#hooligans.

@viiiorica @but-no-cigar

You thought about kissing him, then, while the salt clung to his eyelashes and the sun freckled the back of his neck. You caught yourself staring, again, catching like sea spray in the curve of his lips, the curl of his hair against his forehead. He already had tiny crows' feet growing at the corners of his eyes then, but it only made you love him more, because your grandmother taught you all about wrinkles, guided your fingers to the ones you gave her from worrying, lead your eyes to the ones you gave her from laughter.

In the middle of the Mediterranean, he kissed you first. He paid no mind to the old man at the steering wheel and took a handful of your collar in each set of five fingers and then he pressed his mouth up to yours. For a second, for that moment, you shared two sets of lungs. "I love you," he said, and you felt yourself staring again, and you kept your eyes on his mouth while you said, "God, I hope so. I really hope so."

Actually, it wasn't the Mediterranean but your own smaller version of Lake Michigan, and the boat wasn't a fisherman's but your cousins'. Your grandmother always warned you that those kinds of daydreams were dangerous. "Let's go, let's just go," you still said, and she pretended not to hear you laughing when he tripped over a muddy shoelace in the middle of the night, trying to help you load a stolen ship into the back of his pickup truck. "Shut up," he hissed, but he was laughing too, and it all just spilled out of you as the two of you sped away.

You were sixteen and you managed to sneak him away from his girlfriend, but she was still real whether you wanted to believe in her or not. So it was that he did not tuck himself beside you, did not sit close enough that you could count the constellations on the back of his neck, did not hold your hand beneath a borrowed blanket. Instead he sat across from you, knees knocking into yours, pant loop catching on a nail in the wooden seat. "It's handmade, really chic--" you started to say, and he just laughed and told you to get rowing. You did it that time because he had the time before, and the time before that, and maybe a few times even earlier. It was only fair.

The breeze picked up the black water around you and so you thought the same kind of thoughts. Only you never knew what happened to your parents, never heard anything about car crashes or rainy nights, and he never liked to talk about his. You were afraid of the pollution; your people never knew how to take care of their waters and you thought maybe the spray would hurt more than salt and wind. Still, you thought, when you stopped in the middle of the lake, maybe you were meant to be together anyway.

You caught yourself staring and you thought about kissing him then, not in the Mediterranean but in the middle of your own tiny Lake Michigan, not with the sun burning your scalp but surrounded by two versions of the same starry sky, above and below and all around you. Just this once you let yourself be still and watched the moon shine dimly off his fingernails, spread on the bench beside him, and you heard both of your lungs inflating in tandem.

In the middle of the Midwest he was the first to break the silence. "Hey Pip?" he said, and you let yourself look up to his eyes, his eyes with their tiny crow feet, and you thought about kissing him, and he asked, "Do you think we'll be best friends forever?"

"God," you said, "I hope so. I really hope so." And alone with him and the stars as your witness, you weren't lying.

In the middle of the Mediterranean with him the waves rocked you back and forth and you turned pale and felt your stomach fall away from you. In the middle of the Midwest it was no different; both times he put a hand on your back, both times he got you both back to shore. Both places he drove you home with one hand and talked with the other; both times you could hardly speak but you could not stop laughing.

Phillip Price, a spirited youth with a man's voice and jaw, stood alone on the beach, gazing over the turquoise water with his resolute cinnamon depths. His tawny hair rustled lightly in the ocean breeze. He tried to keep still despite his impatient excitement as he hummed "Iris" to himself. The sun glinted off of his milky, tinted with russet, shoulders and cerulean shorts that looked comfortable and easy to wear. His flaxen mane brushed against his earlobes,complementing his audacious pastel-flushed pale visage. A prominent scar stood out on his healthily color-touched pale skin. He stood, awaiting his love.