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His weight bows into me. Not all, but a fraction of it. A crack in the blank concrete wall of his self-denial.
His hand comes to the back of my head, the nape of my neck, pressing my face into the ragged sound of his breathing.
“Caro,” he says into my hair.
It’s the first time he’s said my name like he used to. Like it’s precious.
Like I’m precious.
“I can come out to Bo’s,” I whisper. “Or we could find a motel. Whatever you need.”
When I lift my chin, his eyes are closed, so I kiss him.
I kiss his mouth. The margin of it. The swell of the bruise on his cheekbone.
His soft lips, his lowered eyelashes. This boy I love.
I kiss beneath his jaw, my tongue flicking out to taste his sweat, his skin, and then his hands are on me, lifting my chin, and he’s kissing me back.
It’s no tender reunion—it’s a swan dive right into the middle of where we used to be, a plunge into blind lust and tension and sex. His tongue, his frustration, his taste, his heat, his lips on mine, his hands guiding me, giving me all of that, all of it, and I get carried away.
Stoned on the taste of him, high on possibility, I tell him, “It’s going to be okay.” Not because I believe it, but because I want to. “We’ll get through this.”
And that’s all it takes for me to wreck it.
All it takes for him to take his hands off me and draw away.
When he opens his eyes, I can see my error written there. Because what sounds like hope to me isn’t hope to West. It’s just a reminder that he can’t have anything he wants.
“There’s no we.” He steps back. Brushes his hands over his thighs. “I don’t need anything from you.”
I know what he’s doing. Of course I do.
He does, too—he has to, because his words are so patently ridiculous. My chest is still heaving. My lips are wet and full. My whole body aches, and West is saying, “You should think about going home.”
It hurts.
God. It hurts so much.
But even as it hurts, I don’t believe him. I’ve had West inside my body. I’ve locked my gaze with his for that first deep thrust, and I know what he looks like when he wants me. I know how he kisses when he’s hurting, how he craves the oblivion our bodies can make together, the comfort afterward, the tired quiet space to talk in, to tell me what’s weighing him down.
I know better than anyone how to read the language of West denying himself what he wants.
So I let him walk down the hill alone. I watch his broad back get smaller, watch him pull off his suit jacket and ball it up and throw it in the Dumpster outside the funeral home. I watch him disappear around the corner of the building, and I count off the time in my head.
Ten minutes.
Then I’m going after him.
The funeral home is hushed. Quiet as a doctor’s office or a chapel, places people aren’t supposed to enjoy themselves.
Suspended places.
The door into the viewing room stands open, but there’s no one in there. No one in the hall, no one in the family lounge area.
I walk out into the parking lot. The sun has dropped beyond the horizon line, and although there’s still enough light to see, dusk is gathering.
I’m tired. I want a hot shower and a warm bed, and I’m going to make West take me to Bo’s tonight. Even if he won’t touch me, I’m sick of sleeping on carpet squares in an attic that makes me sneeze. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning with crusty, red-rimmed eyes.
