Chapter 32
Lennon
I wake, confused and pinned down. It’s dark, my bedding is tangled, and I’m not alone in my bed. Connor is still here, still with me. Still lying behind me with his arms around me.
He must sense that I’ve woken because there’s a subtle change in his breathing. Long, steady draws shorten and falter against the back of my neck.
“Morning.” His lips are so close to my neck that the word runs down my spine. His voice is soft and hoarse. Awake, but still run through by dreams.
“Morning.”
“Will you be okay if I let go?”
It hits me in distinct, mortifying stages that he’s not just holding on to me now.
He held me all night. He didn’t let go when I fell asleep, and he didn’t let go while I slept.
His arm is around my chest, his hand knotted in my T-shirt.
It relaxes microscopically when he speaks, in anticipation that my answer will be yes.
My hand clenches around his wrist. It’s a reflex. An action without sentient thought.
“Can you hold on for one more minute?” I ask, surprising the crap out of both of us.
He doesn’t reply, but he does move closer to me.
He’s so close I can feel his nose and lips in my hair.
I can feel the warmth of his body. The meat of his chest, the weight of his arm.
He nestles closer to me until we’re so close there’s no earthly way to describe what we’re doing as anything other than cuddling.
Snuggling like pack animals and primates do.
And honestly, it’s kind of nice. It’s soothing and calming.
It holds me together in a way I didn’t know I needed.
A way I didn’t know I’d been missing because I’m not sure anyone has held me like this before.
Rounding up pieces of me that have been floating in the ether and squishing them back together.
For his part, Connor enjoys it. He must because he makes soft, happy sounds and wriggles his feet against mine. He presses his forehead against the back of my skull and holds it there, inhaling quietly and making a softer, happier sound.
I know I should move. It’s weird as hell to be letting a guy hold me like this, but I can’t remember why that is.
At last, the hand on my chest moves. There’s a slight scrunch of fabric and a slow tug as his touch is rescinded.
I roll over involuntarily, unsure if I’m doing so to watch him leave or to stop him from going.
“Come on,” he says, giving me a firm tap on the shoulder, “we can still see the sunrise if we hurry.”
“Ugh. The fucking sun,” I grumble as I roll out of bed and grab my jacket.
We both go out in our pajamas. Him with slippers on his feet, me with my unlaced Vans. We don’t talk, but there’s a quiet camaraderie to our movements. An understanding, a closeness, that wasn’t there yesterday.
The sun is already peeking over the horizon when we get to the roof. Pale dusty shades hover in a broad arc above the skyline. We sit on the little bench again, like we did last time, only this time, it doesn’t feel strange where we’re touching. It feels strange where we aren’t.
The sun rises without fanfare today. A light with a dimmer switch that’s slowly being turned on, instead of an explosion of fireworks. The sky changes slowly, hazy gray to hazy blue in increments so tiny that I can’t spot the exact changes. I only know that night has ended and a new day has dawned.
Connor sits silently next to me, the light and warmth inside him competing with that of the sun. Even though we’re outside and it’s chilly, I feel the same as I did when I woke up this morning: comforted and contained.
Still, it’s not lost on me that Connor has no possible way of understanding why I was the way I was yesterday. I don’t think anyone can get away with a performance like that and not give the person they unloaded it on an explanation.
“It was Havi’s birthday yesterday,” I tell him. “It was…a hard day. It fucked me up because it was the first time since we were kids that we didn’t spend the day together. I knew he wouldn’t get in touch, but I still…I dreaded it. And then he didn’t, and it fucked me up all over again.”
“Is he a big birthday person?”
I laugh, and the smile tugs at my tear ducts. “He’s the biggest birthday person ever.”
“I kind of thought he might be from what you’ve told me about him.”
“He’s one of those people who has a birthday month, not a birthday day.
He was always like that. The year I met him, he called me when he woke up on his birthday and made me sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to him over the phone.
” Connor chuckles softly. “When I didn’t sing loudly enough, or with enough enthusiasm for his liking, he started singing too.
” I shake my head at the memory. “It became a thing. Every year, he’d make me sing to him.
I’d almost die of embarrassment, and to save me, he’d sing with me. ”
Years flash before me. Little kid Havi with ash-blond hair.
Gawky teen Havi with bad skin and an attitude problem.
Grown Havi at the store, acting like an adult but still a kid at heart.
All the Havis in my mind’s eye belt out “Happy Birthday, dear Havi,” at the top of their lungs.
It chokes me up like it did last night, but today, it’s not just pain.
It’s not just missing and anger. It’s good memories too.
Memories that I don’t know what to do with, given what happened.
“Last year, we were working on his birthday, so I got a whole lot of helium balloons delivered to the store, and one big foil one that had Birthday Girrrl on it.” I turn to Connor and see that the morning rays have softened his features, blurring his freckles, leaving his eyes in sharp focus.
I expect to regret talking about Havi. I usually do.
I usually feel worse when I say his name than I do when I don’t say it at all.
This morning—with the sun, and the roof, and Connor, and what happened last night—it feels different.
Not easy exactly, but not as barbed as it usually does.
“He loves shit like that. Big over-the-top shit that makes everyone notice him. That kind of attention is like crack to him. Last year, he liked the dumb foil balloon so much that I tied it around his neck as a joke. He kept it on all day, bobbing around a few feet above him. All fucking day.”
Connor laughs soft and low. He laughs for me. Because he wants to support me. Because he doesn’t want me to feel like a dumbass for saying all that. He must because what I said wasn’t particularly funny.
I wish to fuck I was done talking about Havi.
The barbs will be back soon, and I know it.
Soon, my head will start spinning and a siren only I can hear will blare, but I’m not done yet.
“That’s the thing about a long friendship ending badly.
The good memories are almost as hard to deal with as the bad ones. ”
Connor sits with what I’ve said. His hands are turned upward in his lap, palms catching sun rays as they land on him. He looks at the horizon, and I swear to fucking God, he absorbs my words. He lets them flow from me into him. Not only my words, but the meaning and pain they carry as well.
It fucks with me badly, so I scramble to wrestle my errant emotions and verbal diarrhea back into the box they belong in.
“Pretty average sunrise, huh?” I scoff when I’ve successfully managed to shut my shit down.
He smiles at me, which lets me know that even though I’m not very bright, and I might well be missing the whole point of life, he doesn’t judge me. “Nah. It was the best.”
I spend most of the day hiding from Connor.
It’s Saturday, thank fuck, so I go for a drive and end up at the store.
I park across the street, where I have a good view of the entrance.
Customers come and go like they always used to.
There’s a chalkboard near the door that I haven’t seen before, advertising a sale.
The text has been written in narrow block letters.
It makes me irrationally angry. Narrow block letters?
We’re a swirly cursive brand with a graffiti slant. Everyone knows that.
Narrow fucking block letters. What the fuck next?
Todd, the manager, is lucky I’m a mess, or I’d be in the store right now giving him hell for this.
I start my car in an impotent rage. I don’t mean impotent as in my dick isn’t working, I mean impotent as in powerless. Ineffective. Weak because I’m stuck in my car when I should be in the store managing my business, but I’m too much of a pussy to go inside.
My dick is working fine, believe me.
It got hard in the kitchen this morning when Connor frothed milk for my coffee, and since then, it’s been chubbing up for no reason. It’s hard as a rock now, and I’m alone in my car, stalking a store I legally own.
What I should do is get out of my head, go out, and get laid.
That’s what I should do. It’s been way too long, and the cracks are starting to show.
I have friends I could call. Tash and Lacey are cool.
I haven’t seen them in ages, but I could definitely hit them up.
I could call either one of them. Or both of them.
Or I could activate my account on the apps again.
Either way, I should heed the warning my dick is giving me before I do something stupid.
Instead, I drive home to Connor.
It’s late, and I’m in bed. It’s been a fucked-up day. When I wasn’t hiding from Connor, I was waiting for him to do or say something about what happened last night.
For his part, he seemed completely oblivious. He moved around me with well-practiced ease all afternoon. Weaving past me in the living room and sitting on the counter watching me cook dinner like he always does. Like what happened last night was completely normal.
At first, I was grateful, but then it occurred to me that maybe for him, it is normal.
Maybe he gets into bed and puts his arms around people all the time.
Maybe he smells their hair because he likes the way hair smells, not because he particularly likes the way mine smells.
Maybe he makes happy sounds no matter who he’s close to.
The thought of that makes me even angrier than the narrow block letters at the store did.
I have my phone in my hand, messages open. I haven’t bothered to check if Havi has read my messages today because I can’t be assed, but I have changed Connor’s name to Connor Lockwood.
And I’ve changed it back to Connor The Spark again.
I don’t know what kind of help exists for people like me, but I’m pretty sure I need it.
I’ve typed I need you to Connor at least ten times and deleted it each time.
Even as fucked up as I am, I don’t think it’s right to cry for help when you don’t need it.
I mean, I do need help, clearly. It’s just that I need professional help, not the kind of help that involves my hot roommate getting into bed with me.
Because like it or not, what I am tonight is horny, not sad.