Chapter 27 Griffin #2
“What do you want tonight,” he says.
“You inside me.”
“Okay.”
“Slow. Like you have time.”
“I have time.”
“I know.”
He kisses me. He gets the lube from the drawer.
The lube has been in the drawer in the new house for six weeks now, the same way it was in his apartment in November and mine in February and a hotel-room drawer in March on the night before we got on the plane.
The drawer with lube in it, in a new house, is its own thing.
He gets the condom. We don’t always use one.
We had a conversation in March, after the program had panels run, and agreed we didn’t have to.
But sometimes I want it and sometimes he does and we’ve stopped making it a referendum.
Tonight we use one. He puts it on. He gets the lube.
He’s giving the thing the time it asks for.
He moves between my legs.
“Tomas.”
“Yes.”
“Reece.”
“Reece.”
He pushes in. Slow. Without ceremony, because it’s something we do now. He fills me up and stops with his forehead against mine.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Move.”
“You move.”
“Reece.”
“Yeah.”
“I want to look at you for a second.”
I look at him. His eyes are wet from nothing — he hasn’t been crying, he isn’t crying, his eyes are doing what eyes do when a person is feeling more than the face can hold. He’s letting them. He’s letting me see.
“What.”
“Nothing. Just — looking.”
“Okay.”
He moves. Slow. His hand on my hip on the tattoo, his thumb on the letters.
He moves the way he moves when we have time.
I make the sounds and he says yeah and I say his old name once into his shoulder and he says mine back.
We go on like that for a long time — in the white sheets at the back of the house in the town we didn’t choose, with the soup on the stove.
He gets a hand between us and strokes me slow.
“Tomas. Reece. Tomas.”
He says them like a list. Like he’s saying both of me at once.
I say, “Adam. Adam. Reed.”
I say all three of him. He laughs into my shoulder. We laugh in bed in the middle of having sex. I hadn’t known we’d have this in this life. We have it.
“All of us,” he says into my neck.
“Yeah,” I say. “All of us.”
He moves harder. I close my eyes. He’s making me come slowly, with intent, the way he’s been making me come for almost ten years. My hand on his hip, my thumb on his letters, his hand on mine, his thumb on mine — we’re holding the names in our hands while he’s fucking me.
“Adam —“
“Yeah.”
“I —“
“Yeah, Reece. Come on.”
I come. Then he does, a few seconds later, his face against my neck, saying my old name into my skin.
I have it. I’ll always have it. He collapses, takes his weight on his elbows but lets some of it down.
I take it. His face is in my neck and my hand is in his hair and the soup is on the stove and we have an hour and ten minutes left.
After, we lie there. He’s pulled out and dealt with the condom and come back. He’s on his side facing me, his hand on my hip on the letters, his thumb moving over them slowly the way it does in his sleep. His ring catches on the sheet when he moves. It’s just a sound the bed has now.
The rings are plain. We got them on the same Tuesday at a small jeweler near the courthouse, who’d given us a deal because we’d told him we were getting married that afternoon.
He’d brought out a tray of plain bands and we’d picked the same one without consulting each other, and he’d nodded as if he’d known we would. The whole thing took eleven minutes.
When I was twenty I’d imagined what wedding rings I’d have someday, the way I’d imagined I’d meet somebody and stand somewhere and have a thing.
The rings I imagined had meaning. Mine cost less than the dinner we had after, and have been on our hands for six weeks.
Last week I took mine off to wash dishes and forgot to put it back on for an hour, and when I noticed I felt a small wrongness without it.
We’re quiet for a while.
“Adam,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“This is the life.”
“Yeah.”
“This is what we got, then.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good.”
“It is good.”
“It’s more than I had —“
“I know.”
“More than I had let myself imagine.”
“I know, Tomas.”
“Reece.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad you came.”
“I know.”
“I want to say it. Not because I think you don’t know. Every day for the rest of my life I’m going to be glad you came.”
“Adam.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad I came too.”
“Okay.”
We lie there. The light outside is going. The maple is in shadow. The soup smell is reaching us from the kitchen. He pulls the white sheet up over both of us. We don’t get dressed yet.
Later, we eat the soup. Two bowls at the small table. Hot bread he made on Sunday and froze and toasted. A glass of water for me, a beer for him. The lamp over the table is on because the sun has gone down.
“Try it.”
I try it. It’s good — the best one yet. The escarole is right; the barley has cooked the right amount; the meat has the chew that means it’s been in the broth long enough. The broth has depth. I close my eyes for a second on the first bite, and when I open them he’s watching me.
“It’s the best one,” I say.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, Adam. The best one.”
“Okay.”
“Is it —“
“Is it what.”
“Hers.”
He thinks. He looks down at his soup.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s hers.
I don’t know if I’ll ever know. I think it’s mine.
I think she’d taste it and recognize it.
She’d say that’s not how I made it but that’s a soup I would make.
It’s the soup of a person who learned to cook from her, spent two years trying to remember her soup, and made his own version. ”
“Okay.”
“Is that okay.”
“Adam. It’s a good soup.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a good soup that has her in it.”
“Yeah.”
He eats. I eat.
I think about Sara in Chicago at her kitchen table, with her kids and Marcus.
My mother in the home in Lake Forest. Reece’s mother in the apartment in the city, eating dinner alone the way she has for fifteen years.
The way she held a spoon — three fingers and a thumb, the pinky out. I let her hand be in the room.
Across from me, Adam is eating his soup. He looks up. Sees me looking. His eyes are wet. He’s been thinking about his too. We didn’t say. We didn’t have to.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
He puts his hand across the table. I take it. His ring is warm. There’s broth on his chin he doesn’t know about. I let him have the broth on his chin.
“Adam.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m glad I came.”
He looks at me.
“I know.”
“I want to say it. Not because I think you don’t know. Because you don’t get to know it from inside me unless I say it. I’m glad I came. Even on the hard ones.”
“Tomas.”
“I want you to have heard me say it. On a Thursday. Over soup. While you have broth on your chin and don’t know it.”
He laughs. He puts his hand to his chin and finds it. He looks at it on his thumb.
“You let me sit there with broth on my chin.”
“I let you sit there with broth on your chin.”
“For how long.”
“The whole soup.”
He laughs the laugh I’ve known for ten years — the short one, the ha. He laughs it in our kitchen with his hand still in mine and his thumb still wet from the broth.
I keep his hand. I don’t let go. Outside the window the maple is in dark. Somewhere Sara is putting her kids to bed. Somewhere my mother is asleep. Somewhere Marisol is washing one bowl. We carry them into this kitchen with us.
“We’re here,” he says.