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He slides one from his own wrist and onto mine. Then another and one more, until I have three pieces of him bookending the watch, two above, one below.

Carved wooden beads.

Lava stone and red jasper.

It leaves him with three bracelets and I find myself reaching for him with no care that we are in a crowded pub. I wrap my hand around his solid flesh and bone and rub my thumb over the plaited bracelet he’s left behind. “I have one of these at home. Ivy gave it to me.”

“What colour is it?”

“Blue…” I break my fixation with the sorcery of Poet’s muscular forearm and the burnished thread woven into the bracelet. “Like the Baltic Sea. Why is yours brown?”

Poet replies as the band kicks into gear for real.

I lean closer. “I cannot hear you.”

His gaze flickers and he shakes his head.

I do not know what he means. Just that not understanding him is unacceptable and he deserves so much more from me.

Sol is close by again. I feel his attention on me as I take Poet’s hand and lead him away from the bar. Through a crowd that is not always kind to men who are this affectionate with each other, my grip loose enough that Poet can let go if he wants.

He doesn’t and we are outside in the next breath, balmy inland air doing battle with the cool breeze drifting in from the ocean. We are walking and we do not stop until we are no longer with the crowds. Until we reach the low wall running along the harbour.

Only then does he squeeze my hand and release it. “Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I can’t shout—I mean, I probably can. I just hate it and I’ve forgotten how to make myself do it.”

Poet looks away as he speaks and it jars me; I am too used to his entrancing eye contact. I brush my knuckles along his jaw. “Because you can’t hear yourself?”

He frowns at something in the distance. A beat passes, then I get him back. He leans into my light touch and faces me again. “What?”

I am an idiot.

I repeat myself. Apologise.

But he silences me, tapping a finger to my lips. “Don’t do that.”

“Which part?”

“Don’t apologise for not thinking like a deaf person. I don’t need it.”

I take a breath.

He presses that finger harder to my mouth and the urge to draw it between my lips lands so abruptly I have to blink it away.

Focused on me, Poet sees it all and replaces his finger with a thumb, rubbing my bottom lip. A simple gesture. The barest motion. But as the moonlight hits the ocean beyond us, I feel it everywhere.

I reach for his hand again and draw him closer. Swallow the apologies he doesn’t want and wrap my hand around his wrist, pinning his arm in place, trapping his thumb at my lips.

Biting down on it comes so easily it should scare me. But I am not scared. Only certain that wherever this leads us tonight, I do not want it to happen on the street. On the beach. Or in the shadows of the closed-down market stalls.

I release his thumb as his blue eyes gleam with knowing heat. “Come home with me?”

Come home with me.

I haven’t uttered those words to anyone in a very long time. Perhaps if I had, the last five years of my life would’ve been different. A spark instead of a mis-step that turned someone else’s existence upside down.