Published October 9, 2012
I breathe in reserve. I forgot to brush my teeth the night before, and I don’t want to huff my dragon’s breath in his face. But he is unaware. His head, above mine, faces me with no pardon, and sighs heavily as he pleases. I cannot tell if he is awake.
Where his shirt meets his skin a few dark hairs lay at the curve where his neck becomes chest. I want to touch them lightly, but I don’t. In the cave between his chest and mine, where it is dark and comfortable, his breath circulates, and I know I breathe it in and I don’t mind. I wonder if I breathe it out if he will think it is his own, or mine, or partly his and partly mine. I wonder if my breath ever bothers him—if so, he’s never told me. I wonder if he remembered to brush his teeth the night before.
One of the first times we hung out, before I let him know me, we got Burger King to eat in his basement while we watched a movie. He chose a bacon burger, and I a cheeseburger with a chocolate shake, so that I could wash down the burger breath with the shake in case we kissed after we ate. We did kiss—it was maybe the second time; I had made sure not to eat anything before we kissed the first time—and it was the cheesiest bacon-iest kiss I’ve ever experienced. I relaxed. He didn’t think about it, so maybe I shouldn’t either.
He stretches his arms over his head and rolls onto his back. The cave is gone once he moves. He turns his face to me and smiles. I smile and exhale what I didn’t realize I’d been holding in.
His shirt stretches with his body, and a bit of hair from his armpit pokes out of his sleeve. He flinches as I reach my fingers out, but he lets me have a silly indulgence for his little torture. After all, the tickling touch makes his smile even more intoxicating where I can’t help but kiss his face all over, and he kisses mine.
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142,241 Literary Works • 677,072 Reviews
Cute little snippet. I enjoyed it. Nice job.
This is sweet, and pretty well written, too. Not much of a story, but it's a cute little snippet.
My only gripe would be the opening line. Breathe in reverse?! You cannot breathe in reverse, both inhaling and exhaling are in the category of breathing so I actually have no clue what you're talking about HAHA.
Haha, it's reserve, like trying to avoid breathing too much. I can see why it looked like reverse though. lol
I liked this piece. It had a lot of voice, and altough not a ton happened, it was still very descripteve in what did. I liked the part about their second kiss, the bacon-y one. It adds a touch of humor to an otherwise humorless tale, and I appreciate that. It's little known that the 11th commandment was to "naught write unless the reader can laugh with thyne writing."
Very cute. I don't know if you wrote this from personal experience or what, but it was perfectly fleshed when it came to the thoughts of the first person. You gave it a sort of personality, which drew me in immediately.
The only problem I had with it was the repetative use of 'I' at the beginning of most of the sentences. Other than that, well done. =)