My body moved in your direction, and you looked at me, suddenly calmed too. With your arms outstretched to the sides, you were like a ballet dancer hovering in flight. Under the surface of the water something warm rattled in my belly. I approached, until I could see the drops of water on your forehead and on the tip of your nose and in the corners of your mouth. We didn’t say a thing. We looked at each other, already beyond words. You were there, and I was there, close, breathing. And I moved into your circle. All the way to your waiting body and your calm, open face and the drops on your lips. Your arms closed around me. Hard. And then we were one single body floating in the lake, weightless, never touching the ground.

That evening, as the sun began to set, we pitched the tent underneath a large pine. It was still warm and the lake had turned black and cicadas sang calmly and there was no light anywhere but the thin slice of moon. We lay down on our sleeping bags. Wind blew softly against the tent, and the only sound was that of the tree above us swaying along, its needles rustling and whispering to themselves. We lay on our backs, hands folded beneath our heads, our elbows touching lightly. Through the flap in the tent’s roof we saw the sky filled with stars. They were tiny and there didn’t seem to be many, but the closer you looked, the more there were. You could never hold on to all of them. Looking at them made my head spin warmly.

“I’m glad this happened,” I said, enjoying the sound of my voice and its gentle vibration in my body.

“Me too.” You turned your head toward me, your eyes bright. “I knew it would happen since the beginning,” you said, smiling.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. When you looked at me that first day, when we arrived. You’re easy to read.”

I laughed and pushed against you. “Oh yeah?”