Day 6: Desire

The night air is cool and playful, the light breeze occasionally catching the words from our conversation and taking them away with them. Overhead, the moon is a golden haze, filtered through a maze of suspended particles, remanants of fires that have started to plague Singapore. The ecru smell of smoke from the day is gone, a memory, but a remnant tugs at the distant realm of our senses as the breeze whispers.

We murmur in the dim darkness, sitting cross legged on the grass beside each other, staring into the space in front of us. Him asking questions, me answering. Time passes in a smooth babble, echoing the plesant hum of water in the background, a automaton in mimcry of a cheerful rushing brook. Sometimes He looks and I gesture. My eyes flash and His teeth gleam in the darkness. When He leans near to tease me, His arm around my shoulder with a fake leer, my awareness drowses awake. I sense his proximity, the warmth of his skin beneath the fabric of his shirt and the strength in his forearms. That for the first time, I know and recognise that He is larger than me, taller than my tallness. His profile catches in the ambient light and beckons to me, near to me. I feel the naked heat of his skin and hear the rush of his breath as he exhales and turns to me and looks, quizzically. Time stills, as do my senses.

It would be so easy to fall prey to this. But my face remains impassive, laughing in an easy dismissal of his actions, his nearness.

The moment past, I light a cigarette between my fingers. The lighter crackles, sparks and the flame flashes to life. The fag lights and I take a drag, sucking, my lips wrapped against the crisp, tender white of the fag, lean back and exhale to the sky, head tilted with abandon. Resting on my elbows as I contemplate the blur of the night sky and hidden start of my heart, the fag smoulders between my fingers, hissing slightly as it touches the dew scattered on the fine spikes of carpet grass.

When I bring the fag up, a pause of contemplation before I devour it again, I watch the fine, white mist curl up and out into the air, the sky, a fragrant tendril, elegant in it's moment of sureness before it's form is dissipated in the dark air. He's leaned back too, resting on his elbows, watching me watch the fag. At this moment, I steal a glance at his deep, sloe eyes outlined against his cheekbones; he seems entirely too young, uncreased.

As I bring the fag to my mouth, his hand brushes mine as he leans over me and deftly relieves me of it. His hand brushes mine, skin against skin. Our gazes latch. Liquid heat pools in me.

It would be so easy to give in. I could turn to him and brush my smooth, cool lips against his warm, dusky cheeks in wisp of sensation. Instead, my lips twist up and I say " I didn't know you smoked" with the wry statement of one who is older to one you is younger. Predictably, he leans back and takes a short, graceless drag.

I begin to speak on a pretext, before I finally say, delicately. "It's easy with guy friends to cross the line, even platonic friendships. There are moments when it's possible to talk to deeply that a connection forms and a thread of awareness of the masculinity or feminity overwhelms the other party. It happens rather too much to me, all these guys hitting on me when I don't feel anything in the least for them. It gets rather tiresome."

"So what do you do"

"I recognise when they're going to go over the edge of friendship and I back away slowly from them."

I took the fag back from him, triumphantly.

It would have been so easy.