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my finger in the palm of his hand.
I look back down at my hand.
Friends are allowed to touch, right?
I disentangle my finger so that I can entangle all the others until our palms are pressed
against each other.
I look back up to his eyes and see my reflection there. “What do you see?” I ask.
“Well, the first thing is those freckles.”
“You’re obsessed.”
“Slightly. It looks like someone sprinkled chocolate across your nose and cheeks.” His
eyes travel down to my lips and back up to my eyes. “Your lips are pink and they get
pinker when you chew on them. You chew on them more when you’re about to disagree
with me. You should do that less. The disagreeing, not the chewing. The chewing is
adorable.”
I should say something, stop him, but I can’t speak.
“I’ve never seen anyone with hair as long and poofy and curly as yours is. It looks like a
cloud.”
“If clouds were brown,” I say, finally finding my voice, trying to break the spell.
“Yes, curly brown clouds. And then your eyes. I swear they change color. Sometimes
they’re almost black. Sometimes they’re brown. I’m trying to find a correlation between
the color and your mood, but I don’t have it yet. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Correlation is not causation,” I say, just to have something to say.
He grins and squeezes my hand. “What do you see?”
I want to answer, but I find that I can’t. I shake my head and look back down at our
hands.
We remain that way, sliding between certainty and uncertainty and back again until we
hear Carla’s approach and are forced to part.
I am made. I am unmade.