On an Edge of Glass

breath stirs the tiny, curling hairs around my face.   
    What happens next is not something that I plan.  It’s not something that I even think about…
    I kiss him.
    I stretch up on my toes and softly brush my mouth over his.  It’s gentle.  The first leaves of spring.  And for the smallest moment, Ben is too stunned to move.  And the air is still.  So still. 
    T hen, he seems to register what’s happening and his hands slide to my waist.  He lets go of two tight, strained breaths against my mouth, and everything changes.  Now I’m not the one doing the kissing. 
    This is no s hy, just-between-friends kiss.  This is a kiss unlike any that I’ve ever had.  It’s the kiss of a hundred thumping kick drums, a raging earthquake. 
    Ben ’s strong arms pull me against him and I fold.  He parts my lips with his tongue and it’s like discovering that you can fly.  One minute you’re tied to earth by gravity and everything you know about the world, and the next you’re up, floating, soaring, and the houses and people below are tiny, insignificant specs of dust slipping away. 
    Ben picks up the tempo.  His fingers move over my spine and up, up under the fabric of my shirt until he is touching bare skin.  My lips find his neck and my hands find his stomach and everything crashes around inside of me.  I can feel his knocking heart moving under his skin, crawling into me.  Ben kisses along my hairline.  His pink tongue flicks against my ear. 
    Suddenly, I miss his mouth.  I kiss up, up, up , until our lips are fused and we are exploring—tasting, sucking, burning—ungluing everything.  A million tiny bells ring in my ears.  Everything brightens, like the sun has been shoved out of its hiding place from behind the clouds. 
    Ben is the first to break away.  I am left gasping and clinging tightly to his shirt so that I don’t go sideways or mysteriously disintegrate.  He lifts his long musician’s fingers to my face and presses his mouth to me.  He murmurs into my hair.  And, I’m not sure, but I think what he says is, “wow.”
     
     
    I know it’s Ben when I hear the soft tapping on my bedroom door that night. I’m incredibly grateful that I decided to put on my cutest pajamas just in case . 
    Twisting to the side, I usher him into my room and close the door gently behind him.  Then we’re standing in the middle of my green oval area rug staring each other down.  Ben’s hair is pulled back in a low ponytail and I can see his neck.  I have to push aside the thought that I know what it’s like to lick it. 
    After an eternity of awkward , sexually frustrated seconds, Ben hooks his hands in the pockets of his jeans and the corners of his mouth tip upward.  My heart expands. 
    “I thought you could show me your pictures,” he says evenly.
    “Oh,” I say, covering up my wilting heart.  Oh, you mean you aren’t here to ravage me? 
    He just smiles like he can read my thoughts.
    I shake my head to clear it.  “Yeah, of course.  Just—just grab a seat.”  Where? My desk chair is currently being swallowed by LSAT prep books and forcing him to sit on the floor seems rude.  “On the bed.  The edge of the bed.” 
    He sits. 
    On. My. Bed. 
    I’ m over at the desk fiddling with the keys on my laptop.  I find the file with the Paris photos.  They are the ones that I shot two summers ago when my parents took me with them to Europe for ten days.  I yank out the power cord and lop over to the bed with my arm looped under my computer.
    The thing about m attresses is that they dip when you set things on them.  Weighted objects, like bodies, tend to fall together.  Ben and I start out with a good half-foot of boundary space between us, but as the minutes pass, we slide closer until our hips are almost touching.  My whole body is on high-alert, 
    Ben sifts through the images, spending more time on a few of the shots—especially the ones that I’ve taken of people—mostly strangers I encountered on the street.
    “This one,” he says, gesturing to the screen of my laptop. “It’s really beautiful, Ellie.”
    I flush.  The photo is of a white-haired man holding a horn.  I remember that he’d been sitting outside a small Parisian café playing his horn in the afternoon.  I’d already been ready for the shot when the sky opened up and a thousand fingers of rain came tumbling down.  The horn player paused, his mouth an inch from his instrument, and looked up