If We Could Fly
"Paloma. Did you know that's a bird?" He lets out a breath, leaving it hanging in the chilled air between them.
She laughs, the sound forming its own clouds before dissipating. "You think I don't know that?"
He does; everyone knows the meaning and sound of their own name. "Would you fly, if you could?"
She raises her shoulders, her anorak rustling. The wind blows his bangs into his face. "Am I the only one? That can fly?"
He tips his head up and scoffs, boots crunching the snow beneath his feet. The sun is blinding. "You're supposed to say yes. Everyone wants to fly, theoretically."
"What if you're afraid of heights?" She pulls a hand out of her pocket to pull a lock of hair away from her mouth.
"Are you?" Her lips reflect the winter sun, he thinks, in the reflection of her lip gloss.
"Of course I'm not, I'm a bird."
His hand's somewhere near her elbow and she hasn't noticed. She's dipped away from him, further down the road and out of reach. He speeds up and finds her laughing. All the words on his tongue dry up and turn to snowflakes.
She catches one on her tongue.
"Are you going to tell me?" she asks, and his legs freeze up, icicles holding him in place. She stops walking when he does, head cocked to the side.
"Tell you what?" he asks slowly, his breath foggy. She's facing him, and the sun too, and she sparkles in the light.
"If I could fly, would I be the only one? Or could other people do it too?"
Their feet start up in time with each other, slowly pressing their footprints into the road. He glances behind them, just to see the path they've carved in the snow. "No, you're the only one."
She bites her bottom lip, watching the snow fall. He brushes his coat against hers. "Then no, I wouldn't fly."
He shakes his head and laughs. "What? Just because you'd be the only one? But it would be like a superpower!" He wants to knock his arm against hers, or push her playfully, but he burrows his hands into his pockets because the air's too sharp and cold.
"I think--" she looks over at him, and he stops breathing for a second. "--it would be lonely, if I was me and I was the only one up there. I mean, it's probably beautiful and everything, but I'd want to take people with me into the sky, right?"
"Would you take me?" he blurts out, and the cold has gotten to his face, because it's numb. He stops walking, trying to pull warmth from somewhere, staring at her, but being frozen from the inside out. Or outside in.
Snowflakes are in her hair, melty and glittering like stardust, and her cheeks are red from the winter air and her lip glossy mouth keeps outshining the sun and pulling all of his attention.
"Yeah, if you become a bird with me," she laughs, snowflakes on her tongue.
He watches his feet grind into the snow and finds the will to pull them out and make them step forward. They're continuing down the road, hands at their sides, walking, and his hand almost touches hers so many times that the wind knocks them together eventually, knuckle against knuckle and then cold again.
"I'd become a bird with you," he says into the wind. "Paloma." And she smiles.