Page 41 of XOXO, Yours

When we’re finished, and Payton has done his thing—disposed of the condom and gotten us both glasses of water—I’m lying on my back staring at the ceiling. Payton lies next to me, one arm behind his head, the lamp on the nightstand throwing everything in amber.

The day’s bad edges have mostly smoothed out. I won't tell him that's his fault. That I’m feeling contemplative and melancholy because I saw him in a different light.

"Can I tell you something?" I say, which is not a thing I usually say, so it gets his attention immediately—I can feel him turn his head to look at me without actually looking back.

“Always.”

"I saw you today. In the hallway, with that kid—Marcus, the one who sits in the back and looks like he's actively daring someone to notice him."

Payton is quiet for a second. "He was having a hard time."

"I know. I could see that from the doorway." I keep my eyes on the ceiling, because this is somehow easier to say to the ceiling than to his face. "You stopped. You didn't make a thing of it, you didn't call attention to it, you just—sat down on the floor next to him, right there in the hallway, and you talked to him like he was a person instead of a problem to be managed." I pause. "And then you made him laugh. I don't know what you said. But whatever it was, he went back into class looking like a different kid."

Payton doesn't say anything.

"I'm telling you this," I continue, "because I have been a teacher for eleven years, and I still sometimes get it wrong with kids like Marcus. I still sometimes default to fix-it mode before I've actually figured out what needs fixing. And you just—did it. Instinctively. Without any of the eleven years." I finally look at him. "You're going to make one hell of a teacher, Payton."

Something happens to his face when I say it. Not a smile exactly.

"Jules—"

"I'm not being nice," I say, preemptively, because I know how that sentence was going to continue. "I'm being accurate. There's a difference. I don't do nice for its own sake; it's a waste of everyone's time."

"I know you don't." The corner of his mouth turns up. "That's how I know you mean it."

I look back at the ceiling. Something in my chest is doing a thing I'd rather it not do, warm and a little inconvenient, the same thing it's been doing more frequently lately in his general vicinity.

"It's a compliment," I say. "Don't make it weird."

"I'm not making it weird."

"You're looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I said something significant."

"You did say something significant."

“Payton."

"Jules." He says my name back in the same tone I used his, patient and a little amused, and I hate how much I don't hate that. "Thank you. Genuinely. That means more coming from you than from anyone else, and I think you know that, and I think that's why you almost didn't say it."

I don't answer that, because he's right, and confirming it would require acknowledging more than I'm currently prepared to acknowledge. Instead, I reach over and turn the lamp off, which is a coward’s move, and I'm aware of it, and the room goes dark and quiet around us.

I don't mean to fall asleep.

That's the thing I keep coming back to when I surface into consciousness at some unknown hour of the night, heart already doing something inconvenient before I've fully figured out why.

I don't mean to fall asleep.

Yet here I am, on my side, one hand tucked under my own cheek. My body is deeply, traitorously comfortable, in a bed that is not just mine right now.

Because Payton is still here.

Asleep, from the sound of his breathing—deep and even and entirely unbothered. His arm isn’t quite around me, more like it’s lying on my hip. I am warm in a way that has nothing to do with the blankets and everything to do with the big beautiful body behind me. I hate everything about this moment including how much I don't actually hate it.

I need to leave.