Page 24 of Breakaway
"The water or the photo?"
"Both." He pauses. "Show me more."
I glance at him. He is watching me with the look that I have been pretending not to notice since the balcony. He wants me to solve the distance between us on the couch because the screen is too far from where he is sitting. I know what he is doing. I scroll back through the camera roll and shift toward the center. Hold the phone between us.
His shoulder is against mine now. I can smell his cologne and under it the soap he has been borrowing from my shower. His weight settles against me, warm and deliberate, and the foot of space is gone.
I scroll. The ocean in forty frames. Gray water, flat water, water with the light doing nothing. I narrate without thinking, half to him and half to the screen.
"This one the exposure was wrong. Too bright. This one the horizon tilted, I didn't catch it until later. This one is close but the clouds moved between frames."
"What are you looking for?" he says. "In all of them?"
"The line," I say. "About half a mile out. Where the shallow water ends and the deep water starts and the color shifts. It's never the same twice. I'm trying to catch the exact second it changes."
"How many mornings?"
"Most of them. Since I moved here."
"Eight years of the same water?"
"Eight years of a different version of the same water." I scroll to another frame and stop. "This one. Look at the bottom left corner."
He leans in. The bottom left corner has the green-to-blue shift, and the light catches the transition at a low angle, and the color is not green or blue but a third thing that is both at the same time.
"There," I say. "That's the thing."
He stops looking at the phone.
I feel it before I see it. His attention has shifted. His breathing has changed. I can feel the held quality of him next to me, the weight of his shoulder against mine, and when I turn my head his face is right there. Two inches from mine. His eyes are dark and the look in them is not the rookie, not the broadcast, not the man who rating everything because he can. It is just Luca.
He pauses. A beat away from my mouth. Looking at me.
I don't move. I don't pull back. My eyes drop to his mouth and come back up and I stay exactly where I am.
He leans in and kisses me.
His mouth is warm and the wine from dinner is still there and underneath the wine is just him. The kiss is not fast and it is not careful. My phone drops between the cushions and my hand goes to the back of his neck and my fingers press into his hair and the sound he makes against my mouth is low and soft. A sound I want to hear again.
His hand finds my hip and his fingers curve against the bone and the touch is careful, entirely him. His mouth opens under mine and I can feel his heartbeat against my chest and the wall that I held on the balcony is gone.
He pulls back half an inch. His eyes are dark and his mouth is wet and the grin is one the locker room has never seen.
"I've been thinking about this for three weeks," he says.
"I've been thinking about this for longer than that."
"How much longer?"
"Since the gelato."
He grins. "The gelato was the first week."
"I know when the gelato was."
He shifts his weight and swings one leg over so he is straddling my lap, both knees on either side of my thighs. His hands come up to the sides of my face and he holds me still and looks at me.
He kisses me again. His mouth is warm and his tongue slides against mine and the groan I make is not a sound I have heard come out of my own body in years. His hips shift forward on my lap and I feel him through his jeans, hard already.
