Chapter 32 Mickey
Benji follows me inside and the loft is dim. The only light is what’s coming through the windows from the bar sign below, the neon turning everything soft red and gold. I don’t turn on a lamp. The dark feels right.
I stop the chair near the curtained off section of the bedroom.
Benji is behind me. I’ve rehearsed this.
In my head, in the dark, in the hours between midnight and dawn.
I’ve thought about how to do the transfer from the chair to the bed.
How my legs will need to be arranged. The parts of all this that used to be automatic and are now a sequence of actions.
The parts that scare me have nothing to do with Benji and everything to do with the body I’m sitting in.
“Mickey.”
He’s right behind the chair. His hands land on my shoulders, warm through the shirt, and his thumbs press into the muscles at the base of my neck how they’ve pressed a hundred times before.
“We don’t have to do anything tonight,” he says. “We can just sleep. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. There’s no clock. No rush.”
“I know there’s no clock. That’s why I want to do this now. Because there’s no nurse and this is my home. You’re here and I’m tired of stopping.”
His thumbs go still on my neck.
“But I need to tell you something first,” I say.
He comes around the chair and crouches in front of me. His face is level with mine. “Tell me.”
“The sensation below my waist. It’s more than I told you at rehab. It’s been increasing. The spots on my thighs have spread. Steve says the neural pathways are continuing to find new routes. The swelling is still going down. Things are waking up that were asleep.”
He’s watching me and trying very hard not to cry. “How much more?” he asks.
“Enough that I feel things I didn’t feel a month ago.
Not all the time or reliably. But the signals are there.
Pressure. Warmth. Sometimes more than that.
” I pause. This is the hardest part to say.
“I need to be completely honest with you. I don’t know what my body is going to do tonight, Benji.
I’ve only tested it alone and the results have been inconsistent.
Some nights there’s a response. Some nights there’s nothing.
I can’t promise you anything about what happens below my waist.”
“You don’t need to promise me anything, Mickey.
” He takes both my hands. “I don’t care what works or doesn’t.
It doesn’t matter if nothing happens or everything happens or something in between.
I’m here for you. I’ll be grateful for every second of whatever your body does.
I’m finally here alone with you and I’m thrilled about that. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“I need you to believe me,” he says. “Because you’re trying to warn me that you might not be enough and I need you to stop. You’re more than enough. Whatever we do tonight is perfect.”
His hands are gripping mine. I believe him. Not because he said the right words, but because I know his heart.
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Give me a minute to get situated on the bed. To transfer from the chair to the bed. It’s a process. My legs don’t go where I want them. I have to move them with my hands and arrange them. It’s not something I want you to see me do tonight.”
I expect him to tell me he doesn’t care, that nothing about my body could change the way he looks at me. All the things he’s said before that are true and still don’t fix the way my stomach knots at the thought of him watching me lift my own legs into position like luggage.
“I understand,” he says. He kisses the side of my head and stands up. “I need to go freshen up anyway. I want to be pretty for you. Take your time. Yell when you’re ready for me.”
He pulls the curtain closed behind him on his way out. The rings scrape along the rod and then I hear him walk to the bathroom.
I’m alone.
I wheel the chair to the side of the bed, close enough that the edge is within reach.
I lock the brakes again. Left hand on the mattress.
Right hand on the armrest. Push up. Pivot.
The transfer I’ve done many times. My arms take the weight.
My core fires. I swing my hips onto the mattress, and my legs follow because I guide them with my hands.
I pull myself back against the headboard, then I look down at my legs, straight and still in front of me. I can’t help thinking about what Benji will see when he comes back. Hopefully, just me, sitting up like a normal guy, waiting for him.
I hear the bathroom door open. His footsteps cross the loft, barefoot on the wood.
“Are you ready?” he calls from the other side of the curtain. He doesn’t pull it back and is waiting for me to say the words.
“Get in here,” I say.
The curtain slides open. He gives me the same smile I see every time he hears my same greeting and walks into my room. He climbs onto the bed and kneels beside me.
“I’m so damn happy right now,” he says, then his hands find my face and he kisses me.
The kiss is deep. His fingers slide into my hair and grip. The pull sends a current down my neck and across my shoulders and into my chest. My hands go to his narrow waist that my hands fit around like they were made for it, and I pull him closer.
He swings one leg over and settles onto my lap. Knees on either side of my thighs, his weight on me, his face above mine. But this time there’s a bed behind my back instead of a wheelchair.
“Shirt,” he says against my mouth.
I grab the hem of my shirt and pull it over my head.
He’s already shirtless, the chain swinging against his bare skin.
He drops my shirt off the side of the bed and his hands are on me immediately.
Palms flat against my chest, sliding up to my shoulders.
His fingers trace the curve of muscle and his touch leaves a trail of heat.
I pull him in. Chest to chest. Feeling the heat of him pouring into me, the lean planes of his body pressed against mine. My arms lock around his back and his arms go around my neck. We hold each other and breathe the same air.
“I want to see you tonight,” he whispers against my neck. “All of you. Will you let me this time?”
My stomach clenches. This is the door I closed at rehab. The one I told him I wasn’t ready to open. The one that’s been standing between us for weeks, locked by my own hands.
Benji pulls back enough to look at me. His face is flushed, his lips swollen from my mouth, and he’s asking.
“Yes,” I say. “You can see me.”
He moves off my lap. His hands go to the waistband of my shorts and he pauses there, his fingers resting on the elastic, looking at me one more time.
I nod. He slides them down, lifting the fabric over my hips and guiding them down my legs.
His hands doing the work my legs can’t do.
The shorts come off, the boxers follow, and I’m naked on the bed in front of him.
My legs are much thinner than they were. I hate how they look now with the muscle loss from weeks in a bed and a wheelchair. My thighs were thick and powerful from years under a squat bar. They’re smaller now. The quads are softer. The calves have lost definition.
Benji doesn’t rush. He puts his hand on my left thigh. Palm flat. The spot where I first felt his touch on my leg, and his fingers tremble against my skin.
“Can you feel that?” he asks, glancing up at me.
“Yes.”
Pressure and the weight of his hand on the muscle. It’s muted, like feeling through a layer of heavy cloth, but it’s there.
He slides his hand higher. The inside of my thigh. His fingers press and the sensation sharpens, not by much, but enough.
“There,” I say. “I feel that.”
“More than before?”
“Clearer. Like the volume’s been turned up.”
He blinks twice, fast, and looks away for a second. When he looks back his eyes are wet and he’s smiling, but the smile is barely holding together.
“Sorry,” he says. “I told myself I wasn’t going to cry during this.”
“It’s okay, you can cry.”
“I don’t want to cry. I want to be sexy and desirable. I had a whole plan, Mickey. I was going to be smooth.”
“You’ve never been smooth a day in your life.”
“That’s accurate and you’re ruining my moment.
” He presses his hand flat against my thigh and holds it there, his fingers spread wide.
He moves to the right thigh. Outer edge, the spot that was faintest. His palm presses flat and I close my eyes and focus.
There. Fainter than the left side but present. A pulse where there used to be nothing.
“Yes,” I say. “Right there.”
He presses his forehead against my thigh for a second, just resting, his hand still on my skin.
I put my hand in his hair and hold him there.
He lifts his head and keeps touching me.
His palms move from thigh to knee to calf and at the calves the sensation thins and fades.
Below the knee is still silent. But above it, on the thighs, nerves are firing under his palms.
“Tell me where,” he says. “Talk to me. I want to know everywhere you can feel.”
“Inside of the left thigh. Strongest there. Outside of the right, it’s fainter but it’s there. Higher is better. Closer to the hip the signal gets stronger.”
“Here?” He presses the crease where thigh meets hip.
“Yes. There. That’s almost — that’s close to normal.”
“Really?” He almost chokes on the word. “Close to normal?”
“Benji.”
He looks up at me from where he’s kneeling between my legs. His hands are on my thighs. His face is wet and he’s not trying to hide it anymore. He’s given up on trying to be smooth. He’s just here, open with me, exactly who he is.
“I can feel your hands on my legs,” I say. “I can feel you touch me.”
He makes a sound that starts as a laugh and breaks into a sob. He drops his head and presses his face against my thigh and his shoulders shake, and I feel the warmth of his tears falling on my skin.
I feel his tears.
“I can feel that too. Just so you know.”