The gray vinyl on the walls was peeling with moat and the wooden floor reeked of stagnant water. We sat at the back of the room with legs interlocked with each other. I thumbed his hair as he traced my legs and my knees. We stared at the grandfather clock in the center of the room —  beating as loud as it can as my heart thumped and my knees quivered while he traced my inner thigh.

        “You know, when I kiss you, that clock stops ticking,” he told me as he played the hem of my skirt.

        'Oh, really?' I challenged him, gently taking his hand from my thighs.

        “Look at it!” he exclaimed. He pressed his lips on mine and he closed his eyes while I kept mine open and fixed its direction to the clock. The weights stopped right on its track and the hands stopped ticking. He released my lips from the lock of his. “Did you see that?” he asked, staring at me intently and gently.

        I answered, 'Yeah, it was like magic, a spell, just casted then… bam!’ He closed his eyes and laid his head on my thighs. He chuckled.

        “That’s how it is when I kiss you, time just stops. And I want that to happen every time I’m with you,” he says.

        ‘Then let’s just kiss the whole time,’ I answered with a soft smile.

        “No, I want to enjoy you as a whole. Not just when I’m kissing you or when my hands fiddle around your body,” he answered back, shifting his body towards my tummy. “I want all of you. I want to know more of you, and I want to discover more of you,” he added with a tender smile. I smiled back at him and gave him a quick kiss on the forehead.

        “Can you sing for me?” he pleaded. I closed my eyes and sung him his favorite song — to the beat of the grandfather clock. It was then that I knew that this would be the boy I would love in my entirety.


        *And I was right.