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But I also want to wake up next to her the next morning.
The body is ready. The body is close to bursting with sensation. When Rhiannon asks if I want to, I know what the body would answer.
But I tell her no. I tell her we shouldn’t. Not yet. Not right now.
Even though it was a genuine question, she’s surprised by the answer. She pulls away to look at me.
“Are you sure? I want to. If you’re worried about me, don’t be. I want to. I … prepared.”
“I don’t think we should.”
“Okay,” she says, pulling farther away.
“It’s not you,” I tell her. “And it’s not that I don’t want to.”
“So what is it?” she asks.
“It feels wrong.”
She looks hurt by this answer.
“Let me worry about Justin,” she says. “This is you and me. It’s different.”
“But it’s not just you and me,” I tell her. “It’s also Xavier.”
“Xavier?”
I gesture to my body. “Xavier.”
“Oh.”
“He’s never done it before,” I tell her. “And it just feels wrong … for him to do it for the first time, and not know it. I feel like I’m taking something from him if I do that. It doesn’t seem right.”
I have no idea if this is true or not, and I’m not going to access to find out. Because it is an acceptable reason to stop—acceptable because it shouldn’t hurt her pride.
“Oh,” Rhiannon says again. Then she moves back closer and nestles in next to me. “Do you think he would mind this?”
The body relaxes. Enjoys itself in a different way.
“I set an alarm,” Rhiannon says. “So we can sleep.”
We drift together, naked in the bed. My heart is still racing, but as it slows, it slows in pace with hers. We have entered the safest cocoon our affections can make, and we lie there, and we luxuriate in the wealth of the moment, and gently fall into each other, fall into sleep.
It is not the alarm that wakes us. It is the sound of a flock of birds outside the window. It is the sound of the wind hitting the eaves.
I have to remind myself that normal people feel this way, too: The desire to take a moment and make it last forever. The desire to stay like this for much longer than it will really last.
“I know we don’t talk about it,” I say. “But why are you with him?”
“I don’t know,” she tells me. “I used to think I did. But I don’t know anymore.”
“Who was your favorite?” she asks.
“My favorite?”
“Your favorite body. Your favorite life.”
“I was once in the body of a blind girl,” I tell her. “When I was eleven. Maybe twelve. I don’t know if she was my favorite, but I learned more from being her for a day than I’d learn from most people over a year. It showed me how arbitrary and individual it is, the way we experience the world. Not just that the other senses were sharper. But that we find ways to navigate the world as it is presented to us. For me, it was this huge challenge. But for her, it was just life.”
