"Okay," I say.
He breathes once, like the word mattered. Then his hands move again.
This is where the room becomes dangerous. Not because I do not want him. Because I do. Because wanting him is no longerthe controlled, anonymous want I have known how to use and leave behind. Wanting Caleb has context. Furniture. A kitchen island. A bad coffee machine on the counter. A framed photo of his parents on a bookshelf. A man whose mother laser-cut his nameplate and calls him on Tuesdays and asks if he is eating.
Wanting Caleb has a life attached.
I turn him so his back is to the counter and mine is to the room. Better. I can look at his throat, his shoulder, the wall behind him. I can kiss him and keep the parts of him that see me out of view.
Caleb lets me.
That is the first mercy.
He does not force my face up. He does not say my name again. He lets me set the angle, lets me make the contact urgent enough to hide inside. His hands are not passive. They are everywhere I allow them: ribs, back, the waistband of my jeans, careful around the hip even after I told him not to bring it into the room.
The care follows us anyway.
I get his shirt open. Buttons, slow because my fingers are not as quick as they used to be. He helps on the last two. The shirt comes loose. Skin, warm under my palms. He shivers when I touch him and the shiver goes through me like a shot off the post.
I want to look.
I do not.
I put my mouth to his collarbone instead. He says something under his breath that might be my name and might not. I decide it is not. This is easier if he does not say my name. This is easier if I am a body and he is a body and the apartment is a room with no history.
Except nothing about Caleb is history-free.
He touches my belt and waits.
I nod against his shoulder.
"Nolan," he says, very quietly.
I shake my head once.
He understands. Or he understands enough to stop saying it.
We move from the kitchen to the hallway by accident, by gravity, by the mechanics of two men trying to get closer and not fall over furniture. My shoulder hits the wall. His hand lands beside my head. I turn him again before the position can make me look up at him.
Wall. Counter. Doorframe. Surfaces I can hold. Surfaces that keep my hands occupied and my face angled away.
This is not tenderness. Not yet. Tenderness would require too much open space.
This is urgency. Heat. The relief of contact after weeks of not touching. The shock of his body against mine, solid and responsive and real. The quiet, devastating fact that he wants me back.
Caleb is not silent. He is not loud either. He breathes my name without saying it, catches himself, turns the sound into air. He is trying not to ask for more than I can give him. I know this. I hate that I know this. I hate that he knows what not to ask.
I push his shirt open. He gets my shirt rucked up my ribs, not off, and his fingers skim the scar from a blocked shot in St. Louis, the one on my shoulder from Minnesota, the old bruise blooming yellow along my right side from last week's game. He pauses at each mark like his hands are reading a report.
"Don't evaluate me," I say.
His hands still.
Then, softer than the words deserve, "I'm not."
I believe him.
That is worse.
