Page 58 of Trust my Heart

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You’re not.” He crossed the room. He didn’t touch me right away. He looked first. He always wanted the whole of a thing before he put his hands on it. “Tell me.”

“Everything good in my life started in this apartment.” It came out rough, and I let it. “You. Us. Whoever I am when nobody’s performing. All of it started inside these four rooms, and I know we’re taking it with us, and I still don’t want to walk out that door.”

He nodded slowly, like I’d said something reasonable.

“It would worry me if you could walk out of here and feel nothing,” he said. “This place made us. You’re allowed to love it.”

“You’re not sad at all, are you.”

“I’m not leaving anything here.” He said it looking straight at me. “Everything this apartment ever gave me is standing in the middle of the living room feeling sorry for himself.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. That was a good one.”

And he kissed me. Both hands on my face, thumbs at my cheekbones, thorough about it, a kiss that wasn’t going anywhere. I held on to his wrists and let the door stop mattering. When he eased off he stayed close, forehead to mine, and I was breathing differently than I had been.

“We’re not leaving yet,” he said.

“Almeida wants the keys today.”

“Almeida can wait an hour.” He took my hand and pulled, and he was smiling with about ten percent of his mouth, which on Luke was a billboard.

“Where are we going?”

“Bedroom.”

“There’s nothing in the bedroom, Luke. There’s a stripped mattress that belongs to the Toronto Police Service.”

“Then it’s had a boring life until now.”

I laughed. He kept pulling.

“Are you blessing the apartment?”

“Somebody should.” He walked me backward through the bedroom door, one hand at the small of my back so I didn’t have to look where I was going. “One more time. For the next two idiots they assign in here.”

“That’s generous of us.”

“We’re generous men.”

He took the last pillow off my arm, where I’d been carrying it, and dropped it on the head of the bare mattress.

“Amenities,” he said.

He tipped me onto the bed after it. The frame knocked the wall, the same spot it had always knocked, and we were both laughing before anything had even happened.

“The neighbors,” I said.

“We’re leaving. Let them miss us.”

He climbed over me and took his time settling, elbows on either side of my head, and then he didn’t kiss me right away. He just looked down at me, and I looked up at him, at the face that had once refused to shake my hand in a hallway, and I started grinning so wide it probably ruined the mood.

It didn’t ruin anything.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”