Emotions were high and we were cooped up in my hot bedroom wearing nothing but the bathing suits we'd had on since sunrise, splayed out over my faded bed sheets under the light of streetlamps coming through the window.
I could practically taste the chlorine on your skin as you lay facing me, filling the air with talk of work-study and student loans and New York City. You'd spent all day talking about how much you would miss home when you went off to college, that you wanted to take every bit of it with you, that you wanted to tuck memories into your suitcase between pairs of socks.
Now your words were tangled with the kind of confusion that only comes at two in the morning. Lulls in conversation increased with every barely coherent thought that left your mouth. Eventually they ceased all together and we were left listening to the gentle hum of a faulty air conditioner and incessant chirping of crickets. I swear you could hear my erratic heartbeat but you didn't say anything.
I told you I'd bought a new window fan because all I could think about were the tiny beads of sweat on your forehead and the growing heat in the space between us and how much I needed a cold shower. Your face turned the color of your sunburnt shoulders before your lips spread into a wistful smile.
I knew you wanted bring up something heavy by the way you kept trying to catch my eye without being too obvious, by the way you kept your hands tucked shyly under the pillows. You were waiting for just the right moment to say it, whatever it was.
Opening your mouth, you looked somewhere in the curve of my neck and asked me if I remembered the night last year when we'd ditched that party to play drunken "Never Have I Ever" in your living room with all the lights off. Your voice was a million shades of nervous as you recalled the way we'd fallen asleep that night, the night we never talked about.
I swear I could hear your heartbeat even louder than mine as your words continued to spill out. You spoke so quietly I could practically feel your nerves bursting as you wiped the sweat above your lip with an unsteady hand.
You'd been talking about distance for months now, but this time was different as you whispered how much you would miss me, how home was so much more than what it used to be. The air was different. Your voice was different, full of desperation. I didn't know if it was the lack of air circulation or the lack of clothes or the way your words were yanking at my heartstrings, but for the first time that night, everything seemed bigger, more than I could control. The soft curve of your lips and your thick lashes and the smell of your chlorine skin was all I could focus on. That and the space closing between us.
My hands reached clumsily for yours while heat creeped onto my cheeks and you pulled my face to yours. Bumping noses, sunburnt skin, sweaty hands and sweaty legs, beneath the fluorescent moonlight of suburban streetlamps... the impending distance didn't matter anymore, you felt like home. And no matter how far we strayed, I knew we'd have this summer forever.
