Chapter 17 Reece
SEVENTEEN
REECE
He texts me on Saturday at four-twelve. It has been five days.
I left his apartment on Monday. We’ve been at the proseminar on Tuesday and on Thursday and we’ve done the thing.
We sit across from each other. We contribute at the right moments.
We don’t look at each other except when one of us is responding to the other.
We’re bad at it but we’re getting better at it.
On Tuesday I noticed I was holding my pen too tight at the end of class.
On Thursday I did not notice that, which I am taking as a kind of progress.
The text says Come over.
That’s the whole text. No when. No why. Just Come over — and I look at the message for a minute, and I write back now?
He writes back yes.
I look at yes. Sit with it a second. I put on my shoes, my coat. I leave.
He opens the door before I knock. He’s been standing inside the door — I can tell because the door opens too fast. No walk-to-the-door pause.
No time-it-took-him-to-get-up pause. He was at the door when I came up.
He heard my steps on the landing and opened it before I could knock.
He’s been waiting for me to be on it. He looks at me.
“Come in,” he says.
I come in. He closes the door. He locks it. He stands in front of me in the entryway with his hands in his pockets, and the hands are not loose in the pockets, and he is looking at me.
“I have decided something,” he says.
“Okay.”
“I want to tell you what I decided.”
I keep my hands at my sides. I have been doing this for a month, this thing where I make my hands do nothing. It is a small skill. I am using it now.
“Okay,” I say.
“I’m not — I’m not going to forgive you.”
Something twists in my chest. I do not let my face do anything. He has been deciding what to say to me for five days. The least I can do is hear him say it.
“Okay.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to forgive you. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to forgive you. That’s not the question I’m answering tonight. I want to be clear about that.”
“I hear you.”
“What I am answering tonight is whether I am going to keep being in a room with you. Twice a week. For the rest of the year. Pretending I am not in a room with you.”
“Okay.”
“I am not going to do that anymore.”
I look at his hands in his pockets. The hands are doing the thing they did at twenty, the night he told me on a Tuesday we were going to be together.
Pockets, not loose, the knuckles working through the fabric.
The hands are how I used to tell what he had decided before he told me what he had decided.
“Okay,” I say.
“I want…“ He stops.
I wait.
“I want you,” he says.
He says it flat. He says it the way he said Goodbye, Reed in this apartment a month ago. He is saying a thing he has decided to say. He is not saying it in a romantic way. He’s saying it in a way that’s structural. Laying down a rule.
“Okay,” I say.
“And I am not pretending to myself that wanting you is, that it does not mean what it means. I have been pretending for two months. I am not going to keep pretending. I want you. I do not get past the thing by sitting across a table from you twice a week and pretending I do not.”
“Okay.”
“I have decided I am going to have you.”
I look at him.
“I’m going to have you, Reed, and I’m not asking if it’s a good idea.
The question of whether it’s a good idea has an answer and the answer is no.
It’s not a good idea. I’m not pretending it is.
I’m not going to ask you whether you want me.
I’m going to look at you and make you tell me.
Because if you don’t, this stops here, and we go back to the table, and we do the rest of the year. And if you do…“
He stops. He looks at me.
“Reed,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Look at me.”
I look at him.
“Do you want me.”
I look at him. His eyes give him away and the rest of him is still.
Yes. I have wanted you for two years and however many days.
I’m the one who came across the country to be here.
The one who didn’t call Mendez. The one who came back to the bench.
You’re asking me if I want you. You know the answer.
You’re still asking. Because you’re making me say it.
“Yes,” I say.
“Okay.”
He takes his hands out of his pockets.
“Okay,” he says. “Come here.”
I come there. I come to him and he takes my coat off, slowly, without looking at me.
Not rushing. Not breathless. Deliberate.
He hangs the coat on the hook by the door, the same hook he hung his own coat on the night he came to my apartment for the first time.
He turns back to me and he’s the man who has decided something.
The version of him I knew before. The version that, when we were twenty, told me on a Tuesday that he’d thought about it and we were going to be together.
That this was what was happening. I’d said okay because I’d wanted it too, and because the way he’d said it hadn’t invited a conversation.
He’s that version now. In a sweater I don’t know, in an apartment I’ve been in three times.
He kisses me. He kisses me in the entryway and his hand is on the side of my neck and his mouth is open and the kiss is not a kiss that is asking.
The kiss has decided. His tongue is in my mouth and his other hand is on my hip and he is pressing me back against the door, lightly, not hard.
The door is just there, behind me. His hand finds my hip and stays there.
I’m someone who keeps inventory and I am keeping inventory now: his mouth, his hand on my neck, his body against mine, the door at my back, the pressure of his thigh between my legs that he’s doing on purpose and that my body is responding to faster than I’m ready for.
I make a sound into his mouth. He pulls back half an inch.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
He kisses me again. Longer this time. Until I’m hard against his thigh and he can feel it and isn’t pretending he can’t.
His hand moves from my hip, down, over the front of my jeans, and presses.
I make the sound again. He closes his eyes for a second like he is steadying himself. Then he opens them.
“Bedroom,” he says.
“Yes.”
He pulls back. Not far. His mouth is an inch from mine. He says, “Wait.”
“Okay.”
“I want to ask you something first.”
His thumb is moving on the side of my neck without him deciding to. I don’t say anything.
“Okay.”
“I want to know,” he stops. He starts again. “When you and I, before. We did it both ways. We did not have a default. Some weeks were one way, some weeks were the other way, and we did not negotiate it. It just was.”
“Yes.”
“I am asking because tonight is not before. Tonight is. I am asking because I want to know what you want tonight. I do not want to assume. I want to know if there is a way you have been thinking about it. The last two years.”
I look at him. I think about the question. I haven’t let myself think about it. Haven’t let myself think about any version of him for two years. The specifics are now a question he’s asking me in his entryway at eight at night with his hand still on the side of my neck.
“Have you,” I say. “Been thinking about it.”
“Yes.”
“How.”
“Reed.”
“Tell me.”
He looks at me.
“I want you to fuck me tonight,” he says.
The sentence goes through me. I do not move. I do not move for what is probably a second and what feels like longer. He is looking at me and he is letting me have the second.
“You sure,” I say.
“Yes.”
“Because…“
“Because I’ve spent two years thinking you were dead, and the last two months figuring out you’re not, and this is the thing I’ve decided I want tonight. The decision isn’t abstract. I’ve thought about it for a week.”
“A week.”
“Since the stairwell.”
“Okay.”
“You can say no.”
“I’m not saying no.”
“Okay.”
I take a breath. I take it because I am about to say a thing I have been thinking for a month and have not said. I want to be the person who says it on purpose.
“Griffin. You have been the one deciding things. The whole time. Since the sidewalk. You have been the one telling me what is going to happen. I want you to do what you want.”
He looks at me.
“I am doing what I want,” he says.
“You’re deciding to give me the thing.”
“I’m deciding to ask for it. Those are different. I’m asking, Reed.”
I look at him.
“Okay,” I say. “Yes. Yes, Griffin.”
“Okay.”
“And the other times. After tonight.”
“After tonight we figure out. After tonight is for after tonight. Tonight I want you to fuck me. That is the thing I am asking for tonight.”
“Okay.”
He kisses me again, hard, fast, like sealing it. Then he takes my hand. He walks me into the bedroom.
The bed is small. Full size, not queen. The sheets are gray. There’s a lamp on the side table with a brass base and a paper shade — the lamp is on, has been on. He’s been waiting for me with the lamp on. He’s been planning.
The room is cold the way the apartment is cold.
He reaches over and turns on the second lamp on the dresser.
He pulls the sweater off me. He does it the way you take a sweater off a person whose body you used to know, which is to say without checking.
He knows where the sweater catches on my shoulder.
He knows to lift the back of the collar so it does not pull my hair.
He does these things without thinking. His body remembers mine. My body remembers his.
I take his sweater off him. His chest is not the chest I remember.
I knew it would not be. He is thinner than he was two years ago.
The lines of him are different. There is a small mark on his shoulder I do not know.
Pink, the size of a fingernail, the kind of scar you get from something stupid, a kitchen knife maybe, a closing door.
I touch the mark. I do not ask. He sees me touch it. He does not say.
“Bed,” he says.