Indigo: Chapter 4

Chapter 4.

She said, “I did hear about the conversation at breakfast,” and kissed my fingers one by one. Evening found us, just as dawn had, wrapped in each other on the indefatigable divan.

There had been a timeless moment as I lay there late, alone, when I wondered if she would come. Then she materialized in the dark corridor and slipped into my arms and I knew that whatever mistakes or misjudgments I had made in the foggy, sleepless morning were forgiven. Chances came in pairs.

Or maybe in clusters, like grapes. I needed clusters. I was accident-prone.

I said, “Art is a passion of mine too.”

“Why had you not told me?”

“Beauty tends to render me inescapably speechless. Forgetful, perhaps.”

She slapped at me playfully, but I had meant it. She ran tender fingers up my neck, “I do not know how you managed to keep me out of the conversations. I would have thought my own poor example a tempting illustration to make your point.”

I sighed long and lingering somewhere inside of me. If she knew how close. “Your secrets are your own,” I whispered. My fingers were her own too and she found them and folded them in hers. Our thoughts floated for a while, hand in hand, in a calm sea of longing and prolonging. I said, “But tonight we shall not speak of art.”

She said, “We shall speak of gambling.”

And my fingertips found her chin and drew it slowly towards me. Darkness fell—closed eyelids traded for a whole new world opened to me.

Lips that were meant to meet stumbled onto each other, and a spark that had been left smoldering for too long burst into flame.

END