The morning after the first kiss the world did not look different.
That was the part that unsettled me most.
I woke in the hostel bed with the ordinary gray light pushing at the curtains and the ordinary sound of someone running a shower down the hall, and for a disorienting second I could almost pretend the night before had been one more careful evening of shoulders and counted seconds. Then I sat up and the memory arrived in a clean, physical wave: the weight of his mouth, the controlled question of it, the way my hands had fisted in his shirt while the old panic stood in the corner and watched without taking the controls. My lips still felt altered. My body still carried the imprint of his arm along my back. Nothing about the hostel room had changed. Everything about the map I was usi
