The two of us hiding in the dark.
The sweat of our pleasures still glistening on our faces.
“I … I would have been your boyfriend,” says Tanner. “In a heartbeat. I would have taken you to all the dances. To prom and to every homecomin’. Pulled you away from that awkward spot you’d hug near the punch with your friends. Brought you out to the dance floor to shake your ass with me, ignoring the football gang gawkin’ at us. Taken you home for the weekend. Cuddlin’ with your cute self in my childhood bedroom. You’d have been my fuckin’ treasure, Billy.”
My heart beats deeply, staring into his eyes.
Imagining that alternate version of our teenage years.
I can feel it in my bones so potently, we might as well have lived it.
“You still make me feel like one,” I say right back to him, to my man. “Every day.”
Through the window, in the ghostly darkness outside, a wind picks up, tossing the trees and the leaves. I’d give anything for this moment with my husband to last forever.
To forget I ever said anything that one night.
To just accept a piece of furniture.
And its cursed drawer.
To ignore this feeling in the deepest pit of my stomach that something very bad is on its way, something that no amount of love for my husband can stop.