unsere Blicke trafen sich: es war noch nur den See und dich für mich.

He was drumming on her breastbone with his fingers. Seven notes –– quarters, she supposed –– and a quarter-rest, and repeat. Strange and distinct enough to mean something.

She thought about it. Seven notes and a rest.

It’s too simple to be classical, or camp 80’s music.

“It has the right number of syllables to be ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’” she mused aloud, “but it just keeps repeating.”

“You really don’t know what it is?”

She really didn’t.

“’Twinkle, twinkle, little star’?”

Apparently it had been obvious.

There was a silence –– not uncomfortable, but warm and drowsy, like the night. He was waiting, because she was thinking. Her distant eyes and half-smile betrayed her.

“I wonder what it says about me, psychologically, that ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ occurs to me before ‘Twinkle, Twinkle.’ Probably it means I’m nurturing or something.”

“I can believe that.”

“Oh?” She oh?’d a lot. It was nearly reflexive, and generally, it requested elaboration innocently, curiously, with a genuine air of disinterest. This oh? was different from oh?s past, however.

“Yeah.” He understood. “I haven’t really seen you in a nurturing way, but I guess. . .”

He, too, was out of his element here. The thought came easily enough, as thoughts always came easily, but words were not so easy, as they were never so easy –– but usually easier than this. He sorted through his collected words, and his eyes strayed, looked up and away, returned to her face, half-lit, waiting.

“More in a. . . future context.”

The warm silence covered them again, a blanket they did not need; they were already covered in sweat, from the night and one another. They kissed, pressed closer, oblivious to the heat –– even in love with it, they were so full of love. It escaped in trickles and surges, like slow, drenching rain escaping from an old dam.

The dam cannot hold. The dam cannot hold.

His hair fell into his eyes, and he blew at it. The pressure of her body on his arms –– perhaps a matter of gravity, or of magnetism –– prevented him from reaching up and brushing it away. She smiled, pushed it back as she had before, as she would always do, the better to watch his eyes.

And he smiled, and he said: “Yeah, I think you’re nurturing. Even in the little things, you take care of me.”