The afternoon sun

I wake to the scent of sun-warmed linen and your skin.

For a moment, I don’t move. I let my body register yours—your thigh draped over mine, your soft exhale against my collarbone, the faint, damp heat between our joined legs.

The air conditioner hums faintly overhead, but the room is still thick with the residue of what just happened. The kind of heat that doesn’t come from the sun.

I open my eyes just enough to catch the light slipping through the curtains, carving a pale golden stripe across the room. It lands on the wreckage we made: your heel tipped over on the carpet, a bra strap like a ribbon in the sheets, a smudge of your lipstick on the rim of the water glass. It looks like a still life of ruin and reverence.

You’re still asleep, or drifting in that sweet liminal space between. Your breath comes slow, steady. Your hair is everywhere—across my chest, tangled in the crook of my arm, curled like punctuation around the edge of your mouth. One of your hands is tucked beneath my ribs, possessive, like your body hasn’t quite accepted that we’re separate creatures.

I should shift. I should probably peel away, grab a shower, start pretending to be a person again. But I don’t. I stay. You’re too warm, too beautiful, too real for me to move just yet. I can still feel the echo of you—your fingers, your mouth, the way you murmured something half-formed just before you came, as though even your words had melted.

I trace a path down your back with two fingers. Lightly. Reverently. You sigh, not awake, not asleep, but still tethered to whatever tethered us.

Do you remember the look you gave me when I first asked? That slow smile, full of danger and curiosity. You didn’t say yes so much as invite me to dare you. And I did. The hotel keycard was warm in my palm, the elevator too slow, the moment the door clicked shut behind us—the world tilted on its axis. And now we’re here.

This room doesn’t belong to us, not really. It belongs to everyone who’s ever used it to hide. But right now it’s ours, suspended in time, untouched by the outside world. You fit against me like you were poured into the hollow I never knew was waiting.

I don’t know if you’ll stay. Maybe you’ll want coffee. Maybe you’ll vanish. Maybe this will go unspoken and we’ll pretend it never happened. That’s alright.

But just now, with you pressed against me, your thigh heavy and your mouth soft and your scent still clinging to my skin—I don’t need a future.

This is enough.