“I just can’t pretend anymore,” he cried, turning back to confront her with the lines of anguish on his brow. She looked at him and stepped slowly out onto the deck; her face as usual held no clue to the inner tumult of emotion ardently felt.
“Maybe we don’t have to pretend.”
Alfie held his breath, bated, in his throat, afraid a stray exhale would blow away the possibility it had suddenly occurred to him to hope for. His hand drifted outward in tenuous question. But it remained as far away from her waist as it was from his own. He knew with a stinging realization that if her words did not mean what he hoped, he would cry, and he would cry in front of her.
With stiff face, Rosemary answered the delicate question, catching his wrist and pulling it slowly to her waist. So complete was his disbelief that he required similar encouragement to rest his other hand opposite the first.
Slowly and ritualistically, Aflie bent his head and kissed on the forehead a girl he had admired for months, if not years.
In slow and trembling voice he asked, “How was that?” Rosemary could not keep a smile from shifting visibly under the carefully kept mask of her face.
“Better than Alchemy.” And with similar ritual, the alchemist kissed Alfie gently on the corner of his jaw. He shivered unexpectedly, the combination of excitement and disbelief traveling violently through him.
Rosemary leaned closer and her whisper was softer. “How was that?” Alfie closed his eyes, pressing his chin into the hand she had rested on his neck.
“Better than sex.”
Nihilistic Porcupine 