Other Side

35 | Lost Lovers

On the first night, they got a little drunk.

Zaid rested his head on the cabinet behind him, drumming his fingers against the edge of his empty glass, soft clinks sounding from his ring. Sitting across from him, Talia folded her legs into a pretzel and ignored the cool of the wooden floorboards just meeting her bare thighs. The kitchen was as silent as the rest of the house—still theirs until tomorrow—but the upstairs bedrooms had lost some of their meaning as sleep no longer beckoned to them.

Rest was a luxury they couldn't afford in a battle against the clock.

"How's your mother?" he asked, setting his glass down on the counter above his head. When her brow furrowed, he clarified, "You mentioned your grandmother's passing a little while back."

"Oh," she breathed, nodding in recollection. "She's...good. Well, as good as you can get in the early stages of grief—or maybe the later stages. She hasn't said much about her mother since the funeral." She rested her cheek in the palm of her hand, fingers sliding through her curls as she struggled to verbalize her true thoughts. "Sometimes...sometimes I regret not attending it."

A small puff of air released itself from his nose. "You spared yourself the trauma." When two wide eyes met his, he drew in his lower lip, shoulders falling. "Sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

She changed the subject altogether. "You never told me how that trip went. The one during spring break, that is."

"Sometimes I forget I even went, which might be a good thing. It was oddly cathartic, at least as far as my relationship with my brother is concerned." He tugged a hand through his disheveled hair and let it rest against his neck. "On a whim, we took a walk through our old childhood neighborhood, and for a split second, it was like none of the last four years had even happened. We talked and talked until we talked about the fact we were actually talking."

"I know how that feels," she murmured, that confrontation with her mother coming to the forefront of her mind. Through a lifeless chuckle, she added, "I'm almost twenty-one, and now I tear up whenever my mother hugs me because I can finally believe the embraces are genuine."

"I think you cried a few times before when hugging me," he teased. "What should I make of that?"

She covered her slightly sun-kissed face, laughing through her fingertips. "That maybe you, too, can melt my black heart."

"You have a heart of gold, Talia," he murmured, leaning forward and uncovering her face. He swept his thumb down her cheek, then over her bottom lip. "Beautiful...inside and out."

Talia hovered over his lap a moment later, feeling warm hands creep up her lower back. The hard ground dug into her bare knees, cabinets behind his head serving as an odd backdrop for an intimate moment, but when his lips met hers, she knew she wouldn't have it any other way. She let him push her down onto his body, slide his tongue into her mouth, dig his fingers into her wild hair, then release her and whisper the sweet nothings that only made her heart swell if they were in his mother tongue.

When they stood up, she couldn't tell if their gait was unsteady from the effects of sleep deprivation or the alcohol. But she was sure she didn't fall into the countertop by accident. Zaid used the lapse in her balance to push her front against the edge, hands resting on the space on either side of her hips. He trailed his fingertips over the visible skin of her chest, then let them linger just an inch above the hem of her tank top. She captured the edge of the countertop in a white-knuckled grip as his face fell to the curve of her neck, nose brushing the sensitive skin.

"I dreamt of you last night," he murmured. "I haven't dreamt anything in so long, and we were only a day away from each other." She felt the low rumble of his chuckle against her back, amplifying the effect of the hand gravitating to the waistband of her shorts. "Isn't that kind of funny?"