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"No." My cheeks flush. "Sometimes, if the guys were talented… I had moments, you know. Never the acts themselves, but the anticipation. I guess I… I've always had these impulses."
"That's nothing to be embarrassed about."
"I don't want to push things to sex," I say. "I want to talk to you."
"I promise not to jump your bones." He stays glued to the dresser.
My lips curl into a smile. "For how long?"
"Five minutes."
A laugh spills from my lips. "That's a long time for you."
"I can even make it ten."
"A new record," I say.
"I can wait as long as you want."
"You get off on it."
"Yeah," he says. "But that's not what I mean."
"I guess sex and love are tangled for both of us, huh?"
He nods. "I've had girlfriends before, but it was the same as everything else. It was surface level. I liked them and they liked me but we didn't share anything meaningful."
"Even sexually?"
"Sex doesn't have to be intimate," he says.
"No. It doesn't. But it is with you."
"I like it."
"I do too." I sit up straight. "Was that the biggest way you hid from yourself?"
"No. I drank too much. Then, when Deidre died, I drank way too much. I wanted to forget. But I only felt it more… until I drank enough, I passed out. I didn't run to understanding her. I hid from that for a long time too."
"What happened to change things?"
"There wasn't one big moment. It was a bunch of little things, adding up. I was here, surrounded by her stuff all the time, in her space, feeling her absence."
"You took over her lease?"
"Mortgage," he says. "She left it to me. Not an official will. A note. Enough nobody fought it. Or maybe… sometimes I think they let me have it as a bribe, so I'd stay quiet."
"That must hurt."
"I'm used to it."
"Do you want to talk to them about it?"
"I don't know. I can't force them to face it. I'm still trying to understand it myself."
"I'm sorry," I say. "I know how hard that is when your parents want to deny your reality. I… I'm really sorry."
"Thanks."
