The rowboat bumps its nose into the latticework of the low wooden fence that runs along the bank underneath the Fremont Bridge. The bridge itself looms about thirty feet above us, groaning and rumbling each time a car passes overhead, tickling me with a human soul concerto. A cold breeze ruffles my hair. I barely register any of this, enthralled by the idea of what Hunter said, hearing the blood rush to his cheeks, and feeling his eyes burn me with light in the velvety darkness. My mouth is dry. First, the impossibility of his proposition renders me speechless, then it turns into a vivid image of the possibility of it actually happening and my eyes widen to the rapid beating of my betraying heart. A myriad of memories of awkward attempts at making out while stoned stir my chilled muscles.

"If I could choose how to die, I'd choose to die from loving you. From...feeling your skin under my fingers. Like this." He places his hands on my shoulders, then changes his mind and pushes both sides of the clumsy, oversized fisherman jacket apart, tracing the lines of my collar bones underneath; and a different type of hunger sears me from neck to knees.

"Of course you want me, I'm a siren, right?" I swallow. "That's how it's supposed to be. It simply means that the charm is working, or the magic, of whatever you wanna call it." My voice comes out in the feeble shaking manner of a schoolgirl who's been called to the principal's office.

"No, no, no, you're missing the point. It's not like that." He takes his hands off my neck and holds my face, cupping it.

"I know it's hard for you to believe, and I understand why, but please, for the umpteenth time, please believe me when I say this. I don't care what shape you're in. You're Ailen to me, always have been, always will be. Always. I just want to feel you, all the way, at least once, before I die. Is that so hard to believe? Don't you want the same?" His voice catches at the end, his head tilted to one side, childlike and earnest.

"Me?" I suppress the urge to dive and hide under the boat. "You really want me, really?" I whisper, beginning to shake like a sick person shakes from a high fever.

"Yes, you, silly. Really." He looks at me with those blue eyes of his, and I lose it.

A catastrophic yearning to be held, to be loved, boils over and sweeps away my hatred, anger, anxiety, guilt, all in one smooth swipe, sending them up into the sky in an invisible stream, as if the lid held over my heart flew open. I tip forward and place my lips on his in answer.

Slowly, like a man who's dreaming, he takes me into his arms. Then he's kissing me. Wind gusts throw raindrops under the bridge and onto my face, but I hardly feel them. And before descending into an ache of falling that's sweet and final for both of us, the last feeling I register of this world is the peculiar sensation of being watched.

I ignore it.

Nothing matters right now. Only this closeness.

With Hunter's help, I shed the sticky, unpleasant jacket, then the pants, and then my logic and sanity, all together. I throw them on the bottom, as I try not to tear Hunter's hoodie off, wanting to feel the warmth of his energy.

"You want to do it right here, right now?" The last of my doubts escapes when we break the kiss to take a breath, Hunter wiggling out of his pants, goose bumps springing up on his skin and making him shiver.

"Yes, right here, right now," he says, and chucks his sneakers.

"Okay," I say, and then I can say no more, because we tumble in a bind between the boat's benches, our legs twisting on top of each other in an awkward dance of finding a comfortable position. The front bench begins cutting into my neck under Hunter's weight, so I twist my head, breaking the kiss, muttering, "Sorry, just a second."

I turn around and punch my fist into its wooden boards, breaking them clean in the middle with a crack that echoes down from the belly of the bridge. I twist back and ask, "Can you move out of my way for a sec?" Sitting up, I break the back bench as well, tearing at the remaining pieces with a fervor akin to one trying to break out of a coffin after being buried alive. Sodden wood creaks under my fingers, but it doesn't puncture my skin—I'm too tough for it.

"Whoah!" Hunter exclaims. "I like it. Do you always break stuff when—"

"Shut up!" I slap him, lightly. He grins, openly ogling me. We both grin like lunatics, naked, sitting in a boat in the middle of a lake canal, risking being discovered at any moment.

I gather the remaining wood chips and throw them overboard, clearing out as much space as I can, quickly, in the heat of rushing blood, not wanting Hunter to get any splinters or to lose the magic of the moment, like it's happened before. I'm determined for this to go all the way, before shame grips me in its paralyzing bind.

"There, that's better," I say. "One more thing."

Hunter throws his arms up with a sigh. "What now?"

I ignore him and pick up the fisherman's jacket from the bottom, tear off a long strip of the resin fabric with my teeth, and hum to move the boat closer to the fence, because we drifted away a few yards. I tie the strip loosely, pass it through the ring on the very tip of the bow and around a slimy wooden post, fighting off Hunter's hands groping me from behind, yet secretly liking it. "Just let me finish!"

"I'm sorry, I can't help it," he whispers.

As soon as I'm done tying the knot, he turns me around.

"Let's spread the jacket on the bottom so—"

"Fuck it," he says, falling over me, pinning me to the bottom of the boat. Its rows of ridges bite into my back and butt but I'm too feverish to care. Without another word, we descend into a tangled mass of kisses, sighs, and awkward searching that quickly grows into deliberate holds.

A few seconds go by and I feel so good in his embrace that I can't accept it and simply relax. It's too perfect to be true. My mouth betrays me, as always.

"Dude, you're so warm," I say, when Hunter's face leaves mine, tucking into the fold between my neck and shoulder. I guess I'm unable to stifle the reflex to talk-talk-talk, anything to shoo away my clumsiness.

"I was gonna say the same thing," he says from below.

"Me? What—"

"Wrong choice of words. In the opposite way. You're so cool to the touch, I like it."

"You're weird," I whisper, willing the last of my resistance to go.

"So are you. Now, will you shut up already?"

He buries his face in my stomach and I let my mind go.

Waves sway the boat gently, creating a steady rhythm, letting me float in it, beat in unison, feel alive, feel together. This is the very thing parents hope to prevent their teenagers from doing, and I get why. Without alcohol, without weed or acid or any other kind of bravery enhancer, without it all, lovemaking itself is like a drug—it gets you so high, gets you obsessed, and you can't stop doing it. But why can't we be addicted to it? Why is it looked so down upon, as something dirty, something forbidden, or to be ashamed of?

It feels like love. What's so bad with being addicted to love? It is love; it's body poetry.

I feel it fully for the first time, without being dizzy or high or drunk, and I grow divine.

If I could part into a million fingers, only to entwine with Hunter in a million possible ways, I would. If I could turn into wind, to penetrate our connectedness in every gap, to fill it with my hushed exhales, I'd do it in a heartbeat. If I could trail his kisses to draw a map of our love, I'd stare at it every day until I'd go blind. Even then, I'd still stare, tracing the paths with my fingers, immobile, dwelling on the memory of our final doom, beautiful and humid, filling every space inside my dead heart with life, with love, with music so heavenly, it has no name. Only an exotic sound—outlandish in its timbre—that explodes in your ears with a splendor of pleasure beyond which immortality fades into nothing.

"I love you," Hunter whispers in my ear. "It was great. It was fucking awesome."

"I love you, too. Yeah...it was," I whisper back, barely conscious of both our bodies collapsed against each other, slick with Hunter's sweat and a sheen of salty moisture on my skin. We're panting into each other's hair, tired.

The low moon shines on us with her watchful eye through a break in the clouds, creeping to the edge of the bridge's shadow where we hide.

Shivering, we help each other get dressed. I stick Hunter's head into his hoodie and help him wiggle in since his fingers fail to find the neck opening. He hugs himself, pulling up his knees to his chest. I secure the fisherman pants around my waist and sling over the cold, unbending jacket before mirroring his position.

We sit across from each other, dazed.

"I can't believe we actually did it. It's like, unreal," I say, trying to separate myself from the dizziness, blinking at the reflections on the water to make sure they're there.

"No, it's something special, something better than smoking weed. We just had the best joint ever, Ailen, and it's called making love." Hunter reels with this smug satisfaction that only a horny teenager can have after waiting months for a special moment. He pronounces it makiiing loooove, in his typical theatrical manner, and grins.

"Did we just have sex, like, right here, on the boat?" I say, still unable to believe it.

"Thee misses the correct expression, my dearest. It is but called making love. In the darkness of the night, under the bridge, to the gleeful eye of the moon itself, spying on us like a barren bitch who never saw two people shagging," he says in the low baritone of a stage performer, pointing at the moon.

"Stop it! Stop talking like this. Or I'll slap you." I scowl, but I know Hunter recognizes it as fake. In fact, I loved the whole experience but am scared to openly admit it.

"Go ahead, that'll make me horny again." I can see his grin in the darkness, wide and crooked, his teeth shining white and reflecting the faint moonlight.

"Though I admit, you felt kinda cold, you know, as compared to the other times. Must be a siren thing and all, dead body. So I get it. Man, does that make me a necrophiliac?" he says.

"What? Fuck you!" I push him in the chest.

"Gladly. Here, let me get myself worked up again, okay? Just a second." He rubs his hands for warmth, then his belly and sides, stomps his feet and shakes the boat, with a genuine concentration and the small sounds of an athlete warming up for a marathon.

"Uh-uh-uh. Almost there, thank you for your patience." He looks so comical that I laugh.

"Stop it! You're making my stomach hurt," I say, forgetting to be quiet. My voice rolls under the bridge, echoing in a series of bells, reverberating through the night around us. Hunter's burned soul melody envelops me with a familiar warmth, off-key but desirable. For a few minutes, I stop caring about what will happen. Sitting here together, on the boat, makes me happy. I feel at home. Hunter's voice, his very presence, tunes out other noises—the whizzing of late cars, the discord of human unrest as it presses from the land, unoriginal, fragmented, stale, turning and twisting in its insomnia.

I tilt my head and look at the moon. Its light falls on the water in a silvery film, a path with broken dancing edges. A few rain droplets hit its surface and make it quiver. It's beautiful.

I think back to looking down at this very spot from the Aurora Bridge, aching inside, feeling the desire to end my life. Feeling overwhelmed by it, to the point of not being able to stand living another minute, wanting to go underwater and never surface. To be rid of this mind and body that I hate so much; to be rid of myself.

"Hunter?"

"Huh? Hang on, I'm not ready yet..." he starts. When he sees my face, his expression turns somber.

"What is it? What's wrong?" He takes my hand. I let him hold it, clutching his fingers.

"Do you ever feel like you're faking it?" I say, looking at the point where the silver road of the moon reflection ends on the horizon, vanishing into the narrow corridor of the canal.

"Faking what?"

"You know, life. Like you're pretending to live just to get by. To show everyone that you can, but really you don't give a damn. Really, you don't care."

"Is that how you felt? When, you know..." He takes my other hand into his, cradling both of them, and the contrast in our body temperature makes me want to cry all over again.

"What's one reason not to die?" I say quietly. "I remember skipping stones with you into this lake. I was so happy then. What happened to me, Hunter? When did I change? When I was ten, twelve, fifteen? When?" A wave of tears burns behind my eyes, I blink to chase them away.

"You mean, when you decided to turn it off, 'cause it hurt so bad it was easier to survive this way?" he asks.

A light breeze sways our boat. The night is peaceful and quiet, broken up only by an occasional car passing over our heads and the masts of moored boats clinging together in a metallic sounding jingle.

"I wish I knew how it came to this. Look at me," I say and nod toward my body. "I'm a dirty plastic bag of a person who got stuck in a puddle, torn. A plastic bag without a bottom because it fell out, and without handles because they both broke. Remember that dancing plastic bag in American Beauty? The movie?"

"Yeah. What about it?"

"It's like that, only afterward, it's filled with too much water and stomped on in the dirt." I look at my hands held in his.

"That's not true." Hunter reaches for my face, but I turn away.

"Yes, it is. I couldn't hold that weight anymore, that's why. I turned empty, dry. Like an abandoned well. You lean over and look inside, and you know there must be water there, deep down. You throw a rock, but you never hear a splash. Because it's all gone. It's barren."

I take one of my hands out of Hunter's hold and dip it into the lake, to feel it, to connect.

"I can fill you in. I just did, didn't I?" Hunter says and falls silent, perhaps realizing that this is the wrong moment to be funny.

I pretend I don't hear.

"Sorry, I'm sorry. Bad joke. Stupid." He passes a hand through his hair. "What do you want me to do? How can I help?"

"I wish we could just drop it all and swim away. Into the open ocean, you know? I wish I could swim away from myself, but I can't," I say, twirling my hand.

The boat careens left and right in the tiniest waves, soothing. Street lights flicker on and off on the surface of the lake. Stars sprinkle the sky.

"Promise me something?" Hunter says.

"What?"

He palms my face, darkness reflecting around his pupils.

"Promise me that, right after what I will tell you, after you hear what I have to say, you won't argue with me, okay?" He lets out a big exhale and waits.

"I promise," I say, holding my breath.

It takes another second for Hunter to start talking again, and he says it quietly, but firmly. "When you go, I go."

"What? So you did mean it for real. Hunter, you can't! What about your mom?" I ask.

"Please. I asked you not to argue." He makes an impatient face.

"But—" I begin.

He pulls me closer. Our noses touch—mine cold, his warm. Then our lips. Then our tongues. Moonlight splatters our faces joined in a bizarre moment of dare, a dare to those who don't believe in love anymore. I lose myself in it.

A moment later, a fraction of a thought passes through my mind, wondering how come the moon is shining on top of us, we're supposed to be in the shadow of the bridge. It feels like déjà vu, like the kiss that we exchanged in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just before the trawler got on top of us, before Canosa tipped over our boat. I ignored it back then too, I...wait, Canosa! Where is she now? A sinking feeling freezes me. The strap of orange material I tore from the fisherman's jacket must have failed, got torn, or maybe...

The boat revolves around, first slowly, then picking up speed, tracing a full circle. That nagging feeling of being watched returns full force, and I break the kiss.

"Hunter!" I grab his hand, warning him.

"Wh—" he begins and stops talking.

With a quiet hum and glistening eyes, three sirens circle the boat, the remaining ones we're supposed to hunt down and kill. Naturally, no need for that now, since they found us themselves—Teles, Ligeia, and, of course, Canosa, my big sister. She smiles broadly and gives me an encouraging nod.

"Continue. Please, continue, we didn't mean to interrupt," her voice jingles merrily. "It's rather entertaining. Wet and sloppy, but in the absence of any other variety, I'll take it. We'll take it. Right, girls?" she says.

Ligeia and Teles giggle their approval.