creamy or even buttery-smooth; such words are so painfully insufficient and woefully inadequate. For, as mere adjectives they are simply too cold and lacklustre, and too inert to adequately describe something as warm, and alive and captivating as her skin; perfect, unblemished and tantalisingly close.
So close that, if I wanted to, I could reach out and touch her; I could trace my finger gently across her shoulder, and softly caress the indentations of her clavicle, so perfectly defined and so utterly feminine. The thought alone makes my breath catch in my throat.
If I wanted to. Of course I want to, yet I dare not move, so frozen with fear am I, so frightened of the pain of probable rejection. I want to touch her with every thread of my being, my entire body thrums with longing, yet still I falter.
"Martin?" The sound of her voice summons me from my reverie; she is staring at me and, cautiously, I meet her gaze, as if she can read my thoughts.
"Umm, sorry?"
"I asked if you were going to sit down. You look a bit uncomfortable, just standing there."
"Yes." I look down at the grass unhappily and she starts to laugh.
"Not really an outdoorsman, are you?" She says gently and reaches into her bag, and emerging with a folded map which she holds out toward me.
"Six hundred quid suit versus one pound fifty worth of map. No contest really."
"Umm, thank you." I say, unfolding it completely and refolding it in half before I place it onto the dry grass and lower myself gingerly down on to it. I can't quite determine the appropriate distance to place myself away from her and I'm starting to feel very uncomfortable and out of my depth.
As if Louisa is aware of my discomfit, she gazes serenely around her before, eventually, resting her gaze upon me. I raise my knees and rest my forearms on them, there doesn't seem any other way to contort myself so that I keep as much of my person as I can on the safety of the map.
"I might be wrong but I can't help feeling I've made you drive me to somewhere you don't want to be?" She says and her voice is tinged with sadness.
I glance back at her.
"You didn't make me do anything, I brought you here of my own free will. And it's fine, really." I reply but she gives me a look that clearly indicates she doesn't believe a word I'm saying.
She shuffles along toward me and she puts her hand very lightly on my arm.
"Yeah, well, I don't think you're being honest with me, actually, Martin." She says, very gently and I watch mesmerised as she runs her fingers along my sleeve. "And, you know what, it would be nice if you wanted to tell me why that is."
I swallow hard.
"Ummm, I...I just don't have particularly good memories of this place. The park, the ponds, I mean..." I say haltingly.
Her hand stops moving and she stares at me sadly.
"It must have been pretty rubbish if it's still affecting you to this day. How old were you?"
I hear myself gulp.
"Eight." I manage to croak. "I think."
Again she shifts almost imperceptibly toward me and now her fingers are caressing the back of my hand. Everything seems still and quiet and all I can hear is my own shallow, laboured breathing.
"Is this the first time you've been back since?"
I pause.
"Umm, no, came back, once or twice after that...ahh...for virtually the same result actually." I clear my throat awkwardly. "By the time I was eleven, I was the tallest in my form and they sort of left me alone after that. The boys in my year anyway."
I can't look at her now but I can feel how close she is. She slips her fingers through mine and I am bewildered by the effect it has on me.
"It might help both of us if you told me what happened." She murmurs and it feels as if her words vibrate through my whole body.
I glance up at her face, inclined towards me and staring at our interlocked fingers. She looks just as beautiful in repose.
"Usual boy stuff, nothing out of the ordinary in my experience, it just got a bit out of hand and...ummm...well I ended up getting rather severely punished for it." I say quietly, before adding rather unconvincingly. "Mmm, anyway, it's all in the past now. No point dwelling on it is there?"
"I don't think it is in the past though, is it Martin?" She says and she is starting to sound upset. "Weren't there any teachers there? I mean to help you?"
I swallow hard. As if it were yesterday I recall how I am given the responsibility of carrying the excursion handouts from the Gestetner office to the bus. How the journey itself is uneventful due to my fortuitous securing of a position seated in front of one of the masters but that, once we are assembled on the walking path, in a neat crocodile of small but nasty little boys, and I struggle along, carrying the heavy box as best I can, the torment starts. I don't dwell in the details more than to tell her how the handouts end up in the pond, followed by my shoes and socks after I hastily discard them to wade in, in a vain attempt to retrieve the now sodden materials. I conclude by briefly skimming over the humiliating dressing down, in front of the entire class, delivered scathingly by the master who had so effectively set me up as a target. And I don't mention the subsequent caning from the deputy headmaster who seemed to take great personal delight in beating seven bells out of me at every opportunity.
I pause now because, though I have come to accept the mindless brutality of life at a boys Boarding School, I still struggle to understand the vicious beating meted out by my own father as a result of the loss of my shoes. Recalling that evening makes my mouth dry and salty and I find myself licking my lips nervously at the memory of it. My tears never stopped him, in fact it probably made him worse, but I learned that evening that vomiting did. I can still hear the disgust in his voice as he berated me for bringing up my supper so explosively, pausing mid-blow to rush from the room, clutching the waist of his trousers in one hand and trailing the belt behind him with the other. A taxi had taken me back to school and a maid had delivered a new pair of shoes the next day, along with a threatening note from my mother. But I can't tell her any of this. I conclude with the truth, that my parents were upset with me, and she squeezes my hand sympathetically. I can tell by her expression that she knows I have left out large portions of the story but she doesn't press me any further. I reach into my pocket for my handkerchief and wipe my mouth and she watches me intently, clasping my hand in both of hers and rubbing it so very gently.
"You know what I think?" She says and her voice is suddenly different, low and soft and very gentle.
I tilt my head to look at her. She is so close now that, briefly, I don't care about what my father did; I don't care about the mindless oafs that made my childhood such a torment. I don't even care about my heartless mother who never once protected me from anyone or anything. I only care about Louisa, and how it feels to have her here with me, how reassuring it is just to be in her proximity. I feel an inexplicable rush inside me, a bewitching blend of fear and anticipation and desire.
"No..." I say and my voice trails off hopelessly
I am frightened. The truth is that the floodgates are only just holding and I'm truly terrified, such is my apprehension of the moment when they finally breach. And breach they will because, as I sit here, gazing at the most exquisite woman I have ever seen, I feel the weight bearing down on me, gaining momentum and becoming an irresistible force.
Our eyes meet and I see yet another smile; hesitant and encouraging at the same time, serene but determined, sweetly innocent but somehow so bewitching. She leans toward me and the space between us disappears, drawing with it the breath from my yearning body.
"I think we should make some new memories." She says and I feel the intoxicating sensation of her hand in my hair as she pulls me toward her.