”Who wouldn’t be the one you love? Who wouldn’t stand inside your love? Protected and the lover of a pure soul, and beautiful. You”

**

“Carmen…” I say, and my voice sounds croaking and almost aphonic.
“Let’s go back to the hotel, Shane. Get up, please, you’re freezing”, she answers, and there’s so much concerning in her words that I almost believe her.
I stand up from the snow, my trousers are rigid as wood. Frozen.
She clasps my waist and when I clutch to her shoulders, she holds my hand with hers – and I don’t know why, but it’s so warm.
We walk slowly in the fragile light of the night, without talking. Just now I see how beautiful she is in her wedding dress.
I feel so pathetic.
See what a fool I’ve been.

”You don’t understand, don’t feel me now? I will breathe for the both of us. Travel the world. Traverse the skies. Your home is here, within my heart”.

**

In my room, the first thing I do is taking her soaking jacket off. Shane is watching me and her eyes are enormous, black bags under them, blue lips, moist messy hair full of brine.
“You need to warm up” I say, caressing her gelid face.
“How beautiful you are” she says as to herself, with a fragile voice. “You’re beautiful, Carmen, you are beautiful”, she repeats.
“And you look hypothermic…” I sigh, while a lump grows in my throat. “We need to warm up. Come on, a hot shower will be a perfect start”.
I clasp her hand and drag her to the bathroom.
There is something absurd and paradoxical about us, in the way we are dressed – my long, white dress, her black suite – and in our distressed, crying, semi-frostbitten faces. We look like survivors after a plane crash. We should be making wild sex in our bed, we shouldn’t be here.
But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. I’m by her side, everything will be alright.

”And for the first time I feel as now I am re-born in my mind…”

**

The hot water investing my cold skin feels painful. Carmen is facing me and never stops caressing my back, brushing my hair, my shoulders. Her big brown eyes never abandon mine, and this time I’m not avoiding her look. I want her to watch me, fully, I want her to see everything is there to be seen, I want her do discover every hidden and dark place inside of me because if she sees it and still wants me after that, then being totally naked in front of her is the only right thing to do.
She holds me tight, again, and it’s a déjà vu. But this time it’s not like then. This time it’s deflagrating, this time I got it.