Unfathomable

33.

Three years later

Madara:

After me and Hashi had broken up, I had a very giving conversation with my mother. She had told me that when you found the one who was right for you, everything was just easy. Of course, there would be bumps and hardships, but there would never be any hesitation, never any doubt. It would never be a questions of whether the two of you should be together or not. With Hashi, there had been insecurities to begin with; our age gap, what we wanted, Hashi believing he was a fling to me... With Lucas, however...

Meeting my teenage flame from so long ago at the grocery store in Cornwall had been unfathomably surreal. I had blushed and looked away when thinking about how this man, so adult and shaved and clean, had fucked me for hours. And how Hashi had heard. The fun we'd had skiing the next day. How he'd taken care of me when I'd had a panic attack. He asked me out immediately at the grocery store, and I had accepted. We'd gone out for coffee right there and then, causing my frozen raspberries I'd bought to become a mess in the grocery bag but I had been too much up in the air to think about that, and talked. For hours. Conversing with him was easy, and I remember having that feeling even when we met for the first time fourteen years ago. He had been in his mid-twenties then, but this older, more mature version of him... I found him so much hotter and more intimidating. And also that I trusted him. I don't know why, but I had ended up telling him about Hashi, how we had met at the same time as me and Lucas, and how it all ended five years ago. Lucas had whistled at that.

"You met fourteen years ago and broke up after such a long time..."

"Yeah..." I said, the bittersweet sensation I had regarding Hashi still there.

"And how are you... Feeling about it now?" he asked tentatively, looking up at me carefully underneath his blonde fringe.

"Oh, I'm fine", I said truthfully. "It was a long time ago now."

"I'm sorry", he said, and I could see his hand twitch, as if to take mine, but he held back.

So I reached mine out ant took his. "I'm not seeing anyone", I said, straight to the point, and cast a meaningful glance at him.

He looked at me for a while, then stood up and pulled me with him.

His apartment was an attic one, with wooden walls painted in a transparent blue, tilting roofs and windows opening up to the blue sky. It was small and full of books and plants and souvenirs from all over the world, with a kitchen in the corner and a small bathroom attached to the main room, but it was immaculately clean and felt like a home. But of course, I didn't notice that at first as we were kissing like mad, slamming the door open, him closing it behind us while I tore his leather jacket off his large yet slender body. I only reached his chest and his hand was entangled in my hair as he backed me up to the little bedroom and threw me onto the bed. He looked at me hungrily for a fraction of a second before laying his pleasant weight on top of me. I moaned softly, the light from the window above us casting a calming light on top of us, as a third part. My heart was pounding, this being the first man I'd slept with that wasn't Hashi in over a decade. But I needn't have worried because Lucas was calming, competent, hot above me as he undressed me, and we soon found ourself settling for that slow rhythm of when we fucked fourteen years ago, of foreplay lasting for a good two hours and sex in all sorts of different ways. I had him in my mouth, he had me in his, his tongue dominating mine, mine dominating his, his hands on me, mine on him, on and on and on until I fell down parachute-less from the heavens and crashed into the ground in an ear-splitting orgasm that had Lucas laugh like a madman before he, too, came down after me.

We had laid opposite each other from then, just touching each others' skin softly, talking about everything that had happened to us. He had a degree in economy and was working in investments. I told him about my skiing career, which he apparently knew about as he'd been following the olympics, bragging to his friends that he'd had me, not one of them believing him. I also told him about Izuna and his injury and career, how we'd drifted apart but that we were now closer than ever, and how grateful I had been for that when I lost Hashi, or, rather, when Hashi lost himself to depression. I stayed the night, his arms firmly around me the entire time, waking up several times by him kissing me on the lips. From then on out, we were inseparable, meeting as often as we could. It was a soft love, the one that developed between us, soft and crystal clear, like glass fibers. It just went forwards easily, without any major bumps that drove us apart. The first time I met Izuna after I met Lucas, he took one glance at me and he knew immediately.

"You've met someone", he read, dead-pan.

"What?" I said stupidly.

"It's all over your face. See! You're smiling like a madman. Who is he? Tell me!!"

And I had. Izuna whistled when he realised it was someone I'd met at our parents hotel so long ago. "And how does it make you feel?"

"Fantastic", I said. "But I need to give it time. Years, even. I'm not naive. I know every partner seems perfect in the beginning. I need to see how we feel after a few months."

The months passed. The years passed. But there was nothing. We just grew into one happy entity with lives that ran parallel but merged in the middle. He moved into the house with me after one year. We married. We went to work, we paid the bills, we travelled together. We lived an ordinary life that was extraordinary to us. We were both happy. Calm. Settled down. Hashi didn't really cross my mind that much anymore.

I saw him once, when I was forty which meant he was fifty-two. He was walking in a park in Oxford, where I was for a conference. The wind blew across his ankles, making his grayish green tweed trousers move softly. His hair was long as ever, thick and shiny, and he wore a brown coat against the autumn wind. The sun came out from the clouds then, and I saw him turn his face up towards it and smile his warm smile. I didn't go to him to say hi. I didn't want to. But I watched him for a while. He looked well.