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“So what did you do?”
“I watched.”
The word fell into the room and sat there.
“I do not mean it as it sounds. I do not mean—” I searched for the words. “In the first century, in the second, I went to places where people were alive. Taverns. Fairs. Dancing halls. I stood at the edge of the room and watched them laugh and drink and touch each other. A hand on a knee. A kiss in a doorway. I would stand at the window and tell myself that this was enough. That to see it was to have it. I was very good at it. I had a great deal of practice.”
“That’s not creepy,” said Lex slowly. “That’s just sad.”
“It is a little of both.”
“Maksim.”
“I hoped it would be enough.” I shrugged, helplessly. “It was not. It was never enough. It was standing outside in the snow and pressing my face to the glass. And then last night you said, sit and watch, and I sat, and I understood that for eleven hundred years I had been watching the wrong side of the window.”
He was very quiet.
“You never told me you were nervous,” he said. “Last night. You said ‘I do not know what I am doing,’ but I thought you meant, like, technique.”
“I meant everything.”
“Oh my God.”
“I am sorry. I should have been plain. I feared it would frighten you.”
“ Frighten me?” His voice cracked upward. “I’ve been a wreck for ten days worrying you were gonna find me boring! I thought you’d done this a million times! I was standing in that hallway going, oh my God, he’s gonna compare me to Cleopatra! “
“I never met Cleopatra.”
“You’re not helping!”
“I am attempting to.”
He put his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. I thought, for a moment, that he was crying, and I half-rose from the bed, and then I heard the sound, and it was laughter, and it went on and on until he was bent double on the mattress.
“You’re a virgin,” he wheezed. “You’re an eleven-hundred-year-old virgin. “
“I was. I am told it is different now.”
“You bought a book! “
“It was the responsible course.”
“You colored-coded it!”
“For ease of reference.”
He rolled onto his back and lay there, helpless, staring at the ceiling, wiping his eyes. I sat beside him. I did not know what to do with my hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing because— I don’t know. Because I’m so relieved. I was so scared I did it wrong.”
“You did not.”
“And I was your first.”
“You were.”
“And you were—” He turned his head. His eyes were very soft. “Mine, too. Kind of. Like. The first that counted.”
