The Half-Second Before You Ruin Me

The water is warm enough to make my skin forget it is June, and the pink float hums under my cheek like a held breath. I let my tongue slip out—just barely, just enough—to taste the salt of the afternoon and the slow electricity of being watched. You are behind me now, I know it without turning, because the air changes when you get close; it thickens, sweetens, stops behaving like weather and starts behaving like a promise.
I do not look at you yet. That is the game. I let my eyes drift to the far shore where the green trees blur into the gray sky, while my whole body leans an inch toward you, testing whether you will follow. My fingers curl on the plastic rim, nails pale as moonlight, and I feel your gaze land on me like a hand resting on my spine—gentle, but certain.
You have spent all this week healing something in me I never knew was cracked, and now here we are: two people who survived the city, the noise, the small betrayals of ordinary life, floating together in a pool that is not really a pool at all. It is just an excuse to be close. To let the sequins on my skin catch the sun while you pretend to read, pretending your thumb is not trembling where it hovers near mine.
I bite the tip of my tongue and finally turn my head, locking eyes with yours. The space between us stops being air and becomes a question I have no intention of answering with words. So I smile, slow and dangerous, and let you see exactly how close your first move is to the moment it ruins me.

Editor: Danger Zone