Lucy In The Sky

The whole night's events float across my mind's eye like dust motes caught in a ray of sun, highlighted in clarity for a moment before softly drifting away. My head feels light, the memories surreal—were they ever really there in the first place?

I frown at the considerable effort it takes to hold my thoughts. The burning bittersweet taste of liquor clinging to my lips and swimming through my bloodstream as it muddles everything around me. The world spins and continues to spin, but when I see Lucy in front of me under the drifting lights that stain her skin blue with stars, it all stops.

My inner voice releases its restless need to stick to reality, in fact, that voice drifts away completely until I’m lost in her. All of the tension in my body eases away completely and I’m left floating. High above water in the blues and purples of a solar system come to life around me on my bedroom floor.

Sitting here in near silence, the only sound is soft music streaming from my phone thrown carelessly to the floor. It’s some old music our dads both love, barely on at all for fear of waking my parents. My heartbeat nearly drowns it out completely. We’re not doing much besides swaying and in my case, staring. The only source of light is the kaleidoscope of colour created by a projected solar system and the real moon far off—a muted silver through the cracks of plastic blinds.

The re-created stars move slowly over Lucy’s face, highlighting the soft angles and defining reaches beyond beautiful. It’s been weeks, months if I’m honest, since I’ve been able to stop thinking. My thoughts are never silent because of her, and the liquor flowing through my bloodstream only makes her colours brighter.

My head pounds with feelings and my heart races it with want. Slowly and strangely I move from where I’m leaning against the wall, wanting to be closer. I abandon the half-finished tequila bottle behind me as I push myself forwards until I’m sitting right in front of her, cross-legged and still in my favourite blue jeans from earlier.

Once there I just stare, Lucy notices, but all she does is stare back. My whole being is thrumming with feelings of need and want that are fueled by liquid courage; any weight of reason losing its hold with this new unfounded confidence. Her lips look so soft, bluish under the light and flushed with a colour brought on by smiles and liquor. They shimmer with a nearly gone gloss that I know tastes like strawberries.

The world is in hyper-focus right now. My vision tunnelling and she’s at the centre of everything. Matter bends and contracts towards her like she holds her own gravity in the space before me. Her ripped Levi’s, white glowing socks, and green t-shirt all appear brighter but perverted in colour.

Then there are her eyes. Wow. Their washed-out grey fades in and out of focus as if I’m looking through a camera lens. One second they’re alight with blue lights bleeding into green until they’re glowing, and the next they’re blurred like the shallow depths of a lake filled with growing things; her eyes throw dancing rays of light off their surface just the same.

It’s silent in my head now, too, like I’m really underwater. The rare flashes of green that show when the false stars turn remind me of a book we were forced to read this year for school—that far-off glow alighting on the horizon which Gatbsy waxed poetics over and over about. My head feels lighter as I’m overcome with the urge to giggle like I haven't since I was12; she’s my very own Daisy.

My hand comes up before my brain makes any conscious decision, to play with a strand of her soft soft hair; it slides like liquid earth between my fingers, some shades darker than her caramelized skin. There’s no doubt she’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known, or maybe I just never really make the effort to pay attention to anyone else. Either way it doesn’t matter, I could look at her for ages. I’d be right to liken her to any lovely flower: especially if that flower were an over-romanticized, highly sought after starlet out for my heart.

No sooner does this thought occur, rather unwelcome, in my head before it rushes over with the waves of thought-eating liquor. Cheap tequila fighting my intelligence to the death and replacing coherent thought with snatches of rock ballads “So if you want to love me then darling, don’t refrain”.

My entire world dials down into the purely physical plane where feelings lie as distorted sound or the smooth slide of skin beneath my fingers. Guns N’ Roses blurring and fading into the background with everything else that isn’t myself or Lucy.

It feels like bleeding out, having all your emotions poured into the corporeal world. When there’s nothing left to see or know but the sound of air entering your lungs too quickly and the subtle flicker of a vein on her throat, it’s impossible to hide. The rushing of blood feels too fast beneath my skin, too loud in my ears. It must be hot in here, I muse absentmindedly, my face is burning.

My gaze is drawn to the freckles playing across her cheekbones, adding to the constellations reflected there. My eyes flicker yet again down to her lips and I watch as they shift from blue to pink to purple. Full and rounded and slightly parted.

I wonder if they would taste like strawberries.

The thought comes floating up like a bubble to the surface, sparkly and sweet as champagne. And I want to find out. These thoughts have plagued my mind for what feels like forever and I’m not surprised that they’re persistently at the forefront of my mind even in this rather altered state. Just another thing I can’t stop thinking about.

I can’t tell if it’s real or imagined but I swear I can feel Lucy’s heartbeat racing mine through the small space between us. I should really stop staring: unless I want something to happen that either of us might regret—something I can’t take back. But I can’t help thinking that the feeling might be worth it.

When my gaze moves again to her eyes she’s looking back. My lungs hitch on an aborted breath. It feels like she’s somehow stripped my soul from my body. I’m swimming in the kaleidoscope of green and blue and purple light in Lucy’s eyes, reduced to nothing more than a single word, a name, a thought. There’s something familiar in the way she’s looking at me… curiosity and wonder open in her expression. I can tell it’s somewhat subdued by the deep relaxation flowing through her body and mine—the type only possible from killing off brain cells until you stop thinking so much.

When I recognize her curiosity I can’t help the words. They take all the courage in the world and yet none at all. Slipping so effortlessly past my falling boundaries that have managed to crumble all around me—and I never even noticed. Without their constant shielding, I’m sure she can see the longing that’s filling me everywhere, saturating every fibre of my skin. It’s a feeling I usually hide deep down when I’m afraid to look too close. But now it’s visible and shining on the surface.

“I think I want to kiss you right now.”

The words are slow and soft but also come out of me all in a rush as if they’ve been there the whole time. I can't not say them because everything in me is burning with those words and has been. And now they’re out in the open, floating in the space between us. I hold my breath. A single moment stretching into forever as I wait for what she’ll say.

I look and look at her and feel the imminent release of time because it's bound to start again. But at this second her lips are parted in surprise, maybe even recognition. I wonder if she’s been waiting for the words too. Her eyes glance down and then back up. Frozen in her thoughts. When the world has once again started gliding in colourful circles around me, she finally answers.

“Are you going to?” Are the words that fall effortlessly from those lovely lips. Barely a whisper from which I cannot stop staring at.

I wonder why she asks, she should know the answer is entirely dependent on her. Everything I do is. Grasping hold of the feeble strings of courage leftover from my last words, I hold my breath and ask: “Do you want me to?”

Everything is too loud, too real—maybe it’s because I've stopped breathing. The world has become a vortex revolving solely around her. A world shifted on its axis. We aren’t even inches apart now. As if the feelings held between us are a living thing with a will of their own and they’ve slowly been pulling us together, gradually enough that neither of us noticed. But I notice it now, and I can feel the warm breath of her sigh on my lips.

In the soft exhale I almost miss the word “yes.” The single syllable is so quiet you could hardly tell it from the whisper of a summer breeze through my open window. But sitting this close I can hear her, and it feels like flying. I can see the longing in my eyes now answered in hers and my heart stumbles before it puts itself back together and takes off at a sprint.

Everywhere in my body is filled with warm tingly anticipation and the world again shifts its focus as I lift my hands to her face. Her skin is soft under my palms as I rub circles into her cheeks with slow-moving thumbs. Just enjoying the feeling of her beneath my hands. I tilt my face towards her, closing the last millimetres of space that stubbornly sits between us. I see her eyelashes flutter closed as I gently brush my lips against hers. Everything’s so loud and quiet and spinning and dead still. And it feels like I’m dreaming.

I let myself touch her how I‘ve wanted to for what feels like ever now. Her lips are warm and soft as they move against mine, the lingering taste of bitter alcohol and sweet strawberries exploding on my tongue. It feels like I’m outside my body and also fully physically everywhere.

More than ever I’m aware of all the places her skin touches mine and the cool breeze from the window that moves through my hair and makes everything feel lighter. I slide one hand along her waist and the other moves into her hair. She’s so soft and warm and nice. She’s everything I’ve ever wanted.

When I feel her lips part I immediately open for her and release a quiet sigh of pure pleasure, head fuzzy with bliss. Her hands move slowly and lazily up my thighs and under my shirt. It feels like molten honey seeping underneath my skin and igniting little explosions at a cellular level that fill my body to the brim with warmth and light. If my eyes were open I wouldn’t be surprised if her hands left my skin glowing.

I vaguely wonder about how it’s like kissing boys, and yet so different. Nothing’s ever come close to this.

My heartbeat skips along and so much is happening that it’s impossible for my brain to decipher all the thoughts that are rushing like rapids… so I let my mind be quiet and just experience being here. I am kissing Lucy, and that is something I have wanted to do for so long. It feels like a weight lifting from my chest and my lungs expand greedily for air.

Eventually our breathing slows and the kisses become lingering and light until we’re just sitting there with our arms and legs wrapped around each other. My hands lazily drawing nonsensical shapes on her back. I rest my cheek on her shoulder and she does the same. Wanting to be closer I fit my face into the crook of her neck and breathe in deeply—willing myself to believe this is really happening, that Lucy is really here. Just me and her in our own little universe. Unwittingly a small smile lifts my mouth that I can’t manage to wipe from my face.

The lights are still moving and twinkling around us, making me feel like we’re swimming above water, high atop the world in the sky. I can almost let myself believe that we’ll always be like this— warm and soft, honest and vulnerable— for today and every tomorrow. Immediately I frown as the words settle in my mind. What happens tomorrow? Suddenly I’ve fallen from the sky and into the cold water.

The spinning is worse now and the world feels distorted and strange instead of perfectly floating. I squeeze my arms around Lucy tighter and close my eyes. I ask it in a whisper, almost afraid to repeat the words aloud as if they were some sort of evil taboo.

“What happens tomorrow?” I’m already resigned to the answer and don’t mind the silence that comes instead. I take the time offered gratefully and sink deeper into her warmth and let my consciousness wander as I try to escape the sickening circles of the room… and as she continues to hold me it gets better.

By the time she answers I’ve nearly fallen asleep and the words merely drift through my ears without comprehension. I feel arms tighten around me, almost as if she doesn’t want to let go either. Her voice is soft, gentle, angry, afraid and filled with so many other emotions I couldn’t hope to understand, “I don’t know.”

…

She’s gone before I wake up, that had been the plan, after all: sneak out to the party, sneak back in, leave in the morning. Somehow it still leaves something to be desired, a longing, a disappointment. The feelings are loud, clashing and banging around inside my head along with a hangover. It brings the type of awareness that reaches out from bottomless space and overflows, spreading all the way to your fingertips.

The soft scratch of cotton slips through my hands and over my hair, still wet from standing under a torrent of water. My hands wrinkled from staying in too long, just enjoying how it feels to be half-submerged and breathing easy. Distracting my mind from thoughts of her with too hot water, then gentle lotion that leaves everything smelling like citrus and cherry blossoms.

My bare feet are cold on the white tiles, yet I stay and turn to look anyways. Returned to disappointment again and again as I stand bare, dripping with nothing to hide behind as I stare at myself in the mirror. Imperfect skin glistening, everything not quite the shape that I wish it was. Always trying to look at myself from the perspective of someone else. Trying to convince myself that it isn’t personal. It’s easy to look objectively, it’s hard to try to love yourself anyways, harder to believe that anyone else could manage it when you can’t.

After brushing the stale taste of tequila and morning breath away I slip on my comfiest clothes and crawl back in bed, wanting breakfast but also wanting to avoid the rest of the world. When I pick up the book from my bedside table, the words float off the page and my imagination sweeps me away on clouds white like bleached sugar and sweet as cotton candy. It’s there that I find Lucy, gliding on golden rays of sunshine and looking at me with eyes like mirrors that match the clouds.

She’s so much more than perfect. I can’t help the way my heart races and cheeks flush pink when I think of her, when she says my name. I wonder if she notices how I say hers. Like a wish or a prayer. Like a breeze through blisteringly hot lands, or a sun ray through frozen white trees.

I close my eyes and sigh into my pillow, completely and utterly unable to focus on the tumultuous lives of the fictional characters in my book. I can’t help but wish I was perfect like her, maybe I’d let myself be enough that way.

Who knows though, maybe she doesn’t want perfect, I think as my fingers absently rise to grace along my lips with a remembered touch. The thought brings a tentative smile to my face as I stretch along the covers, finally forcing myself from the comfort of blankets and pillows and sleep. With a multitude of feelings settled deep inside my chest, I throw myself into the new day.

After all, maybe I’ll get to see her.