Hazy Horizons Part 1
Under the evening sky my ears flooded with the sound of laughter, echoing off my friends as we clung to each other in the crowded bar. My eyes lit up with amusement but I longed for a spark of excitement. I scanned the room, searching through the maze of people for someone to entertain me.
Our eyes met across the bar, challenging the other to a game we both were eager to play. And with the glint in your eyes and the smile on your lips, I just knew you would be the perfect partner in my verbal dance, distracting me from the stress I seemed to carry around like a child—with the help of the alcohol running through my veins of course.
So, I swallowed down the little courage I had stored in my system and approached you with a friendly smile and my name. You see we weren’t looking for love—affection maybe—but not love.
Our talk turned into the promise of seeing each other the next day under the harsh light of the afternoon, a time when fantasy was stripped away by sunlight. We went into it imagining it to end as a physical encounter, meaningless other than by means of escape. But by the end we realized something between us mattered.
We didn’t want to risk what we felt with the physicality just yet. We both wanted to try and figure out if the spark between us could catch and had enough fuel to become flame.
Days turned in to weeks, and we found ourselves falling into a relationship. We hadn’t found a label for it yet. But we checked in everyday and never went more than a night or two without seeing each other.
We rarely set plans for our time together because we realized every time we met our mouths leaked out our hearts. We’d go from talking about our day to books that have made an impact on us to how often we felt trapped. We couldn’t stop spilling on to each other, splashing pieces of our hearts on to our clothes and watching it soak us straight to the bone. But you smiled through the water’s chill. And after one look at you, I smiled right back and let you pull me in deeper.
My water began bleeding on to your sky as we allowed the strict definitions of ourselves to relax into the lucid form that we never were comfortable enough to release. I exhaled with you in time and there was no longer a horizon in sight as we drowned each other in a haze of love; and I no longer wanted there to be.
I was too entranced in you to want anything else for me. I was entranced by your body, but mostly because it showed me a glimpse into your mind. Your skin was golden with happiness, caramelized by my kisses and glossed with my compliments, reflecting self-love. Your smile was soft, confident yet not beaming; you were content. But I was most captivated by your eyes, how they always found a way to mine as if you always knew where I was both in the room and in my mind.
Wrapped up in your arms, I watched you sleep and realized there was nowhere else I would rather be. I had never felt that before. I’d never felt like where I was was exactly where I wanted to be. But in you I had found the glue that I always longed for and I drifted to sleep, finally at peace.
~~~
Short Story by Nicole Asherah. Nicole Asherah is an artist who tries to connect people to intimate moments, feelings, and relationships experienced throughout life through her poetry, paintings, and photography.
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