It was an innocent gesture, yet one that shook me all the same. I looked up at you, confused by the sudden contact, as you pulled me close. I remember the way my heart sped up as your fingers pressed against the small of my back, the way your eyes looked in the sunlight as they met mine–like two pools of sun-kissed chocolate, melting into the horizon. “Careful,” you said. And then you pulled away, as if the touch meant nothing to you. Which it didn’t. But it made me realize that it meant everything to me.

   The heat from your person burns into me, even when we’re hundreds of miles apart. I can feel it tugging at my heart even now–and I can hear your voice, like thousands of cascading whispers sweeping through my brain.

   How unfair that you’re the reason i’m stuck lying awake, and you’re sound asleep. How unfair that your heart doesn’t race whenever our eyes snap up to meet each other’s. How unfair that your skin doesn’t itch to feel its heat matched by my own; to daydream of my fingertips skimming across your lips and to feel the way they hint at what more they could do. For you make me want you, and i despise you for it. How simple my wish is, and yet, how difficult to obtain. It makes me want to scream.

   What are you doing to me?

   Do you know?

   Sometimes, I’m convinced you do.

  you must know, i tell myself. why else would your eyes linger on me after we’ve said hello? why else would your fingers reach up to caress my neck when we embrace? why else would my phone light up with a message from you, just as your face is growing gauzy in my mind’s eye?

    And yet, sometimes, I’m convinced you’re rendered completely and utterly unaware.

Of course you don’t know, I try to convince myself. I tell myself your accidental touches are indeed accidental. I tell myself you don’t know the way your brown eyes cause my heart to triple in speed. I tell myself your hands linger on my hips to keep my steady while we’re dancing, not because you savor the feeling of my curves beneath your fingertips.

      The truth is, you could keep me trapped in this guessing game for as long as you’d like, and still I wouldn’t complain. Because the truth is, I’m not altogether sure if I’m not a willing contender. I enjoy the way you string me along. I enjoy the way I stumble along blindlessly after you, entrapped by your aura of inadvertent intoxication.

      I act is if I’m helpless against you. But the truth is, I’m not.

      Not in the slightest.  

      I could stop if I wanted to. I could wrench my heart free, strangled and torn, but still steadily pulsing. I could become sober again, if I really tried.

      But I don’t want to.