If I lie on my side pressed against him I can count his freckles. One by one as they fade into winter to hide until the warm weather returns. His hair already seems longer, darker, the curls bigger still. The circles underneath his eyes holding his freckles captive are deep and dark and tell a story you might hardly not believe if it weren't for his eidetic memories, organized by season and year. By Bridget. Bridget at eight. Bridget at fourteen. Bridget at twenty-six. Bridget at thirty-three. Bridget now. Bridget at ten. Either mislabeled or he removed it to wax it nostalgic and now that it shines bright he's forgotten where it belongs.
Most of those stories I have too but mine are arranged haphazardly, clumsily, remembered in a completely different way, having taken away a different slice of life for being younger and far more naive before becoming vaguely, reluctantly hard, jaded into a concrete green for the things I have witnessed with my own eyes when people are free to be themselves. I only ever slept at night because he would take the most unpleasant of stories and explain in the way that only he could, telling me that the man that shot the other man out back was merely practicing a trick or the boy crying with the black eye walked into a light standard and was going to have his pictures taken for school the next day, or that if we didn't eat tonight, we would have the most fantastical breakfast in the morning, right after we've slept well.
Sometimes when he feels patient and generous he tells me Cole is off seeing the world and that Jake is downstairs. Sometimes he tells me the Devil is only in my nightmares because funnel cakes do funny things to my brain. Sometimes he tells me the feeling of falling is the same for falling in love, that agonizing lurch when your heart hits your breastbone and your blood begins to float and that it's not supposed to be scary.
He has two hundred and sixteen freckles left and that means winter is almost here.
