Rewind

They film themselves fucking in their attic bedroom on a day that’s unnaturally quiet. No traffic. No planes in the sky. It’s cloudless out there, and the sky is so blue that it lights their bodies through the skylight. Blue all along their soft edges. They ripple together. They whisper. At one point, as he drives down into her with his arm around her throat, she looks to the camera. Locks eyes with the camera.

And then she looks away again.

When he watches back the video (which he will do many times), this moment of eye contact will strike him every time. A year on, and it feels exactly as it did the first time. Like she’s looking not into a camera but into his eyes, across time, across distance.

It’s a knowing look. Perhaps she does know, he thinks, that he is watching. Perhaps the glance is for him. For a hundred different versions of him. The him who watches back the footage right afterwards, lying sweaty and exhausted with her in their attic bedroom. The him who watches it a week later on his laptop, the sound down, while they talk dirty on the phone. The him who watches it again, masturbating in a hotel room, missing her. The him who watches it with her, two years on, and laughs at their little whispers, their moments of awkwardness. The him who watches it five years on, and is shocked by how young their bodies look. The him who watches it and feels arousal. The him who watches it and feels nostalgia. The dozen hims who watch it when they are apart, and he is longing for her, and he is desperately horny and wants to come. The dozen hims who watch it when he is travelling, and apart from her, and just wishes to hear her voice.

In that moment, looking out from that frozen day of unnatural quiet in their attic bedroom, she locks eyes with them all. Across time. Across distance. And it strikes him every time, just as it did the first.

And, after the briefest of moments, she looks away.