Albus Dumbledore
It's dark. Infectious, so-bad-it's-good dance music is being performed onstage and everyone's eyes are forward or swimming in plastic cups trying to drown out the ridiculousness of the band and the crowd. We were dancing and laughing, so we're out of breath and dizzy when we stumble off to what we think is a secluded corner of the club. A strange feeling washes over me, similar to the feeling a person gets as they're about to faint but more like my mind and body become acutely aware that this moment to come is important, the start of something. All the surrounding noise aggressively mutes out. My eyes tunnel into focusing on what's directly in front of me, your face, and amidst the darkness there are red splashes of light that paint across your features. Dark curls, impossibly dark eyes. That perfect nose. Rough jaw that my mouth grazed for too brief a moment earlier, right where it meets your neck at the pulse point. "That wasn't a real kiss." A challenge. "Show me a real kiss, then."
·
I never told you but we met a long time before this year. Your hair was long, your heart was not yet scarred and your feet were bare onstage in the bordertown dive bar where you were opening for the one-hit wonder band I was there to see. I was home from my first year of college, I had short hair and a lip ring and I forgot all about you after that night except for the hauntingly honest songs. When we met for the second time, it was Valentine's Day and we spent it together, heartbroken and telling secrets to almost strangers, sitting on the steps of a church. A sanctuary. I was laughing and you told me you loved my laugh so I couldn't stop; I took your hand to run across the street where we hugged goodbye before you were driven away. It was two weeks until I saw you again and another moonlit walk filled with conversation until you apologized for your lack of courage and I took your face in my hands and showed you mine.
·
You spent the entire evening sitting across from me looking dumbfounded, trying to keep up with me and all the confessions spilling from my lips. We don't know a thing about one another except the fact that we met when we were hurricanes of self-destruction: you were the life of the party, the man my ex hated out of envy, and our company's prom king and I was belligerent Tinker Bell, heartbroken over a lost boy, with a penchant for crying in photobooths. It's been two years since then and we're sitting across from each other in a prohibition-style saloon on the east side, you asking questions and me answering too fast and too deeply. You interject my rambling with surprisingly similar experiences and feelings, drawing the picture of everything I never dared to hope for in an ideal partner. A true southern gentleman, you walk me to my car and there's a moment of parallel synchronized randomness where we shuffle between a goodnight kiss and something awkward like an ass-out duck hug. I can't go out like that, I'm not known for missed opportunities. My hand finds the scruff of your neck, I go up on my toes and lean in and after it's done I'm driving home smiling when my phone lights up: "I think I'm glowing."
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