Distance

"Can I hear it? Can I? Can I? I promise I will be impressed. No, moved! I will be moved, but only in a safe distant kind of way."

"I'll email it. I'm not giving you a dramatic reading here though."

A few minutes later, the silence broke. In surprisingly stout words, I heard my own flailing attempts at lyricism echoed back at me in baritone timbre.

Social Distancing

Your touch within my dreams, my bones, consoles.

What forces pull where wise men fear to tread!
The distance of our bodies, not our souls,
torments, and yet safeguards in equal stead.

I feel the paradox of being yours.

Dear love, I burn to give my all to you.

Each drop of self from me to you, it pours.

Such rivers tear their paths over and through

all structures if not checked. God, what I'd give!

Yet now, to give's to lose. To have's to lack

Such fires in my soul, I'll ne'er outlive.

Bequesting all, though still the tide held back.

Love, I am yours, completely yours to take...

...for love you won't, and therein lies the ache

A pause reasserted the distance between us as the final consonant blended into the faint rush of traffic. Damn, that was a bit florid, even for the style. Had we reached the stage in the relationship where he had to like me anyways?  He started it, this challenge. Write a sonnet. Rhyme some words. Follow the rhythm. But did I get too honest? I'd given him haiku and he'd written something irreverent and racy. I wanted to show off my chops, but the depth I felt the words maybe belied something deeper.

 Feeling exposed and adolescent, I leaned into the traffic noises for distraction. Unable to read Ben's face behind his black and white checkered ninja mask.

"So take that, Shakespeare. You been served." I spat out to break the spell. 

A muffled laugh. I saw him counting on his fingers as he stared at his phone."Well hot damn, Lady Bard. That's 100% iambic shit flair there. Forget Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, you been served!"

"Hey I didn't gradumacate with ma fancy english degree for nothin', Wyatt. Or at all. This is what happens when you lock me up in somebody else's house and go off working all day with nothing to do except... I dunno... my job or something."

"Hey, I like your English. That was English right? I'm ne'er sure which moon I troth i' the beastly sands and suchnot hereinafter. Seriously, it hit though. I feel it. All of it. The paradox of being... Would it be presumptuous... I mean, I never want to insert myself in other people's works like some egomaniac... But... of being mine?"

I wished I'd saved this for a video chat. The giddy "look at me, look at you, look at me looking at you!!!" of early love needed a better venue. I wanted to drop my tokens and run away. I wanted to explode my feels in one messy burst and then sink into him. I wanted, at least, to see his face and let my eyes sink into his. The delay of video always made for awkward body language, but it was even harder with our faces half obscured from a distance. If we'd been closer, my eyes would have spoken the answers for me. As it was, I had to awkwardly enunciate out some expository words about the words that should have said it all already.

"It's not always about you, Ben... but... it often is. Could you doubt it?"

"Well, damn." Silence stampeded past us. I tried desperately to avoid fidgeting with my mask. My nose was starting to run, as it always seemed to do when I couldn't reach it. I sniffed back as much as I could. Watching him across the divider.

"Yup." I stared at his feet, making idle circles in the dirt. 

 "God, I just got lost imagining what it would be like..." his voice trailed off as a siren blared from a distance. Police? Fire fighters? Or... ambulances were always going down that street. But they seemed more noticeable now.

"Your imagination. I'm a fan. Let's go there. Whatcha got?"

"Who'd win if a pegacorn fought a sharknado, for starters. Um... no, I don't...." he paused. My entire body strained to read his more closely.  "What it would be like if I were able to just run over and kiss you when I feel this big fond feeling I'm feeling now."

 I sighed, imagining him imagining me, the vertiginous thrill of the mere concept. 

That kiss. After two months. It hovered between us waiting to be executed. Six feet to cross. Masks to be torn in triumphant trumpeting tones. And then...

The stillness of that space. A distance that would not be crossed. Echoes of the siren.

"I imagine your smile," he said. "I feel it. One day, I'll feel every inch of it." 

I blushed. He'd mostly have to imagine that as well. 

***

I don't know why I had gotten so hung up on that milestone yet to be had.

Sometimes kissing can feel like a big blazing thing. The way movies and operas make it seem like the seal on a contract between mortals and heaven, and maybe hell. Bells fading into montages and triumphant music? I dunno. My first kiss was... a kiss. The dude's face was really big from so up close. His breath was kinda gnarly. The whole experience was fine. Good even. But that is what Disney had been promising as the reward for all my virtues since child birth? Really?

More often, it's a simple and easy extension of affection and a slow-build transition into a more pointed eroticism. There's something innocent about it, even. We've been doing it since childbirth almost. Interacting with things with our mouths. Our first means of connection.

I had a college boyfriend who was a bit weird about his mouth. Something to do with a piercing gone wrong. He was so self conscious, we didn't kiss for a long time. Maybe that should have been a big red flag. But, well... I liked him. And everything else between us was so, so good. I shrugged. I waited. We worked around it.

You don't notice the facility of kissing until you aren't supposed to do it. When you pull back from a hug and your lips are right there. When your glances catch with a goofy surge of feelings and the only way to break the spell is to press your lips together tight. When your lover says too much too sweetly and you can only release the intensity by stopping his words with your lips. Those intimate feelings, they build. They are pleasurable, but so intense. Sometimes so bright, we flinch. We kiss. Kissing is the body's punctuation mark. Beginning and ending. Full stop. Colon. Pause. 

That strange limitation revealed the ingenuity of the human body. 

Reaching deeper and deeper than was comfortable or manageable, but at the same time more ecstatic than I'd ever experienced before. We had to explore every other avenue of skin but the lips. Our entire faces became our lips. Our necks. Our ears. Every nerve and pore enervated. Our fingers. Every act took on that intimate affectionate burning of a good old fashioned kiss of true love.

One day we did kiss. I don't quite remember why, but there we were and there our mouths were. And it was nice. Really nice. And we started kissing a lot. And that was fun and nice too.

Still, if I have to remember him now. The kissing blurs together with any number of other kisses, great and mediocre. And if I look back at all my lovers, the feel of his cheek stands out more than a thousand first kisses (with or without bells).

****

Kiss? In that little green space, I'd have given it all just to feel Ben's coat swish past mine. To even imagine the weight of his hand. That hand I'd held too briefly, but which had printed its lines across every inch of mine.

Ben and I had our own ingenuity. And I spent even more time gazing helpless across screens and parks into his eyes. More hours than I can dare to count. Every breeze was electric. We'd walked each other through every nuance and delicacy of our bodies a million times. I knew them intimately. But how I longed to feel them directly. Just one toenail scratching my leg. Just one warm breath on my back.

And...that darned kiss! A kiss of true love to vanquish the death and illness and anger all around us. To take us off into the stars. Or, really, just allow me to sink deep into his arms and bury myself in his chest and make it my home. That kiss that - if it had been safe to take - I'd probably not have been present to accept. 

"Well," I blushed again, "I mean you kind of have, you know."

"That... was nice. But it wasn't totally you."

***

When Ben and I kissed, I wasn't blackout drunk exactly. Maybe whiteout. It wasn't my finest hour, day, or year. Freshly graduated and nursing some heartache from a terminated hookup, I wasn't fully intact to be my sister Marion's bridesmaid, but there I was. Ben was my new brother-in-law's old roommate, and the complementary groomsman to walk me down the aisle. It was a task he did ably. I was not blind to the comfortable firmness of his arm as we made our trek.

We'd made polite conversation in a number of awkwardly formal and crowded party spaces in the last few days. He set me at ease at least enough that I wasn't particularly awkward or embarrassed around him. Naturally, I gravitated towards his general vicinity when we gathered at his house for the honeymoon send off.

 I have no full recollection of what occurred between the moment we were all joking together and the moment he and I were making out and the subsequent moment where I was throwing up on Ben's rug while he rubbed my back. I do remember waking up on his couch feeling like death. Him, fresh faced and bashful, emerging from a bedroom in boxers, sporting abs even a hangover couldn't overlook. The concern on his face overshadowed any particular eroticism that may have kindled between us, as did the remaining scent of vomit in my hair. He made me drink some electrolyte water and I obediently fell into his care. When I was able, I slunk off into obscurity as quickly as I could to pick up my luggage, and hobbled onto a plane like the miserable bog monster I was. 

I didn't really expect to see him again. 

***

"Oh honey, I hate to disappoint you, but that was very much me. You just can't smell the regurgitated shrimp canapes in my hair from over there."

"What I wouldn't do to get a nice big whiff of your beautiful stomach acids. With that heavenly finish of rotting seafood. Don't torture, me, dearest."

"Says the man who had to bring kissing into all of this. I was content yearning to - I dunno - feel your hand or smell your neck. You go all Prince Charming on me here..."

"Prince Charming, huh?" He puffed up his chest in mock machismo. "Heck, yeah, I'll take down any dragons you got. So, how beautiful are you when you're sleeping? I bet a lot. I bet I could just lay there staring at you until you wake up and get totally ooked out by the creepy dude staring at you. Can you just leave your camera on on your phone, and prop it up on the adjoining pillow, so I wake up to you looking all groggy and angelic."

"I'm not sure you're ready for that horror in the morning, but... maybe I could try maybe... if... can I make a maybe weirdish request?"

"Do you make any other kind?"

"Prolly not. So, do you think it'd be safe if you left me like a shirt you've worn or a pillow case or something? Something with the smell of you."

"Yep. Weird. I don't think we can talk anymore."

I threw a rock in his direction.

"I mean, I couldn't wash it then right? So it'd have to be dirty. I don't know. I guess I keep my work stuff really far away from my home stuff, but I don't wanna give you anything potentially contaminated."

"Well don't blow your nose or spit on it or anything, but yeah that would defeat the purpose to clean it. I could quarantine it right? Leave it in the sun for a few days? But even if it were bleached clean within an inch of its life, it'd be nice to feel something of yours on me, you know."

"I think, yeah. I... just be careful. I don't want to be paranoid, but I don't ever want to risk your health, not even being able to be there with you if something did happen, I just couldn't... And... well, I know Marion's had a rough year already."

Ben was a nurse in a neighborhood clinic, one that had a fair volume of essential workers as clients, and did its share of tests for people most prone to be positive. Things had gotten safer there, as more protocols and PPE were onboarded, but it was one of those places making do with cloth masks and recycled respirators. I hated it, constantly worried he might get sick, but the risk ran different ways.

My sis was on immunosuppressants, recovering from a synevectomy: she was that excoriate word "vulnerable."

His risk to my risk to hers. I could be romantic and damn it all for one good kiss of true everything, bounding across the divider to him in a surge lovelorn abandonment. But I couldn't drag Marion into it. He couldn't inadvertently endanger his buddy's wife and his girlfriend's sister. Even if things "opened up" a bit, it'd be a long time before it felt safe to set that chain of exposure in motion. 

Maybe a few months. Maybe years. Maybe - and yeah I thought about these things - maybe four or five agonizing years down the road, we'd go from barely having touched to living together in connubial quarantine and I'd spend all my time skyping my sis instead of him. Or he'd dump me in another month for a cuter cam girl. Who knew.

I looked at the news every day. Much much more than I should have. Hoping for some miracle cure. A Eureeka moment. A "nevermind, it's fine now." Or even just a timeline until "safe" was an option. Forget living my life, how about just touching my boyfriend? Could I have a timeline on that?

Instead I usually just ended with a frothing irritation and exhaustion. Nobody knew anything. But every one had loud, angry opinions and ungrounded hype. And none of them added up to "safe." And everyone and their mother had it worse than us, so how could I complain. So my socially distanced relationship carried on like millions of long distance ones before. Except for this. 

These meetings, these sweet little agonies, sitting at opposing ends of a green traffic divider with benches that were too measly to merit taping off. Less real, in some ways, than the intimacy of the screen. But roiling with unsurmountable tangibility at the same time. Heavy physical forces pulling hands to hands, hearts to hearts. And all the restraint in the world to simply sit there, on opposite sides of the divider ignoring the occasional dirty glances of masked figures trudging through space with their enthusiastic dogs and children.

"Hands? Shall we hold hands anyways"

I clasped my hands tightly in my lap, transposing his textures onto mine, letting my index finger venture across my palm and up my wrist with a soft swirl. His hands interlaced fingers as well, eyes drifting closed as mine grew heavy. My head lilted to the side, ear grazing my raised shoulder with a sigh. Thank god I took that hand when I could. 

***

"Cora?" 

My brain jolted through categories as it processed the  smiling face approaching me. My stomach flipped to recognize Ben, that Ben. He was looking adorably rumpled. Dressed a bit more than our last encounter - a faded t-shirt, a hoodie, some jeans - in a way that still came together in a photoshoot approximation of "just slipped out of bed." His smile kicked a million watts. His mossy eyes gleamed with a twinge of jade. The last  few years had been exceptionally kind to him

Then there was me. On whole, the years had been ok. I was less of an overall hot mess, for sure. But this morning was not a shining example. This was one of those early morning nosh runs. Meant for anonymity. I was not prepared to be recognized. Especially not by somebody who'd felt the inside of my mouth and scrubbed my stomach contents off his floor. But I could hardly retreat now, so I casually pulled the ratted ponytail out and smooshed my lips into the most convincing smile I could. 

"I'm Ben... Josh's old roommate. We, uh..." He may not have thought the remainder of his reintroduction out. 

Red flush colored even my words. "I recognize you, Ben. Kind of hard to forget. Trust me... I've tried," I laughed with what I hoped was a light deprecation and no comment on him.

He looked momentarily disconcerted, but it was a mere flash between grins. His sideways glances became boyish with a sweet streak of toffee.

"Well darn, this is awkward then, huh? So, um, let me amend: Good morning, Miss. My name is Wyatt. You look completely unfamiliar. Have I never met you anywhere before?"

"Most likely never. I was literally born yesterday, no joke." 

"A day old! You don't look a second over just-born."

"I'm young at heart." While I was not at my bantering best, something about his smile felt comforting. Like I could crawl up inside of it and take a long soothing nap. After a fairly stressful week, I felt twinges of solace. With no confidence in my charm, I still had a desperate desire for that soothe to remain.

"So, uh, Wyatt you said? I don't want to waylay your important cattle rustler catching and whatnot, but were you here for a coffee?"

"I was mostly just roaming the prairies looking to pick a bar fight or something, but now that you mention it, coffee sounds better." 

"Lemme buy it, and anything else you want." I hoped this came off more smoothly than it felt. I was aiming for casual, but there was a little bit of desperation in there too. "I owe you." 

"Miss... what was your name again? I have no idea what you're talking about, but I accept your offer on the condition that you stick around to watch me drink it. Maybe drink your own even."

A short series of awkward giggles and glances brought us through the line and towards a table, where we shared some desultory conversation about lord knows what. He insisted that I call him Wyatt for the better part of an hour before forgetting the joke. Our feet tapped beneath the table from time to time. An hour later, the coffee was cold and we began to walk. Sometimes in silence. Sometimes in an eruption of nonsense. Until finally, regrettably, he needed to go and we found ourselves by his car.

 I was a little dizzy from talking so long. My mouth was dry. My head was a tiny bit sore. And my feet were aching! My jaw too: I hadn't smiled so persistently in years.

 We lingered shyly there in that eternal pocket of goodbyes.

"So how long are you in town?" His eyes betrayed a flicker of intention smoothly folded into a casual politeness. It gave me a little thrill, but also a reflexive panic. Connections you make on vacation: They're great for liking on Facebook. But what else did they add?

"I don't know. I shouldn't really be here. It was just a short visit to help my sis get set up in recovery before heading on. I was supposed to fly out to Montreal yesterday. My bud was going to do a research year at some university in Belgium and wanted me to take care of her place for her for the next year. Dropped my lease and sold off most of my belongings in anticipation. Then... well, things changed."

"Damn, yeah. It's a scary situation. Europe, I mean. Hopefully not Montreal. I haven't really been keeping track of Canada. I guess everywhere a bit. I'm glad she changed her mind, but where does that leave you? You're not going back to Washington are you?"

I shrugged. I didn't really know. There wasn't really anywhere to be. 

"Yeah I don't know. It's a bit weird in Seattle right now. Not really enthused to fly back there without a place to stay. All my work's remote, so I could really go anywhere. Kind of feeling out my friends for who might have a place to stay. I can't imagine my welcome is gonna last much longer with Marion and Josh. Their place is compact."

 I was already going a little stir crazy. I was used to my own space. My own bathroom. Eating when I wanted. Watching Netflix on the couch at 3 a.m. in my underwear when the urge hit. Marion was trying to work from bed, mostly laid up but typically stubborn about enlisting my help until it was desperately needed. Josh was extremely busy managing their business on his own. I had plenty of time to myself, but with everyone mostly at home, it was ... well, intimate. Turns out, I'd get used to it. 

"Oh I doubt that. You're probably a huge help right now. But, well, there's always the tropical island route. I hear Hawaii is pretty untouched by plague these days. But, um, I have to say this is a nice little town to lay low. And, as your current representative of this town, if you happen to stick around a little longer, the, uh, town would feel pretty fortunate."

I eyed his hand on the car door. Short flickers of its impression on my back, my arm. A moment where we'd swapped glasses and my hand had brushed his. The uniform ease of rolling into his touch and the soothing comfort his bedside manner provided. It had been nice. My fingers extended towards his a smidge and a grin betrayed the eagerness he'd touched in me.

But still I hadn't been planning to stay, and it didn't make sense to go down the path my fingers were nudging me along. My life was an unmoored morass as it was. No two friends in the same town. Another pin in the map of "people I don't see enough of." No insult to my sis and brother in law, but once every few years was an acceptable frequency for this pin. Undialing my smile to a polite level, I shrugged and said "I've got some friends in New York, who have some room for me."

"New York, huh? You sure you wanna go out there. I've been hearing some news..."

"Yeah, I don't know." I didn't. I had mostly abandoned the New York idea a few days ago, but I had to go somewhere eventually. "Maybe Kansas. I hear that's nice and mellow."

"Now we're talking. Corn as far as the eye can see."

"Or Kansas City. Not actually in Kansas. I'll say it. I did not actually know that until recently."

"I see that English degree - it was English right? - paid off"

"Econ, but close enough. Useless things people do in school before going to law school or Barnes and Nobles. I do programming stuff but that's a different story."

"Well damn, I thought here I would dazzle you with my stellar memory of our fleeting pre-bacchanalia small talk. Ah well. You'd best hop on that train to nowhere and keep working on the forgetting thing. I am typically reasonably forgettable so you'll get there."

My fingers twitched towards his again, tugging through my arm up into my chest. A different little impulse to touch the mole on his cheek and reach a hand through his wavy hair flashed through me.

"Not even gonna try.  It's really good to see you again. And sober and everything. I swear that's my default mode of being. Really."

"It suits you..." I felt the end coming. A sense of urgency to hold on a second longer surged through me, but words didn't come to mind. My heart sank, until he looked away and continued, "Hey, I know you're probably heading out, but If you're still around anytime in the foreseeable future, maybe you can buy me another coffee or dinner or something - I mean that was a really nice rug, you know. But, if not, I dunno drop me a meme or something on the internets if you want... "

"I'd... I'd like that. I'll facetweetstagram you some pictures of my food. Spoiler alert: it's probably something I put in the microwave. Usually, not road kill."

The pause cresendo-ed.

"Well, damn I'd shake your hand or hug you or... something, but I guess we're not supposed to do that anymore, so do you elbow touch or you can kick me in the shins if your want..."

I waved a bit more maniacally than intended. Then rubbed my shoe against his. Our shins briefly touched, and the friction echoed through me with a thrill.

"Ok that was a little weird, but I tried."

"I think the handshake is never gonna compete with that, honestly."

"Fuck it," I said, and grabbed his hand for a firm shake. My hand memorizing his every line. The dry textures on his outer fingers against the softness of his palms. A metaphor for a full body hug my body suddenly craved with all its being. We lingered post-shake, hands still joined for several seconds too long, before a final bone crushing squeeze. "You'll wanna burn that now."

He smiled a whole new variety of smile. Shades of sadness painting gentle tones across his crinkle lines. "Cheaper than sanitizer. I hope you stick around maybe. No pressure, but... I hear you owe me..."

***

I hadn't gotten his number, but it was easy to acquire. And I added it covertly to my phone that evening. We exchanged a few aimless texts to my mounting delight.

 A few days after some poking around the atlas, I spoke with Marion about staying longer. She begrudgingly appreciated the help, being semi-bed ridden. Josh felt less guilty about his distraction to have me around. I had rent to pay. It was too tight of quarters and I know Marion resented the dependency, but, well, she needed me and I needed a place to stay.

I won't say I decided to stay just to see Ben again. Still, sometimes when you don't have a lot of stakes anywhere in particular, a little enticement in any one direction helps and his hand's print still echoed in mine.

Finally, I was ready to call him and offer him that dinner. That's when life did its thing

A patient he'd treated a few days ago for some entirely other things had just tested positive. He was in quarantine. I shouldn't worry. It was after we'd seen each other, but he'd be unable to take me up on my invitation for the next 14 days or so.

Instead, I suggested we have some take out together/apart. I left a heaping bag of deliciousness at his door and video called from my car. The reception was terrible and eating in the car was a royal mess. We tried it again the next night with him waiting for me to get home and onto workable wireless.

It was nice. Awkward and choppy, and nothing like savoring shared space. But also, nice. Really, really nice. So... nice. We had breakfast together the same way (he had to cook his own). Then watched a movie together. Then a little break before lunch. He had nowhere to be for 14 days and, well, I had some vacation hours still. If we weren't on video, we were on chat.  When we were talking - which was almost always via one media or other - everything felt right. More right than regular times. I didn't feel that lovelorn crazy rush of up-and-down emotions, so much as just a sense that things were how they were supposed to be. That I was where I needed to be. And whatever was happening, it was good.

When I woke up alone at night, or when he was at work, the thought of him still permeated. I felt him there with me, even as I felt that helpless panic of not knowing if he would still be ok. Not knowing if today would be the day that the wrong person coughed on him. Or maybe it'd be me at the grocery store. A car speeding at a crosswalk. Indignant with fate imagining I might die without ever having felt that damned kiss.

Halfway through his quarantine period, the city and the state locked down. Reality sunk in. Dinner out would not be happening any time soon.

But we'd always have takeout...

***

The first night we met at the divider, Ben had been back at work for about a week. I feel so stupid for not immediately having banged down his door the night before his first day back at work and giving everything there was time to give. Sure, there was still a risk. From both of us. An excess of caution seemed appropriate. But damnit.

We probably weren't supposed to be there. The real parks had been shut down. This was just too small of a green space to consider. But by all calculations, we were mostly doing the right things. Masks were still being discouraged then, so there was the solace of seeing each other face to face, even at about 7 to 8 feet apart.

We stared into each other's eyes for minor eternities. He talked about work. We played a few rounds of armchair epidemiologist. And suddenly I found myself driven to unload. Perhaps something about the distance mimicked the confessional. Maybe I just really wanted to give him as much of "everything" as I could do. If not my body, then some guts. Maybe the lull in conversation was a smidge too long. Maybe it was the way the breeze hit the back of my neck and triggered a memory.

"When we were kids, Marion used to make me play this game with her. She called it Trust, but it was more like a game of chicken. The idea was that the one who was "it" had to sit in a chair, sitting on their hands for ten minutes 'til the timer buzzed. The other player got to do whatever they could to try to get the other person to move their hands or stand up in that time. As the oft abused little sister, I was hellbent on not giving. Marion could punch me, pour any number of things over my head, tickle me, and I held out. Marion had the advantage of being the bigger, brighter sister, but sometimes I still managed to get her out of that chair. My best effort was when I found her phone and sent some pretty idiotic text messages to a boy she was into, and was about to escalate to pictures before she tackled me at the 8 minute mark."

Ben laughed. "Lemme guess, she killed you next time... If she waited that long."

"Next time, she tied a folded up towel over my eyes. Then put noise cancelling headphones over my ears. I could feel displaced air from time to time as she walked past me. Waiting. Anticipating what may come next. A second later, a heavy mildewy taste in my mouth - a wash cloth maybe. Pushed back far enough and thick enough I couldn't work it out with my tongue...

"And then nothing. A slight glow of white fuzz when I tried to open my eyes. My heart pounding and breath getting faster whooshing through my nose. I started to overthink breathing and feel the claustrophobia. I felt like I would suffocate. I started imagining noises that weren't there to hear. Then even worse, the silence took over. I didn't even feel the breeze of somebody moving. Just dead air. Every instinct told me to tear off the blindfold and rip off the ear muffs, but I couldn't. I don't know how to describe it. My hands were completely frozen. I cried and sobbed until my mom found me shaking in hysterics. The buzzer had never been set. I was there for an hour or more."

I couldn't see Ben too well. The sun was setting and we were both well bundled from the wind. He'd been leaning forward as I talked, but any further detail I couldn't see. I heard him mutter "Jesus!"

"Freaked me the F out. I still sometimes get flashes of that feeling. Kind of a panicked helplessness and a sense that if I just moved, I could make it stop, but... instead I'm paralyzed."

"My sister would've just beaten the crap out of me. That's ... damn."

"Marion was always kind of a natural predator. I don't mean that in a bad way. She was a cool sister mostly. Just that she was used to always being the heavyweight. When the RA started coming on... she just kept fighting that way she does everything. Not acknowledging the weakness or the fatigue. Nobody knew for months. She wouldn't accept it. Ripping herself into shreds to keep on conquering the world. Not until the pain was utterly crippling. Her hands were so swollen, she couldn't open a door. She could barely walk across a room...

" Seeing her so helpless. I can tell it's killing her every time I have to help her do something simple. And every time we leave the house - me or Josh - knowing her life is in our hands. How she feels, I can tell. She has no idea if we're risking our health and thus hers some way. Completely relying on us with blind trust is not her strength. I see that same panic in her eyes that I felt that day. It kills me a little. I'm the weak sister. I'm the one who can do helpless mess. Fate fucked it up, you know?"

My voice caught in a hiccup of emotion. I hadn't realized I was about to cry, but I could feel it building now. 

Ben shifted towards me with almost a lurch, and then with a surprisingly urgent timbre, he said "God, this is agony not being able to hold you right now. I just want to wrap my arms around you, until you can barely breathe, and tell you... I don't know, that I can't make it better, but I'm there. My sadness wants to sit with yours and feel it close. Now. Right now."

"I don't even want you to make it better. I just want you to be here with me. And you are. You don't know. You can't even imagine... But yeah, I wish you could hold me, too. With all of me."

A tear threatened to escape my left eye. I blinked it back, not having any clean cloth to wipe it with and still mindful of the face-touching taboos in this moment where all I wanted was to bury my cheek in Ben's hand and let him hold my heaviness for a spell. 

"My mom died of breast cancer this November. She was totally fine and healthy. This vivacious, funny, adventurous woman. I thought she was immortal sometimes. Definitely that she'd outlive me. Then suddenly she was terminal. Few months to live they said. Experimental medications were working. We all took a breath of relief. Then they weren't. It was... I wasn't ready for it. Even after she was. She held on for me for a few more weeks than I'd like to admit. I had a good couple months to mourn. Last "normal" months all a crazy haze of cycles of grief that never really resolve and are soooo not linear... It's been a long time since normal for me."

His voice had a minor quiver in it and it was my turn to ache to hold him. So caught between the desire to comfort and be comforted. I wanted to kill all the bad things in the world, and also just to let them rage and hide away in him.

But still that space. There was always space, always distance, between people. Always layers between us. This distance was distinct largely in how nameable it was. How measureable. I wanted to crush it. All of it. Not just the inches and yards. But the teeny tiny atoms that made barriers of our skin. The discrete egos, the intrinsic subjectivities, the insecurities, the selves and all those meticulously concocted structures. I wanted them gone. I would have settled for skin against mine. Or for the constant calculus of safety and discretion to free our brains to simply be.

"Honestly, I feel more comfortable since the lock down. Everyone at least is in the same place. It feels more honest, the world not just rushing on in its normal ways hollering at me to catch up. I can navigate this. That sounds awful. I don't wish ill on others. I just. It's hard to say. I find myself thinking just how fucking glad I am she died before all this happened. She got a real funeral. She died with family surrounding her. Thinking we'd all be ok. And she didn't have to see... all this crap. She'd have been... disgusted, angry, helpless. God, the isolation. It would have killed her if nothing else did. Her timing was, as always, right on."

"Ben, close your eyes and wrap your arms around yourself really tight," I commanded more forcefully than I'd expected. "That'll be me. I am leaping into your arms, Ben. Holding you until my arms start to shake. Pressing your cheek to my neck and burying my nose in your hair. Rocking just a little. Squeezing right into your marrow."

He snorted a little uncomfortably but did as he was told. I did it too. Feeling his hair tickling my cheek. His hands engulfing my back with a gentle kneading motion. My fingers scrunched against my shirt. The little flashes of a hapless fling so many years ago filling in the blanks. Mutated by the connection subsequently formed into infinite softness and the firmest shelter. And I could have stayed there forever.

In a sense I did.

I don't know how much time passed. Perhaps it was my imagination that the sun was measurably lower when I opened my eyes again. Ben, still holding and held, seemed to sense my eyes. Emerging from a stupor, we slowly re-engaged with the world around us, with each-other-from-the-distance.

"That actually kind of did the trick. God, one day, when it's safe. I will hold you and I will never, never let go."

"One day... you'll have to race to beat me to it."

***

Sometimes I fantasized about getting sick, just so I'd have a reason to see him close up at the clinic. When they got the first antibody tests in, I even made an appointment for one. I was hoping to see him - hoping to discover one or both of us had some magic antibodies that would somehow change the math. Sure it didn't mean immunity maybe, but what if it did? What if... We didn't. Neither one of us. And I didn't even get to see him the day I went to the clinic.

We were lazing on our couches one evening when I got the results. He'd already seen his. He shrugged and said "Well if it'd been positive we'd always have wondered if it were a false positive, so this somehow is easier."

I laughed, tears pressing through, to my surprise. The frustration occasionally needed release without asking my permission.

"You're right. It wouldn't have meant anything. We'd still be stuck here... which, don't get me wrong, is a wonderful place to be stuck, better than anything else. But sometimes..." I sighed and felt defeated. "Sometimes I just feel like I need one thing to mean something. One actual certainty."

"Well, I'm certain you have the most amazing laugh in the entire world. No really. This is objective fact. Lemme record it for you some time. You won't deny. I'm certain about a lot of things when it comes to you."  Ben looked a little tired. I know he was feeling the disappointment too.

"Maybe it's for the best. What if this is it? What if someday the world actually goes back to normal and we hang out and turns out I kiss kind of bad and you smell kind of weird and the way you load the dishwasher infuriates the crap out of me and... Fuck, I'm whiny today. What if you finally realize how whiny I am?"

Ben shrugged. A gentle glimmer in his eyes soothed me.

"Story of every relationship, isn't it? Either I decide that kissing is meh, but the way you nibble on my ear is life changing and feeling your toes tickle my soles is to die for... or I don't. But by the way, I do know about all that, recall. All those things are 100% top level... and you smelled kind of pukey near the end, but before that..."

I blushed. I did not remember the nibbling. I envied my drunken past-self the experience.

"And well, either, you convince me to change my soap and laundry detergent or eat less garlic and chew a different gum... or you don't. Either we shake our heads at each other for all our stupid irrational foibles and laugh or... we don't. That'd be true no matter what. But if you wanna forward me your road map for perfect dishwasher etiquette, I can start studying up."

"How have we only been seeing each other for two months? And we have barely touched? It sounds so little. Like nothing. But you feel like everything. I don't want to over-romanticize this in some deluded haze. I don't want us to be using each other as some crutch to distract from a crazy reality!" Neuroses were kicking in a bit, but I had to stop. To add.  "It doesn't feel like that. At all. It feels real. More real than anything." I touched Ben's face on the screen, knowing he couldn't see, but succumbing to a contemplative awe.

"God, you're cute when you're neurotic. That little line right between your eyebrows. I want to touch it, nuzzle it, like crazy...  I mean yeah, we're at that crazy dopamine phase, right? And it'll mellow out some day. And that's cool. And the world is nuts right now, and it wasn't so hot before now either, and it's definitely worlds better with you in it. Why don't we enjoy it? Just ... let it run that course. As safely as we can. Right?"

I nodded.

"And, c'mon. We haven't touched much in person. You've touched me plenty in a million ways. And you know, if you want it to feel more serious... well.."

He looked down for a minute and the video bobbled a bit for a few minutes.

My email notification blinked and I opened a message from Ben:

Erotica by S.T.P.
I made love to her on paper and spilled ink like passion across the sheets. I caressed her curves in every love letter. I kissed up and down her thighs in short sentences and prose. I tasted all her innocence, without a spoken word. I bit her lip and pulled her hair, in between the lines. I made her arch her back and scream, it only took a pen.

"I don't have a pen."

"Your finger does plenty."

"Lemme just retreat to my room..."

***

"Mmmmm," Ben moaned with such music. "Your hands..."

"They are thirsty for every inch of you, dear one."

"One of these days, Cora. I'm going to save the world, just for the prize of holding your hand in person."

"Meanwhile I'll work on getting us some hazmat suits, so I can hold you, really hold you up tight and close."

"You're a mad genius, my sweet."

"Definitely mad."

The sun was saying its goodbyes. A melancholy breeze scattered pollen about. Evening had arrived. We didn't really have anywhere to be, but we had to eat. Ben had to get up and go back to his heroics in the morning. I had to check on Marion and see if she'd consent to allow me to help in any particular way. We had to get out of these darned masks and gaze into each other's naked faces by some means.

"Dinner tonight?"

"What are you thinking?"

"Thai? Pizza? I'm honestly fine with leftovers served in a frisbee plate."

"You have fixings for pancakes? Breakfast for dinner is an unspoiled treat."

"I could figure something out. I send you a photo of the pantry and you tell me what I need to do not to blow the house up."

"Sounds like a plan."

We both stood up in tandem. About to go our opposite ways to our oppositely aligned cars.

"Hey, hang up. I have something for you in my trunk. Drive 'round?"

"If this is some kind of practical joke with snakes leaping out of the trunk or something... I will be impressed, but I will also need you to stick around until the medics revive me."

"Darnit, now I feel inadequate. That's a way better idea. Crap. This is just one mostly dead goldfish."

We waved and I walked towards the car with a little skip.

In reality, I just had some masks for the clinic I'd collected from various businesses. I'd added some coffee, a flowery letter with more embarrassingly poetic words, and an old photo I'd liberated my Marion's wedding album of us looking young and dazed by the flash. Sealed with a lip-shaped smear of lipstick I rarely wore. A circle around the lips with the caption: "this was sprayed down with rubbing alcohol and dried in quarantine for 3 days."

Romance: clearly not dead. Just doused in antiseptic.

While I waited, I reflexively checked my phone, even though Ben was the only person I wanted to see in my notifications. The rest of the outside world I dismissed with annoyance. Minutes passed until I saw Ben's car pull up behind mine. Our proximity gave me a small thrill as I popped my trunk and waived. He'd taken his mask off, and the fresh burst of his smile knocked me back a little. He grabbed the bag and placed it in his trunk. When the trunk slammed shut, I reached for my keys to start heading home. But then I realized he had walked towards my car, wipes in hand.

I cocked an eyebrow at him as he started scrubbing my window, but he just shrugged and kept wiping. Finished, he returned the wipes to the car and came bounding back.

His hand streaked down the glass, and mine reflexively rose to meet his as if both contained giant magnets. I imagined I could feel the warmth of his fingers through the cool glass. His palm pressed flat and mine followed, willing the glass to melt, to give just a little. Feeling as if it had.

He leaned in closer, resting his forehead on the pane, that same magic pulling mine close as a small gasp escaped my lips. My eyes sunk shut, opening again to see the textured frost of our breath on each side. My free hand rose to his forehead's mark, slowly tracing each line of his face, pressing through the glass to feel soft skin. I rolled my cheek against the pane as he did the same. Our eyes and lips slowly smushed into synchronicity, burning through those last couple millimetres of distance. His breath against mine. His lips pulsing in time with mine, pulling us through some exotic lingual dance that felt coded into my bones. Hand to cheek. Resting again, forehead to forehead. Where the fog accumulated, Ben traced a heart, and I traced another on my side. Another moment of lips-to-lips and Ben stepped backwards, his face a gorgeous glow of everything that gave me hope. I waved and texted him "Daaaaaaamn, you're better than I remembered."  Slowly, in a daze, I started the car and headed home, the lip smushed heart still glowing near my head.

So, there it was, I thought. A darned real life kiss of true love and everything.

We drove off, North and South of the sunset. Things weren't all better, and who knew when they ever might be or what that even meant anymore. But distance, that real distance that can't ever be measured, was losing its hold.

Happily-Ever-After was nothing compared to that.