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He’s zealous in his defense of me and critical of himself in ways I can’t even begin to touch.
After that, I choose to keep my questions about him to simple, silly things like how much he enjoyed my homemade spaghetti—a lot—and how many rainbow bagels he thinks he could eat in a day—at least fifty, he claims.
Once we’re stuffed full of pasta and bread, we tackle the dishes together. He washes, I dry, and Pip supervises with great seriousness—a.k.a. while sleeping on the floor.
When everything’s done, even though I really, really want to, it feels wrong to try to rush straight into the sex I can’t stop thinking about when he’s clearly still fighting personal demons. It’s my fault for bringing up all the tough topics.
We settle on the couch—me tucked into his side and his arm draped around me—and watch a random movie on Netflix together. I’m half asleep by the time the credits roll, and he carries me to bed.
Thankfully, Shane climbs into bed with me and wraps me in his warm embrace. It’s not sex, but it is intimate. I decide to appreciate the moment for what it is, and contentment settles over me like a blanket.
Because it isn’t just about sex when it comes to Shane. It’s about how easy it feels to be with him.
How safe I feel in his arms.
How real it feels between us.
And as long as it keeps feeling like that, he can take all the time he needs with the rest of it.
33
Shane
Thursday, October 28
8:00 p.m.
Two days after I slept at her place, Teeny shows up at my door with a big brown paper bag and looking more beautiful than ever in a lavender-colored hoodie and sweatpants.
“Hi,” Teeny says easily. “I brought dinner.” Her smile could quite literally brighten my entire life. “I figured after you spent the whole day helping your friend move, you needed some food.”
It’s been two days since spaghetti and cuddles at her apartment, and much to my dismay, the lies continue to stack up. Helping a friend move was really an impromptu meetup with Mike, and the guilt of being such a dirty, lying, conniving, scheming bastard is eating me from the inside out.
The sick irony of it all is that the more time I spend with her, the more time I want to spend with her, but the more time I’m all up in her world, the more I feel like an asshole.
Kindness would be telling her to leave—to run the fuck away from me and her evil father and the criminal world he’s dragged her into without her knowing and not look back. She could start a new life somewhere else and make bagels for another community and, quite possibly, fall in love with a guy who isn’t such a giant, duplicitous dick.
But I’m selfish. I want her for myself—not with some prick outside Cleveland—and while things are still so up in the air with her father, I can at least protect her. At least, that’s what I tell myself to keep the antacids down to a bottle or two a day.
I blink at her for half a second too long before answering. “You didn’t have to do that,” I eventually say, clearing my throat before I do.
I step aside to let her in.
Greedy motherfucker.
“I wanted to,” she says, slipping past me like this is normal. Like she belongs here.
I should tell her I changed my mind. Tell her I’m tired. Tell her I’m not who she thinks I am.
Instead, I close the door behind her.
She kicks off her shoes and looks around my fake home that’s the condo above hers—bare, utilitarian, lonely in ways I never noticed before she walked into it.
Honestly, it’s not that far off from my actual home in Woodbine.
That thought lands harder than it should.
She sets the bag on my counter and starts unpacking a container of warm, homemade lasagna, Caesar salad, bread, and a side of olive oil and herbs for dipping.
