I can feel his raspberry lips. 
We lie in a tangled mess of limbs, but all I can think about are his lips, lingering on every inch of my body like the very cells themselves.  He is sleeping now, but he faces me in the darkness.  I can make out the outlines of his features and can trace the exact points where they meet.  What was it that got us to this place?  Perhaps his smile that goes on for days, his eyes that I see when I close mine, or the happiness creases in his cheeks and forehead.  Or perhaps it was just his raspberry lips, and the way that they felt under mine.   
When we sat across from each other last night, he told me about happiness creases. 
“Smile,” he said. 
“I can’t just smile,” I said. 
“Yes you can.  I love you,” he said, and I did, I smiled.  He reached his hands up and ran them over my temples.  “They’re called happiness creases.  You can see them when you smile.” 
“I’ve never heard that before.”
“It’s an undeniable facet of the human face.”  His fingers had dropped now but slowly, first resting on my cheeks and then my knees before they made their way back to his body.  “You see, when you smile at something but you don’t really mean it, your face contorts differently.  But when something really, truly, unequivocally makes you happy, you subconsciously want to let everyone know.”  I laughed. 
“It’s a nice thought.”
“It’s true.”  His gaze stood firmly on my face, not into my eyes but just past them.  He looked so taken with me, with my happiness creases.  I could stare at his eyes forever.  “You’ve got lots of them,” he said. 
I didn’t say anything for a moment.  There was a part of me that wanted to stare at him endlessly as if he were a piece of art; in many ways I thought he was.  Too perfect to be sitting in front of me, but too real to be a painting on a wall.  Most of me was glad that he was there, that his raspberry lips were something that I could taste myself and that his happiness creases were something that I could see come and go.  I know that when you grow older you sometimes lose your taste for things, but I can’t imagine ever losing my taste for him.  
I should be sleeping too now, but I find him distracting.  Even asleep, his movements are so pristine that I could be watching them on film.  They look as though he did them a hundred times before he was finally able to get them right.  I wonder if he thinks there is something so beautiful about me as I do about him.
I want to wake him up.  I want to tell him that he’s special to me, or that last night meant something, or that I think that I can see my happiness creases now when I look in the mirror. 
After he told me about them, I went to the bathroom to search my face. 
“I can see them now,” I said, opening the door.  He looked at me the way I would imagine people look at someone that they love. 
“Come here,” he said.  I sat down next to him.  I took his hand and put it to my chest.
“I’m scared.”  He smiled and kissed me, his hand still on my chest, and we felt my heart slow together.  He had a calming effect, like meditation, like nature sounds when you go to sleep.  He was safe.  I felt safe wrapped up in him, in the warmth of our bodies when they were tied together. 
“Are you still scared?” he asked.  I shook my head. 
I had never been so close to someone before.  I could feel his body like a roadmap on mine, and in it I could feel every turn and side street and all the different paths that I could take.  I felt his lips against my own, and then felt the space between them as he moved them over every inch of me, and even when they had found their way back to my mouth I could feel myself stinging with raspberries. 
“Do you really love me?” I asked.  I looked up at him.  He was smiling, but there were no happiness creases lining his face.  He kissed me hard in response, and I thought that meant yes.  I thought what we were doing meant yes, that I had chosen him and he had chosen me so of course, yes, we loved each other. 
“I love you,” I say to him now, but still he doesn’t respond. 
When we were done, he held me.  He wrapped his arm around me and pulled me into him. 
“You’re amazing,” I heard breathed into my ear. 
I rested my head against his chest so that I could remember what it felt like to be pressed up against him.  It smelled like sweat and lust but also like perfume and devotion.  We laid in a silence that pounded so loudly through my head that I thought my eardrums would burst. 
The silence isn’t as deafening now.  It is accompanied by the sounds of his deep breathing while he sleeps, of the thoughts screaming in my head.  I think about how I had been wooed by happiness creases and lips that tasted like fresh picked fruit.  I’m not sure if I really love him; I had said it to test it out and I’m not sure yet if it felt right, if it felt true. 
He rolls over so that he is facing away from me, so that we are no longer touching.  I am still facing him; I stare at his back rising and falling until I see a light on the other side of him.  We are both awake now. 
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“I didn’t know you were up,” he says. 
“Couldn’t sleep.”  I press my forehead against his back and breathe in.  Raspberries.  The light goes out and he rolls back.  He turns his head and looks at me, this time right into my eyes.  It is a staring contest I cannot win, no matter how much I want to.  He puts his hand on my face and runs his thumb over my cheek, then kisses me. 
He has dark eyes, like coffee before you add in the milk and sugar, and when he talks about something that he loves, they light up, and I think that they get three shades lighter.  His eyes are his happiness creases, his way of telling the world that something has made him really, truly, unequivocally happy.  Now, even in the dark, I can see them, and they are glowing. 
He kisses me again, and suddenly he has found his way on top of me.
“Wait,” I say.
“What’s wrong?” he says.  His lips are still moving; after the words stop coming out they move over my neck like they did the night before.   
“I don’t want to.”
“When you grow up, you don’t always get what you want.”
“But you do?”  He stops then.  He pushes himself up on his arms so that we are hardly touching anymore.  He stares down at me, his eyes black and any trace of creases gone from his face. 
“We’re in love,” he says.
“I know.”
“So come on,” he says, calming.  His voice softens and he puts his nose in the nook of my neck.  “It’ll be better than the first time.”
“I don’t want to,” I repeat. 
He falls to his spot next to me. 
“I’m sorry,” he says.  He turns away from me and the light shines again. 
Does he still love me? 
I wonder what it was that got us to this place.  Perhaps the way his lips felt bitter this time around, how dark his eyes looked when they weren’t glowing, or that I thought that happiness creases might not even be real.
I trace my fingers over his back but he doesn’t react.  After a few seconds he puts the phone down and takes a deep breath.  I can feel my fingers float as he inhales and sink moments after. 
“I should go,” he says. 
“You don’t have to.”
“It’s okay.”  He stands up and gets dressed but comes back to me one last time.  “Last night was fun.”
“Do you really love me?” I ask.  I’ve asked again and again, but still he never answers out loud. 
“You’re amazing.”  He thinks this will suffice as an explanation for my first time and our last. 
I think that I never loved him and that raspberries don’t taste so sweet anymore.