Chapter Seven

Sunday I had to suck it up and do what I’d avoided yesterday. Got into the usual weekend outfit of jeans and a tee shirt. Scooping up net bags and my wallet and starting my errands. Irritated with myself for putting it off. But it would get done, so who cared? Friday had been a massive disruption and so no wonder Saturday was disrupted, I argued with myself. 

Everything was fine until I got to the grocery store. Once again feeling my antenna tingling but unsure as to the cause. I was nearly finished, basket over my arm when I felt a hand on my elbow. I whipped around, expecting to be able to shake it off but it just clung harder. 

Looking straight up into Kieran’s face.

“What?” I asked, too quietly, obviously frightened. 

God, he was even better looking in the unflattering light of the grocery store. Also almost in dress-down clothes himself. A button-up, a sport jacket, but jeans instead. I watched a woman a little older than me give him the down-up-down and then raise an eyebrow at me. Somehow encompassing both “good job” and “how’d you catch this one?” all in one move. 

“This place is so bourgeois,” he said. “They even have a café here. I’ll buy you a refreshment before you head on home.”

“Thank you, but–” I started to say, twisting my arm in his fist.

“Not a request,” he said, smiling warmly. 

“Really I… I have other things on my agenda today,” I said.

“And now I’m on that agenda, sweetheart,” he said, still smiling. Looking like someone about to give a gracious speech. “And it won’t take but a tick.” 

“‘Kay,” I whispered.

We walked to the far side of the building. It was where there were pre-made lunches and dinners. But they had a counter to get drinks, and a few small tables. I settled at a high top, hands shaking as I put my basket under my feet.

“Coffee or tea kind of girl?” he asked.

“Neither is necessary,” I said.

“Tea it is then… Something to relax you,” he said, going to the counter. 

For a long minute I sat in my chair. Watching him going up and ordering. I shook myself physically, starting with my head, moving down to my shoulders. What was I doing? Waiting for him! I slid off the chair, bent toward the basket, decided against it and headed toward the exit. 

Lucky was suddenly standing in front of me.

“Hello,” I said, smiling nervously. Ducking to the left. Blocked. Right. Blocked.

Giving up, I headed back toward the table. Kieran was already sitting there, sorting out his coffee. Pouring handfuls of sugar into it, leaving it black. 

“Welcome back,” he said cheerfully.

“What can I do for you?” I asked sarcastically. Watching him stirring his mountains of sugar.

“My cousin never came home last night,” he said.

“Do you live together?” I asked.

“No. But it does seem prudent to keep track of your loved ones… Or don’t you find it so? What with the lack of family you appear to have?” he asked leadingly, head tilted up to the overhead lights. 

I went cool. Entirely forgetting about the implicit threat of him knowing that Declan hadn’t returned home after the ball last night. Making mention of how very alone I was now. 

“I’m not interested in having a personal conversation with you,” I said coolly. 

He pushed my tea toward me.

“This is such a fancy little place you shop at!” he said, back to cheeriness. “They have a chamomile, lemon and probiotic tea. How lovely. Drink.” 

Numbly, I did so. Instantly burning my tongue on it. His command to “drink” hadn’t been cheery. It had been exactly that– a command. 

“Anyway, sweetheart, it’s not really a matter of conversation. There are things I already know. Adopted by your paternal grandparents when you were quite young. Entirely out of contact with your parents for the whole of your childhood. That is, until of course, their untimely deaths.” 

“Mr. Quinn–” I said. 

He took a sip of coffee, made a moue and started pouring more sugar in.

“See, one of the things I just love about growing up in a small town, with a tight-knit community, there’s always some kind of connection between us all. I really strive to find those out. We all have a little history between us. Even if we don’t know it at first,” he said. 

“Mr. Quinn,” I tried again.

He smiled, giving me a “shush” finger.

“Of course, when you first introduced yourself, I got your name. But Jones? What’s Jones? How many Joneses must there be in this state? In this country? I would imagine the number would astound,” he said, pushing my tea toward me again. 

“However, there really aren’t that many Jones’ in our neighborhood. Especially not with your specific history, sweetheart,” he said. 

I sucked my breath in and stood up.

“I’ll finish what I have to say,” he said. His tone finally shifted from something other than warm conversation. This was a threat. “I’ll finish what I have to say because who you are, and what you are, are a problem for both my livelihood, and my family. And so you will hear it.” 

“I’m not anyone… I’m not anyone,” I whispered. 

“You aren’t,” he agreed. “Your parents are. You’re nothing. They’re a problem.”

“They’re dead,” I whispered.

“Yes, that does appear to be so. One in a pauper’s grave, the other one ashes in your closet, I believe,” he said. 

My mother buried somewhere on behalf of the state. I didn’t know where. I didn’t even think it was marked. My father’s ashes in a taped-up box with the address from the prison he’d died in.  

“As if you’re any cleaner,” I hissed. “As if your family tree is any better looking than mine.”

“Oh, it’s not,” he said mildly. “It most certainly is not. I guess the only real difference is mine is a dirty mess but at least it’s successful. Yours is… Just a dirty mess.” 

“Fuck you,” I said, very low, eyes darting around.

“Gladly,” he said, smiling again. “I would still gladly do so. I think you’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen in perhaps… three years. But that’s not what we’re here for, nor even what is up for discussion.”

My hands were fisting under the table, cutting half-moons into my palms. My teeth grinding together so hard it felt like they’d give-to in a plosive, porcelain pop under the pressure. 

“If it were even a matter of my cousin being out on the town with someone with a… Less than savory background, I still perhaps wouldn’t object as harshly as I am now. However, your unsavory background is a little more worrisome than the usual gutter trash. If you act as if you don’t know who killed your father–”

“I don’t know,” I said, finally raising my voice. Getting a few people to look at us as they trundled by with carts or ate pasta salad and scrolled their phones. 

“Really?” he asked. He seemed to be asking in genuine interest.

“It’s hardly any business of yours but I don’t even have a clear memory of my father’s face. He was never a part of my life. And his death hardly changed that. Details were neither asked for nor given to me,” I said.

“Hm,” he said, tapping his cleanly shaved and beautifully shaped chin. “How interesting. Let me enlighten you on one of your life’s little mysteries, then. Your father was killed in prison by a Quinn. Because, of course, your father had done some work in the past for the Quinns. We were all neighbors at one point, weren’t we? And then when he found himself rather uncomfortably in the slammer and running out of options, he was considering singing to those who would listen about the Quinn business. I’m sure you can understand how it was that action had to be taken. But perhaps you can also understand why I can’t have the daughter of a betrayer sucking the dick of my cousin.”

I snarled, really showing my teeth like an animal. Standing up, hands and shoulder forward, hands in fists and rising rapidly.

“Don’t hit me here,” he said, very quietly. “You really don’t want to do that.”

I was ready to throw a punch right into the bridge of his nose. I saw a few people nearby watching very warily. A man’s hand hovering over his phone like he was about to call someone. I could feel how my hips were twisted, feet planted. I was about to do violence to him. 

“If you should want to do damage, don’t do it where there are witnesses,” he said, still very quietly.

I took a deep breath. Looking away from him. If I kept looking at him, I would most assuredly hit him. 

“Sometimes dogs need physical correction,” he said. “They’re not like children. They don’t know language, they cannot be reasoned with. If you have a Hound, there must be a Rod keeping him in line. I don’t particularly relish the job. I did not enjoy what just happened. But you’re a smart woman. And a careful one. And I think you can appreciate the position we’re all in. Put the Hound in his crate.”

He stood up, bending low and retrieving my basket of food. Hanging it off my elbow. 

“Head on home sweetheart, it’s been a tough afternoon for you.” 

I went home, piling blankets and pillows into my tub and lay down in it. Covering my face in my comforter and keeping the lights off. Kind of not thinking for a while. Reached a hand out of the blanket to grab my water bottle sitting on the edge of the tub. Took an enormous sip. 

There was a lot to think about. That Kieran had spied on me. Had he conveyed the information he learned to Declan as well? Did he talk to him first, and then me? What would Declan think? He wasn’t unaware of the fact that I’d been raised by my grandparents– I’d told him as much. And he hadn’t pried. Not that I would have been able to tell him much. 

I hadn’t lied to Kieran when I was discussing my family. They were mostly a mystery. And there had been a reason why my grandparents kept me so isolated. Why they scrimped and saved to put me into the parochial school outside of our neighborhood instead of the public school. My grandparents had taken custody of me before my first birthday. The last time I saw my father was my fourth birthday– though I didn’t clearly remember it. 

My mother tried to come into my life. She was just too sick and drowning in her problems to have any staying power. She didn’t seem bad– just tired and too far gone. We lost track of her quickly. Found out a few years after she died that she’d been buried by the state. I couldn’t say that I was upset when my grandmother told me. The whole of my emotion seemed to just be “huh.” How could I care? I didn’t know her. I didn’t even call her any variation of mother. Just her first name. The longest she’d been sober, apparently, is while she was pregnant with me. My grandfather said that was the gift she gave me– to not be born sick. That I should love her at least for that. And maybe I appreciated her for that. But it was a bridge too far to love her for that reason alone. 

My father was another matter entirely. While my grandparents were unfailingly honest with me, I could tell it hurt them immensely to talk about him. So eventually I just stopped asking. Similarly to my mother, they’d lost track of their son not long after his fourteenth birthday. Just losing him to the streets. A tragic but hardly uncommon story. 

I hadn’t been that though. I hadn’t been any of that. I did well in school– exceptionally well. I went to college. I didn’t have sex until I was twenty-five. I did all those things my grandparents wanted. Feeling a crushing pressure the whole time to be the fix in their hearts for my father’s sins. I lost any joy I’d ever felt in a church by the age of ten but I went every Sunday– and many days during the week too. The library every afternoon to study. Helping to cook dinner. Doing all my chores. Excelling academically. Joining debate and tennis and charity groups. Just as some kind of prize to show them. Just to say see? I’m okay. You’re okay. God, we’re all doing our best. Things get fixed. We’ll be fine. God sees how hard we are trying and God we are all trying so hard. 

And what did it even matter? Everyone was dead now. My grandparents died only a few days apart while I was in my second year of college. Everyone uselessly told me that it was clear how much they loved each other that they couldn’t be parted even by death. But all I felt right then was the stifling stink of gladiolus back in my old church. Somehow neither nostalgic nor comforted to be in the stench of incense again, surrounded by nuns again. I just felt cold and very, very unattached. 

I cried for a while underneath my blanket. Forever ambushed by the driftwood feeling I’d sometimes get. Universally orphaned, somehow. I felt like a staircase in the middle of the ocean. Useless, unseen and strange. Usually I was okay– mostly, I didn’t even think of this. I mourned my grandparents sometimes, just like anyone would. The smell of wood shavings made me miss sitting in my grandfather’s garage, sorting nails and screws for him as he sanded or scraped a project. I still had the Hope Chest he made me. I’d be sewing a button back on a shirt and so viscerally remember my grandmother teaching me how to thread a needle that I’d prick myself. And that lovely little bauble of blood on my fingertip would make me remember her even sharper. 

But I felt so untethered sometimes. I wished I even looked like my grandparents– they didn’t even tell me where my light eyes and red hair came from. Belonging to no one or nothing. Getting an odd prey-animal panic that no one knew me or marked my passage or would miss me. I knew that wasn’t true– not really. But I felt like a wanderer without a tribe, occasionally. 

And what to do with the information Kieran had given me? That in fact there were tethers? Rotten, terrible ones, but real. That my father, a Jones, had worked for the Quinns. That in fact I was known? And that it made everything far worse. 

Chapter Eight

That week while I was at work my personal phone rang. I recognized the number– Declan. Hand shaking I picked it up.

“Hi,” I said weakly.

“Can I come to you tonight?” he asked. 

“You have eyes on you,” I said heavily.

“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me if it doesn’t matter to you. There’s nothing they can really do about it.”

I wondered if he knew Kieran had come straight to me. I wonder if he knew we talked. If he knew I’d sort of but not truly been threatened. How deeply everyone apparently objected. 

“I miss you,” I whispered. 

“I’ve been aching,” he said back, voice low and growling. “I feel you under my hands and see you on the skin of my eyes and–”

“Yes, come over,” I said. 

“Good,” he sighed, sounding relieved.

It was a huge mistake. This whole thing was a massive mistake. We were rolling into a trap that would cut us to pieces and couldn’t seem to be stopped. 

He was sitting on my stoop when I arrived home from work. Seeing him didn’t make my heart pound. Didn’t thrill me or make my breath speed up. It calmed me utterly. I’d been feeling fussy and tearful since my anticlimactic showdown with Kieran.

Seeing Declan, my heart settled comfortably in my chest. The knot in my neck, my chest, all my joints suddenly let loose. I took a deep breath that actually went all the way down to the bottom of my lungs. My chest expanded, my stomach and feet relaxed. I was grounded, sure of where I was and striding strongly. 

I stepped up to him, he spread his knees so I could stand between his legs. I rested my palms on his shoulders and smiled down at him. 

“Oh, Puppy,” he said.

“Yes?” I asked.

He grinned at me then and I groaned, rolling my eyes and thumping my fists into his shoulders. Realizing I’d just responded to the pet name instead of correcting him. Resting his hands on my hips his grin faded from triumphant to just a content smile. I didn’t think I’d ever seen that precise expression on his face.

“What did you do to me?” he asked. 

“I’ve hardly done anything at all to you,” I said.

“You must have done something,” he said. “Maybe poisoned me. Perhaps some kind of womanly spell or something like. I’ve felt so… Worn. Having you close again is the best I’ve felt since I dropped you off.”

“Right now is the best I’ve felt since you dropped me off,” I said.

“Oh no,” he sighed, looking up at me. “I think we’re lovesick.”

I nodded seriously. He stood up, keeping the length of his body against me and we walked up to my door. Once I unlocked it, he shoved me through again, just as he had at the hotel. I laughed again, kicking off my shoes and backing toward my bedroom. He caught me as I was going through the doorway. 

“Don’t you want to see your present?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” I said. 

From his breast pocket, he pulled out a flat box. I took it, sitting back on my bed, and smiled up at him.

“Can I open it?” I asked.

“You certainly can.”

I did, seeing what was inside. Sort of similar to what I’d worn for the ball, but more clearly a collar. Thicker, still gold with a ring at the front. I fingered the edge of it, the mellow, thick gold. I felt engraving on the inside. Turning it right side up to read, I saw it was just MINE.

I gasped, looking up at him.

“You might feel that’s too forward,” he said. “But I hate to think of anyone else trying to put a collar on my puppy.” 

“It’s not,” I said quietly. “Not too forward. I don’t know what’s wrong with us. I’ve never felt so… So instantly–”

“I know,” he said.  

“Put it on,” I said. 

Finally, he gave me that dangerous, glassy grin again. Reaching down into the box he took it out. Showing me the back clasp. 

“It locks on,” he said. “Too much?”

I felt a low, hungry thump in my guts, seeing how it could be locked on to my neck.

“No,” I said. “Just perfect.”

“Good,” he growled. 

It could stay on. We’d know what it was. Otherwise, it just looked like a piece of jewelry. He’d gotten the right metal for me– it was what I wore on the day-to-day. And unfortunately, it was a massive turn on to be always wearing his collar. 

I lifted my hair off my neck as he locked it onto me. 

“Now let’s see how it looks on your bare skin,” he said. 

Getting me undressed quickly, tossing my clothes across the room to fwump against the wall. 

“I got one other thing,” he said, once I sat naked in front of him. Almost dancing across the mattress, wanting him so terribly. 

“Mhmm?” I murmured.

From inside his jacket he pulled out another handful. Letting it drop from his palm in front of me. I bit my lip– more black and gold. Black leather, gold fixturing. A short but obvious leash. I just nodded stupidly this time. 

He latched it onto the ring at the front of my throat. 

“This feels good,” I sighed.

Rolling a length of the leather over his knuckles he nodded in agreement.

“This feels very good.”

I slid off the edge of the bed, feeling the restraint of the leash, the collar hitching up under my chin before he gave me more play. Reaching up to undo his pants. He helped by getting rid of his shirt as I did that. Leaning forward about to take him in my mouth he jerked up on the leash, making me look up into his face again.

“You look so pretty down there,” he said. “So pretty on your knees. Still prettier wearing my collar.” 

Once again I just nodded stupidly up at him. He gave me slack again and took him in my mouth. For a few minutes we were gentle with each other. I set the pace. I felt him winding up the tail of the leash in his fist again, leather bundled around his knuckles. Pulling me deeper onto him and keeping me nearly sealed to his hips. I reached up, locking my hands behind his waist to let him know how much I liked the roughness. In quick response, he wrapped his free hand in my hair. Pushing his fingers into my pinned up hair, scattering those, pinching my scalp. Setting the rhythm now. Punishingly quick, making me lose my breath. My mind going right along with it. Able to be thoughtless and used, just like before. 

“Who taught you how to be such a smart little slut?” he asked.

I tried to look up, but couldn’t. Forced lower and lower until my throat was filled. He suddenly jerked me away from him. I panted, tongue on my lower lip, catching my breath. Thinking about wiping off my now very messy face. Sure that lipstick was smeared down my chin and across my mouth. 

“Well?” he asked, shaking me by the hair again.

“Well, you did,” I said, smiling up at him, licking my lower lip. “You did because of how badly I wanted you.” 

“That’s my girl,” he said, filling me back up again. 

My jaw locked a little. He must have felt the tension in my face, suddenly withdrawing. Giving a sharp jerk upward with the leash, until I got clumsily to my feet. Pushing his knuckles into my breastbone until I tipped backward, falling onto the mattress. 

“Now give it back to me,” he said, kneeling between my legs, arms circling under my waist and lifting my hips to his mouth. 

Previous to him, I’d avoided oral sex– either giving or receiving. I still felt a lot of shame and guilt about it. It seemed so impossibly dirty and thrilling and more sinful than “regular” sex. The idea of it always caused a fearful excitement. I’d never managed to relax enough to receive and enjoy it. And I always felt like if I went down on a man, I’d be told on or gossiped about– even as an adult.

He blasted all of that out of my head. I believed his desire as he started licking me. I could lose myself in it. And giving to him– that felt like giving in safety. Cradled once more by him, protected by any possible past or future danger. My desire felt understood and embraced by him. No disgust or derision. 

I started crushing his head between my legs. Fingers tangled in his hair and pulled it hard. Realizing how forceful I was being, I relaxed again. His hands went to the outside of my thighs, pressing them back against his face. Telling me; go for it. Hurt me if you have to. Whatever it is, I can take it. 

Going limp, I came on his tongue and let him go. I started the scramble away when he stood up. Grabbing me around the knees and pulling me to the edge of the bed. Landing on top of me again and burying himself in me in the same move. I moaned, fighting under him. With both his hands wrapped around the leash between us, he shook me.

“Come on,” he growled. “Who’s my brave girl?”

I stopped kicking and bucking. Lifting my hips and spreading my legs wider. 

“I am,” I panted, bringing my hands around the back of his neck and holding him close. He started thrusting, but slowly.

“That’s right,” he whispered directly into my ear. “There’s my brave girl… So good at taking it. I know she could do it all night for me.” 

That was too much to bear and I came on him, everything clenching and clutching around him. I cried out, taking him deeper but unable to do anything but accept him. After a while I felt myself crawling back up the incline to another orgasm. I was pretty sure it would knock me senseless. Tension building in my forehead and my guts and I still couldn’t push it aside. Getting my limbs totally locked around him, I could hear myself growling and howling under him. Usually I’d be embarrassed by the noises I was making but I was too far gone to care. 

“Come on,” he said hoarsely, still right into my ear. “You can do it. Give it to me.”

When I finally did, he covered my mouth with his palm. Muffling my guttural shriek into his flesh so I wouldn’t terrify my neighbors. 

He tried to leverage himself off of me, but I kept him close. My ears were ringing, and I didn’t seem to be breathing. I needed him close to be able to come down. Shifting so we could better lay in my bed. Passing my hand endlessly down his torso, feeling his sweat, where we slicked together. Smelling the oceanic scent of our sex over the stupid smells of our day-to-day– hair oil and scent and whatever else we covered up the animal with. 

I cuddled into him and he accepted me in like a beloved pet. We didn’t doze this time. Just lay quietly, cooling down and holding each other. 

“Do you like cherry or lemon-lime slushies?” he murmured.

I laughed. 

“Why?” I asked.

“Aren’t you hot?” he asked.

“Yes, but it feels good,” I said. 

It was true. My room was hazy. I hadn’t turned on the air when I got in. I rarely did, sometimes just to sleep but I liked how hot and humid this summer had been. And I especially liked how naked and steamy we felt. Just laying on top of my cotton sheets, warm and relaxed. 

“I’m about to die,” he said, juggling me a little. “Let’s take a walk. I’ll get us pizza and a cold drink.”

I nuzzled deeper into him, trying to weight him to the bed with my legs. Just then my stomach rumbled in contradiction and we laughed.

“All right,” I said.

We got back up, both of us getting partially dressed. I put back on my underwear, the blouse I’d worn to work but threw on a simpler, cooler, more casual linen skirt than what I’d worn to the office. He put back on his button up, leaving the top three unbuttoned and got back into his jeans. 

I did have a good pizza counter just a few blocks away, which is what he must have been referencing. He took me by the hand as we were about to walk out my front door. 

“Is it… Is it going to be okay?” I asked. “Us? Walking together? Holding my hand?”

“It’s going to have to be,” he said grimly, almost crushing my knuckles in his grip for a moment before relaxing.

So we did. Just walking like two regular, real people. Down to the pizza place I went to about once a month. We got our frozen drinks, several slices of thin crust, greasy messes of pizza. Sitting out on their little patio. The sticky red iron tables and red, white and blue umbrellas. Sipping ice, burning our tongues on melted cheese. Talking quietly, unable to look away from each other. 

He was right. We were love-sick. I’d never had this before. Almost desperate, almost clinging, but not at all bad. If being dragged into a whirlpool could feel right, that’s about what it was like. He had also been right that we were bad for each other. We were going to hurt each other. This couldn’t end well. And I couldn’t care. The only thing that really seemed real was contact. His hand holding mine. Wearing his collar. Kissing him, smelling him. Eating dinner with him. Nothing had been as satisfying as this neighborhood pizza. Nor anything as refreshing and sweet as the drink in front of me. 

This was oddly like a first date. Getting-to-know-each-other conversation. Favorite books, artists. Best vacations, childhood crushes. How we spent our time apart. How badly we were in love.  

I didn’t tell him about Kieran coming to confront me. If he knew– which I knew he must, he didn’t mention it either. Today wasn’t the day for that. We were laughing, we were quietly joyful and content. Warm and full and happy. And still, I couldn’t help myself.

“Are we being watched now?” I asked him.

He glanced around. The way he often did. A sort of scan-and-stop across the landscape.

“Not actively,” he sighed. “But our togetherness and whereabouts have no doubt been marked.”

“Like when Lucky was following me,” I said.

“Yes,” he agreed heavily. 

“What is wrong with him?” I asked, meaning Kieran.

“People who love you, who really love you show it and behave with it in different ways, and you won’t always want or like how they do it,” he said.

“This isn’t love,” I argued.

“This is a form of care. It was wrong, but when he set a tail on you, it was care. I don’t know if you know or understand the effect you can have. How wanting to care for you is… Both easy and primal. We feel… similarly about that,” he said. 

I sneered. I did feel cared for by Declan. In the way that I knew he’d always face any threat head-on first, keeping me behind him. That if I woke up scared in the night he’d fix the problem in the darkness. Being stalked by Kieran did not feel like that. Perhaps he meant I was sheltered from threats. But Kieran himself was a threat. 

“I know,” he sighed. “I know how it is. But he and I are irrevocably linked. And while… And while it’s complicated we do love each other. He’s not my coworker or my cousin. He’s my brother. And I remember running in the streets with him. I remember him plucking gravel out of my scraped knee when I fell off my bike. I remember standing beside him for every challenge and every prize. Being able to hand him down toys and books and even homework and see his gratitude and pride in the two of us being attached in such a way.” 

“That’s the past,” I said. “Maybe back then it was love. Now it’s just… Control.”

“Didn’t you try to fight your way out of the love of your grandparents? Wasn’t the weight of their love such that you would try to scream when your lungs were constricted?” he asked.

And yes. Of course. The control they could and did exert. That my world felt like just the orbit of my bedroom. My slim single bed. The pine wood desk my grandfather made. A white rocking chair. A stool at the desk. A three shelf white bookcase. A closet with the light I always left on, nervous in the dark. How I dragged home every ribbon, every hollow trophy like a cat with a broke-necked bird for them. 

“Things are different now,” I said. “You aren’t two little boys facing down schoolyard bullies, playing board games and eating popsicles.” 

“They are,” he said slowly. “We do work together. And we resent each other. The jobs that were assigned to us. I feel trapped and he seems very free to me. Able to lash out and do as he wants. I have to answer to him for nearly every move I make. My privacy has never counted for much and now it doesn’t even exist. He resents me just as equally. Like an animal he always has to keep a wary eye on. Some person whose hands are always clean, who the sight of blood is foreign to. But for me, it’s not different. Not really. When we sit in the office together, staring at each other. Trying to figure out how to do the things we hate to do… I don’t see the man you know. I see the boy who unfailingly gave me the bigger half of every treat. Because he knew I was going home to little or nothing. The boy who looked up to me, assured I’d always pick him first for every team because he knew he was my second and happy to be so. Things aren’t different now. They may morph but they are unchanging.” 

I sighed.

“But what are we to do?” I asked.

“I love you,” he said. Simply. Just a fact. It felt insane to hear it, but hardly untrue.

“I love you,” I said.

“I picture us together nearly every day,” he said. “I make tea and I ask myself, ‘does she use sweetener? Honey or sugar? How much does she like?’ I wake up with my limbs flung wide in bed and for that moment before my eyes are fully opened I think I feel your weight on my arm. I think about how I ought to buy a home with a fireplace. You get cold so easily. I think about the two of us combining our book collections– we like so many of the same writers that we almost surely have doubles. But I treat my books so rough, they’re in no shape to be donated. I think about this like it’s an actual problem I’m facing. I think about how we schedule our mornings together. Sometimes late at night I’ll be walking barefoot across my floors and for a moment I think I feel one of your pins under my sole. I need you in this big, impossible way.”

“I’ve felt so strange about it,” I said, almost whispering. Because I knew exactly what he meant. Like he was a ghost just out of frame in my life. “Like this odd… Love at first sight reaction? But that isn’t quite right…”

“Not love at first sight,” he said. “Not for me. It was as though… As though I’d been waiting for you. And you were just out-of-sight. I already knew you. I was already missing you. And when I had you it felt like we’d both come home.” 

“That’s it,” I sighed, glad that he put it in place. That he understood and knew how to articulate it. 

We walked leisurely back to my apartment. Still hand in hand. He held me for a long while in my front room. I lay on his chest on my couch, holding a book up so we could both read together. He read faster than me. So he waited, and I turned the page. I could feel his warm breath on the top of my head. His chest rising and falling underneath me. Sense the back and forth and up and down of his eyes reading down the same page as me. 

When the sun went down, I sighed. Bookmarking the page we were on. Getting up so he could get off the couch. Just like in the hotel, we knew that we had to part. Without conversation or desire, the night was over for us. 

He kissed me at my front door. 

“Soon?” he asked.

“Soon,” I promised.