The Rest of the Story

by Tal Bauer

gauzy meringue and lavender heat haze.

I could smell him, and I was dizzy with his scent. I had a moment’s daydream, a flash of imagining so vivid and scorching it burned me. Shea with his head thrown back, throat arched, gasping my name. His hands tangled in my sheets, thighs quaking—

How his laugh fell out of him and bubbled over me, light as champagne and summertime.

Love was an unused muscle inside me.