‘Because the day is dying?’

He kissed my nose. ‘Because the night is just coming to life.’ We might have disappeared into each other again had my stomach not rumbled a firm protest. I hid under the covers, embarrassed, and he coaxed me out from under them, fondness warming his voice and my little fort of sheets. ‘Let’s go get you some dinner, love. It’s almost nine. Come on, let’s go before the night gets away from us.’

Time was following our lead, dancing with us, moments floating, flying, suspended. Gliding like water, flashing past like lightning. I had no handle on the hours, no control over how fast or slow they moved, and I couldn’t have cared less. Because during those first heady months, we were at our best, we were unstoppable. He was the sweetest boy in the world when he had just shaved a decade off his face, and I the girl covering it with kisses, delighting in the simple magic of soap-scented skin. We were nice to everyone, our hearts glowing bright. We drove fast and drank slow, always just the perfect amount of alive.

Dear Tara,

When a man flies halfway around the world in curious anticipation, being able to cull only a couple of days thus to meet the object of his intrigue, he hardly expects to have his unrealistic expectations met.

I must confess I was rather surprised when you sug gested we cap off our weekend by going to Level. You were so—what is the word— restrained, perhaps, during our first few dinners together that I would not have peg ged you as the type for a loud, crazy club. But then, you seem to have made surprising-me-senseless something of a trademark, so I have happily resolved to just buckle in for the ride.

I have been reliving you in trails along my skin all through this flight. The elderly lady in 2B has been looking suspiciously over at me. I suppose the colour of my skin disbars me from exhibiting eccentricities without question.

Tara, I feel you coming for me. It is insidious, the way you have become incessant within my thoughts. I keep going back to our bodies aflame with dance upon the floor and the electric air between us on the ride back. The tumbling fall of hair all over your pretty face and the way you melted into me, shyness laced with need, my mouth slowly tangling you up with greed.

I feared my skin would be all but seared by the brush of your lips and tongue and breath, my eyes fixed forevermore upon the helpless lines of your body—the arch of your back, the stretched bones in your neck, and the fallen hollow in between them, where your heart beat so hard against me, ticking our seconds away.