There was something so intimate about how her thumb skipped over the lines of my palm. My life lines scored through hard skin, her finger tracing the breadth of my soul through it. ADHD, she explained with a sheepish smile before wrapping her lips around her plastic straw to suck up more of the blood-red drink in her hand. I noticed myself noticing. My own ice sloshed in the pause between our words, echoing loudly in my brain. The hand holding the drink was the ice to the fire of the other hand. I looked at the fireflies skimp over the blue-green river. We were at the bridge overlooking it, the faint sound of street performers’ guitars and pedestrians’ shuffling feet dancing in the distance. The silhouette of two girls against the midnight sky. It was almost poetic. 

She asked if I felt trapped in nights like this. The summer lightened the night sky – it didn’t feel as consuming or depressing as winter. I felt like I had the world at my fingertips – but all young people think that, for a while. Perhaps that was consuming me still. Invincible tasted a bit like the cocktail I’d rested on the wood of the bridge next to her. They both ate away at me, burning at my stomach.

“Trapped in the city, I meant.” She smiled sadly into the river, as though it was reflecting images of dreams she could reach if she just dove into the diamond water. Everyone in this town felt its draw. I wondered if she ever had jumped, to see if she could abolish the lustful yearning in her eyes. “As if this bridge leads somewhere different. Special.” I was sure my eyes mirrored the same glint as hers. 

“I try not to think about that.” I saw bridges as journeys. My grandma always said the best journeys were the bridges you built brick by brick. She lived in a simpler time that only concerned flirting with my grandfather and picking up dillies on the way home to surprise her mother with. I try not to think about you. I didn’t say that either; she had more things to worry about. I was consumed by this too, its aftertaste more bitter on my tongue than invincibility and a Negroni. How many times had I wished for a simpler time?

“Do you want to dance?” The question surprised me, but I nodded and started walking towards the distant guitar and its owner’s reedy voice. “No, not there,” she whispered, grabbing my hand to stop me and yank me back towards her. “We can hear it from here.” There had been a fleeting look of anxiety when she’d said “no” that had thawed now. Her eyes were now flitting between mine, reading between their lines, pulling back their pages, before pulling me closer into a two-step. My soul was bared in that moment, my palms facing hers and my thoughts pooling in her eyes.

The air hung heavy with something unspoken, a sweet tang to it. I let its sweet magnolia and honeydew scent sit on my skin and fill my mouth. I enveloped myself in the feeling. I felt compelled to interrupt: “I can’t really hear it, you know.” Her eyes thawed again, warm as she burst out laughing – caught off guard. I never did know what to say.

“Picture this.” Her voice was in my ear now; the line I knew toed in the sand was disrupted by her breath rustling my hair. The air felt more dangerous now, the risk of onlookers passing by hanging over me. “We could’ve gone there, the music loud for a mush of people. Maybe done an awkward spin. A friendly spin.” Friendly came underlined, italicised. She made it other, and this both frightened and excited me. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this.” Her hand presses on the wings of my shoulder blades, tracing down my back to the small of it. I was surprised I hadn’t taken flight. I could’ve sworn that feathers rustled under her fingers, wings fluttering in the pit of my belly. My brain didn’t process anything but one word: right.

She’s right: we couldn’t. We’re girls. They wouldn’t–

This felt right, so right. In her arms, I found a home I don’t want to leave behind. I suppose the word depended on perspective.

A new word came to mind: promise. That was the sweet taste in the air. The taste of hope. That was the taste that sits on my tongue when she inched closer to kiss me. 

Her drink. Her lips. My cheeks. Our blood.

Red, red, red, red.

A promise is dangerous, deceiving. I still promised her a home, somewhere else, far away with me. But behind my eyelids I saw fire. Red. I tasted the bitterness of fear. Will I ever get out of here?

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