Tastes

Departing in the dead-ass earliest of mornings he could still taste her...weaving through the travelers and the luggage and the security gates and over-head announcements...even past the Starbucks line and its scent of coffee and pastries floating gently in the terminal...he could still taste exactly how she tasted...the slight granular and poke of salt on her lips, the cold of the iced-down tequila with the contrast of her slightly warmer tongue...he walked past a gate jammed with travelers and found his a few hundred feet later.

In the antiseptic confines of seats and airline brands he put in his headphones...he had finally joined Spotify and found it amusingly underwhelming...but he was tired.  They had barely slept.

Hours earlier...she had asked..."do you want a lick?"

She had raised an eyebrow, a skill he had never possessed...she was holding the salt rimmed cup in one hand and a lemon in the other...she was still dressed which was disappointing but that was only a matter of time.

Sure, he responded...but where?

She set the cup and the lemon on the counter and started unbuttoning her shirt...she unbuttoned a few buttons but then reached behind her to loosen her bra.  Both items of clothing were loosely clinging to her, like defying gravity and beneath them...well.

She reached over to the lemon and started just below her neck, squeezing it slightly to leave a residue and she pulled it downward to where her unbuttoned shirt hung barely.  She smiled at him, a dare.  Then she reached over to the pile of salt and pinched a portion...she applied it on top of the lemon's glaze...some stuck and others tumbled down her, some going into the void, others falling off of her to the floor.

She patted her hands together to free the last bits of salt and then she took the top of her shirt and pulled it so it fell over her shoulders...just barely...

I'll let you decide, she said.

He kissed her first.  On her lips, and her response was to move closer.  He kissed the corner of them and let gravity slide him down her, along her chin and onto her upper neck...he avoided the obvious and went to her just below the ear...and eventually found the top of the salt and started there...he could feel the movement of her breathing flare.

In the airport somebody was talking about who got to board first, who needed extra time...who needed to check luggage if at a certain point the cabins were full.

He inhaled, hoping to detect a whiff of lemon, a tartness of salt infused with it.  He thought he could.

He got up and boarded with the others, with their morning coffee and orange juice tastes in their mouth while his remained filled with her.