“Theo.”
I stop.
I don't turn.
“Whatever happened in that bar,” he says, quieter, “don't make me hear about it again.”
I nod at the wall.
I go down the hall to my room.
My room has a bed and a desk and a window and a bag I haven't unpacked. I close the door. I lean against the door. I slide down the door until I'm sitting against it with my knees up.
I put my face in my hands.
I don't cry.
The shake is in my thighs. The shake has been in my thighs for an hour. It can't keep being in my thighs because my thighs are a place you can put shaking only for so long before the shaking moves.
I get up off the floor.
I lock the door.
I've never locked this door. Paul has never asked me to lock this door. Paul has never given me a reason to lock this door. I lock it tonight because if I don't lock it, I won't be able to do what I'm about to do. If I don't do what I'm about to do, I won't sleep. If I don't sleep, tomorrow morning Paul will see it on my face, and the seeing will be worse than the locking.
I go to my bed.
I sit on the edge.
I'm shaking.
I take my jeans off.
My hand is not his hand.
That's the first thing I notice. My hand is small. My hand is mine. My hand is a hand I've used to eat breakfast and tie skates and sign a contract Paul put in front of me. It isn't a hand that knows anything about this.
I close my eyes.
I put my hand around myself.
I remember the brick against my shoulder blades.
I remember his palm over my heart.
I remember his breath.I'm gonna do it in this alley.I remember his mouth moving near my ear when he saidsweetheart.The heat of it. The certainty. The animal level of want underneath the word.I'm gonna take you apart against this wall.I remember my body trying to climb his hand. I remember his fingers at my pulse. I remember his knuckles with blood on them and my stomach going warm at the sight of the blood, and I remember being ashamed of that and wanting more of it anyway.
My hand moves.
It's clumsy. I'm clumsy. I've done this before. Hundreds of times. Quickly, quietly, efficiently, a thing I do in four minutes with the shower on. This isn't that. This is slow because I'm not in a rush. Because I want to stay inside the thing I'm remembering. Because the thing I'm remembering is the closest I've ever been to being kissed.
He didn't kiss me.
The fact that he didn't kiss me and I'm thinking about kissing anyway is a piece of information I'm going to have to deal with tomorrow or the day after or never.
My hand moves faster.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep quiet. The apartment is old. The walls aren't thin, but they aren't thick. Paul is at the end of the hall. Paul is at the end of the hall.
