Except You, Love

• Bonus Chapter: 2 •

You are my prologue, my epilogue

Being with Lisa has always been an intense, deeply intimate experience, but this particular coming together in the afterglow reanimates for Chaeyoung, once again, the simple clarity of the sea coming to collect the shore.

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February 14, 2003

It's new, this feeling. This kind of joy.

The grass is cool underneath her socked feet, shoes set aside, sneakers next to a set of cleats. Lisa lies perpendicular, head on her lap. The sun kisses copper skin a deeper shade of red-brown where it isn't covered by a uniform.

Their high school stands stalwart beyond, a silhouette of grey stillness against a pinking horizon. The bleachers are empty. The baseball field is quiet. Absent of the usual din and chatter during games and practices, the last of the latter having ended hours ago. It's an unseasonably warm day, Spring poking in a hello and getting ahead of itself to give a preview of what's in store. The spike in mercury making the pre-season more pleasant, moving the team's indoor activity outdoor. As it has been their in-season routine, she and Lisa had stayed behind, greedy for more idle time together. Greedy for this feeling.

Chaeyoung has been playing with Lisa's hair, a soft exploration of fingers threading and unthreading strands of wheat-brown, while her girlfriend fights exhaustion to stay awake and listen to her latest anecdotes of the Print Club's antics. Girlfriend. The word still sends the butterflies in her stomach into a frenzy whenever she thinks or says it.

They've shared so many firsts in the past half-year, the winged monarchs haven't had much chance to rest. Among the inordinate amount of kissing and discovering of each other's bodies of late, however, it's the casual intimacy—moments like this—that has them working the hardest.

As friends they have always held hands. Always touching or in touch with one another, in some way. But now, ever since the affirmation of mutual like of the non-platonic kind, there's a different weight to Lisa's hand in Chaeyoung's, the one not in her hair but gently laid on her stomach, fingers entwined. Chaeyoung never thought happiness had a mass, but if it does, then it's a lightness, a dispersal of tingles and spread warmth and travelling contentment. This sensation of holding hands—the flutter of a thousand hellos in a single press—feels like Chaeyoung has been heavily entrusted with the world in her palm. A feeling of utter joy that she and Lisa are tied together in the simplest but most significant way.

"Lis?"

"Mhm," Lisa acknowledges, quirks her eyebrow to indicate she's listening but otherwise doesn't open her eyes. Her lips are slightly parted, a breath away from dozing off.

They look so kissable.

Chaeyoung can't resist, momentarily setting aside what she wanted to say. Tracing Lisa's jaw, she bends her head down, placing her mouth over Lisa's, the faintest press for a loose seal. It's not quite a kiss, not yet, merely a taste of sunshine under her lips. A squeeze of fingers lets her know, that won't do. So Chaeyoung dips in and Lisa sighs contently, adjusting to receive her. Both hum into the kiss. A murmuring exchange of soft moans and wilful tongues, it makes Chaeyoung's heart pound louder. The sound rushes in her ear, competes with the flurry of activity in her stomach.

Lisa tastes like banana and spring berries, a surfeit of honey in winter, like a pocket of light that's found its way between dense, snow-covered groves. Maybe the February day's unseasonable warmth isn't so much a temperature difference as it is a Lisa difference. How summer stays on her skin and lingers in her touch and beckons in the movement of her lips. The way her kiss is coterminous with the stretch of an unsetting sun, it has Chaeyoung's heart chasing after an unbounded horizon of golds and saffrons and burnt yellow hues.