Page 67 of Go Luck Yourself
I hear his voice, the memory of it. Echoing. Echoing.
I’m Irish, boyo. Talking shite is how we flirt.
Holy.
Fuck.
Has he beenflirtingwith methis whole time?
And. Oh my god.
Have I been flirtingback?
No. No way. Flirting is telling someone they look nice, or smiling at each other across a room, or anything that leaves a fuzzy feeling in my chest, not—
Not heat so intense I don’t think there’s a part of me that isn’t blistered anymore.
Not tension so potent it creates its own gravitational pull.
That’s not—that isn’t—
Oh my god.
THAT’S WHAT THAT IS?!
My mouth opens. I gulp the wind. But I do not move any more than that.
Only I do.
Bullets of that cold-hot-cold are firing down into the root of my stomach, and I chase them. I am stripped of all thought again, a being of appetite only, and that appetite wants more of this sensation,hot-cold-hot—
I work my hand under his and twine our fingers together.
What am I doing.
I’m suffocating is what I’m doing. I’ve passed out from my injuries and I’m unconscious right now.
Loch’s fingers tighten on mine. His thumb strokes over the back of my hand and I launch stratospheric.
There is nothing deniable about this. No rationalizing it off. It’s such a thing outside myself that I’m forced to sit here in excruciating mental silence and endure his hand in mine. The roughness of his palm, a callus between two fingers, probably from a paint brush.
This is so childish, isn’t it? Holding hands. This is playground bullshit. It shouldn’t be—it shouldn’tbe—
But it’severything.His touch is on my hand but it’s all over mybody, and those bullets whizzing through me, the aching thuds of my pulse,all of itswells together in a detonation that is physically agonizing to not react to.
My eyes split open. And I twist to him; increment by increment, I’ll find an excuse in his face. My mind will start working again and I’ll see the reason I did this and it’ll be something—something—that makessense—
I get as far as looking at the seat between us when Loch pulls away.
He drops my hand and cocks his shoulder to me and clears his throat, scratches his jaw. His beard bristles on his fingertips.
There’s paint caked in his nailbeds. Specks of green. Orange.
I stare down at my palm. Empty.
No thoughts.
But a feeling.
