Page 89 of Yours, For Now

My team disappeared, the other guys did too. The lights around the field shone on us alone, no one else around; their chatter and laughter was distant white noise.

I held Lina against me, her soft and full body resting against mine, and we kissed and kissed, our lips and tongues dancing with each other and for each other alone. My heart skipped every other beat, and I hugged her a little tighter.

"I've missed you," she said, and air left my lungs in a relieved gust.

"I've wanted to call you every day." I frowned. "That's a lie. I wanted to reach out every hour."

"I know we said we should create distance, but I don't think— I mean, why? It's like breaking up before we have to."

"Right." My hands settled on the rounds of her hips, and I frowned. Of course the plan still was to break up, but…

"We both have plans." She sighed. "I won't get in the way of your parents' freedom, and I can't risk not proving myself to my family. But they don't actually know what we do when alone. Since you agreed to do this with me, we've spent time together and they never knew we weren't a real couple. They won't know that what we do together now is different from the past few weeks. We can tell them our time together wasn't as good as it should be, but… but in reality, when we're together…"

Her eyes glimmered, open like they rarely were.

"I see. You're saying we can still tell them what we decided, that we're better off as friends. But until Sunday next…"

Lina nodded. "Yeah. Until then, these next ten days…"

"Why, Lina? It's going to make it harder to break up."

"You're in my system." Vulnerability danced in her eyes. "I didn't like these past three days."

"I didn't like them, either." A long strand of her hair fell next to her face, and I ran it between two fingers. On the second pass over the silky strands, I put it behind her ear, hoping for an unobstructed view.

Almost everyone had left the playing field, and we stood in each other's arms mostly alone on the synthetic surface. The lights were on, a game still ongoing on one other field. Everything remained background noise, focused as I was on Lina.

"We'll go back to our lives, after," she said. "We'll work together, by phone and email to make it a bit easier at first; we'll break up and focus on our goals like we both want to. But over the past few weeks you made your way into my… my… life. And maybe if we let ourselves do what we've been pretending to do, it'll be a little easier when we break up."

How could it be easier? I weighed the possibilities, and they all came with a cost. If we started giving each other space now, it would hurt— it already hurt. It meant swallowing my torn emotions, and crossing my fingers I'd get a chance to test what I felt in two years. If we didn't go our own ways now, and we used this time to do some of what we wanted… If we did, and I knew what it was like to be with Lina, it would hurt even more afterwards… If I was able to let her go.

I frowned. "That morning on Saturday, you said we feel this way because this is what it would be like if this were real. That we just need to… complete the task."

Her nod was slow. "Our bodies don't know we were faking. We kissed, we slept together, we hugged… It's like we promised it something and didn't deliver. And the attraction is real. Why do you have to look so hot taking your shirt off, drying the sweat on your forehead, and letting me see these biteable muffin tops?"

I scoffed, she grabbed said rolls at my waist.

"They're squeezable, too," she added.

Could this be attraction only? The way my heart beat, the way my organism craved a few amazing days with her, I didn't think it was as simple as that. Because if I could brave some honesty with myself, I'd have to admit I wouldn't be simply scratching an itch. I wouldn't be faking it, and the break up would feel even more real.

But for ten days it would be glorious.

The question was, could I give her what she wanted, and deal with what it did to me?

"You want to feel wanted," I repeated from Saturday. "And I want you."

"And for the next ten days, I'll show you that I want you, too."

"It's not only attraction for me, Lina." I gulped. The final whistle for the last game rang nearby, and I ignored it, too. "Are you okay with that?"

Lina's eyebrows wrinkled like the words I'd shared had pained her. I loosened my grip on her, but she tightened hers around my neck.

"It's not only attraction for me, either," she whispered. "But it's all we can give each other, when we only have a week."

"Prima!" Lucía approached us, and Lina didn't let go of me as she turned her face to her cousin. "Are you leaving with Gabe?"

"I have to go to the pub with my team," I said. "You can come if you want."