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Things change. And I'd be lying if I said I wished they didn't. They have to. It's the law of the world. It's evolution, baby.
Yeah. Or something.
But when you get right down to it, it's natural. The same things, the things that once felt right, and perfect, and like they were always going to be the truth, start feeling uncomfortable, and wrong, and simply a travesty.
It's fine in New Zealand, like another world, like a world where kissing him was as natural as breathing. More so, because when he'd lean over me, when he'd run bow-callused fingers up the inner seam of my jeans, breathing suddenly became difficult. But kissing him, that was always easy. That was always saliva-slick enclosing warmth. I could do it all day. It's fine on the beach with grit and slick rubber under my fingers, and it's fine out on the town playing laughing games with watchful eyes, and it's fine with harsh, echoing breaths in hotel lifts.
It's even fine on the publicity junket, when I see him and his grin says it all. Then, I can't resist - don't bother to try - the urge to wrap my limbs around him. A gripping hug, a laugh, and it's all natural, it's all the way it should be, but it's different, too. Because there's cameras and a million wide eyes and Liv laughing over my shoulder. But that's how it is now, when I step back, and that's the way of the world.
The world shifts. Sometimes it doesn't leave a forwarding address. Sometimes you don't realise how far it's taken you until you look back, and realise you can't see where you used to be.
Sometimes you don't realise it until you hear his voice on the other end of the line, sounding less alive when it's not whispering in your ear, stretched thin by distance.
Sometimes you don't realise it until you're making inane, stilted conversation about how's Australia, and what's new with you.
There's a million things I want to ask instead. Like where it went, and did he regret it, and was it possible it could ever be that way again, and did he miss it.
Then he said: "Wow, New Zealand seems a world away."
And I said: "Yeah."
Because everything else sounds wrong. Unnatural. That's just the way it is. That's the way of the world. It happens, you know. Things change.
END