Grapes Upside Down

36. Ramitas

~Madisen~

"¿Cuándo regresas a los Estados Unidos?" As we snuggle together in one of our favorite rock caves on the beach, Ignacio asks me when I return to the United States.

"En agosto," I tell him as a gust of iced wind scrapes across our faces. We're developing a superhuman resistance to the cold with our nightly outdoor excursions through Viña and Valpo.

"Wow." He laces his inexplicably warm fingers in mine, which are brittle and almost numb to his touch.

"I leave in exactly three months."

Waves crash against the shore a short ways off, violent swells of frothy black water that filter through my eardrums as the peaceful whisper of life's secrets.

"That's a lot of time. I'm going to fall so hard for you," Ignacio hums, his bundled body increasing proximity as he blinks at me with that expression of tragic need. "I've already fallen for you."

"Me too," I croak, voice scratchy through the frigid salt air. "My friends keep telling me we shouldn't spend so much time together."

"And what do you think?"

"I agree with them, on an intellectual level." My Spanish is becoming more sophisticated as I spend hours a night conversing with Ignacio; multi-syllable words now roll off my tongue with ease. "But faced with a day in which I have a choice to see you or not see you, there's simply nothing about staying home that makes sense."

"Then keep seeing me," he whispers into my cheek, the hot puff of words condensing, then vaporizing into frozen mist. I tilt an inch to kiss him, but he remains in place so that my mouth falls just short of reaching his. A hive of love hormones hurtle along my empty lips, down my chest, stinging my stomach with need. On my second attempt, he leans back from me ever so slightly, his breath rasping into the layer of space between our faces; a quiet, involuntary gasp escapes my own lungs. We hang like this, in the centimeter-wide abyss between our magnetized souls, me staring at Ignacio as I clamp down on my lip with my front teeth to prevent myself from seeking him a third time. He stares back at me with fire in his black eyes, breathing heavily as though he's being tortured, even though he's the one torturing me.

After an eternity, Ignacio dives into my mouth, swimming through my heart, his rippling lips leaving me breathless; I swallow up the kisses crashing along my mouth, gulping him down until it's crushing me.

By the time we stop, we are quite literally crushing each other against the jagged rocks that enclose and hover tall above us.

"Honestly, Madisen, there's absolutely nothing tying me to Chile. I might follow you back--I swear to God I would follow you to the United States, to France, to freaking China."

All my thoughts and words are sucked from my body, down into a black hole, or up into a rainbow of blinding colors.

"What!" I exclaim with a smile, though I feel the opposite of the light, bubbly giggles forming in my throat. "That's crazy!"

"I couldn't have ever imagined a more perfect partner for myself."

My heart rhythm is tracking like the design of a spirograph erratically scribbled by a toddler.

"Ignacio, you would move to the United States? Are you just saying that, or are you serious?"

"No, I think I'm serious. I almost feel like I'll have no other choice."

Oh my God.

"We've only known each other three weeks." Yet we've spent twenty-one nights together and discussed everything in the world.