If- Nina G. Jones Page 0,56

jackhammer pumped a collection of dark purple dots before my eyes.

My synesthesia was coming back in full force, no longer reserved for things associated with Bird. Shit, I thought Bird glowed before, but now she was otherworldly, just as I knew she would be. I imagined it would be hard to understand for someone who didn’t see things like me. Imagine your significant other glowing like a celestial being. That’s what it was like for me with Bird. But it wasn’t blinding, it was soft and radiant. It was soothing. Her aura sometimes changed colors from its baseline lavender, expanding to layers of mint green, sherbet, or a golden sheen. I never tired of it. I never got bored of looking at the totality of her beauty: her mouth and the plump pinkish lips that framed it. The tiny freckles that speckled her nose and cheeks and the occasional rogue one on her chin or forehead. Her eyes, mostly dark green with flecks of gold. Her hair, the color of embers. Lush, wild, coarse curls that made her all the more womanly in my eyes. Her skin, creamy and bordering on pale when she stayed out of the sun, but it would turn the slightest hint of caramel if she let herself enjoy it. Her body, firm with muscle, but soft to the touch.

A dog barked. Red triangles.

Having the synesthesia come back again was like being reunited with an old friend. The kind of old friend that you clicked with right away no matter how long you had been apart. No awkward reintroduction. No need to relearn your rhythm. It had been like we had never parted ways.

Bird and I had sex for the first time in a while that morning. My drive had been low due to being sick, and she didn’t want to catch what I had anyway. She obviously didn’t understand that what I had wasn’t contagious. I planned on finally telling her everything, but I wanted to be in my right mind. Being depressed is not the condition in which you want to deliver not so great news.

Sex with Bird was like swimming in a warm liquid rainbow. I saw the colors I always saw when we made love, or fucked, but now they were metallic, like mercury. It felt like I was bathed in them, dripping with the limitless colors that she inspired. A sweet and sour taste, like a nectar, filled my taste buds when we softly thrust against each other. Low moans. Soft panting. Gentle caresses. When it was hard, her kisses tasted different. The taste of her mouth was always present, but when I was ravenous, when there was pulling, groaning, growling, grabbing, biting . . . I tasted flesh. Like the finest dry-aged steak, rare. If you’ve ever had a hankering for steak, where nothing else will satisfy you but the slab of meat, with pink juices pooling around it. That first bite, that relief of tasting life, and it filling that intense animalistic craving, that’s how fucking Bird tasted.

There was nothing like being inside of Bird. Nothing.

I entered the coffee shop where I was supposed to meet Bird after her class, using my long walk as a roundabout way to get there.

I sat at a table, observing the crowd around me. I used to be surrounded by people who lived under tarps, kept all their possessions in cart, and shoved needles into their arms in broad daylight. Now, there was a businessman on his cell phone staring up at the menu board and holding up the line, a woman clad in designer workout gear feeding her daughter a piece of coffee cake, a couple of people my age plotting out some “disruptive” business plan. The latter made me feel like a real winner. I was just trying to manage functioning each day, and there they were trying to conquer the world.

A hand waving in my peripheral vision broke my people-watching. As Bird stood up on her tip toes, her sexy stomach peeked out the bottom of her cutoff t-shirt. Her long legs were covered in black spandex. I had become a huge fan of that material since I first saw her. Her body was made for spandex.

“Hey!” she said cheerfully, planting a kiss on my lips. “You look so good today. I am so glad you’re finally feeling better.”

“Yeah, I took a long walk today. My energy is coming back.”

“You’re telling me,” she winked. “Are you sure you still don’t