I say back, but they are just placeholder words, nothing words, words to fill the air because the air is already filled with something thick and nameless and ancient, and my heart and my gut are responding with a kind of keen fervor I haven’t felt in years. And it scares me. It scares me and thrills me, and then she moves her hand from my shoulder to the nape of my neck in a gesture both tentative and determined, and it feels important; it feels adorable; it feels like my body is going to rocket apart from the lust and the protectiveness and the sheer mystery of what I feel right now.
