Through Glass(23)

Touch.

Sometimes I would go to sleep trying to remember what touch felt like. What his touch had felt like.

I reached my hand underneath my flattened pillow and pulled out the black ink pen I had found in the old office during my scavenge last week. I pressed the tip against the dirty skin of my wrist, the ink dragging onto my skin as I pushed the point down, tracing over the lines that Cohen had put there all those years ago.

I followed the swoop of the lines, my fingers having done it so many times I no longer needed to watch; I knew where the pen needed to go.

I let the ink cover my wrist, making the drawing I had been left with darker than it was before. I had gotten really good at keeping my left hand steady as I drew on my wrist. As I traced, I let my memory flow back to that night; to the way his fingers felt against mine, the taste of his kiss…

My revelry was cut short by the deep buzzing that sounded through my room. The low sound was as loud as a fog horn in my ears and I jumped up, hitting the pillow that housed the old wind up alarm clock in a quick attempt to turn it off. The buzzing stopped automatically and I tensed, my body waiting for one minute, waiting for the screech that would herald my death, but it never came.

My shoulders relaxed and I slid off my bed. My tired body pulling itself onto the large desk before I opened the heavy curtain that covered the window.

Cohen was already there, waiting for me. His eyes shining through the darkness that we were both surrounded by. His lips twitched in a smile when he saw me and his hand moved to press against the glass.

I moved my hand to do the same, my skin pressing against the cold, smooth surface the same way we did every day. I looked at his hand, the forever stained fingertips from his charcoal, the calluses. I longed to touch it, to be with him, but it was impossible.

So many others had proven that.

My eyes moved to meet his, my smile small against my lips as I watched his hand move up to form letters; it was the slow movement of the sign language we’d had to resort to after our markers had dried up.

“How is Frances?” he asked, his lips turning up as if he had discovered a great joke.

“She’s a diva,” I signed back, exaggerating my facial expressions as I played along. “Still pouting that she didn’t listen to my web choice.”

“Diva,” he agreed, his eyes rolling dramatically as he signed the word.

“She is!” I signed quickly through a smile. “Whoever thought an eight legged monster could be a diva?”

“Whoever thought you would make friends with an eight legged diva?”

He raised his eyebrow at me with the question and I rolled my eyes at him, exaggerated enough that he would catch it. He smiled brighter and pressed his fingers to his lips before pressing them against the glass.

“Don’t go, not yet,” I pleaded, my heart thumping quickly at his usual farewell.

“I’m not leaving, Lex.” His shoulders heaved as he signed, his eyes sad. “I just miss you. I wish I could hold you. I wish I could kiss you. I wish…”

I looked away. I didn’t want to see the words that I felt in my heart every day. I didn’t want to feel the twist in my heart at the reminder of the life I was missing, the love I was missing. I wanted to find comfort in what we had. It was hard enough without the twang of loss I felt every day. Every day I fought the need to simply run over there and be with him; not to be alone anymore. I would fight the Ulama to the death to have that opportunity, and after seeing them take the life of everyone around us, I knew that was exactly what would be waiting for me. Death. I looked at the dirty windowsill as I waited for him to stop.

His hands stopped moving and he looked at me with his shoulders slumped. I knew I should have let him finish, but I couldn’t. Not today. Maybe not ever. It hurt too much to wish for something impossible.

There were days when I thought Cohen was right; that things would change, that we would get out of here. Other days, I was sure that this reality was all that there was left; trapped in a house with no way to escape, no way to fight back. Even if I had made enough clubs to outfit a small army.

We merely looked at each other as a million words passed between us; love, loss, loneliness. I let them flow through the air as our hands pressed against the window pane. Nothing other than air and glass between us, a ten foot gap of certain death keeping us apart.

“I miss you, too, Cohen,” I signed back slowly, trying to comfort him, to make up for stopping him.

His lips turned up in a small smile at my words, the overgrown scruff on his chin crinkling his face a bit.

“I started work on your birthday present,” he signed, his smile growing with each word.

It was weird how just seeing those words spelled out, hearing them in my head, made me all wiggly inside. I would be turning twenty in just a few months. Twenty and I still felt perpetually eighteen. I had been trapped in this house for over two years.

Two years that I tried not to think about.

“Yeah?” I signed, not sure if I wanted to hear more, yet unable to keep my morbid curiosity at bay.

He nodded once. “I found some paints.”

My eyes widened as he lifted up a small, cardboard container to eye level. The petite container was bursting with white, metal tubes. As I took in the sight, his grin only increased more, if that was possible.

I couldn’t help smiling right alongside him. It had been at least a year since he had found paints. He had been mixing old medication and gruel into a type of charcoal for quite a while. Cohen needed to paint like I needed the human contact with him. They both kept us sane.