In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno Page A

describing.”
    “You’re saying I’m a crazy person?”
    “Maybe a little.” She grins. “I guess I’m saying it’s kind of normal, but I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.”
    I smile back. “It does, actually.”
    She nods.
    “What did you have nightmares about?”
    “When?”
    “When you got back from Iraq—you said you had nightmares?”
    “Oh. I don’t remember too well, honestly. But they must have been bad because I used to choke my partner. Sometimes she’d tell me what’d happened the next day, other times I’d wake up to her yelling my name over and over. My arm would be around her throat like we were fighting.”
    I picture her finding out in the morning the things she had done to her lover during the night and fight the urge to change the subject. “Is there a name for that, too?”
    “Night terrors.” She rolls onto her back and looks up at the sky.“Shit-eating grins, human-eating dogs, and night terrors… honey, we’re so romantic.” At the last second her tone loses its sarcasm and hits a more genuine note. And something in me flinches. The feeling is not uncomfortable; it’s as if she’s reached in, discovered a long cord running from the base of my skull to my tailbone, and plucked it.
    I pinch sand into my palm and tip it out to meet the ground again. On the boardwalk, a man in head-to-toe gold sequins is about to do his routine for the third time.
    “You know, I noticed you in the store a lot,” she says. “When did that start, about three months ago?”
    I gape at her. “So you knew? That whole time?”
    “Knew what?” Her storytelling face is gone, replaced by the beginnings of a smile.
    “Oh, you’re an asshole.”
    “Now wait, I didn’t know anything. I just thought maybe—oh, you’re blushing. Hey, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to embarrass you.” I watch as her fingers make their way over to my forearm and rest on the inside of my wrist. When I lift my gaze to meet hers I find myself unable to move. We stay like that for a few moments, her barely-there fingertips drawing small circles on my thumping pulse.
    “I was going to ask you out,” she says, the breeze nudging her thick hair. “You were always there with that friend of yours. I thought of trying to make conversation but everything I thought of was just so cheesy. You beat me to it is all.” The late afternoon sun makes everything appear more supple, buoyed, three-dimensional, and the glow of her skin and green eyes leaps off her face as she stares at me. “Listen, this isn’t the best way to put it, but…”
    “What?”
    “Should we just get it over with?”
    * * *
    Time stretches itself long and quiet. We move slowly. We are skin to skin. Already, this is more than I can handle. I wrap my arms around her waist and feel her body swell as she breathes in. She rolls over on top of me, cupping my jaw with her fingers as she presses her mouth to mine. My thin sheets settle around our new shape.
    I keep reminding myself that I’ve done this before.
    “You’re trembling,” Ayla says, breaking off our kiss to study me.
    “No, I’m not.”
    She removes my right hand from her naked, warm waist and holds the fluttering traitor up between us. “No?”
    I silently demand my hand stop quivering. It does. We watch the five-pronged silhouette hanging in the air between us, now motionless. I take hold of her hips and tug, feeling the pressure of her hip bones against my palms, and bury my face in her neck. Ayla’s hands tighten and release, trail to a new spot, tighten and release, and when her fingers reach my left leg, just underneath her, she pauses. “Now your leg is shaking.”
    Yes, it is. I tell it to stop but it won’t—the agitated limb responds to the attention by trembling more. I shut my eyes tight and try to disappear.
    What she does with my vulnerability only makes me feel more exposed. She puts her mouth on my ear, tracing my earlobe with her tongue. She takes her time before