#junedenim

He speaks with his hands. Alex has always had a knack for that, without making it exaggerated, like it’s the finishing syllable to his words. He’s tucked himself nicely up against the bar. Staring at this sight of him—lean—had become a practiced tendency by her. She’d tended to have an up-close viewing of him as his conversational counterpart.

It was a Friday night out now with friends. It had morphed into a Saturday morning around an hour ago. The bar had been a staunch classic, your own Cheers. The drinks were worth their price and you could get a free beer with a dozen wings, which were killer and always crushed among the group. She was a caveman with autumn’s first kill of red deer.

She moved her stare away from him toward the TVs, though it had become trivial since the game ended, now just endless commercials. There is a temptation to leave just to force herself to stop looking at him. She is aware of how cheesy the act of mooning over him. Jealousy isn’t what’s conjured up, though the evidence to deny that is getting more and more muddled.

Claudia cornered him at the bar. No blame can be placed on her for doing that. Her boldness is perhaps more enviable than her proximity to Alex. Jenna had invited Claudia after becoming buddy-buddy with her at one of those “paint-and-sip” classes. Anyone who was a friend of Jenna was a friend of hers.

So, there’s no blame on Laura. In fact, there’s no blame on anyone here, everyone is friends, however that has evolved, the core has always remained steady and true. There’s no exclusivity, label, or any claim between Alex and her. This is what adult friendships look like, sometimes. She can love him and want him and know that it doesn’t have to be constrained to something romantic.

No jealousy, she stressed. She had said as much to Jenna, not out loud, but no more than a glance had been required in their communication. Her understanding of this “adult” (air quotes always used by her) friendship was vague. The exact workings of this dynamic had always been hard to discern. Emotionally, their shared group of friends had always had the same disposition toward the flirtatious nature of their banter. 

Whether Alex had straight-up told his mates that this friendship had evolved into what one might perceive as a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship or that they had slept together (multiple, undeniable times) was unknown, though reaction-wise that seemed to be the case. Their prior encouragement of Alex toward women had dissipated in recent months, either from the news or those frontal lobes finally developed some maturity.

Half-truths had been said. The hook-ups had been mentioned, the bottom drawer roped off for her in his dresser had not. No judgement had ever been felt, only an emphasis to err on the side of caution because, no matter how close their bond was, a boundary—an intimate, personal boundary—had now been treaded on. Claiming this new frontier for oneself had not been discussed, but she had certainly thought it. It would complicate things, or rather life would complicate whatever could be established. With anyone else doing something like this would feel too risky, but thoughts, feelings, and needs were communal. Communication came easily, almost impossibly so. Admission of certain feelings felt better unsaid—an understanding both of you had come to (best to keep it under wraps, leave it for another time, one better suited for that).

She clears the bottom of her glass. Another drink sounds nice. Everyone is scattered so the idea of someone covering another round probably ended around the time Matt ran to the bathroom to vomit. She could insert herself between Alex and Claudia, not physically obviously, that would be death-suckingly embarrassing, something that would have her committing seppuku on the bartop.

They’re glowing, sharing a moment in an otherwise crowded bar. That’s the part that has her justifiably crawling up the walls. It’s not even jealousy, it’s a feeling of being slighted. Bitter. So bitter she can feel her mouth bleeding as a side effect, increasing desperation for another drink. Laura can lean in and touch his arm, in fact, she encourages it like some perverted cuckold freak. But Alex hadn’t done more than wave at her when she arrived at the bar late. The newfound entanglement had only enhanced a bitterness she would’ve felt no matter what. 

Jenna catches you staring, she gloats, dick-swinging smile. She catches herself gnawing on her lip, chewing on ice like it’ll shock her out of this spiral. Probably better to leave and not stare at melting glass. If she goes up to the bar and he doesn’t spare her a glance she might murder him and then she’ll kill herself for overreacting.

Her mind is getting too dark. The hour has gone from late to too early, better to leave now than make a mess of organs for the barback to clean up. She yawns first. Chit-chat with Danielle for two more minutes before she goes to the bathroom. She yawns again. Then, hugs Jenna goodbye with a promise to text when she’s home safe. “I’m not that far,” she says, getting a motherly look in return, one that could be interpreted as pity.

This is the first night she’ll sleep alone in a month. The notion sends a chilly bolt through her. Is it better if it’s because she’ll be lonely or because she spent a month not being lonely? A drunk mind plays tricks. Better to think about it tomorrow over coffee then wallow in another drink here. 

Her feet are cold. It’s almost the time of year where you start to double-up on socks. She makes it to the end of the block on the thought of doing laundry—a freshly-sharpened idea for avoidance. She stuffs her hands in her coat’s pockets and waits for the light to change.

“Hold up!” He’s jogging. It’s sadistic that she’s smiling—no, that would imply he’s in pain, if he’s jogging he definitely isn’t in pain. She fingers the lining of her pockets to keep some semblance of cool.

When he reaches her, he says, “You didn’t leave a wing for me” and it’s ridiculous how much tenderness weeps from that sentence. Is the death of a chicken justified by how carnal that sentence is? He slots into her side and pulls her along underneath his arm as if this was a shared plan. Her gut is crushed with a mixture of unease and warmth.

You spent all night at the bar feels like the easier thing to say. She sucks it down with a gulp of air. “They’re too good. You snooze, you lose.”

He does his amused hum, where the laughter sits in the back of his throat, never quite making it out his lips. He tends to do it when he’s sleepy, too tired to exert the energy required for laughter. Often those instances occur after those toe-curling intimate acts, but the sound feels closer, this window into his soul. Sex feels like peering through that window. That humorous hum—along with other small things like how it feels to walk with his arm around your shoulders—feel like sneaking in that window under covert ops, hiding from your parents, making out on top of the sheet, and that sweet sentimental kiss good night. Sounds too close to Romeo & Juliet delusions of youth.

“I’m a starved man.” He knocks against her, encouraging the idea they should consider becoming Siamese twins. It would make the walking thing easier. “That taco place we like is around here, right? Let’s stop there on our way home.”

She fondly smiles. It’s too unbearable to even part her lips to speak.

“God, I can’t believe you were about to leave me at the bar to deal with your friends alone.”

“My friends?! Matt was ready to barf all over the table.”

“But he didn’t.” He’d be a horrible lawyer, but he’d win his cases solely by making the jury swoon. “You know Claudia spent the whole time asking me what Jenna is into? Christ, the things I do for you.”

Something settles in her bones and she’s laughing at herself more than his fake outrage, but he laughs along with her. They end up kissing right there on the sidewalk, tipsy enough to overcorrect their balance and start up again. They’re both grinning. Teeth kissing.

*

Lived-in, he felt, was the best way to describe this “thing” between him and her. Nothing had changed outwardly. Together they’d always resembled a certain closeness he didn’t have with many people. Rarely did anything explicit happen outside the confines of four walls. The kissing on the street was drunken, arguably from more than just alcohol, some other adrenaline-rushing, pants-tightening daze.

She’d described his place as “lived-in” when she first saw it. About a year back, when he had finally settled, and she came to visit, not yet transferred to the city. He’d dropped her duffle at his front door and she’d taken off your backpack, gazed around, and called it lived-in of all things. Not the typical housewarming compliment, not that he was an etiquette expert, but he had heard complimentary adjectives, things that sounded like people were flirting with the house, Joe said it had a “killer vibe” and has been ruthlessly mocked him since, now a tad overdone.

“Yeah, I guess, I haven’t unpacked everything. Bit of a pigsty.”

“No, no,” she said, hanging her coat on a hook—the hook that now belongs to just her. “It’s nice. Feels like you. Feels like you’ve been living forever. Your soul is in the walls.” She knocks her knuckles against his childhood bedside table now repurposed as an entry table. “The bachelor pad.”

He watched as her eyes surveyed the area. “Don’t worry, I shoved all my dirty laundry under my bed before I picked you up.”

She smiled like one of those toothpaste commercials, a sparkle shining off her teeth. He’s half-convinced he hears a ding! in the distance. “Wow. You really know how to treat a girl.”

Since then, she had become lived-in. She found a way into every corner of his place. It wasn’t like she slithered her way in, more cultivated, or maybe she’d been there all along, now it was just illuminated whenever he did laundry and a pair of your underwear would pile in next to his underwear. It never bothered him, perhaps that was where the creeping in lied. She burgled any previous abjection to commitment he had. For fuck’s sake, he didn’t even care he was doing her laundry. He wasn’t even turned on by the fact it was her sexy panties and he knew to wash them on delicate.

The forced ignorance they had was immature, akin to plugging your ears and singing la la la la. They’ve floated by on an excuse of it being easier, though that’s probably harshing the inevitable blow when this blows up in his face. He’s waiting and he knows that not telling her how convinced his going to fuck this up is only worsing the effects of said future fuck-up.

Instead, they exchange stolen kisses in the hallway to the bathroom at the bar, and against the kitchen counter at a friend's housewarming. A bundle of flowers bought to “bring life to the room” and not because “I love you.” Meeting outside during his brief smoke break, she laughs her ass off over his heeled Chelsea boots, swatting him with her purse when he tries to steal one of those old lady mints. Sexless texts that made him feel horny nonetheless. He had lost it, likely long ago, but he knew it now, clearer than ever.

He gave her a key to his place when she moved to the city. Initially, it was for emergency purposes and housesitting, but it had converted into something to ease her daily coming-and-goings. Coming over (he has to resist the Pavlovian urge to call it home) after work, running out to get breakfast, that one time he forgot his key, and, the most mouth-watering, Welcome Homes (tits included).

Admittedly, his intentions in giving the key weren’t innocent. There’s plenty of other people that could’ve been given a key. Truthfully, nobody even needed a key. The house was far more a place to sleep than a home of sentimentality. There were no pets to look after and the only mail he got was junk. But having someone—her—have a key gave more weight to a place that felt so unfathomable not lived-in.

Having an unannounced visit felt like something out of a ‘90s sitcom. The proximity from all the places the group had their drunken nights gave way to her wordlessly returning home with him, and this was prior to sleeping together, prior to sleeping in the same bed; Alex started to fix up the guest bedroom before nights out. 

One night, they returned still charged awake, not ready to separate. Things had already started blurring in small ways. The beginning of flirtation he hadn’t participated in since puberty with knocking knees together and putting his arm around the back of her chair. On that vanishing night, they shared in emptying a quarter of gin while watching the shitty things that only aired at such an abysmal time. The mutual buzz had been an easy excuse to fall into each other.

The falling then progressed to a chaste kiss to the cheek that quickly became ribald, then a glance searching for approval before he began to kiss down her neck as if it was more tame than the lips. Lip-locking followed soon after, then his body pushing her body against the leather that would make an annoying sound if someone so much as breathed funny. The thought of fucking on that thing made him laugh into her mouth.

“What’s so funny?” She was scratching the back of his head, showcasing that talent of head-scratching that only women seem to have.

The thought was too distracting to bring up so he shook his head, muttering, “Nothing,” then diving back in. The fucking took place in his bed, getting there through some combination of stumbling. He made sketches on her skin and found he had an odd skill of making her laugh while he fingered her. Her hands were a dilettante in pleasure. Her grasp was slender around him, stroking rhythmically in a way that produced the most embarrassing sounds from him, yet, his susceptibility to embarrassment didn’t produce any ignominy. Her smile at the sound allowed an openness he had never before felt in himself.

It was the start of summer then and he was already too warm, sticky in the humidity, but she left a path of goosebumps in her wake. Now, she’d been sleeping over, just sleeping, just cuddling, for weeks now. He knew it was her way of acknowledging this wasn’t just sex out of convenience, some partnership had formed. He also knew that she knew that he knew this. Jamie called that telepathy “bosom buddies” like he’s a bloody pensioner. Alex felt that bosom applied too much physicality. Jenna would call it kindred spirits. Far too hippy dippy. Putting a name on it would lessen it. Its ineffability allowed such a bond.

Tonight, he felt warm in winter’s first chill. Her hand was warm because she has some superpower. He asks how to achieve such warmth. “Hand warmers!” She declares, holding them up with parental pride as if she were the man who discovered fire (he would believe it if told so). “Always keep one in my purse just in case. The modern woman has to be very prepared.” 

“You are such a fucking dork.” Things like that make his stomach rock. First, with overwhelming fondness, warmth pouring through him, making him believe this is why his blood pumped. Then, it collapsed into a stir of panic at the realization that things had grown out of control. This wasn’t something explained away as “just having a good time” to his friends. This had grown out of a devotion to someone, which allowed him to explain away the staring, the daydreaming, the counting down of minutes until she finished work. He looks at her, admiring her in that stupid ratty hat she had worn winter after winter, and the realization of love bangs him over the head.

He leans over and mouths her cheek, stumbling on the near-empty street. He questions whether his response is a distraction or acknowledgement of his feelings. He figures it would be better to worry about when away from her and that… fucking sparkle that shines off of her like she wears glitter or is the star—angel on top of the tree.

“You say that, but you’re jealous that I’m not developing frostbite. You know, you can just ask me for one, you don’t have to tease me.” What right does she have to talk about teasing when she’s smiling like that as a long-time employer of the carrot-and-stick flirtation tactics.

He’s too warmed from his revelation to continue bantering, settling into a bubbling simmer under threats of boiling over. He takes her hand, using it as an amateur hand warmer, then placing union in his coat pocket.

She takes her keys out before he even has a chance. She lets go of him, unlocking the door, and he follows behind her. She sits on the mudroom bench, unzipping her boots. “It’s so cold in here.” She shivers for dramatic effect. He can’t stop staring at her fuzzy socks with Smokey Bear insisting only he can prevent wildfires. He’s thinking of what he could get her for Christmas. “Can I turn the heat on?”

He’s still standing with his hands in his coat pocket afflicted with a petrifying feeling from her stare. “You don’t have to ask,” impulsively comes out of his lips. Her gaze lingers longer leaving him to wonder if he might possess a Medusan power too. 

She moves into the house toward the thermostat. He leans back against the closed front door and briefly shuts his eyes. He takes a deep breath before scrubbing his face with his open palms. A deep sigh leaves him. He takes off his coat.

*

The cuddle happens before sex tonight. Usually it’s the reverse. Once every limb is comfortably placed around each other it’s hard to extract into the routine of energetic sweaty sex. But he gently settles against her, placing his head on her chest. She combs her fingers through him. “You’re a total cat.”

“Hm?” He tilts his head up with an inquisitive look with such felinity she wishes she could take a picture for evidence.

“You just curl up against me and you make this little noise when I rub your head, it’s like purring.”

“Stop,” he simpers.

“I swear.”

He hovers his arm over her body, contact lost as he sleepily blinks. “Aren’t you supposed to be the purrer?”

“‘Cause I’m the woman.”

He thoughtfully tilts his head, pressing his lips tightly together. She can see the gears turning. That’s always been easy to witness in Alex. She wonders about the inner workings of his thoughts. In those stuttering moments around unknown interlocutors, she’s attempted to place oil on them, taking over the conversation. Exiting the small talk, he’d thank her and she quipped in return, “‘Don’t cry, Tin Man, you’ll rust so dreadfully.’”

“Shouldn’t I be a canine?” He questions. “Or at least a lion.”

She quizzically laughs at him. “Are you prepared to start roaring? It would be awfully disruptive for me. Disturbing too. I’d think I’d broken your cock or something.”

His laughter seethes into a twist of pain across his face. “Don’t say that.”

“So sensitive.” She reaches out, palming his cheek, stroking her thumb across his flushed skin. “You’re such a tom cat.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay,” he concedes. His body returns to skin-to-skin contact against her. “If you’re not a cat, then what are you?”

He’s kissing her chest now. She suddenly feels old from the recognition that this is what constitutes “dirty talk” now. Though, it’s rather childish, akin to asking “Who’s your spirit animal?” at sleepovers and saying unicorn instead of the truthful answer: church mouse or baboon, probably.

Her hands cradle the back of his head. He raises his head when he reaches her breasts. He actually expects an answer. “Cock. A rooster if you will.”

He snorts, dropping his head into her cleavage. He begins kissing. “You don’t get up early enough for that.”

“Earlier than you.”

“That’s just ‘cause you have work.”

“Not true, you know, on the weekends—”

“If you don’t mind, I’d kind of like to start fucking you.”

She’s blushing, 14 again, snickering in sex ed every time the teacher said any word that could be sexually interrupted. “Vulgar.”

“You don’t mind,” he says against her neck. “You won’t mind,” he corrects on her jawbone.

And she can’t seem to find her mind after that. So easily lost in this exchange. He finds himself on the outskirts of her, places the sun hasn’t even touched. He brushes his fingers against them, kisses the cafe-au-lait splatter on the stretch of her left ribs. 

When he touches her over her panties his breath hitches as if he’s the subject of this pleasure. She quivers, rocking against his contact. She thinks she could come from just this. Return to the days of junior high dry-humping. He once had to rip her probing hands off of him to prevent prematurely coming. “I’m gonna finish before you’ve even started,” he’d said.

She brushed her hand up against his boxers at the remembered thrill of making Tony Gibbons cream his pants after prom. “I don’t mind.”

He laughed unsteadily worried about the slightest movement. “I will. At least let me get out of my underwear first.” He proceeded to drop his drawers, receive a few pumps, and erupt into her hand.

When she washed up she told him, “It’s quite flattering. You’re just too preoccupied with unwanted erections and soiling yourself in P.E. at the girls playing volleyball.”

Shame rolled off of him, washing down the drain as he reached for his toothbrush. “You’re very specific.”

His stare was penetrating. She leaned back against the sink, sharing a precipitating chuckle. “Will Hatfield. Coach Butler had to find him a change of clothes.” Alex laughed against her collarbone. He liked to place himself there, finding foundation on the slope. She understood it, had parts of him she could rest herself on for a possible eternity. She liked to kiss the corner of his shoulder, a habit that long predated this affair.

She lays her hand there while he brushes his fingers against the elastic hemline. She squeezes the skin to hint for more. Fuck this slow shit already, it’s 2 AM. He gets the memo because he always gets the memo. It’s almost infuriating how good he is at this. If she wasn’t the one on the receiving end of this she would be so wildly jealous, seething that another—

“What’s wrong?” He asks.

“Huh?”

“You’re staring at the ceiling like you’re waiting for it to fall on you.” She straightens her eyes onto his soft, infuriating serenity. “We don’t have to do anything. You know that?”

Her worry wasn’t having to do something, it was one day not doing something; his body being with another body. Although, most people probably think things like that when fingers brush so teasingly while you’re at your most desperate state, she figures.

“No, please do.” She invites him, pulling his shirt over his head. It feels so long since she’s seen him like this. A series of exhausting nights have led to this eagerness. She feels like she has minutes before she explodes, pink bits flying across the room. She giggles into his mouth at the unfound fear running through her.

From there it’s a blurry rush. He fills her all up, so quickly she wonders if he always has that eagerness in him, but has to restrain himself. He’s all blown pupils and mussed-up hair, alternating between rabid and rapt. He kisses down her neck, threatening her pulse in a bloodsucking manner.

He moves in waves, feels like she’s out to sea, but in the waterbed relaxing way, not like that one time she got seasick on that Thames River cruise. “Is that good?” He whispers in her ear. It’s enough to fall apart over, unraveling like a loose stitch. He rests deeper in her, stalling, waiting until she can breathe again.

*

“It’s not a favor! I want to do it.” She’s completely flushed, up against the pillows. He’s covered himself with the duvet, but she’s rejected it in favor of showing off her wearing his THE MENACE OF VENICE T-shirt and nothing else. He knows that’s her intention. She told him once that she gets a thrill out of seeming enticing. Back then, he had the thought that she was always enticing but he couldn’t say things like that then when she was with a different man. It still holds water now. 

The T-shirt idea probably seemed more flirtatious when she was with the other guy; baggy, oversized, giving an image of protection, or rather domination with that guy, but that’s just what she said after the break-up. His shirts look interchangeable with her shirts, other than the men’s silhouettes. This one doesn’t even cover her ass so while not well-suited for breakfast with the parents, it works great for breakfast in bed.

He pats her knee, all tucked up into her chest. She rolls herself into these impossible balls. He’s slowly learning what these positions indicate. Stretched out is a clear indication of sleepiness. For a while, he thought this tight ball was a closed-off, finality for the evening, until one night she reached over and gave him a handjob so lethal he thinks he flatlined until his orgasm shocked his heart into a tachycardic rhythm. “You don’t have to do it,” he tells her tonight.

“So, what? You’re going to do it? You prefer that?”

She’s tightly wound into him, sewn into his lining. If she were removed, he would come undone. He forces down the laugh but her contagious grin feeds into the reckless smile that jams into his cheeks. “No,” he timidly drags out.

“You want so badly to be seen as a gentleman that you become chauvinist.” She’s talking with that sultry glint in her eye. One could mistake it for insanity if she’s not careful. She only evokes what he calls “the bigot card” when she sets her heart on something. She goes a bit mad with desire, especially for someone who talks about Buddhism when she’s drunk. 

He pulls the sheets back like it’s Sisyphus’s boulder. “Fine. Blow me, woman.”

She lets a giggle loose. He catches it, polishes the back of it, stuffs it away, and figures he’ll save it for a rainy day. She takes a hold of him, after all he—his penis—is right there waiting for her to treat him, or it. He’s confusing himself now. Is his penis a detached entity? Maybe when all his blood seems to have rushed there. 

They’re both wrapped up in laughter for her to focus on her intended task. “Don’t make me laugh unless you want a circumcision,” she warns before placing her warm mouth over him.

“Can’t say that and then skim your teeth around me. You’re a biter.”

She pops him out his mouth. “God. You’re annoying.”

He smiles into a kiss. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Never said that, but, you know, time and place.” He forgets about those two concepts after she does get to the task they’ve been talking circles around. His head tilts back as she carefully starts to stroke him, and it’s kind of too much, that’s why he resists this. She could do anything to him and he’d let her. She could make him agree to the cruelest torture. The act itself is torturous with its mixed desire for never wanting it to end and to let go right away.

His fingers fist the sheets, not wanting to mess with her practice. He can’t resist strained moaning and this dazed muttering. He lifts a hand to her hip, squeezing a reassurance: I like this, keep going because he lost speaking abilities the minute she thumbed at his tip. Now, taking him in fully, the head hitting her throat.

She comes up for air, panting with a line of connective salvia. Spit-dribble and overworked she’s at her hottest, then giving a bashful smile as she wipes drool away with the back of her hand convincing him she might by the most adorable thing to walk the planet. What a lovesick loser he is, he’d roll his eyes if the evidence wasn’t in front of him. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

Before this, maybe even a few minutes ago, he would have smacked her upside the head and told her to shut up. But, now. There’s a shift of irrevocably tenderness that he can’t bear to taint the act of this, his future memory of this, by shunning her vulnerability. He reaches out, rubbing the missed spot on her chin. “Don’t worry. You’re perfect.”

“Honest feedback,” she half-jokes. She does that, veils the truth in some quip, pretends to be mad when she’s actually mad. She’s too scared to reveal the belly of her emotions, forever in this fear that it’ll deter people from her. They’ve talked about this in those late night hours. It was lightly touched on during late night walks home, now uncovered post-coitus when only the moon can listen in. 

Alex pushes her hair behind her ear. “I am being honest. Don’t worry.”

She gives a look of resistance, but something seems to melt it away, allowing her to settle into steadily breathing. “If I can…” She gestures at him, it, the alien that’s still sturdily standing there.

He lifts his hands away. “Be all means. What’s mine is yours.” The weight of such a statement is laughed off, but for evenings to come he’ll ponder its validity. He’ll feel cold.

She swallows the laughter as she returns so softly. He hums, relishing in the slowness of this. It allows him more time to capture the feeling, allows it to have time to build up rather than an overwhelming rush. It still overwhelms him nonetheless. The act itself always has, but with her there’s another touch, maybe that’s because he told her when he got his first blowjob and then deeply regretted it the morning after when he heard her talking about it with his girlfriend. The act of that embarrassment paved the way for this pleasure, letting go into her mouth because she said she liked it, which he’ll just have to believe her on because no money would make him try his own jizz.

“Fuck,” he utters as she falls back on her pillow (it smells like her now, if this were to end, he’d have to throw it out or start wearing jasmine-scented cologne). She’s tucked one leg up, her toes brushing up his shin, sending further shivers up his spine in a sensation that he imagines is what it feels like to be struck by lightning. She kisses the end of his shoulder. He softly chuckles, unsure what else to do. “You’re so cute after. You’re an evil, manipulative woman.”

“Really?”

He knows she’s not really asking, but he worries about missing a sign of apprehension in his delirium. He kisses her cheek but ends up getting a mouthful of her hair. “Nah, too good to be.”

“I could be James Bond for all you know.”

He sinks further into his pillows, feels like she took part of his soul with her. “Don’t think Bond was as good at giving head.”

She turns away, eventually turning back to face him, but the traces of giddiness still remain on her face. She looks so innocent at times, he can’t imagine anyone ever looking at her and thinking “That’s a girl who takes pride in her fellatio skills.” It makes his heart race that he’s one of the lucky to know such a thing. He thinks people probably look at him and think, “That’s a man who likes a girl who’s good at giving head.” Maybe because he is that man or he just thinks everyone sees him as a prick.

He told her this once—only the prick part, don’t know what her head was like then. She said she didn’t see him as a prick and that means more now than ever.

She leaves to brush her teeth, but he can’t even begin an attempt at standing. He might end up glued to this mattress. She jumped on it the first time she slept in it. Rubbed her hand over the softness and then scolded him for not getting a waterbed because she’s a dorky loser. They’re two peas in a pod.

She peers out of the bathroom, smiling faintly in this loose, easy kind of way. “You’re out of toilet paper.”

“Fuck, I knew I forgot something.” He remembered the unneeded surplus of crisps, but not toilet paper.

She walks over to his desk. “This is why you make a list.” A page rips out of his notebook and she writes toilet paper at the top. “You also need another tube of toothpaste. Anything else?”

“I went to the store today.” He feels some need to declare this, though it just further proves his incompetence. She stares, waiting for him to remember all those other forgotten things. “Trash bags, I think.”

“Of course, you forget all the things that keep your house clean and nice.” She’s standing, naked, writing a grocery list, and all he can think about is what the name of those yogurts she likes.

“I’m barely here half the time,” he reasons. Though, he knows she’s here half the time too. It adds up quickly, but he doesn’t say that outloud knowing it will scare her off, and she’ll start insisting on paying for things and bringing over her own detergent for when she does a load of laundry here.

“We’ll go tomorrow.” We, us, ours. It’s not so troubling to share detergent, their clothes sharing the smell of soft lavender. 

His hand reaches out. “Come back? I’m freezing.”

*

a/n: hey, hi. blame/praise alt for this. glastonbury 2013 sparked something in me. the greaser may return. i've been listening to "glease" 'cause i'm deranged and that shit slaps. okay, well, bye now.

He had infiltrated the last frontier. In time-honored tradition, he was rather tired after. Astrid had taken off her shoes a block back and her feet, with the freshly done pedicure then covered in pantyhose, looked too precious for concrete. He took her onto his back. She was light, at least for the first block. By the time he turned them onto Brook Street (two more to go until Mill), she felt a weight he should never complain to a lady’s face. It prompted her to squawk about putting her down, she can carry her heels, which he then insisted he had to go the rest of the way. Sleep when you’re dead, or the equivalent phrase for carrying two different humans at once.

She dropped off his back to walk up the stairs of their brownstone. Alex crawled up and sat on the top step. She had been unlocking the front door, but heard the flick of the lighter. She dropped beside him. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“I like the smell.” He knows, it’s half the reason why she talked to him in the beginning. Oddball thing, he thinks. Strawberry blonde who likes the smell of tobacco, petrol, and chlorine. She hugs him when he is exercised and sweaty, kisses the place on his neck where it collects. She owns two heirloom pearl necklaces, likes the sound of gurgling water against the transom (nautical terms still go over his head), her favorite color is Gentian blue because of the U8 line of the Berlin U-Bahn.

She leans against him. He keeps steady. He’s her wall, one of the unorthodox compliments she gave in their vows. He’d called her a “Phantom of delight.” Her parents had been pleased by him quoting Wordsworth, even though his name still plagues him with memories of Year 7 English. He left his secret, scandalous reference in the form of the “since feeling is first” poem. Though, he loathes E. E. Cummings’s oddball grammar, he’s always loved the line, “the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids’ flutter which says we are for each other: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life’s not a paragraph and death i think is no parenthesis” and Cummings is one of the few poets that doesn’t bore Astrid.

The cigarette’s intended purpose is to make him feel better. Instead, he had to fight the urge to writhe around. She keeps him still, as she often did. He doesn’t want to disturb her placid posture against him. It irks him how calm she can be when their surroundings feel tumultuous. He finishes the stick to its end because she doesn’t interrupt. The second he drops it, she stands and unlocks the door.

She unravels herself, and hangs all the fixations on the coat tree. She then takes his coat and hangs it respectfully beside her branch. Front-facing him, she sighs, the evening’s weight now off of them. “Thank you.” She smiles too. 

He wrangles his insides still. “Shower?”

“Not a bath?” She twists her hair up. She had fidgeted with it all evening enough that it was starting to bug him too. She had maintained the length of it for years now; just over the threshold of her collarbones, never past her first rib. It had been a bob cut at her chin when they first met. He thought it was adorable. Astrid considered it too juniorish.

“You, who claim to know me, suggest a bath?”

“Well, I want a bath. I’m too tired to do all of that.”

He follows her to their bedroom. “Alright.” The chance will come again. Used to feel like it never would, but youthful urgency had faded, replaced by stubborn languor. “You go first. I don’t want to use up all the hot water.”

She smiles at the gesture. He remembers when they used to fight who would sacrifice themselves to the cold water. Acceptance comes easier now, maybe it's the “what’s mine is yours” attitude. He’s tired of being the two uncles fighting over the check. A cold shower will calm him anyway. She knows that, smile says so. 

She’s finished removing her jewelry, places her engagement and wedding ring on the edge of the dresser so she can put them back on after the bath. She has nightmares about chipping it on the porcelain, a preciousness for jewelry inherited from her mother, who got it from her mother, and so on. He only takes his off when he works out after he heard a horror story of a guy losing his finger on the lat pulldown machine when his ring got caught on the weight stack.

Alex falls asleep before he has the chance at a shower. This has been happening more these days and, while displeasing, it beats insomnia. Astrid tucks him in. He mumbles a Freud joke, something about his mother being the last woman to tuck him in. It doesn’t translate to Astrid, who burrows into her side of the bed. He slices his foot in between her shins, warming his cold toes.

*

There was so much in the early days. He never concentrates on it as a block of time. Sometimes she’ll say “the early days” and he’ll counter with, “Twenty years from now, these will be the early days.” That idea seems obvious to people who ask how long they’ve been married: Two years. Yet, mindfully those two years feel much further away. Astrid gets this idea, it’s among these things they share—a house, a dresser, a suitcase, a marriage.

Astrid definitely hated him upon first meeting, though she doesn’t mention that when people ask how they met. The issue is Astrid doesn’t appear to like most things, but it’s in fact a facade to hide how passionate she does love things—the majority of things. Alex had been quite shocked by this when they were in the “getting to know you” phase. She had natural sour puss lips that had displayed a certain displeasure with everything. When he met her parents this made more sense, both genetically and socially. Alex considered them to be fine parents, but not ones for someone like Astrid. He never said that to her, she was rather protective over them, but their attendance at family gatherings had declined exponentially with no love lost.

Besides all that, Astrid definitely didn’t like him upon first glance. He was much more annoying back then anyway, so she couldn’t be blamed. He didn’t like himself most days then, especially in social settings where he felt charged to impress everybody at the table. Astrid didn’t speak to the whole table at all that night. She talked to Freya, who sat on her left, Steven, who sat on her right, and Marty, who sat across from her. Freya and Steven were already her friends, she won Marty over by the end of the night. 

Her charisma chaffed him too. The second time he was in her vicinity, at Zach’s birthday party, he found she came off performative. Of course, she was performing, he knows that now. She is utterly terrible in large social situations, particularly being the center of attention. Her charm came off like that artificial taste that gets stuck to the roof of your mouth. He wasn’t turned away from her, admittedly it was because he found her attractive.

The third time around each other, at a Super Bowl party of all things, they had finally talked one-on-one over a bag of pretzels. Astrid had been embroiled over football after seeing how it took over the men in her life (few boyfriends, father mainly). Alex preferred other sports and free beer. She stood in the kitchen, gnawing on one pretzel then another then another. He was getting another beer from the fridge. She only stared at the bag, while he only stared at her. Puzzled, very puzzling.

“Pretzels just for you?” He asked. 

“No.” She still didn’t look over, proving it to not be some daze, rather a controlled effort to stare at this bag. “Take, if you’d like.”

“Do you want a beer?”

“No.” He felt it to be a pointed cut against him. He was off put by her, forcing him into a scowl. She finally looked over at him and said, “I don’t drink. Beer, I mean. I drink other things. Non-alcohol things. Wine, very rarely. Champagne, only a glass at New Years.” She sounded as if she were drunk.

“You sound like I’m about to confiscate your fake ID.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” He couldn’t tell if she didn’t get the joke or was offended by it. He hadn’t been friendly, he’ll admit that, but he was a few drinks in, and he considered Astrid a peripheral friend by this point. “You just sound pure. It’s sweet. It’s good to abstain from these kinds of things.” He took a swig, a rather big one. It was tense with a side of awkwardness.

“Yeah. My dad was pretty into it so I don’t want to be too into it.”

Then, he ungainly stood there with the beer bottle at his side. “Sorry about that.” The apology directed at both the alcoholic father and the alcohol in his hand. 

She laughed then and he felt she could get him out of any mess with that laugh. Perhaps, a laugh is the best way to get to know somebody. He said that to her. First, in a clumsy way when he proposed it was between the ring and the question part, though it’s always been a blur. Later, he wrote it in a note after a fight, wanting to get the sentiment out clearly, then he left for Sheffield by himself, and she called him halfway through the drive, crying on the phone. He told her he’d come back, screw the trip, but she told him to go on ahead, and laughed so he did. Later that night, slanted in front of the television with his father, the doorbell went off, and she had been at the front door. She smiled so wide until she laughed. Nothing has ever made him feel more whole.

He stared down at his beer bottle and wondered if someone had said something similar to her about the pretzels to make her stare so hard at them. She picked up the bag and held it out to him. “Pretzel?”

He took one, though his mouth felt dry. He felt the crumbs spread on his lips. They stared at each other in their simultaneous chewing. Amused enough to break into laughter and show the residue of food trying to break out. Romantic, she later said in her vows, an appetite for gluten. 

*

Routine. He never outright hated one. He liked an outline, mildly loathed deadlines, and despised people who showed up early—and Astrid was all of those things. Each night before bed, she made a to-do list for herself. It’s a side effect from her childhood, she had told him the first night they spent together. They had fucked, naturally (third date, after all), and he had lumbered his way to the bathroom, disposed of the goods, and cheesily primped himself in the mirror. 

Upon his return, she was upright in bed with a legal pad, and, yes, his first thought might have been that he had fallen for a psychotic woman who was now planning their future together. “No,” she scoffed at the ridiculous notion of happily-ever-after, “I’m planning my future. Tomorrow, at least.”

He teased her for it, attempted it but couldn’t last further than a week, then on their first night living together, he asked her if she could make a to-do list for him. It was to help with the unpacking process. “You know, just things you’d want me to take care of by the end of the day.” When the unpacking had finished—mostly done by her because she had a “system” that he couldn’t replicate, minus the heavy-lifting (“Glad I’m worth something.” “Hey, you’re worth a lot. I’ve seen your record collection.”)—the to-do lists continued.

“If you want me to go out and get anything. I know the neighborhood better than you and I can ‘heavy-lift.’”

She smirked knowingly. “Like my own errand boy?”  

“I’ll be your anything.” It was the level of schmaltzy he had spent a lifetime rolling his eyes at, but something she procured in him, mostly because she’d always kiss him when he said things like that. That, too, was routine. It was the kind of ease people had always talked about. The same rush Astrid felt from remembering to send his cousin’s daughter a birthday card. A cousin’s daughter that she had never met and Alex only recalls as a tiny pinkish gerbil thing many Christmases ago.

She doesn’t do the lists every day. She told him very early on that she didn’t want to start something with a man incapable of taking care of himself. He then proceeded to do what she deemed most men do: find a woman, be impressive for a few months (six, if lucky, a year tops), and then slack for the rest (until the break-up or death do you part). She reminded him of this the first time they ever went to bed angry.

“Feels weird sleeping next to a cold shoulder,” he said to her back, notably covered by her old pajamas that she only wore when they went to her parents. He talked to the pink silk until she told him to shut up. It was a noteworthy fissure. She had never told him to shut up before, possibly never told anyone to shut up before. A substantial section of time had been spent trying to encourage her to stick up for herself more often. 

In response, Alex smiled. There’s an aberrant pride that rises when your girlfriend finally tells someone to buzz off. 

She didn’t make a to-do list for a while until he requested one before she went away to her parents for a week. It was a visit he was wholly indebted to her for not forcing him to join her on. Whenever they visited her parents stared at him like they thought he stuffed the sterling silverware in his pockets. Her sister also had the most maddening laugh ever like one of those chew toy ducks being strangled. That’s all besides the point.

Regardless, he requested a to-do list. She was stumped at this. “You can’t remember to do laundry?” In Astrid’s usual tone of sincerity that she was seriously concerned that he couldn’t remember basic hygiene.

“No, just things I could do for you. Flowers, chocolates. I’m supposed to surprise you with these things, but you don’t want those inconveniences either so let me convenience you.”

An adorable grin crossed her face. “This is a job for Excel.” She kicked her feet up when running to fetch her laptop. Special things were reserved for Excel. She yelled from the other room, “This is great! Then, I can update it with all the little things I think of while I’m away and curse at myself for forgetting something.”

She returned beside Alex, who was discernably chuckling at this whole U-turn of giddiness. “You can communicate with me while you’re away. It’s not all by candlelight.”

“I know.” She was nuzzling her bottom into the cushion, criss-crossing her legs, and sitting her laptop there in view for them both. “But then I’ll tell you or forget to tell you or you’ll forget to write it down. Few things in life give the same satisfaction as crossing something off a list. I’m giving us both this pleasure. You: to cross. Me: to watch you cross.”

He kissed her neck. “Few things in life are as sexy as you fawning over spreadsheets.”

Then, she did that cutesy thing that he’s liked since he started being attracted to girls but looks especially cute on her where she blushes and tucks her head away to pull away from his kiss and hide her flushing cheeks. She then doubled it by saying his name dragged out and sheepishly. It makes him want to put a bow on her and unwrap her.

She pushes him away in the same tone. “List first. Bon voyage next.” She names sex. She hates saying words that have any relation to sex. There’s sex (duh!), making love (this causes her to plug her ears and sing because it reminds her of her parents at one point having sex to lead to the procreation of her and her sister), fucking (too crass for a girl who doesn’t even curse when she stubs her toe), intercourse (clinical), the birds and the bees (bad memories of having “The Talk”), banging (“What are we banging? It’s more slipping or sliding. Banging sounds like you’re”—her voice turned to a whisper—“raping me.”), screwing (lightbulbs), and any slang (out by mere chance of being teased at her on the playground).

So, she names it, except when she just calls it “it” because it is a lofty thing. When this all came up, he was fearful that she had been an undisclosed virgin. It seems like a virgin thing to do, naming sex after things like the 4th of July (“Fireworks”), but she had considerably assured him by saying, “I’ve done it plenty. More than plenty, perhaps, to some. What does ‘plenty’ mean numerically?”

He had shrugged and she had gone to look it up in the dictionary. Literally, the dictionary. They were at a bar to warp the possession even more. “You carry a dictionary around with you?” He was swooning, smitten, seduced, spellbound, other synonyms that started with “s” and prescribed him as purely fucked, though they would be in need of a theasarus and not her Pocket Oxford English Dictionary.

She was thumbing through the Ps. “Have you met our friends?”

Fair enough, he thought, tilting his head to the side. 

“I feel it makes me smarter,” she said, like having such a thing in a pebbled leather shoulder purse would transmit intelligence by osmosis.

“Hey, I thought you weren’t supposed to be able to fit anything in those bags.”

“Au contraire. You’re supposed to look like you can’t fit anything and then turn yourself into Mary Poppins.” She slid her pointer finger down the tanned pages. Her nail sliced across it. “‘Plenty: pronoun, a large or sufficient amount or quantity.’ Sufficient sounds right.”

“For your amount of sexual partners, right? I was so turned on by the dictionary I’ve been swayed from our original subject matter.” They left the bar soon after.

*

The mornings grew cold long ago. Now, they were resting in the cradle of winter. Alex always liked this time of year, at least visually. The trees near-bare, the sky seeming to have lowered closer to the earth, and the world indescribably smells different. 

Shivering was a different story. He keeps socks on his bedside table to slip into before jumping off the carpet-covered floor onto the chilled wooden floors. Everything needed to be brewed, boiled, or baked. He couldn’t consume a drop of water until his body felt thawed to room temperature.

Astrid loathes this time of year. Holidays don’t bring cheer to the frozen tundra of the world she has crafted. Every winter they have spent in this house together, Alex has been charged with trying the heat on before Astrid can begin to consider exiting the bed.

Her hatred for it just makes him appreciate this time even more. She turns into a non-committal grump, which makes him feel responsible for taking care of her. This time of year, particularly in the early and late hours, she hands it over, no arguments.

He wakes. She’s still asleep, she slumbers longer in winter than him. The rest of the year, she’s up earlier than him. Eventually, he gets to the kitchen brewing coffee, puts the kettle on just in case. He turns the heat on and lounges around. Typically, she stumbles out in the thickest pair of socks, double-nested long sleeves, and sweatpants.

She calls him this morning. He mutters in his head, unsure if the cursing reaches his lips, certain she is sick or hungover or hungover sick. 

But her head is craning up and she reaches a hand out in his direction. She crumbles her hand together and shoves herself under the bedspread, cocooned in madness. She groans when he picks up the blanket, allowing air to gust in, but then sighs when he wraps himself up in her. He loves winter mornings like this when sudden bareness causes no chill, a warmth buried underneath that can only be found somewhere like Venus. He thinks she must too.

*

He wasn’t necessarily conceited back when they first met, perhaps slightly smug, but he felt he earned the right to consider himself the cream of the crop. Thinking that only might place him in the conceited column, but he felt self-assured that he was A1 considering the surrounding litter of men. 

Two dates in, Alex and Astrid were “going steady” as she affectionately put it, however, that did not yet include the label of boyfriend/girlfriend. It was confusing but he considered the hold off by her to be because they hadn’t slept together yet, and nobody wants to bag a man who can’t give a proper lay. 

A Friday at Dave Dearest’s flat brought them together for their first hang-out since unofficially dating. Astrid sat with Chloe on the other side of the room. Alex teased her that she was playing hard-to-get. She shrugged, “I just want to talk with my friend.” He felt kind of stupid after; she had a habit of doing that. 

He was helping Dave grab drinks. The previous ones had possibly rushed through him too quickly or he felt like sin was burning from the inside out and he was in dire need of confession. He picked at his beer’s fraying label. Dave asked, Alex unloaded: “She’s nice. I like her. Like stupid I want to sit next to her and hold her hand all the time. Feel fucking fourteen. And she just sits there. Calm. Unaffected. Then, I just start to feel stupid. She’s making a joke out of me. Now, I feel stupid for telling you rather than letting it go.”

Dave shrugged, seemingly aloof to his woes. “She’s not like that. She’s just private, I think. Definitely, not, uh, what’s it? Heart on your sleeve. And you feel dumb because she’s like stupid smart. Though, she’s also oblivious.” Dave had known her longer, though a secondhand basis through Chloe being his girlfriend, but he had witnessed her far more than Alex. “You haven’t…gone to her place yet right?”

“Her house?”

“Or yours.”

Alex rolled his eyes.

Dave pats his arm. “Dude, you’re just horny. She is too, from what I’ve heard, Astrid is a sex freak. Not in like the tie-up kind of way, but she tells Chloe all these things. You wouldn’t know because she’s shy, but she’s a hot girl, so it makes sense.”

“Dave, you can knock it off. I don’t need to know this. You think Chloe’s telling her all my sex business?”

Dave furrowed his brows. “Pft, if I know the two of them, they covered that before you guys even met. Don’t worry I haven’t heard about any syphilis, unlike some people.”

“I did not have syphilis.”

“Ugh, thank god,” Astrid said, conveniently walking in at that time. He wouldn’t be surprised if she had her ear to the door the whole time. “I once got strep from kissing a boy. Don’t even get me started on lice, which Dave gave to Chloe—”

“I did not!”

“—who gave it to me. Don’t ever borrow a hat from Dave.”

“Shut up.” Dave took a swig. Alex caught his eye. “I’m gonna head back.”

Astrid muffled a laugh, taking a beer as Dave left a swinging door in his wake. “You two are not subtle. Were you making out in here? I wouldn’t be surprised if Dave had a secret gay lover. Chloe has a knack for closested men and she once found—I’m doing the rambling thing again. Sorry.”

He smiled down on her, suddenly closer than ever. “No, you’re fine. Keep going.”

“No, no, you say something.”

He shook his head. Her chest hit his chest. “I love listening to you. You’ve got a great voice, you know?”

“Nobody has ever said that. I either never talk or don’t know when to shut up. It’s uncontrollable.”

He kissed her then, unable to hesitate. He could taste the hint of beer on lips and that cherry lip balm, so sweet he could practically take a bite out of it. He pulled away for a breath. “That’s pretty uncontrollable too.”

“You’re very good at mouth-to-mouth.”

He snorted into her neck, feeling closer than ever. “You planning on choking?”

“For that, I’d consider that risk.”

The night was dire and hot. Dave’s place in itself a hotbox and with their shared close proximity becoming a powder keg. Their absence surely noted, if not announced by Dave’s reentrance. He felt the early brewings of an erection and having one in the kitchen of a house party sounds way too American Pie for him at his age. 

He pulled away, nudging her nose. He nodded toward the closed door. “You should head back in there.”

“Oh.” She recoiled like a hermit to its shell. 

He placed his hands on the countertop, not wanting to get carried away. “Talk to Chloe, spend time with her.”

She twisted a smile, crossing her arms like she just might need to stop herself too. “You’re jealous of Chloe? You were the one talking about STDs with Dave.”

“Hey, I’m jealous of anyone who gets to spend time with you.”

She blushed. He stirred more from that timidness than her thigh rubbing his dick. He felt consumed by her pinking cheeks. The urge to dive in tugging at him. “Then, we’ll just have to fix that.”

“Meaning?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Are we not talking about the same thing?”

“What?” He knew, thought he knew, then believed he had read all the signs wrong, and therefore became just as confused as she was.  

He learned there that if you tempted Astrid she often just spelled it out for you. “Don’t you want to…?” Her hand gestured back and forth between them. “At least, your fella said as much.”

“My fella?”

She slapped her forehead. Red, red, red, red. Goner. “I sound like I was born yesterday. Your boner, or dick, or I don’t know. I don’t like being crass.”

“You are very cute when you’re crass.” Her routine prepossessing features were enhanced under a quick flush. She felt nestled against him. Whether intentional or not, Alex knew then he’d like her to stay there for a time. If “a time” encompassed “in perpetuity.”

That night was filled with “peaks and valleys,” as Alex said while thumbing her exposed nipple, only a short time removed from being inside her. She forgivingly scoffed and stuffed herself under the covers until he joined her there to further survey those peaks and valleys. 

*

For a long time there was a contemplation of more. It primed his mind for a confusion he wouldn’t have bothered with at any other point in his life. Barely dealt with it at that point. His mum called this a marker of maturing into an adult. He didn’t feel as much but it might’ve happened while he wasn’t looking. Similar to Astrid. Likely, she had brushed past him for years and years, and then landed here (he had the thought that he’d like to land with her or fly with her, whatever way, may she be the compass).

The maturity knocked into him around the point he realized Astrid wouldn’t be the one to do it for him. They danced around labelless, though he was under an assumption—wrongfully so, as he learned never to assume with Astrid—that they were dating. He was then introduced one afternoon as a friend to another friend, an equally handsome friend.

And no, he wasn’t “intimidated” more left with the thought that if he was taking her out, warm thinking about her, and—more crassly—fucking her than what was different between him and her handsome friend, Mabel, who was still a hot guy with a name like Mabel. 

“Are we dating?” He asked while they cleaned the dishes. It seemed like a stupid question to ask when washing dishes with someone. All previous points in his life when he had been at the point to wash the dishes together they were patently dating. 

Astrid hummed. Hummed?

His head turned on swivel darting a look of perplexment at her. 

She challenged by raising her eyebrows.

It was awful how good she was at this and Alex didn’t even know what this was. “It’s usually a yes or no answer to the judge.”

“I’m being put on trial. Aren’t you supposed to swear me in first?”

“Astrid.” He hated when she was cute. If this was a court room he’d have to recuse himself and go jerk off in his chambers. 

“I don’t own a Bible but my heart should be good enough.” 

“Come on.” He tried not to smile. It was an Herculean task. 

“Or would your heart be better?”

And there they were in the kitchen, her hand over his pounding heart, kitchen sink neglectfully running, and his brain had long run off without him. Any words that came to his mind made it sound like he was in an afterschool special. He felt his stomach bile. He kissed her like he was trying to fuse their brains together. Maybe I’ll finally know what I’m thinking.

In that grace period anything was an excuse to do that, quickly followed by sex. He’s teasing in his pattern, hoping that if she isn’t convinced already that he can dangle himself in front of her to entice a relationship. He’s thinking of himself as a Buy One, Get One Free sale and he doesn’t know if that’s healthy, but he doesn’t have much care for other things when he’s inside of her.

Because his former wanting desire of sex is transformed into a need; a sincere belief he’ll combust if he can’t do this. He doesn’t know how monks do it. He thinks about telling her this, knows she’d laugh at the thought, except they’re both on the precipice of something and that would be an incredibly sterile sweet-nothing to whisper in her ear, especially when he can only manage to mutter something like “Fuck” in a constrained manner. For fuck’s sake, she bites his shoulder, which is her equivalent of cursing (it only takes about a year of dating for her to finally give into the curse of profanity, her parents will later gasp when she says “shit” at their wedding reception, and they will then giggle madly together in their new little family unit).

After chest-heaving breaths, she smiled over at him. Her hand took to running through his hair. “Keep doing that.” He would’ve cried if she had left. A fear struck through him as a certainty fell upon him that he had misread their relationship as something bigger than she had, or worse, than it actually was. 

He suddenly had become convinced that he had imagined the whole thing. The spiral of infatuation often had done that to him, but usually that spiral had been reciprocated. He began to think of the girls that were on the receiving end of his dismission of their infatuation. He believed that to be an awful thing and that he must then be an awful person. But Astrid wasn’t. So maybe he wasn’t either.

Her hair was soft and smelled of peaches. A flood crashed upon him, the shorelines rising above the houses inside him, knowing her hair was that way because she washed her hair in his shower. Done this morning while he made their small breakfast because they ate all the cereal last night when she was hungry, insisting to him over a mouthful of wet Cheerios, “You have to be prepared for me, Al. I’ll destroy your kitchen and eat your cat after midnight.”

“I don’t have a cat,” he humorously commented. 

She dug for the last scoop. “You should get a cat.”

“For you to eat?” She snorted and he half-expected milk to come out of her nose and he loved her all the same in a choked-down laughter. There is when his first inclination of declaring “I love you” entered his mind, he figured he better find out if she considered him proper boyfriend material before slapping his feelings on her. 

In the aftermath of it, they were twisted up in sheets and each other. He didn’t feel like saying anything, abandoning conversing for the communication of staring. She made him feel small in the same way he felt as a boy in his new Batman pajamas, and more of a man than he ever considered himself to be. He couldn’t quite comprehend that man part, but he had the feeling in him.

“Are you cold?” She asks against his neck. Her breath turns him on: does she know even her breathing is sexy?

“No. I assume you are.”

“No, I’ve just taken most of the blanket.”

He pulled her into him with a sick hope she burrowed into his ribs. This was warm. “I’m fine.” His nose brushes against hers. “Take as much as you want.”

She tucked her face down into his neck. When she talks, she kisses against his skin, “Do you want to be dating?”

Baffled, he questioned, “What?”

She pulled her head out of the hole. “Well, I just don’t know with you. Sometimes I feel like I know everything about you. Chloe has told me enough to make a book on you, but then I feel you’re a mystery. We’re washing dishes and you ask if we’re dating, but then I think how most of what I know about you is through Chloe, which is through Dave, and how true are the things you tell Dave. Not to mention that fact most of what I’ve been told isn’t…committing.”

“Dave doesn’t even know my parents’ names.”

“Alex.” She rolls her eyes with a grin percolating. “I don’t even care about all of that. Well, I do, wanting to know about those things. I’m just saying I haven’t felt that that was something you wanted. So, I wasn’t calling this whatever this could be. But I would, if you’d want something like that.”

They looked at each other in a shared delusion. 

She planted her head down on his chest. “I don’t even know what I’m saying.”

He pinched her skin, teasing, “Astrid, do you like me?”

“Not as much as you do, but I could try.”

He bit his lip to prevent guffawing into her face. Alex felt Astrid was probably right about that, still is right.

*

The kettle whistles. “Permeating what was left of the world’s last sanctum,” Alex narrates as he goes to take it off the stove. Astrid laughs echoes through the house as she inches out of the bedroom, slipping layers on while moving. Alex laughs.

He knows she’s laughing because he’s being, what she considers, “too lyrical” for commonspeak. She knows he’s laughing because she can’t just put on her clothes and then walk, she has to do both at once and trip out like a fool. Both are cute, something Astrid insists he is whenever she laughs. It took awhile, maybe until they were engaged, for him to believe her. It was far more about his insecurities than her conviction. Once he reached that point of maturity, he realized that all the little things she amusingly did that made him feel warm inside could also be how she feels about his idiosyncrasies, or at least she insists as much.

She manages to make it to the kitchen while getting lost in her sweatshirt. She got plenty of practice traveling around half-blind when she had surgery on her left eye last year. She had to wear an eyepatch, which was more of a bandage than “walk the plank.” She allowed him to call it an eyepatch as long as he didn’t make any pirate jokes. He obliged with the exception of the parrot stuffed animal, which got her to smile.

He pours the hot water into a mug for her. She searches through her tea collection: two boxes each of black, mint, chai, chamomile, oolong, and then the one stray box of Earl Grey for him because she finds it “tart.” She selects black like she does most mornings. One squeeze of the bear-shaped honey bottle. “It equates to about a teaspoon and a half,” she told him the first she guided him through her tea routine. Then, she grabs a tiny “tea spoon” to stir it, making ten clockwise rotations before tapping her spoon on the brim, and dropping it onto a spoon rest. Alex didn’t know spoon rests existed before Astrid. It’s now become a necessary integration into his life.

Her wacky has always matched his wacky. Coffee: dark roast beans, hand-grinded because Astrid hated the noise his electric one made, brewed in the coffee maker Astrid dubbed “cute” the first time she saw it, poured into the brown porcelain mug Astrid gave him (though he finds it a little dull), then splash of milk and a shake of sugar. He doesn’t dedicate loyalty to this routine, but he’s not going to change what works for him. He tends to feel like a far more flexible person standing next to Astrid. One day he woke up and he was a guy who liked a specific kind of Bajan turbinado sugar.

*

She’s laconic most of the time. It was a new thing for him to be the talkative one in a relationship. He was already frequently tongue-tied and she often needed him to not be. It might’ve been her prudent nature or just a lifelong wallflower, but it often developed into a withdrawness that Alex didn’t know how to go about. Often, he feared she had lost interest in him. With her socks still in his top drawer.

It was easy to feel like The Fool and he tried to consider that thinking he was The Fool was often his assumed position in a relationship, but he clearly had become The Fool. He waited with patience on a Friday night, no plans. She said she’d call so he stared at his phone. He even stared at the landline. She was the first person ever to use his landline to call someone. He didn’t know it existed before then. 

Midnight. Waiting. When did he become such a girl? His younger self had quite the nerve to leave a handful of girls on the receiving end of this behavior. He thought about going to bed, he was beginning to feel old in all those frustrating ways. His body was looser, at times he felt unshapely, and overtaken by a sudden pompous insecurity not faced since his callow years. Sometimes his back would hurt all day. He began to have fears of waking up one morning with his hearing gone.

Briefly, he got back into the puerile habit of smoking weed, but after a week he just felt long in the tooth. Her general elusive nature had been attractive in instigation of their relationship, but now he yearned and a month of Sundays had passed since he felt ashamed of that kind of want for someone. The Fool part stood strong. He wondered if she still had shame in her, a trait bestowed on girls that he would never understand that told them it was skanky for a girl to reach out to a guy. She seemed to describe her familial upbringing as being somewhat conservative. Though, where that line was drawn was ambiguous. She seemed faraway when he thought of her like that, like he didn’t know anything about her.

His phone rang with an unknown number. He answered with the slim hope it wasn’t a telemarketer and his greeting was returned with panting rambling that unnerved him. “Hey. If it sounds like I’m underwater it’s ‘cause I’m in the bathroom hiding out from my family. It’s all very…a mindfuck for me, I don’t know how else to describe it, but it certainly feels like I’m underwater like I’m drowning. In men, too! Sorry, that’s not the kind of thing I should say in that way. But I’m currently being auctioned off to the highest bidder. So, yeah, could you, uh, come and get me?”

And he can’t wrap his head around all the words he just said so he answers, “To bid on you?”

“To rescue me,” she laughed, “but you can do that too, if you’d like. It’s a thing that…well, I’ll explain it to you when I’m not hiding in the bathtub from my grandma.”

He slipped his shoes on and drove out to the suburbs. The houses started to sprout bigger like they get more direct sunlight and water out here. Better soil, he guessed. She told him not to come up the driveway so he parks at the end of the cul-de-sac and waits. He’s never seen such grandiose birdbaths. 

She came out in this ridiculous fur coat. A bear eating her alive. Her breath was panting the same as it did on the phone. “It’s my grandmother’s, shush. I didn’t bring a coat.” She shut the door and he drove as she commanded. 

Once out from the compound of stone, she shifted to face him. “Thanks. For this. I know it’s a little strange.”

“What are you talking about? Escape missions are my specialty?”

“Did you want to be James Bond when you were younger?”

“Batman.”

“Close enough. I admittedly know very little. About either really.”

“We gotta change that then, don’t we?”

“Oh, no, please don’t make me sit through some really geeky comic conviction.”

He pointed a finger at her, finding it hard to keep his eyes on the road. “Okay, first, I just drove out here at midnight, you owe me.”

“Fine, fine. You’re right.” Her lips smack his cheek. It wasn’t that much of a burden at all. To get this in the end too.

“Second, if comics are geeky then whatever you have going on with that coin collection is forthright dweebish.” 

“Numismatics is a celebrated field and hobby that has been passed generation to generation in my family. I’m proudly dweebish.”

“Third,” he held out three fingers, poking them into her full cheeks, “if coins are fun then Batman will blow your mind.”

“Okay.” Her smile was bijou, far more lush than the looming houses that fade.

“Am I going to hear the story?” While he knew it was in his right to know, he still feels guilty, worried he is prying into something he shouldn’t mess with.

“Food first, please.”

“What’s even open at this hour?”

“McDonald’s.” She sounded tired, something he had recently gotten familiar with. “Fries and a milkshake between us.”

“Two straws. Are we going to fire up the jukebox after?”

“You kid, but I think you long for that.”

“I long for any chance to hand-jive with you.”

Her head tipped back. Her throat on full display and rhythmic laughter echoing through the car. He thought of asking her to take over so he could reach out, but it sounds like an odd threat of choking her. Eyes steady straight ahead, in search of the golden arches.

After a ride via the drive-thru, he parks and at her suggestion, they eat outside to not get crumbs over his car. As if canola grease had been the harshest thing ever in that car. The near-bursting paper bag sits on the hood between them. She left the fur coat inside the car, claiming she was hot, though November had just begun.

“This is the antics my family gets up to,” she explained halfway done with a mix of McFlurry and cheeseburger.

Alex popped the last of his apple pie into his mouth. “Being your personal Tinder?”

“No, well, sometimes.” She choked down her food so she could laugh while spitting it out over the windshield. “Tonight was a function. My grandparents are involved in a lot of organizations. Mostly planning and hosting charity events. They insisted I come tonight. I figured it was because it had been a while since I’d seen them, but nope.”

“Are your grandparents pimps, Astrid?”

She flushed. “In another life maybe. My grandma could probably run a mean brothel. My grandpa is more Travis Bickle.” Mouthful of fries, she corrected, “Without the shooting. Or being a lewd. Or mohawk. Bad pick.”

“More Jimmy the Gent?” She stared blankly back at him. “Goodfellas?”

“Oh, yes. Wait, no, I mean, no. You understand?”

He pressed his lips together. “Yeah, I understand you.” It’s loaded, infused with a strange hope she knows what he means. He’s covering far more than just that sentence, that conversation, their overarching relationship. He can feel his axis shift as they pivot away from the overture and toward the medial. “So, does he look like De Niro or something?”

She wipes the salty dust off her fingers. “No, not really. He looks like Faulkner and Hemingway mixed together, but he’s always been an old gentleman to me so I don’t know if that translates to what a younger version of him looked like.”

“Is he a writer?”

“Pft, no. He was a game theory professor.”

“God. I barely know what game theory is.”

The last of her milkshake begins to gargle as she pinches the straw. “He’s very serious about it. Serious in general, but he’s always been into niche areas. He could talk James Bond with you, well, the books, at least. Don’t bring up superheroes though, I think he finds comic books to be responsible for the downfall in reading comprehension. They still don’t own a television.”

“Ah, no wonder he doesn’t get superheroes, he never watched the Batman TV show. Just wait until he finds out how much a charity could earn for first-edition Batman comics.”

“You’re being nerdy again.”

Just to be smug, he finished the last of the fries. Simpering, he steps closer. “What charity does the money of your highest bidder go to?”

“The Butterfly Conservation.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yeah. My grandma’s specific cause is the British Swallowtail, which can only be found in The Broads.”

“So, your date is saving the British Swallowtail?”

“You’re my date.”

He chuckled, stepping closer. He swallowed, trying to get everything done, wanting to be clean. “Hey, all I’ve pledged is some fast food.”

She pouts. “But the British Swallowtail.”

“I’ll pay enough to have the British Swallowtail live on far longer than us humans.” He looked down at her. She turned to have her back pressed up against the car door. 

Her arms loop around his neck. “Quite the hero.” She caught a handful of his shirt, tugging him close. He leaned as far into her as she would allow. 

She swayed, her hands trailing across his neck and shoulders. The saccharine taste of vanilla and the traces of gross whiskey drawn off her tongue. He pressed into her cheek when she was smiling too much to kiss back. “Missed you,” she whispered. 

“Really?” Though the question is real, he ducks back into her to avoid her seeing the truth in his eyes. He dragged his lips from her temple down her cheekbones, gnawing at the corner of her jaw. “Thank you,” her voice hitching. “For the pickup. And—oh.” She still liked his teeth on her ear. Good. Good. By the sigh that follows, his leg fits rightly between hers. 

They messed around a while longer, until she was pink all over and panting, lipstick smeared down her chin and his. The scene is far more immature than smoking pot. It’s a quickie in a parking lot before prom’s over.

She giggles in between catching her breath. “You’re very good at that. All of it. Picking me up. No questions asked even though it sounded like I was luring you to the middle of the woods. You’re sweet and pretty. And I’m drunk.” 

“Yeah, I figured that out with the amount of talking you’ve done.” 

Laughing now, her eyes shutting, fist in his shirt, sheepish. “The kind I’m sure to be embarrassed over tomorrow.”

“No, don’t be embarrassed. Ever. I like you quite a lot.”

“Well…yeah, I love you.” Is it juvenile to still feel giddy over that kind of thing? That being the first time either of them had said that. It had been implied in actions, but spelling it out has never been his or her thing, except it kind of is her thing. Blunt and obvious and if she were a different woman a “Duh” would be placed on the end, but she’s frank and clear, no questioning in her voice. And still she assures him, “I’m not going to be embarrassed over saying that tomorrow.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yeah, even if you don’t say it back because I know it. You don’t pick a girl up at midnight and make out with her in a McDonald’s parking lot if you don’t love her. Unless this is a thing you’re into. Are illicit parking lot visits in my future?”

“I prefer to do my illicit meetings at home.”

“Because there’s a bed there.”

He floated a laugh. “Because I don’t have to feel like the fry cook is watching us make out.”

She giggled. “Okay. Me too. But, uh, kiss me first, and then we’ll go.”

“Kiss you and then we’ll go,” he vowed.

*

To his left, the multiplying mountain of tissues. They were breeding with one another. His nose was scalped raw, the end tipped in red. Third-day stubble he scratched at in irritation, but Astrid was complimentary enough that the redness on his cheeks outweighed the forming redness on his chin.

A pitiful groan left his lips as she came back in their bedroom with another fresh cup of tea that will surely become lukewarm before Alex can have more than two sips from it. 

She sat next to his thighs looking as if she’s about to fall off the bed. Her hand made soothing circles up his arm before thumbing at the stretched collar of his white shirt. “You should change your shirt.”

“Are you trying to get me naked, woman?” Despite how weak and pathetic it comes out, she laughed. 

“Lift,” she commanded the same way his mother did when she dressed him for school. She even puts a shirt on him in the same rough way. 

Then, heaven. He shuts his eyes as she runs her hands through his hair. She wordlessly pushes him to lay on his stomach and then rubs his back. So soft. So smooth. He fell asleep and woke lighter, sinuses included.

*

There was a faint bruise on her elbow by the time they moved in together. A few days prior, she had hit her arm trying to disassemble one of her shelves. He kissed it as a balm. He observed her as she sliced open her kitchenware box. She fixed her hair into a low bun, already slipping out from the tie. Then, for hours, they robotically put things away the best they could. 

As she cleaned the countertops, he stepped outside for smoke. A minute later, she joined him on the cracked stone step. Guilt crawled through him whenever she watched him smoke. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled when they caught him smoking in their backyard after Christmas dinner. Her grandmother told him a long story about how the only reason cigarettes weren’t banned is because they made insurance companies loads of money. Her grandfather said it was a lack of willpower in a man to not be able to quit smoking. Astrid had sat silently through the whole thing. He couldn’t interpret it as anything other than her taking their side. Fair enough, he doesn’t have willpower.

But she leaned into him before he could put the cigarette out so he took it as permission to keep going, at least with this cigarette. “I’m tired.” She nuzzled into his arm.

“You wanna go to bed?” He put the cigarette out, regretting it already. The taste fresh, he needs a mint.

“Yeah, if my feet are still working.”

“I’ll carry you.”

She hummed a laugh then stood, walking on her own to their new bedroom. He followed closely.

A few hours later, still too dark to awake fully, he felt her next to him. Her hand squeezed the fat of his arm. “Why are you awake?”

“Why are you?”

“Dream.”

Eyes still closed, he asked, “About what?”

He waited for a reply. Nothing came. Her hand moved from his arm to his waist, her nails digging in, grabbing for him. Aching for him. No nightmare. He hitched her thigh properly around him, then slid his hand up to her firm hipbone, then sneaking lower, rolling his wakening cock lazily against her. He tore away from her mouth to gape, blinking, unbelieving, at her reddening face.

He hoarsely said, “This is how wet you fucking wake up.” 

She took a shaking breath as she pulled him closer. “Stop.”

“Don’t be chaste. Your parents aren’t near. Nobody’s near.” Whole place, just for this.

“Don’t talk about my parents when I feel this way.”

He kissed with a laugh and hungry ripping away at him. “Fuck. Can I—”

“Please.” Back down he went, drowsy, making a racket, blissfully giving with his cock caught between the mattress and his stomach, grinding for any friction that made him shut his eyes. Entirely unintentional little moans, high in his voice, or groaning hums of satisfaction echoed off the walls. 

She panted, “I will never be grumpy again. All day and night.” She flung an arm over her face, one hand lying flat on her stomach, pushing up to her clit. Tongue teasing inside, then searching fingers.

The vulgarity from her lips stirred him further. “Yeah? Like that? Yeahh,” because it made her smile, fully smiling with a breathless moan. When she came, it took him all of ten strokes into his fist to follow. 

“Yeah,” she said, watching it wash over him through heavy eyes. His instinct was to bury his face in her hip. He already felt like he was drowning. He went limp, ears ringing. 

“Jesus Christ,” he said in a small voice. His teeth caught against her skin. Her hand slid into his hair, fingers spread, then pulled, throb from his used dick. “Jesus Christ.”

“A room of our own,” she said. “This is going to be a problem.”

He breathlessly laughed, jangling with lingering pleasure. “Yeah,” he said. “Or no. I could live out my days here.”

“Oh, god,” she exhaled. “It’s going to smell like sex.”

He mushed up into her neck. “We can get some candles. Those fancy artisanal kinds.”

“The ones that are sculptures. A woman with her tits out.”

“Oh, lord, one night together and I’m already corrupting you.”

She giggled, pulling him into her neck, his mouth nipping at the skin. “My mum said she was going to get me one. My grandpa said ‘That’s how peoples’ houses burn down, Mercy.’”

*

Their toothbrushes sit in their shared mug—blackletter “A” printed on ceramic. It was an engagement present from her step-dad, awkwardly explained as Astrid unwrapped it, “It’s nothing, kinda stupid really, so if you don’t need it or you shove it in the back of your cabinets for the next decade, I won’t be offended. But I figured you both have the same initial so one of you could…I should’ve gotten two, but it could be your communal mug. That makes it sound like the freshman showers, but I thought this was cute. You like cute stuff.” Really it became Astrid’s favorite gift of the night. In turn, Alex’s favorite too, the most useful too. The Waterford crystal champagne flutes from her grandparents sit on the top shelf, used only once the night of the engagement party. The £11 mug became a symbol of their union, the fusion of their lives, and them as A2 or A+A—the math analogy isn’t their forte. 

Astrid has always used an electric toothbrush. She tried to convert Alex to the movement but he’s always like the ease of the manual Oral-B toothbrush they give you at the dentist. The squeezed flat Colgate toothpaste is used between them, luckily few odontologic issues between them.

Confining the sink space has always been an issue. It’s the one limiting sector of the bathroom, mainly because the only established agreed upon items to be stored there—toothbrushes and soap—take up the two corners, however, one of them (Astrid) always tries to sink an additional item on it. For a while it was her moisturizer until Alex bought and horribly screwed in a shelf for it. In hindsight he should’ve gotten a bigger shelf and had a professional do it. Often, the hairbrush will be found travelling between the bathroom mirror and their bedroom mirror. It’s the one space she hasn’t gotten organized to a tee, mainly because when she’s confronted with the clutter (i.e. him knocking something off the sink while rushing to get ready), she will insist, “We’ve never had enough space in here. I’ve never liked this sink. Or this bathroom. I want to move.” She doesn’t want to move. Nearly once every week he’ll hear her say things about how she’s never lived in a cozier place. There’s also no way they are moving before she finally takes a class at the pottery studio around the corner that she’s been saying she’ll do for nearly five years. 

Interstice between them in the bathroom could either be the most enjoyable time of the day or knife-breaking tension, depending on the occasion. The mornings with shoulder-knocking and glances already played out by Torrance and Cliff. She’s fresh from bed, tucked up in something of his—old henley in winter, even older band T-shirt in the summer—fitting in all the best ways. Tip-toeing on the cold tiles, her bottom clad in only underwear, if he’s lucky. On the ear-splitting days, she’ll sit on the toilet lid in an act of resistance. Or worse, she’ll wait for him to leave before brushing. Those lone moments in front of the mirror are when he always recognizes how well she fits into his life, where toothbrushing without her feels wrong. The sound of her toothbrush’s motor soothes him into the day or into bed. It would be cheap to hear it without her. The muffled sound of it skimming through her mouth is an unreplicable nonpareil. 

*

Daiquiris with way too much rum were crafted by Astrid for celebration. They had both said these kinds of commemorations were meaningless until they hit that point in their relationship. That morning in bed Alex said to her, “Hey, do you know what today is?” and she replied, “A year, I know.” Nothing was different in their day. Dinner made at home by her, dishes washed by him all the same. After he showered, she called him to the kitchen where she mixed whatever leftover liquor she had and made a shitty daiquiri for their one year anniversary. Of dating, which they both said was a very meaningless thing to celebrate, “Plenty of people date that long; it's not like marriage or anything,” she said, but alcohol on a Tuesday night fit worthy of a year together. She was a very cute, very bad bartender.

He scrunched his nose up at the strength. “Did you put some rubbing alcohol in that?”

“I don’t know how to make any cocktails. I was never allowed to go near the bar cart. It’s not a girl’s job.”

“Then why didn’t you have me do it?”

Out of stubbornness, she took a large swig. “I wanted to do it for you.”

“I can teach you.”

She shook her head. “Going forward you will make all alcoholic beverages. I will drink them.”

“Fair deal.”

“But you have to finish the ones I made first.”

“I’ll be knocked dead if I do that.” He strained his face for effect.

“Don’t be wasteful.”

He refrained from mentioning how much plastic waste she likely has committed with her preference of plastic cutlery, explained away because she’s “on-the-go” but really just doesn’t want to clean it. 

In a show of great strength, he downed a big gulp. “Oh, shit,” he gasped while shaking the sting away. She relieved him by pouring in more simple syrup. “Is this a murder plot?”

“Do you want to switch glasses?”

“You could be pulling a Princess Bride on me.”

“Drat!” With a snap of her fingers, she turned to grab more ice from the freezer. “I’ve been foiled again. If it wasn’t for you meddling kids!” 

He chuckled, but admittedly he was staring more at her ass than listening to her. What? “There’s nothing sexier than a horrible mixologist making drinks in her panties.” She ignored the comment and focused her eyes on her glass, already too flustered to add eye contact to the mix. “I’d love to tip you, ma’am, but I’m afraid I don’t have any money.”

“Alex,” she whined, trying to duck away from his view.

Coyly, he widened his eyes and teased, “What?”

She rose back up to wrap her fingers around the dripping glass. “If you want to get with a girl, don’t call her ma’am.”

“M’lady?”

“Stop,” she giggled. Her hand covered her mouth to muffle her infectious pulse.

He stood. In a slow prowl toward her, he pussyfooted around the counter separating them. “Miss? Madame? Mademoiselle?”

She scrambled to the corner like a mouse going back to its wallburrow. “Finish your drink,” she said once calmed. She pushed herself up on the counter in an obvious taunting move.

Fine. She can be the floor show. Tucked in her corner, if it weren’t inhumane he’d have her stay there forever whenever everything else seems filled with ugliness and crumbling up into nothing, and then a glance where she has rested to remind him of everything nice. Or a striptease, he’d get all his money ready into singles for her. He hushed his mind because she’d clam up at such comments, either from the objectifying idea to have her frozen into a statue or hearing the residual comments of her strait-laced brood.

The lines of her body blurred together. His eyes had gone fuzzy and his heart thumped. He swallowed the liquor threatening to burn holes into his esophagus. An irreconcilable feeling reeked in him on whether to stay put or pounce. His hands shook as he placed the empty glass down. Adrenaline or the rush of rum?

“I want chocolate. Do we have chocolate?” Her legs kicked against the counter. He wondered if she was like this as a child. It was easy to imagine her in a smaller form, pigtails or butterfly barrettes, and a smile with crooked teeth. Things he’d never say to her would pop in his mind from time to time, that night he had the thought he wished she never got braces because her teeth in her school portrait were tucked against one another in an adorable procession (the kind he imagined their imaginary child with). While pouring ice into a glass, he chuckled thinking he must wish she still had her baby teeth. He had constructed a creepy devotion of love that only made himself blush. Then, something about Astrid possibly replying with the fact her mother still had all her baby teeth in a little jar in her drawer. A year ago he was unnerved by the keepsake and now he understood wanting to keep every piece of her. Picture: him crawling around on the floor looking for her stray hairs.

He blew a laugh again. Her feet pattered behind him. Then, she rounded her arms around his waist, he felt all evenings would end like this from now on. Her body pressed against his. Relishing in the touch while squeezing the last of the juice out of the lime before turning to feel her fully. Daiquiris be damned, he’s drunk off this, the thought alone, the thought continuing forever on.

She indulged in him and for him, but the daiquiri called. The smallest of sips, how she drank everything in life, and the burst of a smile. “You’re a prodigy.”

He pushed into her. “I have many talents.” He nibbed at her neck.

She nudged him back. “One thing at a time. You can’t overwhelm me. I’ll disintegrate. Poof! ‘I’m melting! I’m melting!’ Ooh, we should watch The Wizard of Oz.” She tapped her hand against his chest, excited into a puppy dog reaching for a treat.

“One thing at a time,” he teased. He chastely kissed her cheek before stepping back for his glass.

“Don’t go.” She reached out and tugged on his arm. “Stay. You’re warm and perfect and I love you and you make excellent daiquiris.”

“Oh, is that all I’m good for?” He teases like this when she starts to keep tipsy. Her words will become flimsy and she loosens to a point where she can dish out adulation without excessively blushing. A month into dating, when she told him in front of his friends that he looked sexy he thought it must be her evil twin hitting on him, but no, just tequila shots.

“Yes, and a few others I’m too embarrassed to say.” Because miracles can’t be made and she’d probably have to be drugged to say something like he’s good at fucking, which he knows because actions speak louder than words and she once bashfully said she’d never had issues getting out of bed before but now she was addicted, implying him or his cotton sateen sheets.  

And, yeah, when he gets drunk he tends to get explicit too. He used to think he was fairly tamed until Astrid made him look like a whoremonger. “You nymph. You’re blushing at the thought. Am I allowed to kiss you back by the dumpsters? Tell your father I won’t keep you out too late.”

“Don’t tease. I’m shocked my grandparents didn’t suffer a stroke when they found out we’re living in sin.”

His back pressed against the cold marble countertops. They stayed close, skin-to-skin, while each taking baby sips from their clinking glasses. “They are severely oblivious if they still think we’re not having sex.”

The notion made him chuckle and her scoff. She had artfully dodged the sex question with batting lashes and her too-pure-to-be-pink demeanor. Though the endzone was still out of sight, the guaranteed “When are you getting married?” question lied on the table every time they had dinner together, but Alex could handle it, mainly because the thought of marriage no longer frightened him. The thought of a forever commitment to her family: shaking his boots.

She tucked her leg in between his two, her socked left foot traced around his ankle. “Only you could somehow make taking one’s socks off sexy.”

“My private school uniform prepared me well.”

He leaned closer to her with his lips playing with a loose smirk. “You should bring that back next time you visit your parents.”

She rammed her forehead against his chest. “Don’t be perverse,” she muttered into his shirt, her hands toying at the hem of his shirt indicating she couldn’t have been that unsettled. In fact.

Her cold hands touched the warm skin of his hips causing him to hiss. “You’re the perverse one, Ass.” Something he only called her when he was hard and she was pressed up against him like this. It turned her on, but she sneered at it in any other context. 

He said of her, “You talk the talk, but you do not walk to walk.” She proved so by kisses at his neck. A fluttering of her lips up to his chin, behind his ear, and back around to the other side of his neck. “Some poor woman in SoHo knows you as the girl who gave head without locking the bathroom door.”

She quickly yanked back, saying as she had asserted time and time again, “I thought it was locked! Who has that confusing of a lock at a place where everyone is three sheets to the wind?” Thankfully, diving back into him right after. Addicted, he insisted.

“I believe you thought it was locked,” he taunted.

“We’re breaking up,” she scoffed before nuzzling right back up to him.

Time to give up talking, he hummed and cupped his hands on waist to pull her center against his. Get the message signaled and she pulled at his neck in a request to fuse their bodies. “Can I watch you take your socks off now?” He muttered into her mouth.

She pulled back with the grin of a minx. Her index finger slid into the cuff. “Is this a Pavlovian association from when you masturbated into a sock?”

Now he felt like the embarrassed one, gaping at whoever was now standing before him pulling gym socks off her feet. “I think I might have a stroke now.”

She giggled, tossing her socks at him. He couldn’t even bother to try to catch them. “After we exercise.”

“It’s amazing what a salted rim can do to a girl.”

“You put salt on your anus?”

He could only stare wide-eyed. “I never heard someone say the word anus seductively. It’s like I’m back in biology trying to not get a hard-on from the pelvic model.”

“Wonder what would’ve happened if you saw the real thing,” said so off-handedly, her tone not even close to suggestive, even though he was clearly hard and she was sockless.

“Maybe I wouldn’t have nearly flunked biology. I always was in need of a tutor.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not putting on my old school uniform.” She turned and walked away from him, but she managed to lead the way to the bedroom. Junkie. Total junkie.

*

Somewhere between morning and afternoon they made their way outside. In winter, it was one of their harshest acts to do. In summer, Astrid strolled in wide strides, basking in the sun, born a derivative of the flower-child era. The cold mutated her into a recluse, more gruff or sullen at times, unless the festivities were crafted exactly how and when she wanted. Her social battery diminished like it could only be solar-powered, often making her only participate in the outside world once a week, forcing him to risk cabin fever or venture out without her. He didn’t like to do much of either nowadays. It had felt wrong to go out without her since his stag night and she is also a major pain in his ass.

But winter also makes her soft. Late nights and early mornings all together in a twisted-up ball of yarn. She’s reposeful—a salve crafted that should be flying off the shelves—in the grasp of his cracked-open palms dried out by winter.

Since the deep of her thirties she’s wilted at this time of year. In effort to prevent her perennial post-Halloween despondency from slipping into a depressive episode, he began November with the suggestion of a daily walk. For nearly the entirety of the month she spent the walk disparaging the weather, but by December she put her shoes on before he could ask. The sun shines a little longer and Astrid looks very cute in her trapper hat.

Sometimes they end up at a cafe or sitting in the park if the weather allows it, but today they just walk around the neighborhood uncovered from last night’s mess in a pale beam of daylight, the kind that makes concrete seem colder. She taps her foot while he struggles to use his phone with his gloves. He slips his right one off and takes a photo of the murky sky puddled up with mist. She stays po-faced but doesn’t comment on it.

Her quietness buzzes in a clear symbol to end the walk with the threat of her simmering scorn. He turns the corner back in the direction of home. He thinks of December pasts and future ones when the world is a blanket of snow and the wind beats violently, but she’s close and even under forty layers he feels her next to him and no matter how cold she still warms him up.  

*

For her 30th birthday she wanted something simple. Of course, that’s after her family’s tenacious Fourth of July/Astrid’s Birthday Extravaganza From the Seventh Circle of Hell in which her grandparents recommended fertility doctors (their biggest mistake ever was thinking a fib about her barren uterus would get the hounding off their back), her mother and step-father silently fought the whole day, her aunt nearly set the house of fire with sparklers, and the grand finale of her father showing up drunk and passing out in the pool. When they got in the car after, she shrugged, and said, “At least the cake was good.” And all he could think and say is “You’re a nut. I love you.”

So, on July 14th, a few friends came over for pizza, liquor, and a Marks & Spencer bought birthday cake. By the time everyone left it was only 10:15. “Is this what happens when you get older?” She asked from her place on the couch while he cleaned up. She was the baby of their friends’ age group. He refrained from mentioning the exhaustion she complained about on his 30th, only because she would now insist it was because she barely knew him, which fair enough they had only been dating for a month or so and she was strapped with Christmas, New Year’s, his birthday, and her mother’s 50th in a back-to-back order.

A lustrum later, they were married and had done the festivities so much that there wasn’t much left to be celebratory about, at least in the going out regard. The evening at home was far nicer and Astrid had effectively given up alcohol since her brother’s wedding where she barfed before they even cut the cake. 

After he’d taken the pizza boxes out, they sat on the living room rug, their high-score flea market find that became the backdrop to their everyday life and held sought-after memories to boot. He handed her his poorly-wrapped present. Her name was written in his handwriting at the top, despite the fact there was obviously no one else there to mistake the present to be for them, but done so because Astrid said she liked how her name looked in his handwriting. She had said it at such a frightening time when he had taken her to the hospital for what turned out to be pneumonia. Six months of dating and he filled out her forms with precision. Since then he’s been her emergency contact. When he thinks of that day where he had never felt more worried in his life, he smiled first at the thought of her slumped against his arm in the waiting room, where he said, “My handwriting is awful,” concerned any mistake would prevent her from being seen, and she replied in a voice so frail, “My name has never looked prettier.”

Her hands fold around the gift. She bit her lip and her fingers unsteadily tucked into the wrapping paper. Her eyes flicked between him and the gift, starting to smile, even if her mannerisms demonstrated a nervousness to the naked eye. Excitement makes her anxious. Her hair was tied-up, rougher than it had ever been allowed to be, but pieces had started to tumble at her temples and the nape of her neck. If she weren’t distracted, she’d be irritated by it, pulling it down and redoing it every few minutes. The slightest touch of stray hair had left her shell shocked from her debutante days.

“Could you take any longer?” he said, rubbing a hand over the back of her calf.

“Sorry,” she muttered. She glanced up, already excusing his incoming comment to not apologize. She did that too often. She continued to peel tape as if she didn’t want to hurt the box’s paper skin. It reminded him of the first time she took his clothes off. Her hands deftly touched the hem of his shirt and the belt of his pants. When she had undone the button, he thought of learning to tie his shoes, when he realized that all the time of doing it wrong had led to now getting it right.

The box was bare then. She cracked it open like an oyster and there like a pearl sat a ring, a thing she had mentioned in passing about never getting jewelry that she liked—hefty, crafty, made from a creativity rather than monetary mind. Left without a breath, she snatched his hand and squeezed it to the bone. He continued to smile, happy in the tortuous flash of pain. 

She put the ring to her pointer finger, then held it out to him, shining next to her engagement ring and wedding band, both heirlooms, and this funky little thing from the depths of a vintage shop. “I love it,” she said. She pulled it close to her chest, giving it a hug as if it were a living thing, new to her world, and this was her promise to love it. “Perfect. It’s perfect. Thank you, thank you.” 

Her tucked up smile, small but mighty. She rose to her knees to shuffled toward him, straddling his lap. He tapped his palms up her thighs, accepted a flurry of pecks across his cheek and parted waiting mouth. She whispered, “You kiss so sweet.”

“It’s the birthday cake.”

She shook her head, her hair thrashing against him. He tucked the dangling bits behind her ears. “No, you have this…sweet, soft, lovely, however else one can say it. If you could kiss you, you’d be in love.”

“Sounds like a Greek tragedy.”

And she kissed so sweet.

*

She fell asleep on the couch before he was back from his nightly smoke. Sometimes she joined him, but she notably cut back when she felt the cigarette was undeserved. Dinner with her family: she’d happily lit the pipe for him. Dessert digestion: a frigid shoulder.

He cared, cut back through the years, but in an awful way felt that this was one thing he deserved. He took care of himself in other ways and lately he took care of her more than she did. Part of it is a health-concern, but he’s always thought it to be a self-conscious concern of her toffee-nosed family members. Understandable, but not now in the long haul they’ve been on. Her nose held proud in the sky despite the fact he sometimes had to force feed her. In other words: deserved smoke.

Her unconscious state initially seemed to be a power move against him, but now was a divulgence, a misère ouvert. He wanted to sit and be low with her. What a wasteful thing to ever be resentful toward her? She looms so large in his life that he begins to feel she overtakes it. A giant crashing feet down and yelling “Fee-fi-fo-fum!” and he quivers under a self-perception of being David against this Goliath, but really she’s just as small as him. Smaller when she’s like this: body burrowed into the couch, sleeping marks pressing into her face, curled up into a ball, some Briar Rose reincarnate. When he’s known her this long it becomes harder to remember how he thought of her in the beginning when she was some outskirt friend, three degrees removed, when their only interaction was for him to stare at her.

The daily doings had scrubbed away at the things he did when their relationship was in its infancy. The getting-to-know had been the scariest, most exhilarating thing, like going to space, as he had told her when he proposed. She laughed at it the same way he had seen her laugh from across the rooms. 

Those first years of knowing, dating, marriage, each gave an excuse to do things because he had never done them before with her. Then, the things they hadn’t shared started to become fewer and farther between, and it had never been a bad thing, just different. There was no greater joy than being known, but it also meant he didn’t linger as much as he used to. He knew what she looked like curled up on the couch, knew when it was a fighting defense, knew her pure exhaustion, knew the drunk sleepiness, knew the fighting to stay awake during a movie, knew the cat nap, knew the waiting for him, and all the positions in between. 

But time had changed them both in the slightest of ways. Softer, harsher. The dreaded expected eventuality of wrinkles and greys that she smiled at because she had a way of making every single thing feel special. “You’re cute,” she’d say first, then, “I feel like a mother watching her child gradually grow. You know how your relatives say things like ‘You’ve gotten so big!’ but you don’t feel like much has changed. Anyway, I feel that way. Should we mark this on the doorjamb? Or pluck it and put it in a scrapbook.” The delicate grace she spoke with made the only proper response he could give was a kiss, as it so often was.

How long had it been since he observed her? Watching her sleep could make him feel like Dracula preying on the innocent. He had felt that way with every girl, a developed behavior to not come off as another male creep. Still, it was always good to look at her—a compulsory practice that had likely not been meeting the requirements of lately. When did she get those socks?

So, he stands in the entranceway and looks for far longer than he had in a while. He debates whether to sit beside her, possibly wake her or fall asleep beside her. He then lays his eyes on her neck, propped up in such a funky way that he begins to ache by sight alone. He rubs the column of his neck.

Eventually, he peels away to the kitchen. He puts the kettle on, removing it before it can whistle out. He concocts her nighttime tea in the precisionist learned way she liked it. When he finished it, he still didn’t know what to do. Don’t wake a sleeping giant. Don’t make a tempest in a teapot. Don’t let your wife get a pillowface. 

It strikes him over the head that this isn’t some stranger. She’s predictable and unpredictable, but the thing he knows is her and him, and the fact that he wants to talk to her because watching someone sleep has never been his cup of tea. He laughs because he knows she’d laugh at the pun. She’s always looked at the most done-to-death things as if it were the newest craze. Maybe because she somehow made it to the age of 22 before hearing “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and she was determined to get why it was funny and in fact still did not get why it was funny (this comes up often at dinner parties or whenever he’s trying to ease tension by distracting her after a fight).

He picks her up, knowing she’ll be more welcomed to being woken up if she’s in her bed and not the couch he’s owned since his first flat. And when he places her under the covers, he laughs, full-out, holly jolly, belly laugh. He knocks her thigh. “You’re not even asleep.”

“Huh?” Her eyes still closed and, with all the willpower she can muster, a weakened smile.

“When I carry you in here and you’re actually asleep, you always end up turning over onto your stomach. And you do this little hum, almost like you’re trying to whistle.”

She turns onto her stomach and mutters, “I can’t whistle.”

“That’s why you’re trying to. At least you don’t spittle like you do when you’re awake.”

She breaks finally. Giggling and then cracking her eyes open, rolling back onto her back. “Fine. Where’s my tea?”

“What makes you think I made you tea?”

“I heard it.”

He crawls on top of her. “What makes you think that tea isn’t for me?” He’s french-pressing her, stomach-to-stomach, but she doesn’t complain because it’s the perfect, pre-established alignment of their bodies.

“Because.” She runs her hands through his hair, scratching the back of his head. She’s briefly silent and he figures the singularity is her only explanation, until she settles her hands on the nape of his neck. “Because you always do my nightly tea just in case I wake up. You’ll sometimes leave it out on the counter overnight and I end up washing it because you never wash your mugs or even put them in the sink.”

“God,” he plays, “I do a nice thing and it always ends up being about the mugs.”

Her hands lift off of him as she reiterates for the umpteenth time, “Because you always leave them out! You’re lucky we don’t have a pet or a kid that would spill them. If I wasn’t such a neat freak the house would be overtaken by mugs.”

His head rests on her slope. “It’s not that bad.” He begins to kiss the corner formed between her neck and shoulder.

“I’m considering an intervention.”

He muffles himself in her skin. He’s certain he’s going to fall asleep here, slanted on top of her, his feet dangling off the side of the bed.

“Honey,” she whispers into his ear as she feels his body decompress. “Before you snooze, can you get my tea?”

He groans as he slowly backtracks and stands up. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she repeats, keeping a hold of his hand sandwiched between her two, tugging at him. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Do you, now?” He quizzes, walking backwards.

“Yes, yes, yes. I’ll do all kinds of sweet things. I’ll make you cookies and make the world a rainbow and let you win at scrabble and pick all the music.”

He boldly stops at the door. “Let me win at scrabble? Young lady, I will beat you fair and square.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ll let you think.”

He gasps. “Where is your integrity?”

“I dropped it somewhere between the stove and the bed, let me know if you find it.”

His eyes are pointedly lowered down her body. “Is it hiding under the covers?”

“No, Alex!” She chastises like he’s a cat and she’s got a deadly spray bottle. “Tea first! Tea, pretty please!”

“And then I have to sit and watch you drink the tea.”

“But I do it so sweet and sexy, right?” She reasons. And, yeah, all tucked up in their sheets, the bedspread her great aunt gifted for their wedding is curled around her waist, and her hair is fussed up into this sleep-smeared state. She plays all her cards right and she doesn’t even know it. No poker face can ever be mustered because she’s the worst actress ever and he knows her so well. She needs a haircut, it’s an inch longer than usual. If she thinks it’s too cold to sit in the salon, she’ll have him do it, and his heart will pound so nervous to mess with this finely crafted object, but even if he ends up scalping her, she’ll look in the mirror, fuss with it for a second, and then smile, give his cheek a kiss, and exclaim, “I love it.”

*

He was a restless boy. His leg had been unstoppably bouncing for weeks, enough that his mum raised concern that he might have come down with a mad case of restless leg syndrome, but all her concerns were alleviated when she looked over his shoulder to see him texting away.

miss u

rly?

ofc

u 2

She can’t quite discern all the texting lingo, but she gets the gist based on who is on the other end. Alex had been a closed book on the topic of girls since girls transitioned for ew to fit. So, when he returned from school last winter with a big smile and a transformation into Chatty Cathy about a girl, it wasn't just a girl.

In July, when paid a visit by this girl, Alex’s cheek seemed a permanent red and he was deeply embarrassed by his mother at every turn. His mum backed up, but it’ll only prompt his father to pinch his cheeks and turn him back into a treatment that had not been seen since Alex’s infancy. You only seemed to laugh at this and said things like, “Now you know what it feels like,” leaving it to be assumed your parents gave similar treatment to you when Alex visited you in June.

In the month between your departure and the term’s start, Alex had been nearly unbearable, which left Penny praying for the start to come quicker so they all wouldn’t have to suffer anymore. She would feel horrible over this, except for the fact that Alex was doing the same thing. His dad would tease him by saying, “Less than 10 days left!” Alex would flush in embarrassment over this teasing, but clearly had his own mental countdown occurring.

*

It’s slightly pathetic to wait outside someone’s door. He knows that, hands in his pocket, feet pacing the hallway, but he waits because he is pathetic for you, and he’ll own up to that. He doesn’t mind it. He just thanks god no one is here to see it. The mere thought of you is enough to pass the time while he waits outside your dorm door, simply replaying the thought of you. You were supposed to meet here 15 minutes ago, but you’re late, which is slightly worrying considering you’re Little Miss On Time.

Another pair of shoes hit the carpeted floor. He looks up at you, completely casual, bag slung over your shoulder, and your hair a few inches shorter than when he last saw you. “Sorry, I’m late. You’ve been rubbing off on me,” you say.

He doesn’t care. He isn’t punctual like that and he’s just happy to see you. That’s all that matters to him at this moment. It’s like tunnel vision, a kind he wouldn’t mind indelibly having. “Oh, I’ll rub off on you.” You in those little shorts and that stupid shirt you picked up from a charity shop with the periodic table on it that’s missing oxygen. You two laughed about it for days because how do you miss oxygen???

“You can rub off by yourself all you’d like.” You throw an arm around him, yanking him to you. A clueless onlooker might consider it an assault, you shoving your body into his.

Especially when he shouts, “Ow! You’re banging up me head.” He scratched up the back of his hair with a pulling fist. He looks down at you as if you’re sitting in his little T-shirt pocket. A healthy little grin sprouts on his face. “Hi.”

You tip your head back, occupied by a grin. “Hi. How are you?”

He tosses his head from one shoulder to the other. “Alright.” His hand cups your hip bone, pulling it to his. “At least now.” First, your hips kiss, then he bends down and lets himself be the first to do the honours of welcoming you back. And if this kiss is the welcoming committee, a buzz goes through him, imagining what the rest of the year could be like. 

“We should probably just go inside if that’s how we’re gonna act,” you suggest.

Sure, your room is right there with a bed just waiting to be acted on, but… “I thought we were going to get donuts.” 

You exaggerate a sigh. “The plight of men everywhere. Sex or food?” You take a hand, leading him on a lease to the outside world.

“Not just any food, donuts. Aren’t you hungry?” He feels like a child again, except you are playing the role of his mother, who was forced to give in to his needs for a special treat so he wouldn’t be crying through the shops. He feels bad that he hasn’t quite aged out of this in the decade since, but he’s hoping by the end of university, he can consider himself an adult, or more aptly a man, instead of a boy.

You shrug. He’s staring at your back, shoulders moving, spine curving, butt included. “Yes, but I thought you seemed pretty desperate back there.”

“Well, sure,” he agrees. “But I had to wait sooooooo long, my stomach is grumbling away.”

You shake your head as you push the door, opening the sun to your skin, and he likes the look of it here too, forgets how good you can look when the sun hits you right. Your skin is slightly tanner. He’s still pale as ever, embarrassingly so. All in all, things feel the same, you feel the same, except you’re now with him.

*

For the first night back, right before classes start, everyone gets the idea to go out together. He’s fine with this because, despite how much he missed you, he missed his friends too. However, he didn’t plan to stay here this long with a need for relief in more… areas… than one. You make it worse and he thinks you know it, but you tend to get pretty oblivious when drunk.

It’s a hectic little fit. The evening is dark, this club is dark, and that’s not just from the sunglasses that seem permanently glued to his face, a habit he’s started ever since a RA caught him high at the end of last year. It also shields his eyes from his obvious staring at your hips swaying on beat. It might seem quite pervy to the unknowing eye, a boy staring from the couch as a girl dances, but he doesn’t think he comes across as a leering old man and you’re, well, you are sort of a smoke show and he’s a sunglass-wearing guy with a hard-on watching you, so, yes, it is quite pervy, but permissive pervy-ness.

He shields himself with his glass like a localised cold shower to his schlong. He stares at the ice in it until he doesn’t feel like he’s about to rip a hole through his jeans. 

“The key is to go have a wank in the bathroom,” Matthew teases. Alex snaps a harsh look over at him, which is, of course, mitigated by the fact that he has large black shields over his eyes, which are also stoned as hell. “And maybe stop staring at the girl’s ass.”

“Fuck off,” Alex curses.

Matt simply chuckles in response. “Or is this some game between you two? She got a cock cage on you.”

“You’re awfully concerned with my dick.”

Matt pats him on the back. “I’m just looking out for you, mate. Wouldn’t want you losing the thing.”

“Like you did?”

He shakes his head and stands up. “I’m gonna go get my beak wetted now. Good luck with yours, Al.” 

“I know a few hookers who can help you out with that!” Alex shouts out at his disappearing figure. Matt waves him off as his body evaporates into the crowd of people.

“Do you, now?”

“Shit!” He clutches his chest. You stand behind the couch with your arms crossed, getting a kick out of both teasing him and frightening him. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

You giggle, rounding the couch until you’re sitting next to him. “I’m sorry your perception skills have been cut in half. I did tell you not to smoke so much.”

“I didn’t!” He insists.

You hum a note of disbelief and cover an arm around him, hugging his tiny frame to yours. “Now, where did you get to know these hookers?”

His lips curl up with confusion. “Huh?”

You shake your head. “Never mind.”

“Hey,” he says, shelving his head on your shoulder. “Missed you. Did you miss me?”

“Yeah.” You smile at him, nudging your nose against his. “I’ve already told you.”

“Tell me again. It makes me feel…I don’t know. I don’t even know what it makes me feel, but I like it.”

You kiss him, locking him to you. He’s the most precious thing. Maybe it’s a side effect of young love or maybe it’s a simple fact with his hair completely roughed up from his fingers running through it, with his inability to keep still and his cold hand on your warm, bare thigh. “I missed you very much, Alex.”

He leans back, crossing his arms like a smug little boy getting his way. “Good.”

You roll your eyes because it’s the only way to deal with him when he’s like this. “I’m glad.” You pat his hand and stand up.

“Where are you going?” He whines. “Stay.” He desperately tugs on your hand.

“I have other people to see but you.”

“But are they going to treat you like I’m gonna treat you?”

You pat his cheek. “I’ll call you a hooker to keep you company.”

“Can’t you be my hooker?”

“How much?”

He reaches into his back pocket, pulling out his wallet with a handful of bills. You snatch them out of his hand with a shake of your head at the total amount of them. “I’m not made out of money, woman.”

“Woman?”

“Madam.”

“I’ll see you in a little, Al.”

He leans his head back against the couch with a complete sense of exhaustion. Why did I pick donuts over fucking her? Oh, a donut sounds really good right now. But she took all my money. There’s got to be some food in here. His stomach miserably rumbles. Fucking hell I’m starved.

*

“Hello!” You crash into him, the liquor in his glass slightly spilling, not that either of you notices it. You adjust yourself onto his lap and curl your arms around his neck, tightening a hold on him akin to a death grip. “Where have you been?”

His mouth chews in response. He holds up the bag of Doritos he found. 

“Oh, Cool Ranch.” You reach for the bag eagerly too but he snatches it away from your grasp. “Hey! What happened to sharing is caring?”

He pouts. “You stole all my money.” 

“How did you get these then?”

He plucks another one, savouring it on his tongue. “Took them from the cupboard.”

You eye him closely. “Stole them from the cupboard.”

“Tomayto, tomahto.”

“Will you let me be an accomplice to your crime?” You pull the sunglasses down to look him directly in his eyes. “Please.”

He sighs exhaustively. “Fine.”

Your face is flushed red with sweat on your temples. He could lick it like a lime after a shot, and he does, a toss-up between hornyness or inebriation. “Don’t act like I won’t be paying you back.” You grind your hips into his.

He grabs your waist. “Don’t be cruel.”

You lock your arms around his neck, pushing closer, your breasts smashing up against his chest. “Oh, you’ll be fine.”

He pushes you back in an attempt to regain control of his airway. “Police officers should use you instead of handcuffs.”

“I am quite known for my domineering power.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Are you now?” He can’t help but feel eager to once again witness this domineering power.

“Yes,” you sigh, leaning backward until he has to hold onto to make sure you don’t fall backward off his lap onto the cement floors. Quickly, you snap back up, eye to eye with him. “But you already know this.”

He hums. “Shall we?”

You slap his chest. “No, Alex, we have to stay until they do the limbo.”

“The limbo?”

You roll your eyes. “Yes! They do a limbo challenge at midnight every night.”

He’s pretty sure you’ve just made this up, but, sure, why not witness you fail miserably at doing the limbo. “Fine. Then, let me take you to the bathroom.”

“No, not after the shower incident last year.”

“I’m more well-trained this time.”

“Trained enough not to do it.”

“I thought you were going to make it up to me.” He sulks like a sucker, an idiot, or some other variation of the debilitation. 

You move off, flipping to lie beside him. “With the privacy of a locked door.”

“I’m sure these doors lock.”

You stand, walking away from him. “You can enjoy it yourself then.”

“Why is everyone talking about me having a wank tonight?”

*

It was raining on the way home, which put an extra eagerness on getting to shelter as soon as possible. Upon getting inside, in the close vicinity of a bed, it becomes a newfound eagerness to get all clothes off as soon as possible because they were soaked wet, of course. It then became necessary to get your bodies pushed up against one another for warmth. “Pneumonia is a killer way to start the year,” Alex says with his mouth muffled against your neck.

The whole charade of the rain making it a requirement for you to have sex with one another ends there, mostly because there isn’t much reason for Alex to stick his penis inside you because of the rain and it’s hard to say much when Alex’s penis is inside you. Though you are very warm, as he claims, thrusting in and out slowly.

It’s not the best fuck of your life because you’re drunk and he’s high making his movements lethargic and you’re a little too numb to the sensation from the alcohol. It’s like your body is cut in half and your brain can’t quite communicate with your lower half, but that part comes and he seems to do the same at a speed that makes him hide in your neck.

“Sorry, it was so quick. I’ll work harder next time,” he says earnestly. The time away from one another has him slipping under a shadow of insecurity as if you have to reacquaint yourselves with one another. Deep down, hidden in the back of his mind for no one but himself to see, he has the fear of you finding someone else along the way. 

You comb your fingers through the back of his head, a slight pull on the longer strands of hair. “I liked it,” you say. “The part of me I can still feel did at least.”

He chuckles into your collarbone, relieving that knot in the center of you. “Plenty of time, plenty of time,” he amends.

“It’s okay,” you whisper into his ear. “I missed you.”

Alex lifts his head, a slow smile on his face for you. “Yeah?” You nod quickly. “Missed you too.” He lands a soft kiss on your cheek.

“But you can’t stay here, you know that,” you break the fantasy.

“Why not?” He whines, already tired out from the idea of walking to his dorm.

You pinch his nose irritatingly until he pulls your hand away. “Because you have an early class tomorrow and I don’t and you’ll wake me up with the alarm or oversleep and you can’t start the term like that and you have no clothes here other than the dirty wet ones on the floor that stink of weed.”

He clicks his tongue repeatedly at you. “Excuses, excuses, excuses.” He noisily exhales, hoisting himself up, and swinging his legs off the side of the small bed. “You’re gonna make me go out in that.” He points to the window where a slight beating of rain is coming down.

“You had no problem making it back here. You’re only a few minutes away and you can borrow my brolly.” You stand up, searching for the umbrella.

He loudly groans. “Now you’re gonna flaunt your naked body in front of me. What a cruel person you are.”

“Don’t be such a baby. You already got to play with it once tonight,” you tease.

“Only once!” He complains. “Why do you get to hang out with it all the time?”

You toss a puzzled look his way as you dig through your bin of things. “You mean, why do I get to be with my own body? Are you trying to tell me something, Al?”

“That I’m horny,” he moans.

You roll your eyes. “Put some clothes on.”

“Same to you.”

You retrieve the umbrella. “Touché.” 

Despite his complaints, he begins pulling his damp clothes on with only a few whimpers. “I can’t wait until a year from now when we won’t have to kick one another out.”

“What do you mean?” You question as you pull a shirt on.

He cheekily grins, fixing the wet cloth of his shirt onto his torso. You can't help but ache and think of that Pablo Neruda quote, I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. He’s just so argh. It’s terrorizing.

“When we’re living together, dear.” He makes a point of tenderly placing a peck on your lips and quickly making his way to the door.

“Al!” You call out, but he shuts the door behind him, leaving you with only a quick flash of his smile. 

*

You wait for him by attempting to read a book, but your mind struggles too much to focus on it, not even bothering to stare at the pages, instead the cafe’s front door. He’s late, of course, only by a few minutes, but you’ve already been here for fifteen minutes, hopelessly waiting for him. Again, on you, not him. You’re the steadfast loser whose eyes light up every time you hear the bell of the door ring.

Then, when he walks in with a slow gait and a peaceful smile, you feel you could slide under the covers of him and hibernate for the whole year inside him. He raises his hand with a wave. He waves like a politician, the dorky kind, not the dickhead kind. You tried to look like you’re reading while he waits in line, but you keep looking back to stare at him.

Finally, when he walks over with his signature donut and a coffee, you happily close the unread book. “Don’t let me keep you from…” he bends his head nearly upside-down to read the title of the book. “​​A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present. Riveting.”

“Don’t mock me.”

He slides into the chair across from you. “I’m not mocking you. I’m serious. I’m excited to hear you tell me about it.”

“I’m afraid ancient modernity might go over your head,” you tease.

He opens his mouth in ersatz offense. “Who’s mocking who now? Tell me about it.”

You blush in embarrassment and hide behind your cup of coffee. “I haven’t read it yet.”

He rests his head on his hand. “Read it to me then.”

“I don’t want to bore you.”

“Shush. Read.”

Thus, the distraction becomes the solution as you read him far too many pages with the tiniest text size on ancient modernity in British art, but he listens intently, educating himself for those future geeky flashcards. 

Later, once you’ve made it through the chapter, you ask him, “How was your first class? Curricular Integration.”

He smiles at you, remembering before frowning at the reminder of the class. “Fucking boring.”

You laugh at his frustrated expression. “It was the first class. Those are always boring.”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I kind of feel like it’s not for me.”

“It’s only been one class, Al, you’ll be okay. I can help you, you know, if you ever need a tutor.” You try to flirt to cheer him up.

It sneaks a half-grin onto his face before the discouragement returns. “Thanks, but it’s not that. I’m just feeling a little lost. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Why do you feel lost?” You ask, placing your hand over his, stroking your thumb on the back of it.

He turns away, motioning the topic away. “It’s just one class,” he excuses. “Let’s talk about something else. Please.”

You nod. The words nervously rise up, asking, “What was that thing you were talking about last night?”

“Oh.” A grin quickly spreads across his face. “Living together? Yeah. I mean, it’s a logical conclusion.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Is that so?”

He chuckles at your surprise, taking a sip of his coffee. “Duh.”

“Duh,” you impersonate. 

“C’mon. Did you think we’d be living in tiny bedrooms for the rest of uni?”

“Well, no,” you keep your eyes on the napkin you’re ripping up to distract your nerves, “but you’re so sure of it.”

He leans forward. “Like you’re gonna say no.”

“When did you become so confident? Last night, you were so timid.”

“Timid. I know I was slow but I wouldn’t call myself timid.”

You snort a laugh. “You know what I mean, but it’s not like we know each other that well.”

“What do you mean?”

“You barely know me. I could be an axe murderer or you could be. Naive girls fall for that kind of stuff all the time.”

He makes a pointed look. “I wouldn’t call you naive.”

“Besides the point. It’s a risky thing to share something like that.”

He finds this to be a ridiculous argument. You can tell by the look on his face. “It’s an apartment. Not a child or stocks or something.”

“We’ve been together for less than a year and I don’t want to flat-on my ass with nowhere to live next year.”

“I’d move in with Matt before I let you be homeless.”

“You’re very sure of this.”

“I’m just sure of myself with you. Everything else can feel like a mess sometimes that if I start to question this then I might lose it completely. You make sense to me.”

You look over dreamily at him, half-sure you created him in a hyper-delusional state of mind. “You know how to wow a girl.”

“Oh, yeah,” he jests, “I’m teaching a class on it.”

You place a foot between his ankles. “Really? Can I be your TA?”

“It might not be highly advisable for me to be sleeping with my TA, but you’d look good with a ruler in your hand.”

You giggle, slotting your knee between his knees, on the edge of your seat. “What’s it with you in these dominatrix fantasies? Watching too much porn while we were away from one another?”

He won’t be fazed, leaning back in his chair. “I like you in any position.”

You loudly shush him, terrified of eavesdroppers. “I have Rhetorical Theory. You can’t be trying anything at this hour.” You stand, gathering your things.

“But another hour I can?” His head bends back, eyes following your movements.

“I’ll see you at dinner.” You bend down to him to kiss his lips like you’ve done this thousands of times, and you might have at this point. You squeeze his shoulder and disappear out the cafe’s door, only bells left ringing in your wake, one on the door and the one inside of Alex.

*

On Wednesdays, you two share a class with one another, specially picked out for the purpose. American Literature in the 20th Century. Alex dragged his feet on it until he heard there would be Nabokov short stories and a delectable treat with batting eyelashes and lips that taste so sweet.

You closely clutch the syllabus as you exit the hall together. “And we get to read Franny & Zooey! I love Franny & Zooey!” You shake the paper between your hands in unadulterated excitement.

He taps your back with a chuckle. “Okay, maybe don’t rip the paper in half.”

“Why? You nearly wet yourself when she said we’d be reading Nabokov.”

“Nabokov’s cool.”

“And Salinger isn’t?”

“No, Faulkner isn’t.”

“Right, Faulkner,” you say. “It’ll broaden our knowledge.”

“You and this broadening of knowledge. Can’t I broaden my knowledge by reading something I can actually understand?”

“You’ll understand Faulkner. You’re a lot smarter than you let yourself believe.”

“I think you might be confusing me with someone else. Is this your other boyfriend?”

You pinch his side to get a laugh out of him. “Jealousy isn’t a nice look on you.”

“I’m not jealous,” he mumbles.

You wrap your arm around his back and curl your hand against his body, tugging him closer. You might as well take up a sideshow career as Siamese twins. “Could’ve fooled me.”

He tilts his head until his cheerful smile is facing you directly. “I’m not,” he insists. “And if I were, it would only be a little because this guy gets to spend time with you.”

“We barely talk when we’re together, and when we do, it’s me lecturing him.”

“Isn’t that what we pretty much do?” He reasons.

“He’s much dumber than you.”

“Well, we can’t all have our smarts to fall back on.”

“And our looks,” you compliment with your mouth so close to his skin, the air you let out dances against his jaw.

“What a charmer you are. Do you talk to everyone this way?” His eyes look down like he’s trying perilously to take you all in at once. “Or just the boys you fancy?”

You roll your eyes. “Ha ha,” you exaggerate before mouthing against his ear, “just one boy.”

“Young Joe’s a lucky man.” That’s the boy. Joe.

You sock him in the arm. “I can’t help it if you’ve a teacher kink, you pervert.”

He adjusts his bag to knock shoulders with you as you now walk side-by-side. “If they all looked like you, everyone would have a teacher kink. Hence, young Joseph.”

“He’s only a year younger than us.”

“Is that so? An older woman.”

You huff a laugh as Alex holds the door open for the dining hall. “Weren’t you the one who had a crush on your professor last year? I should be concerned with an older woman coming in to sweep up a young man.”

He rejoins your side, saying, “I simply said she was good looking, not that I wanted to do her. I was fargone on you by that point.”

You hum in a disbelieving fashion. “So you say.”

“Yeah. Just like Junior Joe is. It doesn’t take much.”

“Junior Joe?” You question. “You’re getting very creative with these nicknames for a boy you’ve never met.”

“I know Joey’s kind.”

You infectiously giggle with him. “Are you pretending to be in an old western again?”

He shrugs with a sheepish grin. “We’re watching The Searchers in my film class.”

“Aw,” you coo, pulling at his cheek like an old granny. “You should consider an acting class. It might help you get all that unaddressed rage out.”

“Rage?”

“They’ll at least train you in stage combat, which will help you for duel against Joe, which will, of course, also be your final exam.”

“When you tutor him, do you wrestle in preparation for this final exam?” Alex quips.

You pick up your tray of dinner. “Yes, and we’re usually naked, wet, and oiled up.”

“Really?” He follows behind you like an obedient pup. “Can I sit in on these lessons? I could really use your assistance.”

“But wouldn’t that ruin the integrity of the sport? You would be spying on him.”

“Wouldn’t you be spying on him for me? Or are you going to flip on me? Double agent.”

You sigh. “Not quite yet, but if he throws any other money my way, I can’t make any promises.”

*

Just as you had taken up tutoring, Alex obtains a job at one of the campus pubs. The best decision the owners of this pub ever made was letting their employees dress in casual attire. It allows Alex to roam the place in his perfectly fitted T-shirts that expose the lower plain of his torso every time he grabs something on one of the taller shelves.

The place itself is a proper hangout spot, allowing you to chill with friends while watching him in the distance or, on slow weekday nights, share a basket of leftover chips with him. On one night, this particular night, his jeans hang loosely on his hips and a navy blue long-sleeved shirt as the cold autumn air creeps its way into every corner of your world. He leans on the bar with the chips sitting between you and other than a gathering of teachers in the corner, the place has grown empty in the late hour.

“He’s too buddy-buddy. He keeps asking me for high fives,” you complain about your British Art professor. “I get that it’s to facilitate a relationship, poorly, I might add, because the guy doesn’t even know my name. I’m sure of this.”

Alex chews and chuckles. “Did you know the high five wasn’t invented until 1977?”

“Shut up, really?” This is clearly a method of distraction, something you won’t pick up on until later.

He hums, taking another chip. “LA Dodgers.”

“Baseball, right?”

“Very good. I’ll add a baseball class to my roster.”

“You barely know anything about baseball. Have you ever even seen a game?”

He counters, “Have you?”

“Fair enough.”

“Besides, what’s there to know—”

“Excuse me!” A group of girls has come in, with one girl violently waving her hand to get Alex’s attention. 

He pulls away, attending to them, while you play Lode Runner on your phone with patience. The group is rather large and noisy, ruining the former environment that felt like a cozy fireplace and turning it into an inferno with each drink they gulp down.

“I should go,” you tell Alex when he returns.

“Sorry about them.”

You shake your head, admiring his charming, solemn face. “Nonsense. You better get some good tips.”

He smirks. “I don’t think you’d like that.”

You button up your jacket. “Don’t become some cheating bastard. I’d have to write my name on your forehead.”

“I don’t know. That blonde one looks rather nice.”

You eye the girl, slinging a purse over your shoulder. “One bleach away from her hair falling out. How lovely.”

He chuckles, leaning over the bar for a kiss. “I’ll see you later.” A quick liplock before you once again leave one another.

*

His hands grow icy on the way to the dorm, enough that he can’t feel the tip of his fingers. The air is windy; it causes his nose to exhibit a biting red that you told him last winter reminded you of Frosty the Snowman. He rubs it and his running nostrils when he finally enters the radiator-heated building, the kind that emits the terrible rusty smell. 

He makes it into your room where your sleeping figure lies, shucking his too-thin jacket, and lying down beside—half beside you, half on top of you, considering how small a twin bed is. You murmur an awakening sound, turning to give more space to him.

“Why do they call it a twin if it only fits one person?” He whispers into your ear.

“Because they used to be sold in pairs,” you answer, curling your arms around his neck.

“How’d you know that?” He asks.

“Grandparents.” 

You hiss from the contact of his hands on the hollow of your hip. “Sorry,” he softly purrs.

“It’s okay,” you grumble back. “How was the rest of your shift?”

“Alright. Girls were bad tippers.”

You nuzzle your nose into his neck. “‘m sorry.”

“It’s fine.” His hands run up and down your cloth-covered back, both to soothe and to warm.

You raise your head, blinking your eyes, dazedly looking at him. “Do you want a tip?” You ask, nudging what’s between his legs.

He gives a shake of his head and rests you back into him. “No. I just want to lay like this. You’re warm.”

You giggle against his skin. “See what dressing properly gets ya.”

“Fine, fine, fine.” He taps along your skin as he says each word. “Can I stay over tonight?”

“You beat any blanket, babe. Couldn’t have you leave me even if you tried.”

And he thinks this is the kind of thing romance novels are made of. Though, he wouldn’t know, he’s only read Wuthering Heights, which is “totally not a romance” as you repeatedly state at any given chance.

*

The moors are under a crust of snow—not enough to blanket them in white, but a mean, dirty frosting on the hard earth and wilted shrubs. It was early November but the snow came on so harshly that when the first sign of it had occurred, classes had quickly been cancelled for the day, despite half the school’s attendance rushing outside to engage in squabbles of snowball fights and dip their backs into snow angels. 

You sling a scarf around Alex’s bare neck in spite of his protests. You slip on mittens, knitted by his mother. They were sent in this month’s care package, one pair for Alex, one pair for you. You palm his already red cheeks in your hand. “Can’t we stay in?” He whines.

“Everyone else is going out. Don’t be such a loner.”

“I’m not. I just want to be with you and everyone is going to be at the pub tonight.”

“But you’ll be working.”

“Exactly. A convenient excuse to exit any conversation.” He enthusiastically smiles so wide his face might split in two.

You sigh and head for the door. “We have to go and after we can warm up in the shower before you have to go to work.”

“We?” You peek back to see his wide, gratifying smile.

“Yes, we. Now, let’s go.” You tug on his hand and make your way out to the frigid, homely world.

Alex complains about being cold every other sentence before everyone gets sick of it and decides to simply pelt snowballs at him to at least get pleasure in the grumbling, but then Alex keeps insisting on going inside, which you won’t agree to until everyone else decides to disband so Alex quickly hardens and suffocates everyone else in snow, including poor, old you.

“You could’ve at least spared me, the woman you love, the one you want to sleep with. I could’ve gotten a nosebleed or needed stitches.” You pull your snow-covered hat off as you reenter your room. You strip your heavy clothes into the laundry basket, hoping to spare the rest of your room from a wet, melting disaster.

“Poor old baby,” he teases.

You gasp. “Don’t ‘poor old baby’ me! That’s my line, you’re the whiny little brat.”

He tosses his scarf at you before turning on his heels. “I’ll see you in the showers, baby.”

And if he’s going to try and goad you, then you’ll just wait here in your room, under the warm covers, while he impatiently waits in the shower for a gift that won’t be given. Upon his return—with his hair planted to the skin like a wet old dog—you’re on the phone with Holly. You don’t need to be on the phone with Holly, in fact, she’s grown rather annoying, but there’s nothing quite like Alex getting all pent up.

He has one goal in mind: release. He shivers from water still dripping down his body, even as he covers himself with sweats and a hoodie. (Sweats and a hoodie!! He’s good. Too good.) He fiddles with the zipper, pulling it all the way up and all the way down several times, enjoying the percussion of its sound, before settling the slider right below the collar and placing his hands in the pockets.

He stands by the foot of the bed. He might be tapping his foot, but you can’t see the lower half of him. Your eyes acknowledge his presence before tipping them to the ceiling, admiring the cracks in them. “Who are you on the phone with?” He harshly whispers at a level that could be deemed no longer a whisper, other than the fact that he has made his voice more raspy.

The only acceptable answer would be your parents, some important family news that’s worth blowing off giving him a blowjob in the shower. And yeah, maybe a blowjob only involves his desire, but he suffered through the snow, and that’s the only thing he deems worthy enough of giving him a runny nose. “Holly,” you shortly answer.

“Holly?!”

“Yeah.” You don’t spare him a glance. It’s easy to predict the puzzled look on his face, worthy of giving a slap followed by a soul-sucking kiss.

You feel his weight enter the bed. His body rubbing against your legs as he crawls his way up you. “Get off the phone.”

You place your finger over your lips. “No, it’s just Alex,” you irritably say to the phone.

He heaves and takes the phone from your fingers. “She’ll call you back, Holly.”

“That’s very rude,” you say right away.

He straddles your hips. “You left me hanging.”

“I got distracted.” You slyly smile.

He furrows his brows and leans down, hovering his face right above yours. “By Holly? Nice try. You don’t have to be mean to me.”

Your arms hug around him, taking in his body heat. “Yeah, but then you wouldn’t be all cute and crawl in my lap like this.”

He breaks, hiding a chuckle into his shoulder. “You’re very conniving.”

You shrug. “A wise woman. A genius, if you will.”

“Alright, you witch, do I get the pleasure of going into your hut?” He leans down, hiding under the blankets.

His nose tickles your stomach, making you giggle out, “Not if you start speaking like that.”

The laughter hides away as he pulls on the waistband of your sweats, taking them and your underwear down in one pull. He’s a smart man, going straight for the jugular. Mouth meets vagina. His tongue colors within the lines, or maybe outside the lines, because it’s hard to believe other people have felt this pleasure and considered it not worthy of discussion every day, or consider it taboo. This can’t be taboo. Why don’t people have classes on this?

“You should teach a class on how to do this,” you moan out, clawing your fingers into his hair, yanking, combing, petting, stroking, soothing.

He places a kiss just right and speaks against you, “As long as you’re my TA.”

“Quit it with this kink,” you quip. “You’re gonna be one of those pervert professors who fucks their student.”

“You? Hell fucking yes.”

“Quit it. We’re the same age.”

“I’m very advanced.” He reinforces this succinctly, placing his mouth where it should be biologically attached, sucking, licking, kissing, spitting, tonguing. He’s an unwillful beast and a delicate angel wrapped in the body of a boy who loves you. You could kick your feet at the idea if your legs weren’t too busy shaking at the feeling of this uncontrollable vibration. 

You go from pushing his face inward like you’re trying to do some reverse birth with him and shove him back into the womb to dragging him away because he’s too much. Too much all the time but really too much when he sucks at you like the elixir of life is hidden within the folds of your vulva.

He hangs around with his chin atop your pubic bone watching your lungs expand and deflate heavily before deciding it has been enough, flipping over, squishing beside you, and declaring, “My turn.” He even helps you out by untying his sweats, but not taking them off because that’s “a woman’s job.” Something he sexistly and sexily declared last month.

“So much for patience.”

Alex points at himself. “I’ve been patient, in fact, I have shown an intense amount of restraint. I’ve made a down payment and now I’m waiting for my return of investment.”

“Jeez, Warren Buffet, you really know how to make a woman feel special.” You roll yourself up because despite his chauvinism, he’s been patient, and he is very, very…

You brush your hand over the fabric of his sweats and his eyes flutter at the mere suggestion of his dick being touched. You would tease him, but you only find his sensitivity endearing. You won’t hold him up anymore, exposing him, just this little portion of him to keep the rest of his sensitive skin warm from this snapping air.

You spit in your hand and give him a few slow tugs. His hips lift and shift. His thighs push against your still exposed center. His knee slides right into it, causing a slight trembling in your motions. It’s hard to tell whether this act was intentional or not. His expression too lost in pleasure, eyes shut, mouth pursed tightly together to fight off the urge to groan.

You slowly lean down. Your lips circle his cock with your tongue sweeping over the head, forcing that groan to leave his mouth in a tiny little mewl. You smile and go lower, halfway down, and then go back out. When you stop halfway again, his hands hold you there, pressing just a little further. 

When you pop back out, he says, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rough.”

“You weren’t rough,” you assure. “I liked it.”

His eyes open up darkly. “Good. Go on.”

You shake your head, roll your eyes, and go on. You move lower each time with delight, toe-curling delight. His legs move up and down, not kicking, more digging, heels pressed down into the mattress, and his knee shifting pleasingly at your sensitive bits.

You’re not sure how good at giving head you are. You’ve never received any feedback other than the grateful conclusion of any person: coming. Alex always does this, making a noise almost like he’s so painfully frustrated like there is a splinter in his finger and then a blissful breath as the pest is removed. His cum doesn’t have much of a taste. Maybe a little salty, but that could be sweat. He often sweats, a little gathering right around his pubic hair, but no complaints from either party.

After he has returned to this biosphere, he tucks himself in and hugs you to his chest. “I wish all snow days were like this.”

“I don’t think it would’ve been appropriate—”

“I know,” he cuts you off. “Don’t make some creepy underage sex joke. That’s my territory.”

You ease into his body with your nose poking behind his ear before settling with an exhale. “You’re very possessive lately.”

“I’ve never been called a sharer. Too controlling for that.”

“Obsessive, some may call it.”

He lets out a hollow laugh, his lips not even poking his cheeks. “Yeah, maybe.”

“You okay?”

His fingers brush your upper arm. He doesn’t say anything for a minute before letting out, “Yeah.” Then, sighing. “Just thinking about winter. The break and all. Being away from you.”

“You’ll live.”

“But I won’t want to,” he bemoans.

“Don’t be dramatic, Romeo. I’m only faking my death. No need to kill yourself.”

He stills a laugh, and with that, the year ends, pulled away by two omnipotent hands.

*

He gets allergies in spring, the terrible, terrible kind where he sneezes all the time and has to carry tissues with him. Those dorky little packs, but you keep an extra pack in your purse in an act of devotion. He theorises in his journal (yeah, he has a dorky little journal too, fuck off) that there’s no greater act of love than carrying tissues around for someone else. It’s a great signal of caring for another person, looking out for their well-being, their forgetfulness, their sickness, their health. It’s what wedding vows are made of, and he sounds insane, 20, and clinging to an eternal loving debt to you. 

The days have formed in a lather, rinse, repeat fashion. There’s class, work ( still tutoring for you, the pub for him), and some form of hangout. Sometimes just the two of you, either keeping him company at the pub, sex, or an activity—dinner, “studying,” movie, or, his favourite, the arcade, which may sound geeky and nerdy, but you’re both saving up for Margaritaville light-up ice bucket and that’s not dorky. 

Other times, it’s a whole group thing, drunk idiot nonsense, which also includes collecting tickets for the Margaritaville light-up ice bucket that could likely be purchased for less money than what the arcade is selling it for, but you consider it to be a rare luxury only afforded to the stupidest “adults” roaming the UK.

On a Saturday night, a group of you sneak beers into the arcade, and play Jet-Pong, an appropriated version of beer pong for children. You ask Alex, “How can they have beer pong in here and not beer?” as he sinks one pong into the far left corner. “Nothing promotes drinking like a fun game.”

He shrugs, missing the next one.

“Holly asked me about getting a place with her next year.”

“Oh.” He tries his best to focus on the game in front of him. “What’d you say?”

“I’d get back to her.” You pull from your bagged beer. “Since we hadn’t talked about it since the start of the year. I didn’t know if you had made other plans.”

“My offer still stands.” Last pong, center cup. The tickets spit out. “I can always room with Matt.”

“Do you want to room with Matt?”

He bends down to collect the fifteen tickets. “Do I want to room with that dirty bastard or you? I’ll get back to you on that one.” He passes you to go to the ticket counter.

You catch up to his side. “Well, I’d like that too. You and me, I mean.”

“You feel you know me adequately enough?” He asks you as he feeds his bucket of tickets into the machine.

You lean against the side of the machine to be right in his line of sight. He eyes you carefully. “I feel I love you adequately enough.”

He blows a laugh like it’s a sick joke being played. He takes his ticket from the machine and stuffs it for safekeeping into his wallet. Once everything is packed away, he turns to you and reaches his hand out. “Ready to go?”

“Yeah.” You take his hand, entering the thawing weather, making your way back to the dorms. “Is this the cold shoulder?”

“No,” he says, giving your hand a squeeze. “I’m just trying to think of something to say.”

“What about ‘Yes!’?” You offer.

He cracks a grin and leans over, kissing your cheek. “You’re very cute. It shouldn’t be allowed.”

“I can’t help my feminine wiles.”

“Yeah right. I know how cunny you can be.”

“You like my cunningness.” You make eyes at him, luring him into your web. “So, Alex, what is your answer?”

He has to take a moment to capture this in his mind. This happens every once in a while, usually pertaining to you, but not limited to circumstances associated with you. It’s a click in his head. It might be a camera, but he hasn’t decided yet. It’s his brain having to catch up with the rest of him. It’s a processing issue that might be a sign of a larger problem, but at this point in his life, Alex merely relates it with moments of importance. This, you, the moment are all more than worthy enough. “It’s yes, you dweeb. Now give me a swing of that.”

*

He finds you curled up in his bed with a book laying facedown on your chest. You haven’t been asleep too long. He can tell because you always end up turning on your stomach and your book hasn’t fallen down onto the floor below. He begins to pry the book out of your hands, you grab his wrist in a frightful fit, scaring him half-to-death. 

“It’s just me,” he whispers. You relax back into the substandard mattress, slept on by hundreds of students before him and hundreds more after him. “How’d you get in here?”

“I have my ways,” you sneakily say. 

He chuckles, closing the book, and placing it on his desk. He sits down in the desk chair, untying the laces of his Converses, placing them beside yours at the door. “Am I going to wake up tomorrow with all my stuff gone?”

You sleepily giggle. “I’d never steal from you. You don’t have anything worth stealing.”

He cocks his head back, testing a challenged look on you. “What about the girl in my bed?”

“Oh, well, she’s different.”

“Uh-huh.” He strips his jacket off then his jeans before he races on top of you causing you to groan loudly.

“God, you’re gonna break one of my ribs.”

He kisses all around your face, tracing the other corners before bubbling in the circle. “They’re nothing valuable anyway.”

“Really? What about the rest of me?”

“Oh, you’d sell well on the black market.”

The laughter slowly dissolves into a heated make-out session. He takes his time. It’s hard for boys to do that, including him, in this tiny bed, trying to get it over quickly so you don’t have to sit on top of one another in a suffocating fashion. “Won’t it be great when we can do this in a bigger bed. Even a full would do.”

“We are not sleeping in a full. Queen, at least,” you insist.

“I’d get a California king, no complaints.” 

The making out resumes, this time a little more naked, and then his fingers inside you like he’s scooping your insides out. He’d liken it to taking all the guts out of a pumpkin, which is admittedly a disgusting comparison, but he can’t think of anything else. He isn’t a sexologist, just a boy who’d like to think he knows his way around you. “Does that feel good?” He asks against your lips.

“Yes,” you whimper out. So, he keeps going like he’s pushing a button or strumming the strings of a guitar. You lean your quivering body into his, exhibiting startled breathing into his ear. Your hands clutch around your shoulder, reassuring him of the previous form of affirmation you gave and then he feels that familiar throbbing around his fingers and you let out a grunt of finality before all the tension furling up inside you is released in one shake.

He lays you down against the mattress. Your hair pressed up in a nest against the pillow. “Do you want to keep going?” He asks, implying future steps: him inside you, preferably with his cock, preferably said cock fucking you, preferably to completion. 

“Yeah.” You smile up at him with this smile that he’ll try for many months after to find an adjective that fits this smile before giving up and deciding a person would have to see it to believe the beauty of it. Like a wonder of the ancient world or the harmonium solo in “In My Life.” It feels like that, searing. “Please do.”

It’s a natural inclination. He feels like his soul is being sucked away as he eases into you and lands his hands on your torso in a careful touch. His thumbs stroke your stomach and his fingers pull your skin to his as he settles all the way in. His eyes look at you, speaking for him, asking if it would be okay to keep going, that everything feels good, that this isn’t just for him, this is a shared act. You nod all-knowingly.

It’s how Alex knows this is different. This is love, not everyone can read him at a glance. It’s the beauty of letting someone know all of you. It’s the thing that makes poets write sonnets. It’s what makes ordinary people feel they can write sonnets.

The feeling shifts to his gut, getting tangled up in the center, moving about him in that somersaulting way. A flickering flame in a deep, dark cave. He feels this when he masturbates too, but that’s more lonely, and this is like kilonova or the initial singularity (sorry, he’s reading Carl Sagan right now), and the universe is inflating but hasn’t banged or boomed or whatever the word is yet.

He moves a little quicker in order to get to that bang, but still not what one would perceive as fast. He likes it this way. It’s out of the ordinary but not some wild origami-style sex that is cool to watch but he is so not ready to do yet, or maybe ever because it looks like too much work and it feels good like this and he isn’t ready to mess with a good thing by folding you in half.

His mind tends to drift a lot when he’s having sex. Or all the time. Sometimes he wishes he would just shut up, but occasionally he’s thankful for his fair-weather mind, like during boring lectures or long shifts at the pub. But in situations like this where he should just focus on the simple feeling of sex his mind wanders to Carl Sagan and he’s shouting at himself like “Fucking hell, Alex, just shut the fuck up.”

Of course, you can tell when he does this and then he can tell that you can tell and then he’s stuck on that, that previous feeling of being exposed then feels violating because what gives you the right to know that in his head he’s screaming at himself and then you say something like, “Keep going.” and he realises he is once again reading too much into situations and you’re probably just enjoying the feeling of being fucked or maybe also screaming at yourself in your head too because you’re the same after all or Siamese twins or some shit and he returns to the thought that this fucking feels really fucking good and he’s said the word “fuck” too many fucking times to count and fuck is a weird word, but so is every word, and what is the English language, and why didn’t his mum teach him German like all the students she fucking teaches, instead he only knows how to count to 20 and the colours of the rainbow and other stupid fucking elementary phrases.

And then he comes as he so often does. Cum is disgusting. White, slimy jizz dripping out of him and into a condom. Who invented the condom? He’ll write that down in the back of his mind and try to remember to look it up later, but then everyone in the library will think he’s a pervert for looking up who invented a condom on the communal computers. He should’ve asked for a computer for his birthday. Not that he would use it much, computer screens hurt his eyes and give him a headache, but he sure would help when he wants to look up the inventor of condoms or watch porn or something. And school, that too.

“Alex.” Fuck, right, you. “Can you, um, get out of me? I’ve got to pee.”

“Oh, fuck, sorry.”

You giggle. “You’re okay.” You cradle his face and he feels like a bobblehead that has been shaking around for hours and now suddenly stilled. You kiss his cheek. “I’ll be right back.” You slip on your clothes and shoes and head to the hallway bathroom.

He sits for a while before realising he has been sitting naked with his cock resting in his own jizz wrapped in latex for far too long to be seen as normal if he were to be walked in on. He disposes of the goods and digs into his drawers for his, well, drawers. Isn’t it funny that two words can mean totally different things? And the word for that is…—he struggles on this for a while—homonym, right, right, right.

His stomach rumbles. There were no leftovers at the pub tonight. It was crawling with disgustingly drunk people that make Alex question why alcohol is legal if it makes people into such dickheads. He only has a bag of sour cream & onion chips, and that’ll have to do the job of dinner.

He sits at his desk and grabs handfuls out of the bag, having to truly stuff his face because that is how hungry he is. He understands why the Donner Party ate each other. He looks at the book that you were reading, now sitting next to his journal. He realises he didn’t put a bookmark into the page you were on. He’ll have to remember to apologise for that. He already knows you’ll say it’s fine and you can find the page you left off on, but he’s convinced you’ll be hiding your indignation toward him.

Madame Bovary. He’ll have to pick up a copy. All he knows is Emma Bovary is “a cunt and we love her.” You said this yesterday at the cafe. You were only a few chapters in then. It seems to have gotten much further since based on the thickness of the book’s split when he picked it up. 

She cheats, too, Emma Bovary. Maybe that’s a good thing in the book. Like her husband is scum and thank god she was able to find love elsewhere or something. He doesn’t know. Now all he can think about is paranoia about whether you are cheating on him or not. Not you actually cheating, just the paranoia he would feel if you actually did cheat. 

He is aware that he’s giving himself ulcers over this heavy contemplation of nothingness but he can’t stop the turning of the wheel. His mind goes on and on and he’s still trying to figure out ways to make this train of thought stop. Like someone tied to the track while the train blows the horn instead of slamming on the brakes. He tugs and tugs but can’t free himself and he’s only making things harder rather than accepting his—

“Hey.” You’ve returned, thank god. “You’ll never guess what I saw in the bathroom.” You hop on the bed with the glee of those monkeys jumping on the bed in that nursery rhyme.

“What?” He chucks his head in anticipatory elation. 

“There were eggs all over the floor and I exclaimed something like ‘Ew!’ because, you know, eggs on the bathroom floor is a little bizarre, right?” He’s nodding along. “But then these two girls answered back, saying they were doing an experiment. I asked what kind of experiment and they were like ‘The science kind’ and I said ‘No, shit’ but in my head. When I came out of the stall, they were like ‘Try not to step on the eggs on the way out’ and that’s when I cracked—ha ha, get it, cracked.”

Yeah, he gets it, and he fucking loves this. This is all he needs. He cracks along with you. “Keep going.”

“Right. Sorry. Sorry. So, then I said, ‘Why would I want to step in eggs?’ As if it’s a well-known thing that egg yolk moisturises your skin. Then, I left and came here and had to tell you.”

“Thanks for telling me,” he sincerely says. “I needed it.”

You give a thoughtful smile. “I could tell.”

He doesn’t ask how. He doesn’t feel he is supposed to know. You don’t explain any further. You sit criss-cross on his bed and he remains in his desk chair for now. Of course, he is sure that at some point you’ll both get under the covers and go to sleep, but you’ll just talk for now because he needs it, and you could tell.

*

He nearly trips over the cat when he walks in. He mutters curse words to himself before picking Pepper—the cat—up before it runs out the front door. Pepper has always been a calm kitty and she takes well in Alex's arms, though they are full and he struggles through the door before he can finally put everything, including Pepper, down on the floor. She tangles in his legs before running off back into the house.

Alex closes the front door roughly causing one of the magnets that holds a picture of the girls up to fall on the floor loud enough to alert the other residents of the house that he is home.

"Sounds like someone's home," he hears you announce followed by the sudden noise of pattering feet.

He rounds the corner, greeted by two blurs rushing him like linebackers. As always, Willow is quick to talk her mouth going a mile a minute, shouting, "Come look what I made today! Pick me up, daddy, pick me up! Come on!" He can't even keep track of what she is saying most of the time, her mouth going a mile a minute.

Contrasting her twin sister, Wren, his quiet little girl, tugs on his pant leg to get his attention. They've always been this way, even when you were pregnant with them. Willow would kick away and Wren would suck her thumb. Wren speaks when spoken to, preferring to perform motions to express her opinions. Unless it's vegetables, then she cries and yells, "Yuck!"

To combat both girls' interests, he bends down and picks them both up. They are just on the edge of being too heavy for Alex to pick both up at once. But maybe he'll wait until the next birthday to stop doing this. Wren curls into him while Willow hangs off his neck still yapping, "I want mac & cheese for dinner. Mummy said we can so you have to let us. Wen wants it too. Say it, Wen." Willow has always called Wren "Wen." It's adorable and Alex and you can't bear to ever correct it.

Alex turns to Wren, nudging her with a bounce to show her some attention and get her answer. "I want mac & cheese," she says robotically as if Willow trained her to say it.

"Really?" Alex questions. He looks toward you, sitting on the living room rug and watching this exchange. You share a silent laugh with him. You're calm, and he never understands how you managed to hold that through the whole day with the girls. He loves them like nothing else ever but, man, do they tire him out.

"Swear," Willow answers for Wren. "Mummy also said you'd play dolls with us."

You laugh out loud. "I never said that, Will."

Willow thinks otherwise. "Well, maybe you could anyway."

Alex laughs. "We'll see." He feels a strain in his back and decides it's time to put the girls down. Will goes off running back to her toys but Wren hangs on, unable to let go of the comfort. "C'mon Wren. At least let me take my shoes off."

"But you'll come back?" She's completely wide-eyed and worried. Whenever she's in need of reassurance, Alex fears it's his fault. That he went on tour when they were too young and ever since Alex is certain he has caused them abandonment issues. 

He told you this once, late at night, after Wren had cried for him to not leave her alone in her room. He stayed with her until she fell asleep and would have fallen asleep beside her if you hadn't come to collect him. Under the covers, he told you this fear and regret, at first, you laughed, insisting Wren was just clingy. Alex chose to believe you if only to fall asleep that night.  

Sometime after midnight, Wren came into yours and Alex's bedroom, tugging on Alex's hand making sure that he was still there, still breathing, still real. Her little whimpers woke you up. Alex hugged Wren to his chest and you ran a hand down the sensitive girl's back. She kept saying, "You were gone. You left." You tried your best to minimize Alex's worries but he felt this fear to be true and a hidden part of him thinks you blame him too.

Alex kisses Wren's plump baby cheek, placing her tiny feet on the wooden floor. "Always," he assured her. She toddles cautiously back to the toys to join her sister.

But then there's one more girl he has to take care of. "Are you going to make me mac & cheese?" You ask, approaching him, and slinging your arms around his neck. His hand finds its rightful place on the small of your back, the one where you always feel an ache when his hand isn't there.

He pulls you closer to him, pressing her body up against his, your faces so close, your noses just barely not touching. "I'll make you whatever you want." His lips pucker expectantly, waiting for yours to collide with them.

"Anything?" You raise an eyebrow.

He relaxes his lips and quirks a smile. "Yeah, I can make you the unicorn-shaped mac & cheese."

"Wow," you laugh, "you really are my prince charming."

He puckers his lips again. "Hurry up and kiss me, would you?" You give in because he's so cute talking about mac and cheese and there's a flutter in his eyes that you can tell means he had a long day so you won't put up much of a fight, especially when he kisses you just right.

You pull away and ask, "Long day?"

Alex shrugs. "I'm where I want to be now. How was it here?" He runs his hand up and down your right arm.

You sigh as you begin to feel the weight of the day"Good. No fights. Wren didn't nap."

Alex throws his head back. "Don't tell me that." 

That fear ticks away inside him but you grab his hand and squeeze it. "It's not because of you. It allowed me to have Wren & me time considering she's a daddy's girl and Will's constant desire to be the center of attention, but don't tell her I told you that."

He chuckles. "Your secret's safe with me."

"Now come on with the mac & cheese!"

Later, when he's cooking dinner, Wren clings to his leg. Will is singing loudly in the living room and he can hear you clapping along with her. 

"Mac & cheese?" Wren asks him.

"Almost done," Alex promises, picking her up by the straps of her overalls and depositing her onto the counter. "Would you do today? Did you have fun with mummy and Will?"

Wren simply nods with a smile, which is a good sign, no frowns in sight.

But she tugs away at his heart, making grabby hands for him. She's always been clingy, enjoying the feeling of being held, but he can't help but feel that she's spent the whole day missing him, not able to have any fun. 

"Do you maybe want to come to work with me tomorrow, honey?" He knows he should ask you about this and Willow will have to come along or she'll throw a temper tantrum but sometimes he thinks Wren needs a little extra love. She doesn't shout for attention in the manner Willow does. Sometimes she needs to be noticed and needs to feel special.

Then, Wren starts doing that happy gurgle-laugh thing. She swings her legs, tiny socked feet hitting the utensil drawer. She nods quickly, completely excited. "I'll have to talk with mummy about it but you and me will do something special. That sound nice?"

"Yeah!" She squeals and claps her hands. 

Her excitement rubs off on Alex, giving him something to smile about. He nuzzles his nose with hers. He can't get over how precious she is. "Yeah," he repeats, completely content. In moments like this, he doesn't feel like he's completely failed as a parent.

Willow comes walking in, patting her stomach, asking, "Is the mac & cheese ready? I'm 'ungry."

*

Putting the twins to bed can either be the easiest part of the day or the hardest. Wren nearly passes out in the bathtub, running on limited sleep. Willow refuses to stay in bed. When you leave the room, she pops out of bed and starts playing with her toys in the dark. 

Alex goes in to kiss her goodnight after he lays Wren down and finds her bouncing on her bed. She stalls at the sight of Alex, clear that she has been caught out. "Bedtime, missy," he tells her.

She giggles but plops down on her butt. "I'm not tired," she states like there is simply no argument to be made.

Alex sighs and sits on the edge of her tiny bed. "But I'm tired."

"You can go to bed. That's okay, daddy." She touches his arm like she's reassuring him she'll be fine.

Alex huffs a laugh into his hand. He doesn't want Will to get excited that she's making her dad laugh. "I can't go to bed unless you go to bed. It's the rules."

She closes her eyes and flops down on the bed dramatically, pushing the air loudly out of her pillow. "Fine." She seems like she's making an attempt, but then she opens her eyes wide and demands, "Story first."

He knows you probably read her two stories already and he shouldn't give in but you're in the shower and he'll be waiting all alone in bed for you so why shouldn't he kill some time with one of his girls? "One."

She claps her little kiddie hands. "You can pick," she says like she's doing him a favour.

And she kind of is because if he has to read Goldilocks again, he might lose it. "Rumplestiltskin it is." He's always liked it and he knows Will likes the straw turning into gold part. 

He picks up the book of the collected Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Part of him can never deny reading the girls (including you) a story. You all do the same thing: cuddle up beside him, lay your head on his arm, point at the pictures, and say a comment on every sentence if only to make reading time just a bit longer. Will curls his fingers around his forearm and falls asleep halfway through the story but he finishes it anyway. Partly because he knows if Will is pretending to be asleep and he doesn't finish the whole thing she'll insist he has to read her another one. (The other part because he loves the story).

You've just exited the bathroom with wet hair and a towel wrapped around you when Alex enters your bedroom. "Everyone went to sleep alright?" You're going through the drawers, looking for pajamas.

"Yeah. Will had me read her another story but she conked out quick."

You smirk. "Will had you read another story or you wanted to read another story?"

He rolls his eyes at you mocking him before admitting, "Both."

You laugh at him, your sweet boy. The house can feel overrun with girls sometimes, even the cat is a girl, but Alex never seems to mind. He likes all the girlish things the girls like. Tea parties and dress-up, although, he did get noticeably a little more excited when the girls started kicking around a football. But then Alex just said, "Girls are better at football anyway." 

He's better at tea parties than football anyway. He doesn't even try to pretend to lose to the girls when they play 2 v. 1 with him. They are sneaky and tiny and like Pepper does, they wrap around and slide through his legs to kick into his goal. Meanwhile, he thrives at the tea parties, drinking whatever concoction the girls make, even if it tastes like plastic. You always pretend to sip but Alex is the real deal. Always has been.

"Did you miss me while I was gone?" He asks, leaning against the wall, trying to tempt you.

You smile, dropping the towel, leaving you naked in his view for five seconds before you toss a T-shirt over your head. "No, not really."

The T-shirt is red and he's like a bull as he charges toward you, picks you up, and lands both of you on the bed. You're giggling affectionately into the kiss and it's completely loved-up and lovely and you both love that but Alex and you clearly want more. You push him up, off of your lips. "Shut the door."

Sex with the kids can be challenging. Before you did it every time, every surface you could find. Now, you mostly do it at night, rarely in the morning because the girls are always up early. You can't do it every night. Sometimes you can tell the girls didn't fall asleep or you're tired or Alex passed out while you were in the shower. 

Despite the scheduling-sounding nature of things, sex still seems spontaneous. Like a random gust of wind felt upon the skin. Alex always makes things exciting and after doing it more times than you can count, it never bores. The predictability of it is what makes it so charged, so romantic, so sexual, so loving. You can tell by the thrust of his hips whether he's close or not. He can tell by the furrow of your brow whether he's hitting that spot in you or not. It has always felt right.

He's fast in his steps, locking the door, and pretty much launching himself back onto the bed. He covers you, completely all over you, kissing you, feeling you up. He reaches under your shirt, pushing it up to expose your boobs, but not taking it off. He grabs them, a fistful at first, then just the nipple. He kisses down your neck, over the collection of your shirt's fabric, onto the skin of your boobs, and then the areola, licking over the wrinkles of it before meeting the erected nipple.

There are times when you do devote time to foreplay. Alex loves it. You love it. Both ways. You both have always been reciprocal naturally. You never need to ask the other for more. In fact, more often you ask for less. Like...

"This feels really nice," you tell him, "but I'm tired and I know you're tired so just fuck me, okay?"

"Okay," he agrees, breathing heavily already. He stands to take his clothes off. You don't bother shedding the top. He can fondle your boobs just fine with it still on and it provides an emergency cover if one of the girls walks in.

Alex lays back on you intently, kissing you harshly. You reach down to hold his cock, pumping him a few times before his hand takes over and slides into you. The idea of it is quick but the pace is rocking, not fast, not slow, just right. You furrow your brows and arch up into him. He reaches into the space underneath the arch and holds you, completely skin-to-skin. He lays kisses on your neck in no particular pattern like he isn't even trying to turn you on more, he just wants to do it. 

You grip the back of his head's hair, clumps in your compressed grasp. "More," you urge, needing just a little more to tip over.

His mouth moves next to your ear, whispering, "Want me to fuck another baby into you?"

It makes you snort a laugh right in the middle of sex. You have to physically stop his hips from moving as you collect your breath. "What? Another set of twins?"

"Yeah. With my super sperm." He's jokingly bragged about that with you since you found out you were having twins. You corrected him and said it was your eggs that made the twins since they're fraternal. He said, "No, it was a really good load, I remember." It's always made you laugh.

"Twin boys now?" You ask.

He shrugs. "Or more girls? I don't mind."

Everything about him is calm, but there is sincerity in all of it. "Are we seriously talking about more kids while you're inside me?"

Alex makes small movements inside you. "Yeah, come on." He leans closer and closer to you. "We make cute kids. The girls are older. I know you want it."

You place your hands on his shoulders. "Right now I just want you so can we do that part before the 9-month part?"

He nods. "Cart before the horse."

You laugh and tug him down into your shoulder. You whisper into his ear as his hips begin to move harder and harder, "Fuck a baby into me."

Alex chuckles and kisses your jugular. He quickens, both of you feeling an ache for release conjuring inside you. He moves harder and pulls your hips to him. He's doing all the work, but he doesn't mind, he likes doing this for you, likes being good for you. That's all he wants to do.

"That feel good?" He has asked this almost every time you've had sex like, no matter what, even after doing this for years, he wants to make sure it's as good as the last time.

You hum in the affirmative, feeling too overwhelmed to talk clearly. Your grip around his neck tightens as you drag him closer down to you. He keeps thrusting into you hard, skin hitting skin sounding across the room. 

"So fucking tight," he groans into your ear. 

His pace is quick, erratic, and eager. His breath is heavy and filled with soft grunts. His hands are rough, squeezing on your hips. You know he's holding on for you but you want him to enjoy it too. It doesn't always have to be about you. "Let go," you tell him. 

But he's hot for it, not rejecting your request like you thought he would. "You want it?" He asks.

You nod, fluttering eyes.

"Tell me," he says, pounding deep.

You scrap your nails down his back soothingly. "I want it. Deep in me." He hums, requesting more without saying it. "Fill me up with your cum. Please."

Maybe it's your words, maybe it's how close he was, or maybe it's both, but he cums instantly after, deep inside you, filling you up. He groans and pants into your neck. He rests inside you, holding everything in, while he catches his breath. You comb your fingers through his hair, calming him.

He raises his head so he's looking down on you. "You okay?"

You softly smile, exhaustion hovering over you. "Yeah."

"You don't cum," he comments.

You shrug. "I got what I wanted."

Alex grunts. "God, you're gonna make me cum again."

You push him up, making him hiss at the sensitivity. "Don't," you command.

He pulls out slowly and before you can even say anything, he's got his fingers inside you, keeping all that cum in, making a mess on his finger. It takes you off guard, making you moan instantly. He's quick with everything, knowing you want to go to bed, hoping to release the tension and ease you into relaxation.

His two fingers shove in and out of you rapidly. He curls them just in the right spot, making you moan, "Fuck." His thumb grazes over your clit, just like how he knows to do it. It's messy, the whole thing is a mess, but it feels like the hottest thing ever, and soon your hips are unable to stay still and you're coming.

It's your turn to catch your breath and he's licking your shared cum off his hands. He makes a face. "I don't think I've ever tasted my own cum."

You reach out and grab his hand, taking the still-dirty finger into your mouth, and licking it clean. "You've made me taste both before."

He kisses your lips before getting off the bed to grab tissues. "Don't act like it was against your will. I recall you liking it."

You sigh, sitting up and fixing your shirt. "We're gonna have to change the sheets."

Alex hands you a few tissues and says, "I'll do it. You clean yourself up." You'll always accept him doing all the work.

*

It’s three in the morning when a tiny hand shakes Alex awake, and he opens his eyes to find Wren there holding her stuffed teddy bear against her chest, cheeks wet from crying. “I wet the bed.”

“Oh,” Alex says, while his heart rate settles. He looks around to get his bearings and finds you out of it to his right, curled up on your side. He blinks the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes as Wren sniffles miserably, and he pushes up to wipe her jaw dry. “Hey, it’s okay, baby. It just happens sometimes, alright?”

“But I'm not ‘posed to,” she croaks. “I’m supposed to be a big girl now. I’m sorry.”

“No, hey,” Alex kisses her forehead. “It’ll be fine, come on.”

She holds onto his hand and he leads her into the bathroom, running the water to warm and filling the tub with strawberry-scented bubbles. Once she’s in, he lets her play with her rubber ducks for a while to calm down. She splashes them and chews on their tails and presses their drawn-on smiles to his cheek as a kiss. "Muah," she says, and he loves her so much it hurts.

He runs a hand over her damp hair. “I’m gonna go fix your bed, okay? Just keep playing.”

Wren nods, so he leaves her with the door wide open and the light cascading into the hall. Strips her bed of the old sheets and carries them over to the wash. When he comes back, she’s resting her chin against the edge of the tub, waiting for him.

His head tilts, looking down at her big eyes on her little face. “Hey, Peanut.”

“Hi,” she says, timid. “Do you still love me?”

Alex frowns and sits down in front of her on the cold tile. “Why wouldn’t I still love you?”

“M’no good,” she whispers. “M’not small anymore, and I miss you all the time, and—”

“Alright, hey,” Alex cuts in gently, pushing her hair behind her ears to hold her face, all flushed chubby cheeks. He hates himself. Feels like he has made her feel this way. Made her feel unloved and he'll beat himself up for it every day. Never forgive himself for making her doubt his love. "I know I’ve been gone a lot, and I’m really sorry, but I miss you the whole time I’m away. All I wanna do is be here with you, okay? I promise. I love you,” he says, kissing her freckled nose and watching it crinkle up, “so much. I hope you know that.”

She nods, bites her lower lip, and chews. “You love mummy?”

“Yes,” Alex says. “Tons.”

“Is tons a lot?” She asks, and he notices her eyes flit over his shoulder, which gives him a pretty good idea of why she’s asking.

“It is,” he confirms, glancing behind him and finding you in the doorway, hair thrown up, wearing that ratty old red tee. You grin and lean against the door jamb, eyes soft. “The better question is: does mummy love daddy?”

You laugh. “Tons squared,” she promises. “Come on, it’s bedtime, baby.”

“Can I sleep with you?” Wren asks, anxious.

Alex kisses her cheek. “Of course,” he says and leans around her to pull the drain. You come over to help her dry off and Alex goes to grab her fresh pajamas. You both help her dress because she’s all sleepy from the warmth of the bath, and she’d get lost in her shirt if you weren’t around. Alex picks her up and carries her to their bed, laying her down between them so they can both hold her.

"You okay, honey?" You ask Wren, running your fingers through her hair, calming her like you do for him.

She nods, her eyes slowly closing, sleep taking her away from you.

Alex kisses her cheek lightly, not wanting to disturb her sleep. "Love you."

You repeat his action, kissing her baby skin cheek. "Me too." But she's already fallen asleep, exhausted from her little life.

You look across at Alex, his eyes cautiously looking over Wren. "Hey," you whisper to him to grab his attention. His gaze meets yours, his eyes solemn, but affectionate. "Love you."

He smiles because that's just what he needs. That's all he'll ever need. "Me too."

*

A hand pushes on your back somewhere around 4 in the morning. You turn around at the expected sight: Willow holding her stuffed teddy bear, thumb in her mouth, scared little eyes.

"What's wrong, baby?" You ask her, reaching out and smoothing back her messy hair.

"I had a night'are." Her voice wobbles. Alex and Wren are still sound asleep. You reach down to pick her up, laying her on your chest and hugging her to you, wanting to keep her safe from all the evil things awakening her.

"Everything's okay," you reassure.

"What's wrong?" You turn to see Alex, alert and worried rubbing his eyes.

"Nightmare."

Willow turns her head to look at her dad. "Oh," she says, "there's Wen. I was scared she wasn't where she was."

Alex reaches his arm over a sleeping Wren and rubs Willow's back, hushing her rapid heartbeat. "She's been in here. She got scared too but she's okay. She's sleeping now."

Willow keeps her voice low, understanding to keep quiet. "I went lookin' for her but she wasn't in her room."

"Why did you go to her room, honey? Why didn’t you come in here?" You ask.

"'Cause I always go there when I'm scared. Wen goes 'Everyting's okay' and then I know it will be 'cause she said so." She's so sweet, she hides it sometimes, doesn't like to give it away, she's careful with who she gives it to and you're sure nobody loves someone like Willow and Wren love each other. For that, Alex doesn't have to worry. He knows Willow and Wren will always look out for each other.

You kiss Willow's cheek and slide her carefully next to Wren. The bed is just big enough to fit you all but you have to hold steady to not tip off the bed. The girls are comfortable though and that's all that matters.

"We should sleep in here all the time," Willow says.

You and Alex both laugh quietly at your little girl. "Maybe," Alex says.

"Pep should be here too."

So, Alex goes and gets Pepper.

*

There was a time when this type of thing—lying side-by-side in bed together—would make your whole body feel like it was being electrified. Like a tree being hit by lightning, cracking slowly into two, falling to the ground, and turning the whole ground into an earthquake. Now, the idea of lying as two bodies was dull. In a life intertwined as one, you were now two separate things wandering through this house.

Neither of you minded it. Not one bit actually. But it wouldn’t be described as romantic. Hadn’t been for a long time. Sometimes it felt like you were co-workers. You would stand in the kitchen, waiting for the bread slices to pop up from the toaster while he poured himself a cup of coffee. He’d give you a head nod, ask how you were, and never ask further about what your “Good” meant. What was good even defined as any more than some pleasantries, some permission for someone to go about their day? At most, you might say you slept badly, and he would respond, his lips hovering above the lip of his mug, giving it more of a kiss than you, “Aw, that sucks.”

One time he asked if you had any plans for the weekend, and you burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” He asked, sitting at the kitchen table, giving you just a small peek of that old smile. Flashes could be shown, but never given in full. Sometimes you thought you were more guarded now than you were when you were first dating. Things were more vulnerable then, giving yourself in full to one another. The urge to never be apart, to know every facet of the other person, to stay on the phone for hours. One day he left the house, and you didn’t even know where he was going, and you didn't bother to ask. You didn’t care to know, and it’s not from some apathy toward him, always wanting him to be well, but it was monotonous to ask after every aspect of him. There was no need to know everything.

It was comforting to wake up, go into the kitchen, and wait for Alex to pour himself a cup of coffee. Every morning, waking up before him, filling the coffeemaker for just enough for 2½ cups because Alex always needed just a little more before starting the day. 

The first month you lived together, you’d wake up just the same, except Alex slept in later, and you always made too much coffee, which grew cold by the time Alex arose. You’d be getting dressed for the day when he’d wake up, kiss your cheek, and attempt to reheat the coffee. He usually ended up tossing it because of its bitter flavor, making himself a fresh new pot. By the time it was brewed, you’d left for the day. Eventually, he woke up earlier, and you learned the measurements of Alex’s coffee consumption. All of these changes were unnoticed. A slow effort by both parties.

You eat your toast standing upright at the counter. Though mornings aren’t a rush, sitting down feels like relaxing too much, something reserved for holidays and long weekends. Alex doesn’t eat breakfast. That too is reserved for holidays and long weekends. His stomach isn’t fully awake until noon where he will eat snacks throughout the day until dinner arrives. You both like dinner a lot. All your first few dates had revolved around dinners and trying new restaurants, sharing plates with one another like something out of Lady & the Tramp. 

Alex gets the post every morning. His cute grandpa slippers on, scuffing on the floor, and his mug still steaming in his hand. Sometimes he comes back with it, sometimes it hasn’t arrived yet. If there’s nothing, he shouts, “Nada!” and goes into the living room where he’ll sit on the couch and flip through the television channels. You’ll go to the bedroom to change. If he comes back with it, he’ll stand at the kitchen table, and flip through them. You’ll stay in the kitchen and watch as he remarks on its envelope. Sometimes there’s a delightful letter from someone or a little postcard from your brother, backpacking his way through Japan for some reason. Most of the time, it’s junk mail and the painful bill. “All rubbish,” he’ll declare and toss it on the table. Then, he’ll sit and page through the newspaper, reading the headlines, but none of the paragraphs. He’ll pull the sports section and the games section out to take with him. The rest will either remain unread or skimmed by you. You’ve both questioned still paying for the paper, but consider it a local donation to the city now. “Keep print media alive one pound at a time,” he says. You never mention how it is far more than a pound to have it delivered daily. It’s not worth noting.

Then, he would move to the living room couch and flip through channels, just like he did on days the mail had not arrived yet. He tended to settle on the news on days the paper hadn’t arrived yet, getting a debriefing on what had transpired while he was sleeping like he’d be quizzed on it on his commute. On days the paper had arrived, he tends to settle on something like whatever Channel 4 is rerunning or Barefoot Contessa, which he says makes him feel warm inside. You guess Ina Garten reminds him of his mother, but you’ve never formally asked, but can tell by the taste of his mother’s apple galette.

You’ve never quite enjoyed the television being on, especially in the morning with its mindless chatter. He doesn’t even pay much attention to it, still half-asleep on the couch, only sitting there for a few minutes before he wanders. You’ve stopped saying anything, instead walking away from an argument and getting dressed. The longest fight you ever had was about BBC Breakfast. Since you’ve felt you’ve given too much power to broadcasting services to pick a fight over it.

If Alex is hooked by Ina Garten’s sweet breasts— the chicken kind, of course—he’ll remain on the couch until you leave for work, but, generally, he’ll get up and knock around the house for a little while, not leaving until the coffee has fully stimulated him. Occasionally, he returns to the kitchen, struck with inspiration by the Barefoot Contessa for what to make for dinner. He’ll search each cabinet for possible ingredients before deciding on any particular recipe.

If he’s grown quickly bored with the news, he’ll leave it on, and return to the bedroom. Every time you hear the padding of his feet along with Charlie Stayt’s voice, your whole body folds, hunched over, physically pained by the television being left on.

From here, the routine varies day-to-day. Early on, he’d try something, kiss your neck while you searched the drawers for your ornate blouses, teasing you, “Oh, you’d look nice in that one.” He’d bite the lope of your ear, tickling you with his breath, blowing in slow streams across the slope of your neck.

You’d laugh, insisting, “Stop it,” even though you never wanted him to stop. You never wanted him to stop.

Back in those days it was a fight with time, trying to finish before the sun fully crept in, and broke away the day. A fight with him and yourself to resist, not needing tardiness on your job report. You tended to give yourself over in some way, early enough to complete a task, if lucky even two, on each other before the glare of the sundial demanded a separation.

Now, it’s faded away. In a way, it feels like too much time is on your hands now. A whole life ahead with one another, there’s no need for a quickie. Back then, it always felt you were running out of time. Like going to work was the equivalent of Armageddon. It was a little silly to feel that way. Naive and youthful to grasp at one another like that.

He sits on his side of the bed, sorting through his nightstand. His book, the book he keeps saying he’ll read one day, that old radio alarm clock that has no purpose other than its glaring red light, a lamp, tissues, and the new addition: reading glasses he rarely wears. He slides out his slippers and sits back against his pillows, hands tucked behind his head, his body messing up the newly made bed.

“You want chicken tonight?” He’ll ask this or some variation. Gone are the days of going out for dinner, maybe an attempt on an anniversary, or when family comes into town.

If you don’t nod in agreement, you’ll groan while pinning your hair back, or slipping into a skirt. You look at him through the mirror above your bureau. “We had that a couple nights ago.”

He’ll move his hands down to rest on his stomach, still dressed in some pyjama variation. It’s progressed throughout the years: nude, underwear, boxers, sweats, the T-shirt has been the most recent evolution. You questioned it when he went to bed wearing a long-sleeve, but he just said it made him feel more comfortable.

“You can never have too much chicken.” He’ll rub his eyes, or sip from his coffee, sometimes picking up his book, signaling there is no argument to be made, his ruling was made. The latter only happens when some argument has taken place that night or the morning.

You turn around to face him once you’re fully dressed. “The chickens would beg to differ.”

He’ll laugh at this because he’s supposed to laugh at this. A clear joke that if a laugh isn’t made, like in the case of reading, there’s been some fight. If the laughter is genuine, you can actually feel the rumbling through the floor, each ripple running through your legs. Occasionally, you get just a smile, which feels like something much more than a simple smile. You feel him admiring, cherishing, taking you all in, locked in a mental image, all done up for work in some atrocious uncomfortable business attire, but savored by him.

“Some pasta then,” he offers. “Spaghetti, penne, rigatoni.” He’d go on if you didn’t stop him. Eventually he’d run out of ones to stay, unable to think of another, and stand there for several minutes, trying to think of one more. Lasagna might pop into his mind, or ramen, and then he’d tilt his head to the side and ask, “Does ramen count?” 

You accept pasta, step into your shoes, and exit the bedroom. He stays in his bedroom if he’s hit the cushions just right, or he’s in the cold-shoulder state, half-reading his book, half-stewing. Otherwise, he’ll walk out into the kitchen, and check ingredients again. “I’ll have to get tomatoes,” he declares. Always out of something, always finding an excuse to head to the grocery store.

“Okay,” you softly say. You grab your bag and your keys. He used to pour your remaining coffee into a travel mug, but he doesn’t do that anymore, and you don’t take coffee on your commute. When he would hand you the thermos, he’d kiss you. Cheek if he was being romantic, neck if he was trying to tease, lips as aftercare.

Now, he escapes into his small office—co-occupied as a guest bedroom, a bedroom that used to be meant for something else—in search of a legal pad to write his grocery list on. He’ll be focused so deeply into this daze that you question even calling after him. Should be no significance in leaving him be.

You contemplated this one morning, simply leaving without a goodbye, after some fight, the kind you don’t even remember how they got started. But what would this relationship be if you didn’t say goodbye. And so, you shout to him in the next room, “Bye, Al!”

In gradual evolution, he has changed from poking his head out of the room, smiling, and saying goodbye. Today, he continues his search, and he yells back, “Have a good day!”

Texts used to be sprinkled throughout your day, messaging him back while you ate your lunch. At times, so cheesy, you’d roll your eyes, not knowing what you had. He uses his phone less now, feeling it takes too much away. “More to tell me when you get home,” he said. Though, you didn’t think that was much of the point.

When you return home now, he’s either cooking away in the kitchen, or out. Somewhere, could be anywhere. You don’t mind an empty house, could even prefer it on the days where he’s cold. You’d roam freely, sneaking into all his spaces, occupying them completely as your own. He said that once. Something about you creeping into all the parts of him. It was said romantically, but in practice it seems like a bad omen, straight from a horror movie. You’ve infected his life.

He’s cooking pasta. Towel over his shoulder, for no important reason, just for show. It’s pasta, still boiling in the water, it isn’t all that messy. Maybe you should get him a chef hat, those toque blanche ones, to fake being a professional, yet again. He’d appreciate it, used to see the humor in those gifts, though he might take it too seriously now and actually wear the thing.

There’s a greeting, a smile tossed over the shoulder. You move into the bedroom to change. He used to put the moves on you here too, insatiable. He still could. There’s nothing stopping him, except the boiling water, and he’d say, “Screw the pasta, we’ll order something.” Make some off-color joke about eating you. Joke could’ve come true, it feels like parts of you are gone, consumed by him. You don’t cook dinner anymore. You used to love doing that. But you come home too late, and he’s here, and he likes having it ready, served with a bon appétit attitude, announcing it has been made “Just for you.” Even though that isn’t true, it’s made for him too. Everything in twos.

There’s a light conversation over dinner—a scattering of comments about the day. He recognizes every name from work. He’s always been good with names. He always has some stories, possessed with the ability to make the microscopic details seem important. You watch his hands, always enthralled by the figure 8s he makes in the air. He’ll sigh, place his napkin atop his plate, and say, “I’m as full as can be.”

He’ll go out for a walk and a cigarette while you do the dishes. You like the way you can so easily lose your thoughts in the meditative practice. The water rushes from the faucet over your hands, always a tad too hot, soapy suds running into the drain. You swear you don’t think about anything, but you probably do.

By the time he returns, the dishes are dry and you’ve turned the TV on to something nauseating, your turn to annoy him. He slips into his office, trying to force out the noise. When you would go out for dinner, you’d see a movie before returning home, or you’d come straight back and fuck. 

You get goosebumps by the memory of when fucking was easy. You always knew the day would come when that dries up. It’s not like your parents were doing it in the kitchen. But here there are no kids to stop you, so why not do it in the kitchen. Or anywhere, you wouldn’t mind.

The bed works just fine. He doesn’t like to do it standing up any more, it hurts his back or some other excuse. One of you always has an excuse. Work. Headache. Sleepy. Not interested. Not interested, he said that once. You don’t think he ever gave it a second thought, but you keep thinking it over, tossing the words around, hoping one day you can make sense of them.

You could just do it, here on the couch. Nobody would stop you. He wouldn’t even notice, locked out. But the thought is too depressing. Masturbating with 8 Out of 10 Cats blaring in the background. You wouldn’t even be doing it for pleasure, just proving some shallow point. And not even to him, solely to yourself because he would never know. God, you would never tell him. What’s the point of any of that stuff—masturbating, sex, him—if you’re not going to enjoy it?

He feels so far away in these moments. An unattainable god, who isn’t simply in the room over. He likes it this way. Feeling godlike, divine, out-of-this-world. You used to like that too—loved it, encouraged it. You felt power from just being with him, and not even in front of other people, simply you and him alone felt like you could be that way too, that you even might already be. When did you lose that power? 

You probably gave it away too freely, let him make the calls. No, that’s blaming him too much, you gave it willingly. He probably doesn’t even notice he has it. He probably doesn’t even notice.

You knock on the door, then it feels stupid to knock. It's your house, your guest room, not just his office. You’ve slept in here when he has been out of town, not like to be in your bed without him, not like ours become mine. 

He looks up, curious little eyes, gazing, wondering, smiling like Hey, there you are! I’ve been waiting for you.

What a splendid feeling. Let’s just stand here and take this feeling in.

A beat passes. “What?” A dull inquiry like knocking on a teenage boy’s room. He even sounds it, all lethargic and worn-out “What?” He’s not even saying all the syllables, it's more like “Wha?” It could even be “Wa?” like a baby crying out for you.

Typically, you’d fold, not caring anymore, “Just checking in, sorry to bother you.” like his mother coming to collect the wash. You’ve become the mother without the baby. Depressing. You could wallow. Usually do. Pack it away and cry in the shower where the tears are even unnoticeable to yourself, could not even be crying, simply dry crying, whining for nothing.

“Would you like to have sex?” You’re a twisted, slutty little trick-or-treater, might as well beg, he’d like that. Hands and knees, down on all fours, Whack! to the ass. (You’d like to too, though the thought is too scandalous to think now, to say in true words, reserved for the enclosed privacy of parentheses).

Oh, and he is like those teenaged boys. Wide-eyed like the first time he saw boobs. Hard for the word “sex” alone. “Is that really all it takes to get you going?” You whispered into his ear once. He could’ve come from that alone, cum stuck to his underwear, trembling. He came once when you palmed his cock through his jeans. Got jizz all over the denim, never got the crust out of them, had to toss them.

You tilt your head, beckoning him to answer. “Yes. Yes. Here? Now?” He points down to the floor, looking around dazed. It’s like the girls from those Page 3 magazines came to life, crawled out from under his bed, and seduced him, and he’s whispering, “My parents are downstairs.” but they don’t care, they keep going, they’d start screaming, and he’d have to cover their mouth with his hand. He’s come to that thought before, but the Page 3 girls aren’t there anymore. You, instead.

“Course,” you say.

“Okay.” Trembling, always trembling. “On the bed?” He stands, moving over.

“Do we have to?”

“Okay. Desk?”

You shrug. “It’s not fun if you plan it.”

“I just figured.” His palms are damp. He rubs away at the sweat, scraping his hands on his trousers. “You’re a planner. You’ve planned this.”

“It was more…romantic in my head.” Calling this seductive is far too depressing. It’s desperate, that’s the word for it.

“Floor?” He should stop posing things. Just do. Just do it. Used to. Hard now. Feels like you’ve done everything together. Why go through all those uncomfortable positions on the floor when the bed is just right? You hit your head on the soap niche once while doing it and refused to ever do it in the shower again.

“You’re supposed to just take me on the floor!” You look like you could stomp a foot right now. Little brat. He used to say those things but once during a dinner with friends you went all this long rant about how men get away with calling women sluts, cunts, and bitches because there’s supposed to be the implication of humor so he stopped saying those words.

He laughs then. You’re folding your arms now, rolling your eyes. Fuck. “Why don’t you take me?”

Your arms drop. You look him in the eye, then look away, too hot like touching a steaming kettle.

“Thought never occurred to you? Wasn’t in the plan?”

You smile so nicely, the frustrated, unwilling to quit one, keeps him going, keeps him wanting more. More of you. “I didn’t have the chance to plan out alternative scenarios.”

You share a laugh. A distance still between you two. “Well?” You meet his eyes. “Why don’t you then? Do the taking.”

You bite your lip. He can see the thought pass through your mind. “Reset. Sit back down.”

He listens. Likes following orders. Told you that the first time you had sex. “Just tell me what you like and I’ll do it.” That turned you on more than an act of sex, meeting a man who listened and acted on it. You made your toes curl from his words brushing up against your ears. Could’ve said I love you then. Almost did. Maybe even did when you came. It’s hard to know. Might’ve black out a little from the ecstasy. 

“Should I go in your lap?” 

He wags his finger. “Just do it.” He’s so far away but you can feel it brushing against your ear. Divine.

And you go from the doorway to straddling his lap. No need to close the door, no one here to watch. You act slowly, sinking on top of him. You start, “Remember when we—”

And then he takes, whether out of impatience, no longer wanting to listen, or desperation. He could be too. He feels it. Cock hard, you can feel it up against your sweats, pushing through the thin material of fleece against your core. He kisses your lips, goes for the neck eventually, just to get a taste of your collarbone.

That little bone. There’s something in there. The remnants of your raspberry perfume and something more, something that’s always been there, even when you’ve been clean washed away. Like an Everlasting Gobstopper, the thought makes him laugh into your chest.

“What?” You cheerfully ask, that sweet glint in your voice.

He shakes his head. “Nothing.” His hand cups the back of your head, pulls your forehead to his, and you sit in the middle, looking at one another before he moves back in and pecks at you 1, 2, 3 like a woodpecker. His hands move down to your shirt, he looks up for permission, and you nod. It’s like the first time, when he kept asking, “Is this okay?” wanting to be sure of every move, wanting it to be good for you, for there to be no pressure, just lewd bliss. 

Naked chest, no bra. This is why people spend their whole lives together. To look at a woman’s breasts and say, “Hello, old friends. I’ve missed you.” He kisses your nips, laps at the areolas like a parched man in the desert. God bless you for ending this drought.

And you writhe, what a wonder for a woman, this woman, to writhe on top of him. He holds your hips, following your motions. Dry humping is as much sex as any, and this hits the spot almost as much as a cervix. 

“C’mere,” you murmur, pulling him up, looking him in the eye, and yanking at his shirt. You don’t need permission, you just know. He’s so hard, how could he even deny it. He knows from the taunting look in your eye that you’re aroused by his erection. He almost feels embarrassed for being this hard, trying red, like that one time he got an erection at school, and had to walk with a textbook in front of his junk until he got to the bathroom. No shame now, maybe not ever again, almost wears it proudly, but that would be the douche thing. So, for now, he just feels good for feeling this good. Like multiplication or exponents are however the fuck that works in maths, he doesn’t remember anymore.

You reach down to take off your pants, and he stops you. “Leave your panties on.”

You smile suspiciously. “Why?”

He tosses his head to the side, a twinkle in his eye. “Because I said so.” Then, a smirk erupts.

You giggle. “Okay. And you?” You gesture to the tent in his pants, buried beneath the surface, but clear as day.

“Me?” He looks down, an admiring glance at the thing. “What about me?”

You blush. It’s like you’re a pre-teen, blushing from the word “sex” alone, shunning, vowing to be the Virgin Mary, or something, then puberty happened. “You know, well, just—”

“Can’t keep it together?” Fuck. His teasing. When he gets into this routine, what's the point of sex? Should just turn this into an audiobook. “Sit back down.”

You listen, straddling, and face him. You can’t keep yourself from laughing, and then he breaks laughing too, and it’s just laughter through the air. “Are we dry humping? This is so high school. How sophomoric of us.”

“Fuck,” he utters as your hips dig. “Yeah, handjobs under the bleachers, or whatever the fuck.”

You laugh in his face. “You’re flustered,” you accuse.

“I’m fucking about to come, of course, I’m flustered.”

You keep laughing. Funny, he can come from a girl laughing at him, this really is sophomoric. “You’re gonna come already? We just started.”

“No, we haven’t.” You’ve done this forever, started years ago, this is a years-long sex act, never ending, just pauses in between. “How am I not supposed when you’re all over me and…” You jut just right. You always jut just right.

You pinch his earlobe. “You’re cute like this.”

“Are you not…feeling it?” He has been too consumed in his personal pleasure, taking yours away from you, right?

“Course I am, just like looking at you.” You say it in a way that might actually make him believe it.

He gazes down sheepishly. “Sure, but are you…close or is this not good for you?”

“It’s good. If it’s good for you.”

“Yeah, but should I put my hand—”

“Alex,” you stop him. “Keep going, this is nice.” You knock into him, waves into rocks.

He squeezes your ass, fat pulsing from his fists. You yelp in surprise. He likes taking you off-guard, the drop of pleasure casting down from you. He presses you down into him. Missed this. Longed for this. Keep going. Don’t stop. Kiss the collarbone. Bow to thee. Lay an offer at your feet. Divinity.

“You like this?” You breathe into his ear, digging down into him. Your clothed cunt banging against his stretched denim. “Huh?”

He can’t even answer, just presses further. More, please, could quiver the thought.

There’s not even more to give, just this forever, keep going, this over and over, this all that is needed to sustain. No need for any further. This. Again. Again. Then, he shudders, caving in, blowing in his pants. “Fuck.” Quietly, softly against your skin.

“Good?” 

Is that even a question? “Of course.” Good.

He can’t let go. Fingernail imprints on your ass cheeks. You sit there, still slowly moving, in need of your own release. “Let me,” he begs, fingering the cotton trim of your underwear. “Please.”

It’s your favorite word. Up there with all the curse words. A simple nod and he understands perfectly, no need for much, no fingers diving deep, or even lips against the folds, just a brush to the clit. Two fingers, sticky, slowly rubbing. “That feel good?”

Of course, it is. It’s a biological fact. Humans are made to do this. No need for procreation, just embracing. When does it become sex? Some discussion for a celibacy group, not for this. This is pornographic. You’ve had wet dreams about this. Good ones that leave you so soaked that it drips onto your thighs, muddies the sheets.

“You feel good, honey?” Like sweet nectar, his voice.

You nod in a dazed way. Might as well be birds circling your head. Your eyes close and you duck down into his neck. His other hand removes itself from your ass, moving to your head, pushing it back. “Look at me,” he says. It’s not demanding, but not a request. It’s a second life of pleasure to watch someone else feel pleasure. Altruistic man, he is.

You’re buzzing. A vibration that will probably last until the next time you do this. You sigh. His hand reaches up and brushes back locks of hair. Feels good. It all feels good.

*

You're standing in front of the produce, strawberries to be specific. One hand on the small shopping cart, the other on your chin. You're contemplating the strawberries. They aren't in season but they look perfectly sculpted, painted in a daunting red, designed to grab your eyes.

Then you hear the click. There he is. Alex. His tiny camera sitting in his hand. His brown leather jacket crinkles as he drops the camera down from his eyes, revealing his face. He plays the shy innocent card—bashful smile with those enamored brown eyes staring straight at you.

You giggle at the familiar sight. "God, you're like glorified paparazzi. You never leave me alone with that thing." You swat your hand at him and gaze back upon the strawberries.

He comes closer to you, one of his hands landing on your shoulder. "How could I?" He lands a kiss upon your cheek, gentle and soft.

You lift a carton, examining it. "Should I get strawberries?"

He pulls back, landing a hand on the small of your back. "Get whatever you want, love."

"I don't know if it'll be a waste of money." You tilt them in your hand trying to decide. It's easy for him to get lost in you in moments like this. That's why he takes pictures of all these little things. You make everything seem fun. The idea of the grocery store is a joy to you and something that was such a pain in his day, you make an adventure out of it, not only with his photography but with your behavior. 

"All eat 'em if you don't like 'em, so get 'em," Alex insists.

You hum, tapping your chin before exclaiming your decision, "Okay!"  You place them in the cart and start your stroll again. He lags behind to capture a picture. "Alex," you whine, "don't make me do all the work."

He snaps a shot of your frustrated face—nose wrinkled up, hand on your hip—before putting the camera away and taking over for you by pushing the cart. 

Things came easily in your relationship. He felt it was something you both just relaxed into the inevitability. In other relationships, this would have caused him trouble. He’s been called uncommunicative and taciturn for a time or twenty—something inherited from being a natural perceiver hidden behind the camera.

But this time was different. It was like a puzzle piece had fallen into place. Part of him slotted into part of you and that missing gap was no more. Maybe he’s becoming soppy, he’s been accused of that by some, including you—though that is more a teasing flirt than ridicule. 

He doesn’t mind. He takes it all with a shrug of his shoulders like yeah, no shit, how can you not be in love with her? 

*

Alex finds it weird that you, as a model, think having pictures of yourself is egotistical. He won’t pride himself and say he’s the greatest photographer of all time and he doesn’t have an altar dedicated to his work but he thinks homes are supposed to have pictures of loved ones. He reasons you’re a loved one so he should have pictures of you. He tries to convince you of this when you’re moving in.

You refuse every picture. He scrolls through each one trying to get you on his side. You shake your head at each one. There are the grocery shopping photos. There are the photos of you by the ocean wearing only bottoms (fair enough, if your parents ever visit). There’s one of you doing laundry, pissed off he was getting in your way. There’s the one when you painted his bedroom walls. 

You told him no person should have stark white walls. It makes you insane and the walls get super dirty. So, you painted them yellow with a bandana tying your hair back and a sunshine smile on your face. He asked you to move in that day.

“I’d like to have you around more often,” he said, standing on the ladder, perfecting the lines between the wall and the ceiling.

You giggled. “But I’m here all the time already.”

“Maybe you could live here all the time,” he offered plainly.

So, now there’s your clothes next to his clothes and way too many shoes on the rack and you have this weird powder you put in all your drinks that makes the water green. He had a taste of it once and almost vomited. But he sees that shade of green everywhere now because he thinks of you everywhere now. He likes the sight of your body next to his body.

The bed is warmer now and his house is starting to gain personality now, covered in colour and books and artwork, no longer looking like an asylum’s padded room. The world just seems to brighten up. He always found that to be cheesy, the way those people who aren’t in love roll their eyes when someone gushes, but he gets it now. As if the world was blurry and you’ve shifted it into focus.

Sometimes he feels crazy. He desires you violently. It’s kind of his every waking thought and he knows that’s crazy because it makes his heart beat really quickly and he’s aroused by just the thought of you. That’s certifiable. 

But then one time you straddled him in the morning. He had just woken up, barely had enough time to open his eyes before you were all over him. He never considered that he may want him this intensely too. Enough to crawl all over him during your first wink of the day. You’re uncontrollable. You’re licking up his body and you’re making him feel like he’s dead and you are the gates of heaven, slowly opening to him.

He reaches down in between the two front gates, runs his fingers through you. He brings it back up to his mouth just to taste it because he’s never tasted something quite so sweet. “They should make that into a lollipop,” he says.

“Shut up.” You hit his chest and he can tell you’re hungry for it. You would usually laugh at something like that but you’re horny, rubbing your cunt along his thigh, soaking your wetness on him. 

He puts his hands on your hips and stops your movement. He has you groaning and writhing against his hold. He’s hungry too but it’s nice to see you starve. “I was gonna give you a blowjob,” you say, “now I’m not so sure.”

Alex pouts. “You don’t behave well enough to give me a blowjob.”

You lean over him, your hair making a curtain around the two of you. “What do I behave well enough for?” Fuck. You’re whispering seductively, your breathing making love to his breathing, and it’s unfair when you have a voice like that. “What? Are you going to spank me?”

No, he doesn’t have the nerve for that. He doesn’t ever want you to hurt, even if you ask for it. Also, he thinks he’d be bad at it. Like it would be too soft or too half-hearted or he would rather fuck you within an inch of your life than smack you around. Fucking you sounds really fucking nice.

“Do you want to spank me?” He counters.

You straighten and laugh at him. It’s ruthless but he likes the feeling. You sober when you see his face. “Wait. Are you serious?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Hit me.”

You giggle nervously. “Like on the ass?”

“Wherever you want.” He does mind pain if it gives you pleasure.

You scoot down so you’re sitting on his thighs. “What if I kick you in the balls?”

He blushes and chuckles. “If you want, I would like to still have working function of my dick and I think you would too.”

You put your hand on his cock over his boxers. You press down on it placing pressure but not hurting him. “I wouldn’t kick you that hard.”

“I’ve seen you work out. I think I’d have to get a new set.”

You tilt your head back in laughter. Then, you pounce, laying your mouth on him, covering yourself over him. You kiss his bare chest, a straight line down from his Adam’s apple to his pubic mound. You bite into the waistband of his boxers, teething on them. Then, you drag until he pops out. 

You sit up again. “Should you roll over now so I can smack you?” You’re touching your lips together to reduce giggles.

“Don’t make fun of me. It’s natural sexual desire.”

“I’m not making fun of you.” Despite the insistence, your laughter bubbles up. “Swear.”

“Uh-huh,” he sounds. He can barely be heard over you losing it.

To hell with this, he thinks. He lifts his hips and rolls until you’re on your back and unable to breathe because of the shock. “I could blow air on you and you’d fall over,” he says.

You smirk. “I’m already laying down.”

He groans and ground his head into your stomach. It would be annoying if you weren’t so cute. 

His mouth is right there, kissing just above your clit. He would tease you if he wasn’t voracious. He sticks his tongue in and you crack almost instantly. Hands to the roots of his hair, yanking as if to scalp him. It hurts and he loves it because it’s a sign of your uncontrollable gratification.

“Higher,” you command, so he goes higher. He sucks right on the clit, pucker his lips out to tweak it, to put his tongue on it, to turn it in his mouth. He goes harder with each of your moans.

Alex traces his fingers up your leg until he reaches the middle of you. He runs his fingers through and then pushes in, fucks you with his fingers because he wants to be soaked by you. He wants his fingers to prune with the taste of you. 

You wanted more and now you think you asked for too much. It’s overwhelming and you’re beat red and you just woke up but you’ve never felt more exhausted in your life. But you don’t want him to stop. You want to dissolve into his hands.

You weren’t inexperienced when you met him but you were young and you had never felt lovemaking like this before. Sex was something to make guys like you. Sex was to make babies. Sex was something to fake your way through in the hopes of maybe, one day, that boyfriend will figure out how to make a girl cum.

Men are more appealing when Alex is included with them. Before men were gross, stuffy, stuck-up beings with only a handful of good ones that were either taken or related. You wake up smiling every day because you realize you’re one of the people you used to be jealous of. You’re consumed by the idea people look at you guys together and are green with envy. He’s one of the taken ones now and he’s taken by you.

And then you cum and it all goes white, those thoughts in your head. It’s the only time in your life when you don’t think it all. And then you spend the rest of your day replaying it in your head. You knew orgasms were good but you understand now why all guys think about is sex because it feels like that’s all you think about now too.

When you can see again, he’s lying on top of you, brushing your hair off of your face. He’s smiling and not in the pride way, but in the plain old happy way. Because making a woman cum isn’t an achievement for him. He’s never struggled with you and you doubt he’s ever struggled much since he figured out where a woman’s clitoris is. 

The urge suddenly possesses you because the thought has been ticking in your head since he mentioned it. You slap him. Clearly across the face. It barely makes a noise but it puts a red mark on his face. He squints his eyes and shakes his head before he’s able to process everything.

You’re laughing below him, clearly sheepish by the action and waiting for his response. He can’t think of anything to say. He didn’t think you’d actually do it and he’s kind of stunned, but, you know, incredibly turned on.

“Do you still want that blowjob?” You ask, a slight blush on your cheeks like you’re a schoolgirl with a crush. He lets out a breathy laugh. You feel the way his stomach rubbles, tickling up against your skin. Sometimes you’d like to rip him limb from limb, other times, you’d like to just stare at his softness.

He rubs his nose against yours, his mouth hovering over yours. “You can if you like. I won’t object.” He’s kissing you gently like a cushion for your soul to rest on.

You nudge him to signal him to roll off of you. When he’s on his back, you assume your previous position straddling his legs. You take him in your hand, squeezing him slightly before putting him in your mouth. He’s half-hard. You like the way he feels when he’s soft like you have to work for it. Sometimes you like to feel him when his dick is in its resting position. The slight window into his natural body.

For better or worse, he arouses quickly. You take the compliment and suck him off. You lick his shaft because it always gets him kicking his legs and he’s fighting against your body resting on top of his legs, unintentionally brushing against your pussy. 

You kiss his tip, treating him delicately after the harshness inflicted on his face. You want to treat him right and make him squirm from the lightest touch. You mouth your way down his cock and begin to stroke him with one of your hands.

He curls his toes and squeezes his eyes shut, despite how much he wants to look at this. He wants to capture every moment of this. He wants someone to transmit the whole scene into his brain to replay over and over again. He sees why people become sex addicts and he might even be one because he wants to stay buried in this. He pets your hair back before fisting it, cumming, jerking up, and shaking his legs. He can’t help but mutter, “Fuck.”

He opens his eyes and sees you wipe your mouth after taking every drop of him. He tosses his head back. “Fuck.”

*

You like watching him take pictures. You don’t often get to center in on him because you’re usually the one he’s taking photos of, but every once in a while he’s able to take you with him. You fake being an assistant and sit in his chair and watch him work. You’ll get him a bottle of water to play into the act but other than that you simply watch him.

He leans a certain way depending on how good of a photo he thinks it’ll be. If he’s standing straight up, he hates it. If he’s all the way forward, willing to get on the ground for the photo, he’s completely in love, swooning for the photo (you know from experience that he likes getting on his knees, at least for you).

It’s probably not the smartest thing for you to be on set with him because he’s easily distracted. It’s hard to pull his attention away from the camera but he’s beginning to understand the beauty of his own eyes. It’s much sweeter to look at you than whatever person is before him.

People used to ask him how he didn't fall in love with all these beautiful models. Before you, he had always viewed this as work. He keeps work and pleasure separate. What a fool he was because mixing pleasure with work was the best decision of his life. But nobody else has had that ability. You drive your personality into the photo. Your gaze only turns any picture into art. He thinks whoever said eyes are the windows to the soul was only referring to you. Everyone else is just a model, nothing else.

This doesn’t do well when he’s on a professional photoshoot and he’s distracted every two seconds by you—your laugh, your eyes, your smile, the way you leave to talk to Jerry (because nobody else ever wants to talk to Jerry).

He has two models yell at him for getting distracted but he doesn’t understand how they can blame him. How are they not staring at you? 

He’s a fool who should never bring you to work again but can’t bear to leave your side. He has an attachment issue.

*

Alex gets an idea. This can either be the smartest idea ever or the dumbest one. This one might be the first to lie somewhere in the middle.

“You want to make a sex tape?”

“An artistic film,” he says because he’s a pretentious prick who claims everything you do is art. It’s flattering but sometimes you want to brush your teeth in peace.

“A porno.”

He purses his lips. “An erotic film.”

You furrow your brows. “Do you jerk off to photos of me?”

He stands up and collects your plates from dinner, silently.

You gasp. “You totally do. You perv. I never gave you permission to do that!”

Alex chuckles. “What did you think I was doing with nude photos of you?”

You follow him to the kitchen sink. “Admiring their aesthetic quality.”

“Believe me, your tits are very aesthetically pleasing.”

You smack his arm and walk down the hall.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

You don’t bother to turn back and walk straight to the bedroom. “To prepare for my porno debut.”

*

The sex tape, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t happen until the weekend. Alex wants to shoot it on film because he’s a weirdo (he admits it) and you want to get cute lingerie because you're self-absorbed (you admit it). You’re two peas in a pod.

“Are you rolling?” You ask him as he sets up. “Oh, god, that was the most pornographic thing I could have said.”

“Relax,” he commands. You’re on edge, he can tell. 

In an effort to put you at ease, he walks over and lies on top of you. He wraps his arms around you and holds you to him. He digs his nose into your neck and breathes you in. He told you once that you smelled like what he imagines clouds smell like and cherries. It puts him at ease and his body in this position calms you. It’s familiar and there’s no reason to be performative.

“Do you ever wish that film could capture smell?” He asks into your skin.

“When there’s cookies on screen, yeah, but what if someone farts or just smells bad?”

He chuckles and looks up at you. His smile is joyous and there’s something about this being for only you—the smile and this film. It makes this idea of his even more interesting because it’s not about sex, it’s about these little in-between moments.

Each move is delicate. He’s always been a smooth lover, even when he’s harsh and raw, his touch is always soft. He parts your legs and drags your underwear down. He takes his shirt off and you unclip your bra. He stands off the bed to take his pants off. 

“Film is expensive so we’re gonna have to go quick,” he says. It leaves you cackling and already out of breath.

“That’s up to you. You’re the one who drags things out for so long.”

Alex joins you back in bed. “I can’t help it if I last long.”

You squint. “I didn’t say that. It takes you a long time to make me cum.”

He leans over you, pushing you down against the mattress. “I know that isn’t true.” He moves closer and closer. It would be threatening if his eyes weren’t so swoon-worthy. You want to kiss every inch of his face. You’d give butterfly kisses to his eyelashes. You’d make love to every last inch of him.

He’s fast, but in a controlled manner. His hips meet yours and he lines himself up with your core. He eases in slowly as you engulf his cock. He hums at the wetness and you moan at being open. Sometimes it feels like the first time all over again. Sometimes it feels like you’ve been doing this all your life and you’ll do it for another hundred years. Either way, you don’t mind, both feel this good.

“Should we be loud?” You ask.

Alex smirks. “You’re already loud.”

You roll your eyes. “I mean so the camera can hear us.”

He’s moving in and out of you now. “I don’t think it’ll have a problem hearing us.” He thrusts straight into, knocking your head against the wooden headboard, eliciting a moan from you. He knows every move in the book. He could write a manual on you to fuck you.

You push against his shoulders. “Should we do a sexier position?”

His grin is shit-eating. “Like what?” You’d slap him again if you didn’t think he’d enjoy it so much.

“I don’t know. Should I ride you? Or doggy? What way do you want it?”

“Whatever way you want it.”

You prop yourself up on your elbows. He’s still moving, albeit slowly, but still pleasantly. “I don’t know that’s why I asked you.”

“Alright.” He pulls out of you and it aches. It isn’t right, he should always be there. It feels like a part of you slipped out. He flops onto his back beside you. “Go to work.”

“Facing you or the camera?”

“Me.”

“But the camera won’t be able to see my boobs.”

“But I’ll be able to see your boobs.”

“But does future you want to see my boobs?”

“Every me wants to see your boobs.”

“So, I should face the camera.”

“No, I still want to have sex with you, not the camera.”

You giggle and don’t say anything else. You want to give yourself over to him. The whole point of this was to commit your sex to film not have sex for the film. You sink down onto him and rock against him. It’s quick because you want it to be, not because the amount of film calls for it.

It’s the perfect sight for him. Some people like sunsets or the ocean, he likes your body. He doesn’t care if it’s naked, clothed, or covered by bubbles in the bath, every part of it is poetic. He’s a bit self-conscious about him being on film. He isn’t used to being in front of the camera. But he so desperately wants you committed to filmic memory. He’s terrified one day you’ll leave or he’ll get dementia or amnesia. He wants to remember every second of this. 

You arch your back and throw your head back. You’re shaking. His hips buck up, slamming into you, finishing you both off. You land on top of him and this is his favourite part, other than the incomparable act of coming for a man, this is his second favourite. He wraps his arms around you, still inside you, and holds this moment in his arms. 

The physical thing will always be better than any photography or piece of film. Only here can he feel your laughter and see your smile and smell that cloudy scent and feel the touch of your delicate, little hands. Only here can he kiss every bit of you while resting inside you. He feels you as you slowly fall asleep. He whispers, “I love you,” only for himself to hear, but you know it just as well as he does.

*

The film cuts off right around when you straddle him. Something is better than nothing. You can always do it again. Neither of you mind.

*

Perhaps, in a strange twist of things, January felt warm. It must be how most fish feel in their bowls, that for months this place has been just the same, only a little darker, a little colder, and a little hungrier, but now they have settled into this fishbowl, and this fishbowl is now their home—a comforting little thing, only thing they know, and would ever want to know. They wouldn’t do too good outside the fishbowl. 

The New Year was rained upon for several days. The outside world was soggy, so we stayed inside. Now that Beatrice was toddling we had to purchase real shoes. (“She’ll outgrow them in two weeks. We’re dropping a hundred quid on a pair of shoes she’ll wear twice.” But baby wellies are so, so cute).

Day-to-day life felt both like it was constantly changing and that is stubbornly staying the same. The inescapable pattern dazed me for a bit. Kept me lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling. I’d stare enviously over at Alex, sound asleep, and wonder why he wasn’t punished this way. I knew he was. He was a man constantly hidden in his thoughts, but in the same breath, I knew only women were punished this way, stuck in an informidable state of worry about the future, something to do with the biological clock, the moon, the tides, and bloating.

On the night before Alex’s birthday, he went out drinking with some friends. I was busy making a permanent indent of my body on the couch while scrolling through Facebook, something I hadn’t done in a decade. Even worse, I was scrolling through my old Facebook, which started somewhere around 2009 during the MySpace decline and ended in 2013 when I began to abhor taking photos of myself.

From my memory, since the servers have been lost (praise the lord!!), my MySpace page consisted of photos taken of myself on my digital camera with the flash on, likely containing that nasty red eye. The unfortunate thing is I signed up for MySpace right when Alex and I began dating, and used it until we pretty much broke up the second time (or was it the third? Fourth?). 

That memory card has long since been destroyed, and my profile on Facebook was left for the exclusive time I was without Alex. It was boring anyway. Mostly photos of Opal eating cereal. Still, I kept scrolling. Top to bottom.

I don’t know why. Nothing interesting caught my eye, except some awful photos, and some past people I’d like to forget. There was a photo of Stacey’s 18th on there, which I forward to her.

Ew. Delete it.

After I reached the bottom, I just scrolled back to the top, and yet I still had no clue what I was looking for. Closure? Nostalgia? Self-obsessed? I kept replying to myself, none of the above. I couldn’t even control my carnivorous attitude, my fingers simply kept flicking.

The front door opened and Alex sauntered in. Not drunk, but buzzed. That delightful, perfect amount of alcohol where you feel all cozy inside, and you actually love yourself. There was one drunk post of myself on Facebook with a photo at a party with the caption: “I am the coolest person ever.” I had the urge to just comment: “No, you’re not stfu!!” But maybe that would only show how self-obsessed I was.

He plopped on the couch. His face was in a saggy pout. His finger curled, beckoning. “Aren’t you gonna kiss me hello?”

I snorted, my lungs were trapped in the couch cushions, and my throat was constricted by my curled-up neck. “No. I don’t kiss the drunk.”

“Oh,” he said, a smirk growing on his face, “yes, you do. I”—he pointed to himself—“am speaking from experience.” He stood up as if he were giving a speech to his loyal subjects—well, subject.

I hummed. My eyes flight strained from the computer light. “You have fun?”

He plopped onto the end of the couch by my feet, placing them in his lap. “Yeah.” Then, he chuckled, surely remembering something from that night, but I didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell. Like stag party secrets. “What did you get up to?”

“Same old.” 

He leaned over, closing in on sight of the computer screen. I turned the laptop away. He looked up at me. “What? You watching porn?” It was a commonplace joke for him, and had been repeated so much it started to become stale and grow mold, but he still said it like he was 17 again with glam mags tucked under his bed. He smiled wickedly as if he were the porn star I was watching. That made me feel 17 again.

“No, I’m on Facebook.”

He sat up. “Oh.” Uncaring toward that kind of thing. Then, his eyes squinted, eyebrows all curled up. “Why are you on Facebook?”

“For fun.”

“Okay. That’s fun to you?”

“No.”

He laughed. “Why are you on it then?”

“I don’t know.”

He huffed and shook his head. “You’re hard to figure out.”

“Yeah, I have a tough enough time.”

We went to bed after and the next day he was 36.

*

I started to become more aware of the economization of hours. My father always said time is money, and I somewhat believed the statement, though I never practiced it. The thought would slip in my head when I would be flirting with some guy who didn’t deserve it and I thought, “Dad says ‘Time is money’ and this guy is definitely not worth my money.” But the thought would pass and I wouldn’t think of it again until the next guy or the next tiresome job or on a lazy afternoon when I never left my bedroom.

Money was always more valuable than time until I had settled into a place that I never wanted to live. Alex was worth a lot of money, but Beatrice was worth all my time. When someone is that tiny and fakes getting a “boo boo” in order to get a kiss (though Alex weirdly developed the same thing, hmm…), it was easier to see that time passing as her words become sharper and she started running with a funny little waddle and high knees.

I never became the helicopter mother, in need to witness every breath my daughter took. Part of me felt good for that, the rest felt guilty. Was it a woman’s destiny to always feel guilt? Was the path to getting older only for the shame to spread and worsen? It was always from me too. It was never from other parties. Alex seemed careless about what I did, encouraging extracurricular, blissful unawareness of what came with that. 

I wasn’t even shamed by people I didn’t know. Nobody ever said to me, “Where’s your baby? Why aren’t you spending time with your baby?” Though, this only made me spiral more and think these strangers didn’t even know I had a baby. I would lie awake and think, “Shouldn’t I be telling everyone about B? Shouldn’t I be spending my meetings discussing my daughter?”

By morning, when I remembered these thoughts, I felt disgusted that I even thought them because I hated when people talked about their children. I recall many nights in my twenties, standing for far too long in heels, drinking too many dirty martinis on an empty stomach, praying for people to shut the fuck about their kid. And I still thought that, only because when they talked about their kids, I wanted to talk about B. But most of the time, I didn’t feel the need. It added little to the conversation. Only numbing my guilty, which pivoted afterwards to “Why did I spend so much talking about my fucking kid?”

Alex said I knew too many words, that being in the literary field made me feel this way because I thought too much about how other people felt. Most people never even gave a second glance to these things. I denied this because all I had ever heard about being a mother is how much it defined a woman. 

He said, “Fair enough.” And he was done talking about it, perhaps I should have been done thinking about it too, but, you know, I don’t control my mind.

Alex told me he worried too, which I was well-versed in, though he was always vague about what he was losing sleep over. It’s human nature, and maybe we were heightened species by being writers, we thought about every corner of the universe. “You know, when you’re awake, I usually am too,” he said.

“No, you’re not. You make this little snoring, heavy breathing sound. You can’t fake that kind of thing.”

He cracked an amused look. “Okay, well, I still lie awake plenty. It’s like one big calendar in my mind, flipping through the months, kind of always was that way I just didn’t have…”

“Us?”

“You say that like a bad thing.”

“I suppose we're a little detrimental.”

He shook his head, hair rustled against the pillow. “No, never.”

“You are for me,” I confessed. He squeezed the fat of my arm, comfortingly. “It’s hard juggling so many things and I sometimes wish I was young again when I didn’t have to think about looking after someone else. But I wasn’t happy then either. I’m much happier now. I’ve just never been…I don’t think I was built for this kind of thing. The mother gene isn’t in me so I’m developing it. I have to learn a little.” 

He laughed as if this was my stand-up routine. Give me a stool and a mic and I’ll say vaguely sexist things under the title of comedy. It took him a moment to calm his breathing. “You don’t have to learn anything, Janie. You’ve been mothering me for years.”

I hummed. “Men usually need that kind of thing, right? Is that why you all watch MILF porn?” In my defense, he rubbed off on me, porn jokes are always in.

His stomach tightened in a rumble of laughter. “Shush. Our secret.”

The day then went on and I continued to walk around, to live, breathe, eat, suffer with all the little things inside me and thinking and feeling those things didn’t stop it. Whenever I made up stories for my dolls when I was younger, there was always something tragic and dramatic that happened to them because otherwise the story would be dull. Playing house could be fun just taking care of each other, but it was far more interesting when my sister, who was, of course, playing my wife, would cheat on me with my other brother, who was, of course, my cousin. It sounds very incestual and complicated, but it was quite the interesting play to live out in our youth. Blame the soaps.

And, just taking care of one another was the greatest feeling in the world, but drinking a cocktail with Opal and lusting over boys was also. In my new universe of London, I only had my heart for Alex, but it was quite fun to play the what-if/who’d you do? game. The game had been created by Alex, in fact, when one evening, over a decade before, he pointed to a guy at a bar, and said, “Is that you’re kind of guy?”

I didn’t look behind me to see where his arrow led and simply (and cheesily) said, “You’re my kind of guy.”

He rolled his eyes, stuck his tongue out, and blushed. “I know, I know,” he smugly said, “but, you know, if you were on your own tonight.”

“Are you proposing some sort of threesome?”

“No, gosh, Janie.” He was a scandalized Southern woman, hand on his blouse in horror. The Church Lady, if you will. “So dirty.”

I looked over at the man, dressed similar to Alex at the time with a fluffy moptop do, and one of those awful cheap leather jackets that have the buckles all over them. I nodded. “Maybe. Without the jacket. No, with. Looks better on the floor.”

He dropped his head in his hands and looked embarrassed that he had even asked.

We still played the game every now and then, mostly with TV shows and movies we watched with these unobtainable figures, but one night at a bar, first night of 2022 sans B, we nestled in a corner and played. We were the same level of drunk, a rare status. I was buzzed, holding him so close we practically made one body, we almost shared one barstool. I felt we were psychics in our carnival booth, sitting, waiting for prey.

Eavesdropping it sounds like we were looking for a third, and maybe it was a sexual fantasy, though for me, imagining Alex in another life with someone else gave me a renewed thankfulness that at the end of the night, he went home with me to our baby. I thought about B a lot that night, thinking of her as only Alex’s daughter, and I had no part in her creation. Voyeristic maybe, pretending not to have taken place in my own life, but by the end of the night when he did go home with me, it gave me another kick. My brain was tricking itself into dopamine doses, pretending falsehoods, and then remembering how lucky it was. If my brain could freak itself out with guilt, then I, at least, got the trade off contrived happiness.

Opal found this psychotic when I told her the next day, but that was becoming Opal’s new thing, calling everything “psychotic” down to the way her fingers looked when her hand was stretched out (too long, curling inward, looked like she had “daddy long legs as fingers”). She thought this act was an early sign of a delusional disorder and I was in the beginning stages of a mental breakdown.

Alex was out and I was home alone with B, who had just gone down for a nap, so I took the time to yap on the phone, pacing around the living room. “At least it’ll be a happy one. Remember all the yarn mental breakdown.”

She groaned and I giggled. “You just need a distraction all the time. That’s the way it seems.”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“You’re faking that your husband gave birth to a baby on his own.”

I hadn’t even pictured Alex pregnant and now I was lost in howling at the thought. “He doesn’t give birth, he just has the baby, you know. B coming from the sea like Venus.”

“Okay, you’re fucking weird,” she giggled.

“Sure, but it’s just pretending or something. I’m not actually running away or having him cheat on me or something.”

“I just think you need a hobby. Maybe I’m projecting. I've been weird since the break-up. I feel like I should be dating someone else, but who? I want a boyfriend, but I don’t want to date. Like you and Alex like reconnecting, should I hit up my high school boyfriend?”

“You should come and live in London.” I had been on this tirade for an annoying length. I had lived with her for too long that it hurt to be far away from her. 

“No, maybe, no. You’re very cute with this whole London thing, but I couldn’t do it. You should come here.”

“No, you should come here.”

“No, you should.”

I probably married Opal in another life. She’s very cute. And still looking for a boyfriend.

*

My mother came to visit the week of Valentine’s Day, under the excuse of volunteering to take care of B while Alex and I went out, however, Alex and I didn’t have plans for the holiday, and my mother was fighting with her boyfriend. I never brought up the subject with her. It was just easier to let her in the house.

Stacey and Paul came over that Friday for dinner. We had roast chicken cooked by Paul and my mother brought two giant bottles of Rombauer Sauvignon Blanc, which we refrained from commenting on because we indulged in it as much as she did. Beatrice had apple juice. Her eyes became enthralled with the wine glasses and I whispered to Alex, “This is how we turn our daughter into an alcoholic.” He laughed, though side-eyed the way B made grabby hands from his wine glass.

“She’s such a cherubic bambina,” my mother said, brushing her hand over the top of B’s head.

Stacey, Paul, Alex, and I all glanced at each other, holding in a laugh. “Thanks, mum.” Her boyfriend was “Italian” in the way that I’m “Asian” because I’m “Caucasian.” My mother had been learning Italian, even though he didn’t speak Italian, and all the words she knew most English people already knew. Like saying “Ciao!” instead of goodbye. It was disturbing.

“She’s the next Babe Ruth,” Paul joked.

My mother looked up with a deeply offended look on her face. “What?”

Paul was knocked off his feet. “Like the Curse of the Bambino, you know? Right? Isn’t that a thing?”

“Don’t talk about baseball,” she spat, as if we were discussing murder at the dinner table or something. Paul was excessively sweating, the poor little thing.

B brightened up the room by giggling like the mad little lady she is. My mother went back to pinch her cheeks. Paul went to the bathroom because he had likely wet himself.

When the dinner plates were taken away, we spotted some tea, and brought out chocolate mousse from Alex’s and my mother’s favourite bakery, one of few things they have agreed upon.

We dug our spoons in, digging for treasures at the bottom of our dishes. “Now, Jane, are you writing again?” My mother talked about all careers like they were hobbies because the last job she worked was 50 years ago at a Green Stamp Store. My siblings and their spouses all had what might be deemed “legitimate careers” not in the art field, and still my mother spoke of them as if she didn’t know what money was. To Stacey, she would say, “Do people still need their data analyzed?”

“Here and there,” I said. To me, it was always easier to be short and have her do most of the talking.

“Nothing more about me I hope.” We hadn’t really discussed the things I had written about her, still haven’t. I know she read it, but we left it as acknowledged rather than explored.

I shrugged. “Haven’t decided yet.”

“I’m sure it’s great,” Stacey cheered. God, to have that kind of pep come so genuinely from your soul. Whenever I said things like that I sounded like a demented cheerleader. 

“I was wondering something,” my mother announced. I would groan, but that would’ve been rude, even my mother doesn’t deserve that, though I hated anyone plainly questioning me about writing. People who went about it like Alex did, simply interested in the process and comparing it to his own, never questioning the subject, but rather the form. Why use that verbiage? What’s the difference between shouting, yelling, and screaming?

My mother continued, “In that piece, the pushcar one.” Oh, that old thing. It was last year but felt like an eon since I wrote my polemic against all baby vehicles. “You never mention Alex. Right? You’ve never written about him.”

I shrugged and flicked my spoon around the ceramic bowl, even though nearly all the mousse was gone. I rarely talked about Alex with my mother, but I had never before talked about him to her with him sitting next to me. And then Stacey and Paul. And B, who had chocolate on her cheeks. Why weren’t we talking about that sugarplum?

“I’m prying, aren’t I? You get all closed off when I poke my nose in unwanted places.” She was facing me but it felt close to an invasion onto my whole being equivalent to D-Day. Her eyes could’ve been placed right up against my eyeballs, eyelashes kissing each other. 

“No, maybe. You have a habit of poking around.”

“Motherly instinct, you know.” I don’t think I’ll be like that. Maybe it’s a generational thing, or maybe I’ll grow into that. Maybe I already act like that toward B and I’m as unaware of it as my mother is toward me. I do know all the playground drama, though B is a total gossip. She can’t keep a secret to save her life! Like grandmother, like granddaughter. “I just read something about how private the two of you are. Understandable for the rest of the world, but shouldn’t I know more? All that time in America.”

I bit my tongue on a remark of how she had ignored me for most of my twenties. I hadn’t exactly been welcoming toward her anyway. “You could just ask.” Not that I’d really tell her the truth. It’s like when you know your parents know you have sex, especially when you have a baby, explicit proof sitting right in front of them, but you’re never gonna talk about the fact that you know what sex is. The same squeamish feeling of watching a sex scene in a movie with them.

“Mhmm, but you’re closed off, remember? Anyway, I was just wondering after I read the article.” The article was likely something on Reddit, but, sure, that’s where journalism lies these days anyway. “You’ve written about me, your father, your baby, so why not our dear Alex?”

Alex began to speak, not wetting himself, but a shaky hand placing his wine glass back on the table. I commend my mother’s ability to frighten men. “Doesn’t always work like that.”

“But you’ve written about her, clearly. Jane, you’re always agitated about something.” It’s like back a few paragraphs when I shamed Paul for “wetting himself,” which he didn’t actually do, but I got sick pleasure out of imagining he was. I suppose, my mother felt the same way that my cheeks were growing red and she was stoking the fire. “Jane, are you bothered by me?”

I shook my head until I could think of something to say back. My spoon was scraping against the ramekin, practically nothing left to dig at, but the vexing sound of metal against ceramic oddly calmed me. “I feel like you’re trying to embarrass me in front of my school crush.”

She smiled. Then, I smiled. It was an odd exchange, like we were both in on the joke, but neither of us knew what the joke’s context was. Was it the subjects of my writing? Was it my mother’s twisted need to talk out of her ass? Was this the long overcast duel my father said was always occurring between my mother and I? I wasn’t amused, really, but I still smiled, teeth clenched together. 

“I’m not trying to embarrass you,” she excused. “I’m just curious. How could that be faulted?”

“Mum,” Stacey interjected, “you sound like you work for the red-tops.”

My mother gasped and tossed herself back in her chair. She was Norma Desmond dramatic. I’m shocked she didn’t fake a fainting spell, hand tossed back on her forehead. Alex muffled a chuckle into his fist. I pinched his thigh to stop him before he made me start to laugh.

“I just want to know,” she declared, facing Stacey, pointing her arm out toward me. “She’s the one who evades, going all roundy until we all get too dizzy to keep up.” Then, she turned to Alex. “You live with her like this?”

Alex amusingly nodded with his chin in the palm of his hand. “It’s fun. Like a Ferris wheel.”

“More tilt-a-whirl,” my mother quipped. She looked me in the eye. “So, tell me.”

“About what?” I knew what, but I felt we had strayed so far from the original topic that my mother could very well be asking me if I was a beard to hide Alex’s queerness.

She groaned and tossed her arms up in the air. “I can’t anymore, Janie.”

Stacey, arms crossed and eyes rolling, requested, “Can we talk about something else? Paul?”

Paul’s teeth chattered like Scooby Doo. “What?”

I’m sure Stacey was over everybody and had been since she was about 8, always smarter and more mature than the rest of us. “Paul got a promotion.”

“What?! To what? Are they transferring you?” My mother quivered like he was being shipped off to ‘Nam. Bay of Pigs averted.

Once Stacey and Paul left, my mother instantly rushed up the stairs to watch the season finale of Below Deck, and Beatrice passed out like a drunk sorority girl on pledge night. Alex and I locked ourselves in our room. I had a terrifying dream the night before that my mother snuck into our room. My mind kept repeating it, slowly convincing itself that it was the truth.

I was in bed formerly flicking through channels, now half-absorbed in Paris, Texas, questioning my whole life’s existence, and the other half simply waiting for Al. Perhaps, they’re synonymous. 

He was taking a while and I could feel the wine percolate, sleep winning. “What are you doing?” I shouted to him. I could see him standing at the sink, though his face was hidden by the wall. Only his legs, back, and scruff of his neck were visible. I imagine him just staring at himself in the mirror. I used to do that for hours at a time until I didn’t know if I was looking at myself or a figment of my imagination? Like I would just slip through the mirror out of time and all existence.

“Cleaning up,” he replied. He turned the sink faucet on.

I doubtfully furrowed my brows, but laid back anyway. “Did you shave?”

He stuck his head out. “Not yet. Do you want me to?” You could barely call the appearance of facial hair stubble. It was light dots of his hair follicles. Al didn’t get the five o’clock shadow, more the five week shadow, and that estimate is generous. 

“No,” I moaned, “I want you to hurry up.”

He tucked himself back into the bathroom. I knew his lack of response came from displeasure toward my provoking hassle. The source of all his ire likely came from me and that isn’t self-deprecation, more self-absorbation to think I occupy so much of someone’s mind, but he had told me once that he liked me bogging him down and every word sounded genuine. Now, it makes me sound like a nagging wife, but I refute being pigeonholed into such a limiting role.

The bathroom light shut off. He walked to his drawers first, digging around for something, but coming out empty-handed. He sat on his side of the bed with his back toward me. His bare spine protruded out toward me, begging for me to lightly touch it. Hot to the touch like a fresh sunburn. He was searching for something in his side table, but once again never found it. I scratched at his skin until he moved away, searching the bookshelf. 

“What are you looking for?” I asked, caught up in him, Paris, Texas meaning nothing.

“My notebook.” He was one vexation away from cursing repeatedly. He just needed a stubbed toe.

“I think it’s on the desk downstairs.”

“Why the fuck is it down there?”

Bing!

I shrugged.

He left to retrieve it.

When he returned, I turned the television off, and burrowed my head into my pillow stack. “Are you writing about me in your diary?” I teased.

He rested against the headboard, casting a tired smile down at me. I snuggled closer. “Long day,” he noted aloud.

“I know.” I grabbed his forearm, rubbing up and down. “Sorry.”

“I’ve got no problem with it. You seem two steps away from knocking your mother out.”

I laughed, but not one worth having faith in. “No, I’m not.”

His eyes widened doubtfully at me. It felt like they were casting shadows onto me. “Hon, you just about threw your ramekin at her. You’re too easily confrontational toward her.”

“Well, she pokes me like she’s got a cattle prod and I’m a cow.”

He snorted. “J, she asks you one question about your life and you think she’s convicting you for murder.”

“She’s just so nosy.”

He placed his notebook onto his nightstand, giving up on that endeavor. “She’s your mum. That’s always been her deal. Aren’t you giving her more bait by not answering?”

“I don’t have to answer to her.”

He sighed and rubbed the lines between his brows. Me: annoying. Him: annoyed.

“Oh, I see,” I said, raising myself to a seated position. “You want to know why I don’t write about you. That’s why you’re mad I didn’t answer.”

“No,” he said, though he was smirking all bashful of sorts. “I’m confused why you had to have a twenty questions back and forth with the woman, instead of simply fibbing, and moving on.”

“I don’t believe you.” I had always been this way, it wasn’t just toward my mother. Why not tell Alex and let the issue die? Because I loved the thought of him having an enduring envy of not being one of my subjects and I wanted to make it about him, instead of me. His problem, not mine.

He exasperatedly tossed his head back. “Fine, I’m so jealous. I want you to stay up writing Shakespearean sonnets for me, Janie.” He had the look in his eyes that indicated he was trying to be all cute and taunting. His nose poked into my shoulder.

I tossed him off, moving away. “Quit it. You’re lop-sided. Completely off-base.”

He sucked in air through his teeth. “Avoidant.”

“I do write about you. Little notes, corners of my mind.”

He humourously rolled his eyes. “Oh, so like laundry lists.”

Accusingly, I poked my finger into his chest, pushing to feel the bones through his skin. “You do care.”

He merely hummed like a tune going through his head. He picked up his notebook again, propped up on his legs.

I crept at his side, something he long hated that I did. He much preferred a Peeping Tom to be peering on his naked body than someone—also known as his wife—peering in on his work. He clicked his pen and sat waiting for me to move.

“Do you mind?” My voice was nothing more than a mouse in a corner. Any abrasive power I had was diminished the minute he took his eyes off him. My body poured down onto his, melting witchly into his side. I wondered if these were the moments I most reminded him of B. When the similar glint in her eyes matched mine and all we wanted in this world was his comfort. That I was as burdensome as a child.

But he didn’t reply right away either and that made me unable to move away. And I felt all moments of my life would be measured in Alex’s rejection of me. No matter the direction gone, I would feel small here. It felt so unfeminist to say I was already getting angered by it and the only person who ever said it was me. I fear I poured too much into this and I spiraled before he even got the chance to speak and I was still converted under this belief that he was a guy who didn’t want to kiss me and this was the long con. Then, I felt stupid. 

Then, I heard his lips part. “No.” Certain. “I’ve long passed thinking I could order you around.” Lighthearted. He was smirking when I sat up.

His hand reached out and pushed my hair behind my ear. His palm squeezed the left half of my jaw. Then, it fell to his side. “I’m being serious.”

“I am too,” he insisted, though his voice was too off-step for me to believe. If there is one gene I’m missing, it’s that one. His head tilted and his voice wished for this to be over. “Kapish?”

I stretched back and returned to the television, but my brain didn’t pick up anything. My eyes stared at the center of the screen until my vision blurred and all that was left was the vague impression of pixels. I stared until I wasn’t even thinking anymore, my brain out of control from me, filled with nothing, unable to decide what move to make next. 

Alex moved beside me, sinking further into bed until his neck was propped up on his stack of pillows. My eyesight returned and the thought that I should decide to do something, an uncontrollable urge to move like a cat that has to run through the house at late hours to get all its energy out. I debated running up and down the stairs but that would cause far more concern than staring blankly.

“I’ve always had a thing for Milla Jovovich,” I heard Alex say beside me. He sounded as if he was three rooms away, echoing throughout the house. 

I sent a furrowed look his way. “What?”

His head tilted to the television where Jane Henderson sat on the other side of the mirror from Travis Henderson. I always wanted that pink sweater. I wondered if my hair would look good like that, blonde and in a bob, so beautiful done, but a cut that only serves the sharpest of faces. I’d more likely resemble Jane Lane from Daria. 

“That’s Nastassja Kinski. You’re thinking of the girl from Fifth Element.” She had a bob too, though I’ve never thought orange hair would look good on me. Too striking for someone as meek at me.

“Oh,” he chuckled. “Had a thing for her too.”

I hummed, returning forward facing, crossing my arms, and sinking further into the cushions.

He poked my arm. “What? You jealous? Don’t worry, both are a little too brassy for me. It was a total teenage thing of me. I once had a thing for Ashi from Samurai Jack and now it creeps me out that I ever had anything for a cartoon. Well, that might not be true. I mean, who doesn’t have a thing for Jessica Rabbit…”

I don’t know what he was going off about.

I rose to retrieve my laptop. He laughed. “What? Are you showing me your dirty folder?”

I scoffed, “No.”

“Admittedly titling it ‘Taxes’ was pretty clever until tax season.”

My jaw lowered and when I reached the bed I knocked into him, scolding, “Snoop! Besides, that folder disappeared about 20 years ago when the movers dropped my iMac down the stairs.”

He placed his hand over his heart in mourning. “World Peace was probably downloaded somewhere on the iMac.” I told him to shut up as I impounded the keyboard. “Oh, come on, you have to give me that one. The reverence you hold for that computer. You know, Apple should hire you to promote it, even the most tech-averse would buy it.”

 “I have objectal attachment issues. That was the first thing you got in the Jane manual.”

“There’s a manual?!” He leaned over my shoulder, his breath brushing my neck, making all the hairs stick up. “Is there a return policy?”

I cracked a smile, eventually giving in, and laughing as his nose dug into the slope of my neck, tickling me. “Stop. Stop. I’m trying to show you something.”

“Oh, boy, I hope it’s your Ricky Martin folder.”

I held my finger up. “Excuse me it was Enrique Iglesias, not Ricky Martin, you idiot.”

He feigned a serious apology, a hand held to my chest. “You’re not denying its existence.” 

“Uh, I’m not the one who watched all of Buffy to stare at Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ass.”

“Pft, no, I watched like one episode. You’re the one who kept wanting to watch Scooby Doo over and over again to stare at Freddie Prinze Jr.”

“Liar! You kept wanting to watch for Daphne and Velma, but refused to watch Freaks & Geeks with me.”

“Because you talked over the whole first episode!”

“Did not!”

“Yes, and you’re the one who had a thing for Linda Cardellini.”

I turned my grin to my laptop screen, reducing the brightness to adjust to our brand of darkness. “My mother taught me that threatening a man by leaving was the only way to get them to stay.”

“Pft,” he laughed, “only made me picture you with Linda Cardellini.”

I cut a look at him, grinning with raised eyebrows. I could see the picture in his mind. “Quit it. Read this.”

I placed the hot laptop on his stomach. He tipped down, forming a double chin to read it. His eyes squinted. I resisted the urge to tease him for it. They settled on the first sentence, glazed over the first paragraph, then looked up at me. “This is about me?” He rhetorically stated. The corner of his mouth poked upward.

“I do think of you every now and then. Just to pass the time.”

He sat up, placing the laptop between us. “Hmm.”

“What?” I questioned.

He shook his head. My eyes prompted him for more. “No. No. It’s just…” His head hung down into his chest. His hand reached out and shut the laptop.

“That bad? I haven’t read it in a while so if I say anything mean about you I don't remember it. Or mean it necessarily. We were apart and all.”

He let out a humorous laugh at my rambling, and then finally interrupted me, “No, at least didn’t get far enough into where I make a fool of myself. When’d you write it?”

I shrugged, slightly pigmented. “Few years ago.”

The math seemed to be going in his mind, figuring we’d been together for more than the qualified ‘few years’ but saying how long ago it was from made me feel shameful. I don’t know why, if anything he would’ve been flattered by the token of devotion, but I got enough ripples of nausea from him reading any of my work, let alone something that said “Alex” at the top.

“I don’t want to read it, if you don’t want me to,” he softly said, hovering at a whisper. I pictured my mother with her ear to the door. For him, the meaning was too personal to be spoken loudly, like even breaking a certain decibel would punish the moment. “I mean.” His cheek tucked into his shoulder, and it felt like he still had that tiny bit of baby fat, and was trying to hide his acne flare-up. “You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

“I know.”

The quick shutting of his notebook still rings through my mind. The tension in him as someone walked behind him. The way his arms covered his page so I wouldn’t make out the scribbles in my quick glances across the room. So, when he would, it was him saying Here I am, I’m serious, and if I read between the lines enough to convince myself that maybe, just maybe, he liked me, it was him saying, Here I am, I'm serious about you.

“So, I’ll read it when you want me to read it.”

“Okay.” I picked up the laptop and returned it to the desk. I rolled the rejection of it away, leaving whatever longing I had for him to read it and say he liked it and say he liked me on the table, and return to him, in our bed, in our life. “What if I never let you read it?”

He was back against his pillows, two winks away from sleep. “That’s fine.”

I huffed. “Your lack of inquisitiveness troubles me.”

 His eyes shut, but his grin widened. “I don’t lack. I’m trying not to be invasive.”

I scoffed. “That was a pointed remark.” I leaned against the headboard. “Hey.” I poked his side. “Don’t fall asleep yet.”

His eyelids fluttered open. “Okay.”

We stared at the TV. He took a minute of trying to stay awake before pulling the sheets back. “Where are you going?”

“Getting something. Hold on.”

I waited. I turned the TV off, the bright light of it becoming too straining on the eyes. There was a recently installed light outside our bedroom window that I was convinced had been ruining my sleep. It was an easy way to fool myself that I wasn’t the one ruining my sleep. It was nice. Year after year, there was a new thing to blame my sleep on. Last year, it was B. This year, the streetlight.

Squealing came from the hallway. Last year’s pest might have still been this year’s pest, but she was a cute one like a little rabbit that ate all the crops in your garden. Alex held B sideways as if she was a pound of flour. Her hair had a gravitational pull to the floor, zapped by electricity.

“I got you a present.” He tossed her on the bed, making her giggle continuously.

I pressed my lips flat. “Feet pressed into my back all night.”

He puffed, “No. I got us dessert.” Alex placed some raspberries on her, making her wiggling and pulling herself away, fighting her way to me. 

She slept between us. We folded together like a shared dinner plate. B slept with her legs tucked up into her pot belly, Alex’s arms draped under her center. They both had the same sleepy smile, mouth parted just slightly. If this be the whole world—bed, Alex, B—that’s quite alright with me.

*

For my birthday, Alex and I went to my favourite Mediterranean restaurant. It’s nowhere near my favorite cuisine, and I had seafood, which is usually on the low-rung of my food pyramid. The bread at this place is very nice and any place that gives “complimentary” (because is anything complimentary?) bread is bumped to the top of my list. 

After we had sex that night, I turned far too existential, briefly wondered if the restaurant had drugged me, and then only settled when Alex pulled out a deck of cards. As I held the seven cards of gin rummy, I told him, “This is only going to make me panic more. I’ll be thinking about how much time has passed. Soon I’ll be on the floor.”

He chuckled and picked up a card for the deck. “Worry about beating me and not worrying about nothing.”

“It’s not nothing!” He placed down three queens. “You bastard! I knew you had them.”

Mockingly, he shook his head, “Less shaming, more gaming.”

“You’re too cheesy for words.”

He discarded a measly 2 of Clubs. “Less saying, more playing.”

I groaned. We ended 305-210, Alex. I was off my game.

I left for the bathroom while Alex collected the cards. I was vomiting by the time he reached the bedroom. “Wow, Cavendish.” His hand reached my back.

I leaned back onto my heels, intaking air quickly. “Don’t make me laugh when I’m ralphing.”

“Sorry,” he said, though his words lacked any repentance. “Too many rolls?”

Snot dripped as my laughter rumbled. “Stop,” I weakly commanded as I wiped my nose. “How come I’m the one who always gets food poisoning?”

He was off his feet starting a bath. “You have a more bellicose stomach than me.” 

I’m not sure what that means, but something about it sent a shiver to my stomach, in that smitten way. I went into the tub and he sat arms crossed on the toilet seat, leaned back against the tank as if it truly were the king’s throne. He was telling a story, and I don’t think I had spoken for the past 15 minutes, and it was nice. There’s no better word for it. That nice sensation of warm water against the skin and him beside me all the same as I had known him for years, and any panic had dissipated somewhere between the flood and the bath.

“I don’t feel sick anymore.” I reached my arm out for him.

He was tucking himself up, placing elbows on his knees, and his smile sunrising. “You can handle the rest then.” He stood and went for the door.

“Hey!” The bathroom echoed his chuckles. “You could at least get me a towel.”

Pieced together by the Ides of March, I became disturbingly sure that I hadn’t had food poisoning and that it couldn’t be the flu. I was shriveled up and pregnant. For sure. And I said to Al, “You see that’s what my body was panicking over. It was the fetus taking root.”

“So, you think you got pregnant on your birthday?” We were back to being squashed on the bathroom floor. That little plastic thing between us. There’s something so brilliant in the coolness of the bathroom floor. I do believe it holds life’s sacred truths and the search of El Dorado or the Holy Grail could end here.

I scoffed. “No, it doesn’t work that quick.”

He shrugged. “It would be funny to know.”

“For who? Do you know where you were conceived?”

His face wrinkled up in disgust. “Fair. Though, I had a girlfriend that was conceived on Halloween and she always found that special.”

“I find that disturbing.”

“Well, you’re judgy.”

I sighed. Time had no meaning. It’s that St. Augustine quote, What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. This felt pressed flat in the book of life already. The stork knocking at the door. I exhaled until there was no air left in me. “What do you want to do?”

“You mean about the…” He was pointing to my stomach. It felt like he was holding a gun there. “Whatever you want.” But that’s not what I wanted him to say and he knew it.

I flipped the test over and when it said that definitive NOT PREGNANT I felt foolish for ever bringing it up. I celebrated with wine.

Bedhead and just the smallest bit hungover, I told Alex over an omelette that I would not like to ever be pregnant again.

“Okay.”

It’s hard to tell with Alex if his tone is nonchalance or in-one-ear-out-the-other. “Maybe I should get my uterus removed. Then I wouldn’t have to do the period or birth control thing. Just be done with that old thing.”

“Okay, but do you want to go through menopause?”

I stopped with the fork in front of my lips. “You’re far more educated on hysterectomies than I expected you to be.”

He placed a plastic bowl filled with apple slices in front of B. “I think you’ve threatened them before.”

“I’m the boy who cried wolf.”

“Uterus, but yes. I think it’s cool.”

“You find women without uteruses sexy?”

He snorted somewhere between laughter and dismissal. “Sure. I think you’d look good without ‘that old thing.’” He was airquoting. I found him very hot when he did air quotes.

I gave into the eggs, pecking a bite. “Nah. Too soon to lose it. 40, maybe. I still have eggs.”

He forked a bite of my omelette, choking laughter down. “Alright then. If I said no, would you have done it?”

“No, but I would have egged you on for longer.”

He gave a massive eye roll. “And I’m the one who is ‘too cheesy’?” Hot. So hot.

*

The heat swelled so restrictively it began to choke us. Alex came home with a kiddie pool and spent two hours attempting to inflate it before calling for help and—yes, I’m probably bragging when I say this—I completed it in under five minutes with Beatrice on my hip.

He then turned on the hose and sprayed us in retaliation for my impending teasing. This led to Beatrice becoming obsessed with the hose, enough that we had to cover the valve that turns on the hose water. Eventually, he placed the hose in the pool until it was adequately filled. Then, we all sat in the kiddie pool because it was just that hot. For B, it’s just a bigger bath, she sits, she splashes. We attempted a swimming lesson, but she just looked at us like we were nuts. One hand sat on her hip and she kept asking, “What you doing?” and I love her so much it hurts and I weirdly understand why mothers eat their young. Alex and her go back and forth, peddling their feet out, splashing the water, until anyone is unable to tell who is copying who or if they are even different people. 

*

I began to have awful dreams at the start of June. Ones that were indescribable other than the feeling they brought to my body. Sometimes they were clearer visions of a threat striking me down, whether death or some cruel, dark life force, but more often than not, it was the sensation of falling that jolted me okay. I didn’t know where I was falling from or where I would land, I would just freefall through the air placed there with no landing, scared the falling would never end. I began to wake up in the early hours of the morning and never find my way back to bed. 

By 5 AM, I would give up and make myself a cup of coffee. Alex always slept like he was hibernating. I envied him so grievingly, but in that month more than ever. The sight of him beside me, so soundly asleep that little snores would come out of him like hiccups. Every once in a while he would shift, rubbing his head into his pillow before finding stillness again. I could never be still, not even in my dreams.

It took a week and change for Alex to take note of my problem. He came out one morning with me on the ground of the living room with my eyes closed. The rug was cooler than our bed was. “What are you doing?” He asked, amusement tipping from every inch of him.

I blinked open my eyes. “Mediating.”

“Oh?” He flicked back onto the couch. He even looked settled on the lumpy thing. Here I was suffering from heatstroke and insomnia and he was a cuddly little thing wearing a long sleeve in the thick of a heatwave. “I wasn’t aware you did that.”

“Trying something new.” I closed my eyes again.

“What are you meditating on?” He was sipping coffee in slow dips, testing the heat on his lips.

I settled on keeping my eyes open, no point in sleeping with him awake. I flipped onto my side, rubbing my hand down on the fuzz of the rug. “Can’t sleep. A curse has been placed on me.”

“Oh?” He began to slurp his coffee. I’ve long suspected Alex to be an enemy agent that infiltrated and was here to be the pest stuck on my soul for the rest of my life.

I exhaled all the air out of my body and plopped down onto my folded up arms below me. “Oh? You have so much care for your loved ones.”

He dragged the mug up to his lips again. “I just woke up. It takes me a minute.”

“I’ve been up since 3:40. I’m being haunted. Do you think someone made a voodoo doll out of me?”

He grinned and dipped his nose into the coffee. “Is that your working theory?”

I groaned. “Yeah or I have a brain tumor or something.”

Alex sighed and untucked himself, placing his mug down. “Don’t talk like that.” He came down to sit cross-legged beside me. I internally giggled at the crack of his knees but refrained from commenting on it. I am likely on an early road to a hip replacement and I found it cute how old man he had become. It was the only thing that didn’t freak me out about the slow crawl toward death. It’s a little dramatic, but I had been up thinking for far longer than I should be allowed.

His hand began rubbing my upper back. I turned my head away, moaning, “I need ambien. Or heroin.” 

He snorted, which made up for my loss. “I think we have a few more steps before heroin.”

“Is this house haunted? I think it is.”

“I didn’t tell you about the murder that happened here.”

I muffled my voice in my arms. “At least that would provide some explanation.”

The floors creaked as he stood up. “You’re fine. It’s hot. You were sick. You panic more than Piglet.” B had developed a recent Winnie the Pooh obsession. Alex likely watched it just as much as she did.

“‘To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub.’”

His chuckle echoed as he moved to the kitchen. “We really do have to get you to a nunnery if you’re gonna start quoting Shakespeare to me.”

I heaved myself up to sit back on my heels. “But wouldn’t you miss me? Besides, I feel more Lady Macbeth than Ophelia.”

He stalled in the archway to the kitchen. His body svelte against the wood. I could sit and look at him like this for hours. I just might. “So, you’re the murderer haunting this house?”

Giggling made me feel better. I had spent all those hours waiting for him to arise and remind me how it felt to be human. “I have a thing about washing my hands.” I attempted a collapse onto the couch as he might do, but it only felt like an imitation.

“Oh?” So annoying. He moved into the kitchen, fussing around, hearing the faucet turn on, the fridge open. I could hear B overturning the world in her room. Her solitude play was synonymous with aftermaths on Tornado Alley.

Alex returned to the room with a wet cloth in his hand, holding it out as a knight would serve a lady. I snorted. “Is this to wash my hands with?”

He double-patted my knee. “For your headache, you dope.”

The world was shut off, placing the coldness over the forehead and eyes. My breath became unburdened and I just might have melted into those cushions like Alex can. I was a candle with the wax slowly dripping down. I wouldn’t rest at the bottom for a while, but for now, some pressure was relieved. I started to think about death again and that was likely the end of the wick for all of us, but I was pulled away before the collapse.

“What happened to her hair?”

I sat up on my elbows. The towel plopped down to my stomach, revealing Alex holding Beatrice, who outstretched her tiny, chubby right arm to me, and vigorously waved it—her new favorite activity, which unfortunately caused me to have to be social with people after she waved them over. When she is fully grown I will leave her stranded in conversations the way she has done to me.

“Oh, yeah, I cut it.” She was just as I had left her 10 minutes ago. Her soft brown hair in the cutest plaited pigtails tied off with these hot pink hair ties that would engross her for hours at a time. I wonder if her mind was still learning to process the colour or she was just as in love with how adorable she was as I was.

“Why?” His hand brushed back her freshly cut bangs. The wispy hairs floated above her big old blue eyes. Her cheeks swelled up as she pressed a smile hard into them and gazed up at Alex. She was the cutest sundrop and he was her moon.

“Look how cute she is!”

He cumbersomely rolled his eyes. “She’d look cute with a bag over her head. Why’d you do it without me?”

I stared at him with an arcane turmoil. “You were sleeping. It’s not like it’s her first haircut or anything. I can dig the hair out of the trashcan if you’d like.” B wiggled and he let her down to the floor. She toddled off to her toy grocery cart. Her walk was always lightly unbalanced, fully against the wind, rushing toward some undecided target.

 “No.” His hands were on his hips, his gaze on the floor, his mouth taciturn.

I tilted my head. “What? Alex?”

He started to crank his hands in a circle, trying to drive his train of thoughts forward to his lips. “I just…I want to know.”

“Alex.” It was talking him down from a ledge. Usually it was night where the room would be so dark I couldn’t see his face letting him feel comfortable enough to let go, but here he stood processing, unsure what he was even thinking, feeling, or how he was supposed to move past it. How To Let Go: 101. “It’s just hair. It grows back.”

“It’s not the hair.” His voice wearily toned now. He walked toward the kitchen, playing an act of getting breakfast, but his body language was shunning.

I judged whether to let it go. It was hard enough getting overrun by my own emotions. I let him part. He clanked plates around in the kitchen and ran the water for a few minutes, but he returned from the kitchen with nothing in his hands. He was stiff and in constant movement. I sat avoidant on the couch until B called for me. Alex said some jumble of words about working on something, parting to his studio where no music was played.

*

Alex and I went to three weddings that summer. It was—pending any divorces—the last wave of weddings I will have in my life, all resting in the nook of July and August. They were all lovely in their own way and I have always enjoyed a good wedding, but why must they all be back to back? Why do I always feel like a perv at them? I remember having to watch my aunt pucker up with Uncle #2 at the altar for far too long and it has left unforgiven consequences on my life.

Their stacked nature led to B forming a new attachment to all things wedding. Of course, she couldn’t differentiate a wedding from Adam and still referred to things in monosyllabic junctions. Her favourite part of a wedding was the veil. 

B still couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘v’ so the word would come out in a scrambled mess that only Alex and I could understand. “Bail.” “Wail.” “Fail.” “Blahaila.” I’d told Alex we should put her in Mensa since she was inventing a new language. Alex asked if that meant we were geniuses too because we were able to understand it. I wonder who is more deserving: the inventor or those that interpret it?

*

I went to Istanbul once when I was much younger and spent most of the trip in the hotel. The second time I spent most of the trip at the Grand Bazaar. Separately, I went to Hagia Sophia, swam between two continents, and saw two Arctic Monkeys concerts. Then, I returned home to Beatrice.

The night before, after the second show, Alex and I laid in a dark room with no present intention of sleeping. I skimmed his arm with my fingernails. I could see his eyes open, the shine on them barely visible. “What are you thinking about?”

His lips were shut so tightly that a gust of wind was let out when he began to speak. “I don’t even know.” He turned his head toward me. “You?”

I sighed long and deep. “Enrique Iglesias in the shower.”

His whole body rumbled and he flipped himself on top of me like we were two flapjacks fresh off the griddle. His chin poked down onto my thorax. “Don’t forget about me, okay?” He spoke down into my skin; his body so close, but his eyes so far away from me.

“It would be concerning if I did. Sounds like dementia.”

I pet his hair back until his eyes reached mine. “You know what I mean.”

In a want to speak clearly to him, I shifted us onto our sides. “Is that what you’re thinking about?”

“You getting dementia?”

“You know what I mean.”

He smiled. His face halfway cushioned, completely pulled away from the grasp of time. Might we all be so lucky. Or, perhaps, looking onto that objectivity is much kinder. Like a slightly healthier Narcissus. In him I see me. “Just sucks.”

I rolled my eyes and teased, “You’re being so junior high, Al.”

He pinched me to silence. “Whatever I mean is in there somewhere. Or you already know it.”

“Or you could just say it?”

“Say what?”

“I’ll miss you.”

He hummed and moved in until his nose brushed my neck. “That’s it.” He was smelling me, an act that would be creepy from anyone else, maybe even Alex, but under the circumstances I knew what he was doing. I was his Proustian madeleine.

He pulled away, slotting back onto the pillow. “Tell me everything.”

I furrowed up. “Now?”

His chuckle formed soft ripples in our pond. “No, just what I’m missing out on.”

“Same to you. You’ll be in Budapest. I’ll be hanging out with my mother.”

Something in his smile told me he was more joyous about missing out on the occasion than being in Budapest. “You don’t have to go. She told you that.”

I flipped onto my back, a pot simmering against the stovetop. “That’s how she gets you to go. It’s not a valid excuse. You need doctor’s notes, hospital bills.”

“Jane, if you’re going to complain about it I’m gonna rat you out to your mum.”

I gasped and childishly tackled him. “I always knew you were a snitch. Double agent.”

He wrestled me down. “Piss or get off the pot, man.”

I settled back down. “I shouldn’t complain. She’s taking care of B. B loves her more than me, I think.”

“Your joking placidity is not effective.”

I snapped my fingers. “Rats.”

He tittered closer to me. “Annoy the shit out of me with photos, okay?”

“Same to you,” I said.

He squeezed my arm. “And none of that stupid up-close picture where you can barely tell what you’re looking at.”

“Those are the best ones! They’re abstract and daring.”

“Alright, Ansel Adams.”

“I’m Annie Lebowitz. You’re Ansel Adams.”

He ignored me. “And not just photos of you or your left big toe.”

“You don’t like my left big toe.”

“No, it’s one of my favourite left big toes in the world.” 

“One of?”

“Have you seen B’s left big toe? It’s dainty and pink. You should paint it that fuchsia colour again. Make all the kids on the playground jealous.” No one else has ever been more giddy over nail polish. “You can send me your left big toe too, if you want. Send me anything, just don’t forget about me.”

“Like Simple Minds, baby.”

He laughed in confusion. “What?”

“‘Don’t You Forget About Me,’ dude, keep up.”

“God, I’m already so out of the loop, I’ve missed the 80s.”

I smiled down upon him. “‘Does Barry Manilow know that you raid his wardrobe?’”

He presented a mock offense. “That’s not very nice, young lady.”

“It’s from the movie.” I was laughing obnoxiously. “‘Why, because I'm telling the truth? That makes me a bitch?’”

He looked dazed, in a complete hypnosis. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.” 

I stuck out my tongue. “If you stuck a lump of coal up your ass, in two weeks, you'd have a diamond.’”

“Okay, that one I know is Ferris Bueller.”

After an attempt to sleep, I opened my eyes. His clear awakeness was off-putting, disruptive to my sleep pattern. He was resigned to a place I couldn’t reach. I had known for a long time—maybe as long as I had known him—that I’d never get to the bottom of that abyss, this endless motor in his mind. My attempts to trespass this bunker had failed, giving way to further desolation.

My hand squeezed his bicep. His head turned, and the terrifying wave swept me under, that I didn’t know what I was looking at. The thought wrapped around me in a constrictive grip that if I didn’t know him then I must not know anything. And then, his voice cut in, roughly, sleep-hollow, “Hi.”

“Hi.” My finger brushed over his left eyebrow, centering on his third eye. “You’re stiff.”

He inquisitively hummed. “Not cool enough for you, Janie?” He was flirtatious and smirking and his hand was now brushing my wrist knowingly eliciting lechery on my bones. It’s like a Victorian gentleman at the sight of a well-turned ankle.

“Al.” His distraction ploys were learned. He was a dedicated expert in me, which brought the fear that he could know every bit of me and I would forever be stuck outside this fortress, waiting for the drawbridge to be lowered. “C’mon.”

He drew his eyebrows together and tilted his head so playfully that it almost made me laugh. He was dramatic, always had been, making me so convinced that he was acting whole parts of himself out. When my lonely nights came where he wasn’t there breathing, I became convinced that he never even existed. He was just a body holding some piece of me. Alex always said that didn’t make sense and after B it should become clear that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination, but I didn’t mean it that way. He never understood it fully, but I never told it right. Maybe I don’t even know what my thoughts truly mean, only the uneasiness they possess.

I tried to scope my way around to find another entrance, if someone is in they must get out, and then I was thinking about Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, and this has all gone too far. “You look like B does after a nightmare.”

“Well, I haven’t slept yet.” As if that was the defense. No issue could be present because he stared at the ceiling as if he was forming a black hole.

I sighed, pulled away, laid on my back like him. “Why?”

I felt him shrug, shoulder brushing mine. “You?”

A snort came out of me. “You. You’re a total Cameron Frye.”

“What’s that mean?”

I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t answer. A minute stretched on, one where I didn’t think about anything. I waited for an idea to fall from the heavens and hit me over the head. It never did and I debated just falling asleep, instead of prying him open. “Guess I should sleep.”

“Yeah.”

I shifted, but he stayed the same, but closed his eyes. We just breathed for a while. Eventually, I shuddered. “Your rigidness isn’t comforting me.”

He opened his eyes as if I had woken him up, a slight hum pursuing his lips. “What?”

I blinked. “Nothing.” I closed back to sleep.

“I don’t like it when you do that.” He was speaking louder now, forgoing the whisper pillow talk voice.

My eyes stared at his new close proximity. “Do what?”

“Say nothing when I asked what you said. I ask ‘cause I want to know.”

“Well, ditto, I guess. You’re not telling me much.”

He roughly exhaled, pulling at the comforter, clinging it closer to his body as if he was trying to choke the life out of it. His eyes closed and I figured that was his rejection, and I treaded into a pit staring at his unrecognizable discomfort. Then, he muttered, “Touché.” Followed by a chuckle.

That made me giggle, if only to hear something light fall from him. “Is this your deflection plan?”

“No,” he drawled. “I don’t know…what to say. How to say it. What you want me to say.”

“Okay.” I touched his shoulder. He picked up my hand and kissed the palm. “Are you nervous?”

He scoffed. “I’m always nervous. I’m a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”

“Well, what’s worrying you the most?”

His attention was focused on my fingers, spreading them out, patting his warmth onto them. “Hard to pick one. You’re leaving soon and that always…B makes it different. I should’ve waited until she was older.”

“You’d be feeling this way if she was twenty. Age doesn’t stop the missing part.”

“I know. Guess it’s being by myself. Without that anchor.”

“You’re not by yourself.”

He nodded but didn’t seem to believe it, dismissing himself,“I’m being irrational.”

“No, you’re not. Trust me. I’d be a floating orb without you guys. Something worth getting out of bed every day for.”

He dropped my hand onto his chest. I felt his breathing stagger. “Think that’s it. Getting up every day for without. Seems pointless.” He grew concerned with the weight of his words and shifted to his stomach. His head plopping down onto his pillow. “Not in that way. I’ve just gotten way too used to having you around.”

“I’m here now. Worry about later later.”

He gave a half-grin, mumbling an agreement. He seemed to settle after that, or faked it for me. His body relaxing into the mattress. I worried over what he said until I was too exhausted to stay awake any longer. Then, I thought about it the whole plane ride home. Still, worrying.

*

Weeks flowed in an inescapable way. Time had always been mercurial, but now Beatrice made me see it in human form. Every day growing like a seedling into a sprout into a flower. Alex being gone only made time more muddled. He wasn’t more than a timezone away and yet it felt like we were further than we’d ever been.

We communicated daily in short calls and even shorter texts, but it would’ve been easier for me if we hadn’t talked at all. The ache hung heavier when he spoke. Then again, days we didn’t talk, an incubus of grief would wrap around me and suck me alive. Late at night I’d intrusively believe he’d die just to see how it would feel. 

After the first night, B slept in bed with me. I tried to figure how she felt, if she even noticed. Certain times—breakfast, usually—she asked, needing reminding. Alex would wish her good night on the phone and she’d giggle so raucously that I asked Al what he said to her. He always refused, but it was likely such a dad joke he was far too embarrassed to tell me.

Other times, I couldn’t tell if the longing in her wet eyes was because of him or due to my lack of mothering. Sometimes when she’d cry she’d look around the room as if waiting for him to walk through the door and pick her up. She’d go into his music room and I don’t know if she was searching for him or exploring. Maybe she didn’t even know, she was convinced for a time period that Daddy Pig was her dad. 

Alex came home at the start of September after headlining Reading & Leeds. I saw him in the former, not the latter because Stacey called and said B was sick. I went home concerned, leaving Alex on edge. B was no longer sick when we returned home, which was later discovered was because she was allergic to Oswald. And I thought they had bonded so well in the womb.

Alex returned to London and then left again a week later. Then, B and I flew to New York where I became paranoid that a blood clot was forming in my legs and I should’ve bought those compression socks my mother had told me to get and B slept the whole way. For once I wasn’t envious of Alex’s genes. In fact, it felt like retribution for all those years I watched over him snoozed out against the plane window.

We went through customs (B’s passport picture is very cute. Lots of babies’ passports aren’t, according to the photographer that took it, but B’s was. I spent the whole night telling Alex she should be put in commercials because it would be a disservice to the world to not see her cuteness, but I guess he was right that it would lead to the same amount of resentment that I had against my mother for making me do a singular pageant.) where we were held up for 20 minutes because my last name is still “Cavendish” but B’s is “Turner.”

“Maybe you should change it to Turner,” Alex told me on the A train. Beatrice was in his lap slapping her hands down on his open palms. He was softly smiling and his eye had that twinkle and if it wasn’t so much paperwork I probably would’ve, but

“Jane Turner sounds boring. Don’t you think Cavendish fits me more?”

He shrugged. “Maybe, with your poshness.” I was giggling before I could elbow him. Any frame of seriousness I could’ve possessed dissipated and we were laughing along with the sound of the train rocking against the tracks.

Fennel and Kaka met B for the first time and nearly ate her alive, chomping on her scrumptious cheeks. She was the equivalent of a Dutch apple pie slice to them. They briefly considered adopting her but we decided we liked her too much.

*

“Do you ever miss living here?”

“A little, but it’d be the same wherever I was, thinking about the next place.”

“‘Caught between the moon in New York City.’”

“Don’t you dare quote Christopher Cross to me.”

“Shut up, you love ‘Arthur.’”

“Mhmm. I’d go wherever you went. The rest doesn’t matter much. North Pole, South Pole, Bermuda.”

“What about being near the good schools?”

“B.B. doesn’t need to know how to read. She’ll have survival skills.”

“Are you planning on her being Tarzan?”

“Nah, George of the Jungle.”

“You’re very dorky. I like it a lot.”

“My 90s movie knowledge turns you on?”

“Everything about you turns me on.”

“You’re very cute when you’re provocative.”

“You’re not the first to say so.”

“Wow, thanks.”

“C’mon, my philandering ways used to be one of my most attractive qualities.”

“So, I guess I should just be happy I’m the one who locked you down.”

“Monogamy is one of the hottest things a person can do.”

“Let’s make love then.”

“Too sappy. You’re gonna start producing maple syrup soon.”

“Coitus, my love.”

“You so think you’re Shakespeare.”

“I know I am, but what are you? He’d call it the deed of darkness.”

“Nerd.”

“‘And be you blithe and bonny.’”

“God, when did you become a bardolater?”

“I’ve had a lot of downtime.”

“Sure. You’re changing the subject.”

“You did it first.”

“You did it second.”

“Well, shall we shake the sheets?”

“That’s not what I’m talking about and quit your renaissance verbiage on me.”

“My 16th century slang really gets you going?”

“You get me going up the walls.”

“That far, huh?”

“Stop. Talk to me.”

“We are talking.”

“But not what I want to talk about.”

“Let’s brush the cobwebs away then.”

“Stop, don’t talk about it like that.”

“Horizontal refreshment.”

“Fine, but I won’t enjoy a minute of it.”

“You never do.”

*

It was winter by the time Alex came home. He’d been sweating in South America and I would’ve frozen into a block of ice without the invention of HVAC systems. A blizzard occurred halfway through December due to a displacement of cold Arctic air masses, but London was minimally affected and the snow made the frigid temperature worth it. Of course, a series of rainy days followed, which made me cry in the warmth of showers, and not get out of said shower until Alex was holding a towel out to wrap me into, the same way he did with B.

He’d coo, “We should get you a towel with bear ears on it.”

“Jesus Christ, there’s warmer temperatures in the Arctic!”

“Oh, that can’t be true.”

It’s like the Bukowski quote: “I will remember the kisses, our lips raw with love, and how you gave me everything you had, and how I offered you what was left of me, and I will remember your small room, the feel of you, the light in the window, your records, your books, our morning coffee, our noons, our nights, our bodies spilled together, sleeping, the tiny flowing currents, immediate and forever, your leg my leg, your arm my arm, your smile and the warmth of you.”

We remained on our island of warmth amidst the bitterness of encroaching winter. Our bed was the next-greatest solace. B snuggled in between us, freshly in the terrible twos where she never behaved up to the name, cherubic and giggling from Alex tickling her, saying the cutest mispronunciations, and then insisting we were saying it wrong. The early morning meant enduring the frigid rush to the bathroom to relieve ourselves, our feet scurrying back to the endless piles of blankets, and once under them, believing Siberia had turned into the Sahara. The heat grew exceptionally under cover and we were too ebullient to feel the ephemerality of the pleasure. We stayed basking with the belief we’d never go anywhere else.

*

a/n: only about three different medications later...