I'm next to you on the couch, my feet tucked under your leg, your brow furrowed in some intense concentration, when I notice it.
     "Um, honey?"
     You turn away from the screen, briefly. "Yeah?"
     "You have...um..." I trail off as you see where my eyes are trained.
     "You did not." Your eyes widen as you touch your neck.
     "I didn't mean to!"
     This last part is shouted after you as you run to the bathroom. I hear a groan from behind the door as the two perfectly formed crescents on your neck are bathed in flourescent lighting. You yell, "Hooooneeeey!" making it into a three-syllable word.
     "I honestly didn't know I was biting that hard!"
     "Now I have to go to work with this!"
     You give me a glare as you walk back into the living room, my wide-eyed innocent look not as convincing above a smug, teasing grin. "Oops."
     "I am so getting shit about this."
     "No one'll even notice."
     "I haven't had a hickey on my neck in...years! I feel like a sixteen-year-old!"
     "Well, technically it's not a hickey, it's a bite mark." I become quiet as you glare again, though I know you're not angry at me. "You can hardly see it."
     "I can see it! That's bad enough!"
     I sigh as you gather your things for work. In the morning I'll ask you if anyone noticed, and you'll say you showed it off, as I knew you would. We'll laugh, and tease, and in three days it'll be gone, your first bruised neck in years.


     I stare up at the ceiling, praying for air in my lungs, as breathing doesn't seem to be a bodily priority at the moment. Your head is on my stomach, where your hair would be tickling me if I was feeling much of anything at the moment.
     You shift, grey eyes staring at my chin. "You okay?"
     I give a vague nod, blinking my eyes in rapid succession. "My eyes aren't focusing."
     You chuckle, pleased with yourself. You kiss my hip, the inside of my thigh, my stomach, then come to rest your head in my shoulder, laying your body across mine. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
     I shake my head slightly, amazed to be able to bring my hand up from where it was flung from the bed, and rest it on your back, drawing small circles with my thumb. "I'm fine. Better than fine. Fabulous. Amazing. All those other synomynyms...syno...those other words that mean the same thing."
     You chuckle again. "Want a cigarette?"
     At my vigorous nodding, you lean across the mattress to grab the ashtray, lighter, and pack from the nightstand. You hand me a cigarette, and my hands shake as I light it. I'm somewhat aware that I should not be smoking in bed in my weakened state, but I'm too exhausted to care. Too blissful.
     "I have to pee."
     I swear I can hear your eyes roll as you shift to the other side of the bed. "Alright, go pee."
     Using the walls for support, the muscles and joints of my legs liquid, I stumble my way to the bathroom.
     Later, I will lay beside you, struggling to keep my eyes open a bit longer, to have more time than the little I have to memorize the shadows in your body, the lines your eyelashes make across your cheeks in the candelight. I will see you exposed and vulnerable as we talk of dreams, and I will fall in love with you more than I thought was possible. You will tell me you love me more than life itself, and I will believe you. And then we will sleep, and we will not dream, for we have what we desire, and not even our creative minds could think of more.


     We're in the setting light, trucks and four-door sedans in the next lane. The sun flashes through the trees, bounces off your tanned skin, making it almost glow.
     "You're gorgeous."
     You spare me a glance as you change lanes. "You're crazy."
     "And you love me. What does that say about you?"
     "I don't even want to know."
     I settle back in my seat, comfortable in our two-year banter that has never changed, never will change. Opening up the center console, I search for CDs.
     "Where's the Taylor Swift CD?"
     You look down to where my hands have come up empty. "Um...in the cover thing. That you took out. Yeah, that thing," as I finally find it.
     I turn the volume up, sing along to the chorus. My hand plays with the wind, content without a cigarette for now. Besides, we smoked our last two on the freeway.
     Thinking I heard you say something below the Southern fiddles and country twang, I turn to find you smiling, wide, open, looking straight at me. "What?"
     You turn your head away, think better of it, continue to stare with that off-center smile I love so much. "Nothing."
     "What?"
     "Nothing!"
     I shake my head and grin, go back to teasing the wind. A warmth grows in me, starts in my chest and travels to my solar plexus, seems to spread through my bloodstream as it overtakes me. Being with you, I have learned, gives me this feeling. Loved. Happy. And the both together make a sweet gold mixture that never fails to give me a heady high.
     Later, I will watch you walk back to the car from the store. You will climb in and suggest pasta for dinner, having no idea that I am thinking how lucky I am, how beautiful you are, how much I love you. I will respond that we have no bread, and as we follow the winding road home, we will speak of gas and groceries, budgets and paychecks, and I will be the happiest I have ever been, for every moment with you surpasses the one before it with an intensity heretofore unknown.