I don’t usually ask such a nerdy question, but I’m pretty sure he’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
He cocks an eyebrow. “Slithering.”
“I knew it.”
“And I bet you’re Ravenclaw.”
Damn, he’s right again.
“How do you do that?”
“Haven’t you figured out by now that I’m amazing?” he snickers. “So…don’t keep me in suspense, what did the list say?”
“The list said come over,” I tell him. “Basically.”
“Basically?”
“It was more detailed than that.”
“I bet it was.”
“You’re stalling me on purpose.”
“I’m pacing you. You taught me that.”
“I taught you that about signing forms.”
“It transfers,” he says. “You’re here in the daytime.”
“Well, you said daylight. You were very specific about it.”
“I was.” He doesn’t step back to let me in. He just looks at me, carefully. “You good?”
“I made a decision.”
“Yeah?”
“On purpose. I need that on the record.”
Something moves across his face, and he holds the door open wider. “Okay, it’s on the record. Come in.”
I don’t come in. Not yet. There’s a thing I have to do first, and if I go inside, I’ll lose the nerve to do it.
“There are things you have to know,” I say firmly. “About how I work. Before anything.”
“Okay.” He leans on the doorframe and waits for me to speak as if my words truly matter. “Tell me.”
“I need to know what’s coming before it comes. It’s not me being controlling or anything; it’s all just about my wiring. You tell me what you’re going to do, and then you do that thing. You change it on me without saying so, I will cut you off…at the knees.”
“Done.”
“I’m not finished.”
“Sorry. Keep going.”
“Some touch is fine and some makes me extremely uncomfortable, and it’s not the kind of touch you’d guess, so I’ll have to tell you as we go.” My voice is doing the flat thing, the official voice. “You can’t take it personally. The second I have to manage how you feel about it, I will check out of the moment. If I let you finish when I’m in “that way” you’ll have had a body, and not me.”
I recall my time with my ex– Jay. Well, calling Jason an ex is being gracious with myself. We were fuck buddies at best. He was a so-so looking, engineering major who was quiet like me. The very opposite of Caleb. I thought we’d be a good fit but we weren’t and it was brutal. We were miscommunicating with each other the whole time.
