I remember when I steadied my hands on your hips from behind as if to
better look at the painting. It was all bold pretense and nothing I’d
ever done before, but you let me like we’d been doing that all of our
lives, or like it was a perfectly acceptable way to touch someone that
you’re not familiar with. You grabbed my fingers and held them and
pulled them around so they were resting on your stomach. You held
tight and wouldn’t let go. I tried to talk about the detail of the
picture we were looking at, my arms locked around your waist, but I
kept thinking, there’s no possible way that anyone could like me this
much. You mentioned how the women in the shawls in the lower left
corner looked cold but you wouldn’t point them out. You kept holding
my hands instead. When you turned your head to look back at me, I
stopped breathing for a minute.
I kissed you for the first time in the parking lot against your car.
I couldn’t believe how familiar you felt, or how I wished I had a
camera because I wanted to capture that look in your eyes after we
stopped. I was afraid I might never see it again. One of those
once-in-a-relationship looks.
After you dropped me off, I sat on my futon, drinking a beer and
listening to Aretha Franklin and replaying the night over and over in
my head. I felt like a grown-up and it actually didn’t scare me.
-Robert Sturma, Submitted by: Jessica Rose
