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by
Tahereh Mafi
Hot Hands
I’m always apologizing. Forever apologizing. For who I am and what I never meant to be and for this body I was born into, this DNA I never asked for, this person I can’t unbecome. 17 years I’ve spent trying to be different. Every single day. Trying to be someone else for someone else.
this kiss, it’s like I’m diving into an ocean of emotion and I’m too swept up in the current to realize I’m drowning and nothing even matters anymore.
I want all of him, I want to feel the beauty of this love with the tips of my fingers and the palms of my hands and every fiber and bone in my being.
“You,” he says to me, his hands gripping me tighter now, “are one of the bravest, strongest people I’ve ever met. You have the best heart, the best intentions—” He stops. Takes a tight, shaky breath. “You’re the best person I’ve ever known,” he says to me. “You’ve been through the worst possible experiences and you survived with your humanity still intact. How the hell,” he says, his voice breaking now, “am I supposed to let go of you? How can I walk away from you?” “Adam—”
I will be waiting for you when you’re ready. I’m not going anywhere. There won’t be another person for me. You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted and that’s never,” he says, “that’s never going to change.”
“You can go to hell,” Adam shouts at Warner. “Just because I’m going to hell,” Warner says, “doesn’t mean you’ll ever deserve her.”
hell is empty and all the devils are here
“I love it when you say my name,” he says. “I don’t even know why.” “Warner isn’t your name,” I point out. “Your name is Aaron.” His smile is wide, so wide. “God, I love that.” “Your name?” “Only when you say it.”
“On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again.”
“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,”
Aaron Warner Anderson, chief commander and regent of Sector 45, son of the supreme commander of The Reestablishment. He has a soft spot for fashion.
I am no longer afraid of fear, and I will not let it rule me. Fear will learn to fear me.
No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay, burying themselves in our bones to become corpses we carry into the future, all the time digging and failing to rip their skeletons from our flesh.
“Because I am afraid,” he finally says, voice shaking, “that your friendship would be the end of me.”
“You don’t love him at all?” Warner asks me. My voice is being stupid. “Romantically?” He nods. “No.” “You’re not attracted to him?” “I’m attracted to you.” “I’m serious,” he says. “So am I.” Warner’s still staring at me. He blinks, once. “Don’t you believe me?” I ask. He looks away.
And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.
“Lift your hips for me, love,”
It’s a heavy, unbelievable kiss. It’s the kind of kiss that inspires stars to climb into the sky and light up the world. The kind that takes forever and no time at all.
“In a world where there is so much to grieve and so little good to take? I grieve nothing. I take everything.”
“Ignite, my love. Ignite.”
Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we’re feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we’re feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own.
We are hours and minutes reaching for the same second, holding hands as we spin forward into new days and the promise of something better.
