After dinner, we’d work on my model plane together, then I’d practice playing my keyboards with my headphones on so I didn’t disturb him while he memorized lines for his movie.I didn’t ask him for any details about what he was doing, and he didn’t supply any.I figured out of sight, out of mind was the way to go, as far as his costar went.
I liked to look at him while he was practicing—that intense, focused expression on his face as he read the script.I’d catch myself wondering if he looked like that when he was having sex.
One night while we were watching TV, I said, trying to sound casual, “You’ve got a rip in the seam of your T-shirt.”
“Hmm?”he said.
My mother wouldn’t let me out the door if I had a rip in my clothes.“What would people think?”she’d say.Then she’d call me “uncouth” and tell me to fix it.“Uncouth” was her favorite word.Whenever I disappointed her, she’d call me that.
“I can fix it for you if you want,” I offered.
I didn’t want to offend him, but he must have been cold if he was walking around with rips in his clothes.And I wanted to look after him more than anything.
“Sure,” he said.
He got up and started to pull off his shirt.Then he stopped.Maybe he noticed the way I tensed up and looked away.He took a clean shirt from his backpack and got changed in the bathroom.He came out holding the torn shirt.It was the same shirt he’d been wearing on our first date: sky blue with a flaking stencil of a stick man in the kind of indigo paint that glowed under UV light.I got out my sewing kit and found a pale blue thread to match the color.The shirt was warm from his body and soft, and it smelled of him, so I took my sweet time stitching it, making sure I did it perfectly.I cut the thread, then handed his shirt back to him.
“Thanks,” he said, running his thumb over my stitching.He looked sad.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.Just, no one’s ever done that for me before.”
“Your mom never fixed your clothes when you were a kid?”
“No,” he said, and he didn’t look at me.
“I can fix the rips in your jeans too,” I offered, feeling paranoid he’d get offended I’d insulted his clothes.
“Sure,” he said quietly.
“Don’t you feel cold in the winter?”
He shrugged.
“Doesn’t it bother you?”
“I never learned to sew.After I left home, I couldn’t afford new clothes, so I wear stuff till it falls apart.”
“Let me fix your things.I’ll show you how.”
I spent the evening showing him how to sew little tears and how to iron fabric patches over larger holes.
“You can pick different colors of fabric, depending on the look you want.If you don’t want the patches to be obvious, you can use blue or black ones.”
He said he didn’t want them obvious.I showed him how to sew, let him hold the needle and guided his hand.I held onto his hand a little longer than I needed to because my hand tingled whenever I touched him, and I didn’t want it to stop.But I had to let go eventually so he could do it himself.
When we were done, he folded his clothes and put them in his backpack.He looked at me, and he didn’t look sad anymore.“Thanks.”
“My pleasure.”
––––––––
Istill had the feelingwe didn’t really know each other, but we were getting closer every day.Our conversations got more personal, which was easier when we were building my model plane because we were looking at the plane, not each other.
One day, I blurted out, “What does a blow job feel like?”
He looked at me in disbelief.“Are you telling me you’ve never had one?”
