“I have never seen your place so illuminated.” Walking into my apartment with a platter of sliced apples topped with goat cheese and smoked trout, his eyes scanned the brightly lit walls. I smiled coyly. The only time you are here, I thought, was when the lights are down and so are we. 

As soon as his hands were emptied and the food set on the table, he swept me into his newly opened arms. I pulled him closer, my heart quickening. His beard pressed against my cheek and he pushed his nose into my neck. A kiss followed, right where I needed it. Laughter couldn’t help herself and spilled out of me into the yellow room. 

His lips, stretched upward in pleasure, raised to find mine. I’m not one for hide and seek, so I met him with my softness. Our hands explored, our chests bound themselves tightly, and our eyes delighted in the darkness of closed lids. This was the kind of kissing songwriters pen down and singers split open about. This was my kind of kissing. 

The guests started to arrive. 

“Someone let us in,” the married couple laughed their way through my door, “We did what we could not to get here so early!” She was wrapped neatly in a pink and black overcoat and he was clean shaven, handsome. Her eyes, permanently sparkling and simply captivating, were decorated with a chunky black mascara. His own reflected an upturned grin, offering all mirth from a good dad joke or two. 

They added their treats to the dining room table which was slowly filling with alcoholic and snack-able merriment, “Spiked Cider and cookies and we need a bowl for the trail mix.”

“We brought games!” this duo usually showed up as a pair. Stacked in his arms was Cards Against Humanity, the ultimate catalyst for belly-aching laughter later in the night. Each worked hard throughout the week and a Tuesday night party was both risky and much-needed. She happily accepted a spiked seltzer and he got right to cracking open a beer. 

“We’re here!” the two friends buzzed with an electricity that someone needs to bottle up and sell for ultimate mood boosters. I eyed the Costco wine bottle in her arms as it was donned with a festive sweater. “I lost the little hat,” she delivered this news and the cozy bottle over to me with a howl. The other gave way to a tinkling, infectious laugh and I caught it bad right there. 

One by one, and two by two, the other guests arrived. My apartment, once quiet with the purr of Benson the cat and the scrape of my pen against paper, was now a cavern of laughter.

There was no better place to be that night then in the midst of friends and frivolity.