danced with each other, an inch of air between us but the sound of the orchestra filling the precious gap.

I had never held another man in my arms, and I don’t know why tonight I suddenly reached out and took Kent in mine. It just felt right and he came to me, softly and without hesitation as we stepped together until the music ceased. We stood there in silence, touching but not moving.

He was looking down on the pilings we stood on, and I at the moon behind his head. It felt good to feel the heat of someone else’s body, someone who didn’t have designs on what kind of life I could provide for them or silently totaling up my plus and the negative traits to decide if the next step was worth the risk.

In the rays of the moon, I could see the little ringlets around Kent’s ear his short hair made when the weather was damp or he got overheated. I wanted to touch them, and tonight I did. I took just the pad of my fingers and grazed them enough to feel their softness and tremble at their determination to be known. Kent sighed. He leaned his face in to my hand and closed his eyes, he too, remembering what it was like to be touched and not scrutinized. He started to say something but I stopped him.

“Just let me breathe…you…a minute.” I said quietly. Kent took just a small step toward me, the air between our bodies finally gone. I could feel his warmth, his musculature and the strength in which he resigned himself to just being held.

He slipped his hands tighter around my waist and put his head on my shoulder. I held him close and we slowly started swaying, dancing to the music of the bay, our hearts beating to the slip of the water and surrendering for the moment to just being. I knew I should be regretting holding a man this close, touching his body and him touching mine, but the moment was there and we both needed it.

Once again, a quiet sigh rose from somewhere. I didn’t know if it came from me, or from him. All I knew for sure is that for the first time in a long time I was at peace and felt safe, and strangely enough loved. I put my hand on the back of his head as we danced. He nuzzled his cheek into the small where my neck gathered to my shoulder. It was oddly, if that’s even the correct word, right.

I remembered the nights holding Della this way, feeling her soft body comforted next to mine. I could feel her heart beat again. I closed my eyes and just imagined the two hearts pumping warmth in the crisp of the fall, and that familiar sensation began to trail its fingers from my lightly shifting feet, through and all the way up to my mind, as I lay my cheek on the top of that blonde hair and just became the moment.

“Joe.” At first I thought he was calling my name, asking me a question. His body only held itself to mine and I realized, that like myself, he was just reminding himself that it was I in real time, not a love he had lost in his mind. My response was to simply run my hand in a tiny reassuring circle in the small of his back.