“Are you…“
“I’m not freaked out.”
“Are you sure.”
“I just want to do it right.”
“You are going to do it right.”
“Yeah.”
He crosses the eight feet. He kisses me in the middle of the apartment and his hand is on the side of my neck. The kiss is not the kiss from last week, which was decided. This kiss is asking. It is the same kind of asking he was doing with his words a second ago. The mouth keeps doing what it was doing. He is asking me with his mouth and I am answering with mine. After a minute he pulls back half an inch and says, “Bedroom.”
“Yes.”
The lamp is on. The bed is the bed I have slept in alone for fifteen months. Full size, gray sheets, the lamp on the side table with the brass base from a thrift store I went to in October. The room is small. The room has a window that faces the back of the next house over. I cleaned it at three in the afternoon and turned the lamp on at six because it would be dark by the time he came. He turns to me in the doorway.
“Yes,” he says. “Or no.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what.”
“Yes, Griffin.”
“Okay.”
We get our clothes off without ceremony. We get on the bed. I’m over him. He’s on his back, looking up at me. I stop. I stop because I — I don’t know what I am. I’m over him. Between his legs. I’ve been here before, a thousand times, with him, before. But I haven’t been here for two years and I’ve never been here for this. It’s hitting me harder than I knew it would.
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“Hey.”
“Yeah. Give me a second.”
“Take it.”
I take a second. I look at him. I look at his face and his hair and the small mark on his shoulder. I noticed it last week and did not ask about it and have not asked about it and am not going to ask about it. I look at his chest, which is moving — his hand on my hip, just there. He’s going to let me do this. I haven’t done this with him and I don’t know how my body is supposed to be doing this. I am over him. I am the one in charge tonight. I am scared.
I do not say I am scared.
I think he knows. He puts his hand on the side of my face.
“Hey,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“I have not done this. You have not done this with me. We are figuring it out together.”
“Yeah.”
“You do not have to be a different person tonight. I asked for this. I asked because I wanted you to be the person you are, doing this with me. I am not asking you to perform anything.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
