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“I would too. It’s a great place.” He was silent a moment. Then, “Edwin?”
There was something in the tone of his voice that made me still upon the merry-go-round. “Yes?”
“When we first met, you seemed…wary, I guess. It made me wonder if you were shy. But you’re not, are you?”
I shook my head. “Most people think I am. But it’s more a kind of s-self-consciousness. W-when I was younger, I was scared of people only listening to…tohowI say things, notwhatI say. And the more you think something like that, the harder it is to risk saying anything at all.”
His eyes strayed from mine. For the sweetest of moments, I felt their focus on my mouth like the promise of a kiss. “It’s not what I’m thinking about when I listen to you.”
I swallowed. “W-what are you thinking about?”
“Now that would be telling, petal.”
“Yes. Yes, it would. That was why I asked.”
He laughed and brought fresh heat to the exposed places of my skin—the backs of my hands, my throat—as though he had touched me. And, when he spoke, it was gently. “All the same, must have been annoying. Having to worry like that.”
Annoying? Most people who asked about my stutter went fordifficultin that familiar tone of pity and incomprehension. “Yes,” I told him. “It’s fucking annoying.”
“But you aren’t scared like that anymore?”
“I am, and I’m not. It’s…it’s complicated. I think maybe it’s just the habit of worrying. Like when you sprain your ankle, so you never quite trust putting your weight on it again.”
He nodded.
“W-when I was even younger, they kept telling me it would get better. I’d grow out of it, they said. Parents. Teachers. D-doctors. So I kept w-waiting. Every time I thought of s-something to s-say—” What the fuck?Sas well? It had barely troubled me for months, and here it was again, these past few days, my relapsing, remittings.
But I wasn’t stopping now. Nothing could stop me. Not with Adam there, listening.
I tried again.
“Every time I hadsomething to say, I’d think, ‘Well, no, w-w-wait until you can s-say it properly.’ Except it’s never going away. It ebbs and flows, and fades and comes b-back, and s-sometimes it’s hardly there at all, but it’s s-still there, and it’s always going to be there. And now I’m over thirty, and I’ve been w-waiting my whole f-f-fu-fuck-fucking life for a chance to s-speak.”
I was suddenly breathless, blood roaring in my ears. And Adam had been so quiet, so still, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Speak to me,” was what he said.
Just before he kissed me again.
Different this time. Gently and carefully, his hands on either side of my face, holding me like a chalice. And I opened for him so easily, his tongue slipping between my lips and into the darkness where all my words entangle.
After that, he walked me home.60
He left me there by my front door, as though this was our first date, and this my good-night kiss. And long after he was gone, I stood in the hall, trembling, delirious, dizzy, my mouth shaped by his mouth, and full of the taste of him.
I spent the rest of the day on small necessary tasks. I rolled up the hall carpet. I took photographs with my phone and made notes for my insurers. In a fit of anxious vanity I had a cold but highly necessary and extensive sponge bath with the last of my preserved water. It was one thing to maybe look a little bit like Paddington, quite another to smell like him. Realistically speaking, I was probably going to have to spend a few days in a Travelodge with Adam. Not the sort of thing that most people would find romantic.
But it would be an adventure. And I would be with him.
My boyfriend. My new boyfriend. My Adam.
It was late again when he finally arrived. In seconds, he was out of his coat and into my arms, his face pressed against my neck. I wrapped him up tightly, feeling my own strength suddenly, different to his, but there nonetheless.
Something else I could give sometime. When he wanted it.
“Fuck,” he whispered. “Fuck.”
After a second’s hesitation, I reached up and curled my fingers into his hair. It was so soft, this fire I could hold in my hands, and I’d been wanting to touch him this way from almost the first moment I’d seen him. This beautiful man, all warmth and smiles andpetal, waiting in the rain. “Is everything all right?”
