To The Moon and Back

𝟏𝟗 | 𝐡𝐲𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐱𝐲

H Y P E R G A L A X Y

A system consisting of a spiral galaxy surrounded by several dwarf white galaxies, often ellipticals. Our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are examples of hypergalaxies.

T O  T H E
M O O N & B A C K

I STARE AT her through a thick layer of fog which floats around us, and I hear her mostly smoked cigarette sizzling away in the puddle she had tossed it into. She's panting now, heavily. In fact, even when I chased her down the streets of London, she wasn't anywhere near this out of breath.

A car honks at us and we both simultaneously flip the piece of shit off, but Rory goes to the extent of shouting fuck off too. I lower her to the ground, waiting for her to stabilize herself as my hands linger on her waist.

"Atlas?" the way her voice clings to my name makes me want to ask her to repeat herself over and over again. When I don't answer she continues. "What do you feel?"

I furrow my eyebrows, staring down at her with a confused expression when she sends me a worried one. I open my mouth to speak but stop quickly when she grabs both of my hands and slide them beneath the thick material of her jumper, letting them rest on the bare skin on her waist. She's cold and when I touch her there, she gasps. It makes me wonder if I'm cold too or maybe this feels good to her.

"What do I feel?" I repeat the question, still confused.

In terms of emotions—not a lot, to be quite honest. Clearly, I don't know but the tingling in my hands and heat in my chest is not familiar. Saying familiar would be putting it lightly, this is so fucking foreign even if I weren't bipolar and instead a normal functioning human, I wouldn't know how to process what I'm feeling because it doesn't make sense in the slightest.

Or does she mean what do I feel in terms of what lies beneath my fingertips. Because in that case, I feel skin. Soft skin. I feel the coldness of her skin. And with each up-and-down stroke of my thumb, I feel where the deep dip of her waist curves into her hips. I feel her. I realize how her muscles tense beneath my touch, I notice the way her eyes waver like I might retract my hands any second, I notice the way her body gradually shifts forward like she needs more of my touch.

I realize that maybe she's never been loved before. Maybe she's never been touched before either. Possibly, she's never been warm before.

"When you touch me—what do you feel?" she adds and I purse my lips shut.

I don't know what she's hoping I will say because I'm not about to say what I actually feel. I'm not common with speaking upon positive thoughts, only the negative. And I'm not sure these thoughts are positive. The thin line between good and bad blurs and I don't want to be on the foreign side of that line: the good side. But I have no fucking clue where that side is.

I shrug. "Nothing."

She doesn't narrow her eyes nor does she smile. I can't tell whether that was the right answer or not, but I don't ponder. I don't care.

Finally, she nods. "Good."

Good?

My brows knit together in confusion. "Good?" I slowly tear my hands away from her waist to see what it is that she really wants. This time she doesn't whimper or pout. She lets me go and I don't try to stay. "Why are you asking me this?"