NYE

Three… two… one…  And the room goes wild.

He kisses me.  He tastes like you think a man should.  His arms are wrapped around me, clutching my back to shield me from the crowd.  We are pressed tight, an ocean of champagne and shouting.

He downs the last of an enormous beer, crashes the glass to the ground, and rides us through the crowd, throwing elbows to get to the door.  He has flown across an ocean to be here, and I am lost in something adolescent and amorous.  It’s perfect.

Stumbling out of an Irish Pub in Boston, I grip his arm in the darkness.  We laugh and slip in terror, gliding over the ice.

…

He climbs into bed.  With his shirt off and my hand on his chest, I breathe a sigh of relief.  Our faces close in the darkness, I am still.  The awareness of his skin, his heartbeat on my fingertips, the smell of him in the air – tells me that he’s really here.  After nearly six years, he’s here.  And when I wake in the morning I won’t be counting down the days to the next plane ticket, wondering if he’ll ever be here again.

I sleep.

I sleep clean through the freezing night.