Page 134

“Cool.”

“Cool,” I agreed.

He put his head down. I felt his heart, hammering against my ribs, as fast as a bird’s.

The house was quiet when I woke.

It was ten in the morning. The sun lay on the carpet in long yellow bars. I could hear the distant tick of a clock, the soft plunk of a pipe, the sound of somebody humming in the kitchen. A smell had drifted up the stairs, warm and rich and dark: coffee, real coffee, ground that morning.

I lay still and listened.

I cannot describe what it is, to a man who has spent a thousand years listening to silence, to lie in a strange bed on a winter morning and hear someone else’s life going on downstairs.

He came in at ten past, bare-chested, in his gray sweatpants, with a tray.

It was a ridiculous tray. It held two mugs, a chipped plate of toast, a jar of jam, and a bright red tulip in a jelly glass, which he had plainly stolen from a vase in the hall. His hair was wet. His feet were bare. His face was scrubbed pink from the shower, and on his neck, in the hollow of the throat, lay a garnet on a platinum chain.

He set the tray on the bed. He sat down in front of me, cross-legged. He picked up a mug, and put it down again.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello.”

“So. It’s daylight.”

“It is.”

“I had a shower.”

“I can smell.”

“I slept. A bit. Not much. But I did.” He rubbed his neck. “I’m not drunk. I’m not scared. I’m not, like, high on adrenaline or anything. I’m just… here. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I want to be sure you know that.”

“I know it.”

“Because I have a speech.” He swallowed. “I wrote it in the shower. It’s stupid. It’s not even a good speech. But I’ve got it here, and I want you to sit there and listen without saying anything.”

I folded my hands in my lap. “I am listening.”

He took a breath.

“When I was six,” said Lex, “my parents took me to see a doctor. I’d bitten a kid at school. And a teacher. And the guy who ran the ice cream truck. The doctor said I had a problem with ‘impulse regulation,’ and my dad said ‘Get it fixed,’ and they gave me a pill, and I hated it. I hated the pill. I hated the doctor. I hated my dad for a long time, because I thought he was ashamed of me.”

He looked at his hands.

“I’m twenty-six and I still don’t know if I was wrong,” he said. “But I know I built my whole life around it. I built a personality out of it, out of being loud and mean and hard to love, because if I made it hard first, then it wouldn’t hurt when people left. And they did. They always did. Every girl. Every coach. I got so good at being the guy who left first that I forgot how to be anything else.”

I did not move.

“Then you came along,” he said, “and you didn’t leave.”

“Lex—”

“No, let me finish. I’ve got a whole— okay.” He wiped his nose on his wrist. “You didn’t leave. I said I hated you and you bought me bread. I said we were fuck buddies and you said deal. I said the worst thing I could think of in a text and you got on a plane and walked into a trap. You should’ve hated me. You should’ve walked away. You didn’t. You never did. Not once.” His voice cracked. “You stood there for me the whole time and you asked. Every single thing. Every time. You asked me if it was okay.”