I was leaving the beach when I saw the most beautiful set of green eyes. They looked at me with a fierce iridescence, catching the sunlight in a manner that insisted I say something. Say anything. “Your eyes might be more green than mine,” I said, aware of my voice like I was a kid again.
“I was thinking the same thing.” The eyes smiled back.
We passed on the hot, soft sand where muscle and skin reign as king – not when these eyes were present. I walked just five steps before looking over my shoulder, and there they were, more like precious stones than a girl’s optic nerve. I’ve lived long enough to know that fleeting moments of lust are good to cherish but shouldn’t be pursued. They’re meant to be dropped quickly, as we do with dreams and nightmares. I glanced again and those eyes, they were still staring!
“This never happens,” I said, louder than before. More confident.
“I know, right?”
“What do you think it means?”
That question has no answer, her shoulders said with a shrug. “What are you thinking right now?” she asked. Her irises blazed like a teenager playing truth or dare.
“I’m thinking that we don’t kiss strangers often enough.” I don’t remember walking closer to her, but I must have because my lips were in striking distance. We shared a lasting kiss that tasted fresh and a little sweet as a million possible futures collapsed, writing our lifelines through spacetime; waves of probability crashing around us just as the waves of a nearby ocean crashed on wet sand.
“Can I call you?”
“No. Because then we wouldn’t be strangers.”
—
By Kenneth Hunn