YOU HAVE APPROACHED A LONELY CRAB.

We wove ourselves into a basket, crotches pressed together as far as our thighs would allow. It was hard to tell where my legs began and his ended. Hands on knees, knees on hands, polish brushed on our nails through an echoed 69.

Afterwards, I sucked on my fingertips to make the paint dry quicker. 

It's 60 degrees outside and I'm freezing but this is considered warm in Connecticut. On the way, we listened to the DDLC soundtrack and "Chill Out" and your dad and "Keep in Line" by Maybird because I noticed you added it to your Liked songs after I played it on the way to New York.

We walk towards the water and the sand on my feet isn't sand, it's rocks. It hurts but I get used to it.

I check my phone-- 1:14am. I have a paper due tomorrow that I haven't started but I texted you if you wanted to go to the beach tonight because I haven't been to an East Coast beach yet, so we went. We sit on the rocks and I'm glad I wore jeans or else my ass would've hurt afterward.

"Do you think there's crabs on the beach? I'm scared of crabs."

"Uh, probably not."

The water is calm, and dark, and the moonlight sparkles on it. We talk in the same way the water ebbs and flows-- I listen to him speak about his latest moral reframing, and I tell him about my post-grad existential crisis. The light crashing of waves fills the occasional silence.

"Hey, isn't skinny dipping on your bucket list?"

I laugh. "How do you remember that?"

Sometimes, he remembers the things I say. I only showed it to him once.

"Well, shall we?"

He takes off his shirt by crossing his arms and pulling from under, then over his head. I follow. The waves crash, and we're left in our underwear, and this isn't the first time we've seen each other like this, but it was different then.

I look towards the water and remove my inside-out granny panties and my sister's ratty Champion bra from the 7th grade, dropping them to the rocks. I slowly wade into the blue-- OH MY GOD IT'S FUCKING FREEZING THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA!

"HOLY SHIT IT'S FUCKING FREEZING!! THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA!!" I run all the way in, and so does he.

"Fuck it!!" He yells it again, louder. "FUCK IT!!!!!!!!"

Our heads bob on the water like buoys and we're screaming and laughing and suddenly he's facing me and I face him.

"Either it's actually not that cold anymore and I'm used to it or I'm going into some sort of hypothermia-induced shock or something."

"Yeah, it's definitely hypothermia. This is way colder than an ice bath."

We drift closer to each other.

"Thank you for this...I needed this. I like that you enable me to do the things I want."

He doesn't respond for a second, and my mind immediately turns into anxiety mode-- did I say something wrong? Does he hate me? Why did I say that?

I snap back to reality when I realize he's now no more than an inch away from my face. We make uncomfortable, intense eye contact (the exact kind I hate) and it makes my stomach lurch and brain scream. He leans in the same way he did in the gay bar when I asked him if I smelled bad and he smelled my neck. But this time, our lips touch.

I pull back at first. Then, I grab his face and wrap my legs around him which is easy to do in the water. I don't know what I'm doing and chew on his upper lip and I tell him

"I don't know what I'm fucking doing I'm so sorry"

and he doesn't care and we keep doing something that isn't quite kissing but it's close enough and my heart is beating so fast and it tingles down there and I'm confused

and I push off of him like a pool wall and dive under the water and it's silent. And I can't hear anything and I scream WHAT THE FUCK into the water and no one can hear it. I close my eyes and remember it's cold and go back up for air but when I get there I can't breathe.

I suffocate in my own feelings and emotions and don't know how to express them. It's the worst feeling in the world when water goes up your nose the wrong way and that's what it feels like when I think about him like That because it feels wrong, but that didn't happen and I feel okay for once. Because he gets me and I get him and I want to live in the water with him, in that moment with him forever.

But it doesn't work like that. Because #10 still remains unchecked and I don't think it'll happen like this. But I can dream, right?