Chapter 18 #2
I watch him eat each whole pizza like it’s a single slice, folding them in half like tacos.
He sighs contentedly through his nose and runs his tongue over his teeth behind his lips, and I have to look away, a bolt shooting up my midsection.
My body’s unpredictable reactions to things like this are the times I feel truly wary about our living arrangement.
Not because of the way he’s generally (very) attractive or when he hugs me or paws me absentmindedly .
. . Not even the flirting that slips out.
These are all things I know to expect. It’s that damn napkin I find irresistible in both its quirkiness and conscientiousness, and him enthusiastically enjoying his food with his entire being.
Otherwise, this friendship is the boon I needed it to be.
I appreciate him the way I need to, in the respectable way he deserves.
“Treats?” he says again when I get hung up staring.
“Hey, weren’t you off today?” I ask, thinking of my cotton candy and the treats that probably warmed me up earlier this afternoon, too. The farmers market seemed like precisely his scene, all those people to charm and vittles to savor.
He stops chewing, and something inscrutable streaks his face before he dips his head, gaze in his lap.
“I went to a group meeting,” he tells me. “Group therapy, I mean. For burn survivors.”
“Oh, that’s—Silas, that’s great.” He nods tightly, picking at a spot on the couch with his thumb. “Did you like it?”
“It’s not what I expected, but . . . yeah, I did like it.”
He tells me that he met a few other guys there who recommended a fishing charter and pulls out his laptop when we finish our last bites. The boat’s page has dates listed with the number of openings, so we cross-reference them with when we’re both available.
“There are plenty of open slots on my birthday,” he says excitedly. “You off?”
I’m not. June 19 is on a Friday—traditionally one of my busiest weekdays. But the sweet, hopeful way he’s said this makes me consider lying. “You’d want to do that on your birthday? You don’t have bigger plans?”
“I’m turning thirty-two. I don’t need to make birthday plans; I already know what happens.
Wren makes a cake and Ellis writes a sappy message in a card that makes me cry privately.
Micah sends me a text message with a middle-finger emoji.
Sage will call and sing to me.” And he sounds proud and grateful about all of it.
“I can move some clients around,” I hear myself say.
I lie awake for hours after I initially try to go to bed that night—my brain wandering, wondering.
I wonder if maybe I smiled too much today and if that’s why my face is sore.
If I have been smiling too much in general lately.
Am I still grieving enough if I’m smiling more?
I know I’m doing my best to welcome memories as they come, but is it some other sort of avoidance if I welcome happy and hopeful feelings this much, too?
I listen to the ambient sounds of Silas existing in the rooms below, and I question the comfort it brings me.
Is that warmth I feel just because I’m replacing the sounds of Merritt in my house that I used to hear?
Filling a void? I don’t think so, but I don’t know.
I’m starting to believe that no one ever really knows if they’re doing this shit right.
I feel better and wonder if it’s wrong of me, but I feel better all the same.
My thoughts get dozier, and I wonder about a baby and if it’s okay and safe for me to feel as excited or to want it like I do.
I stare at the ceiling fan above me with my hand running patterns over my stomach, and I let myself wonder what it’ll feel like.
What they’ll be like. Tears leak from the corners of my eyes after a while.
Cracking myself open to that want, letting myself feel the entirety of it, nearly hurts.
I cling onto every imagined moment that hasn’t yet happened and maybe never will, and grief takes on yet another facet.
Maybe grief isn’t just a place or person you can’t go back to, but somewhere you’ve never been and someone you’re scared you’ll never get to know.
But then my thoughts leap to the cat I’m hoping to know, and I’m laughing at myself.
In the light of the full moon, my perspective has softened, some.
The welcome reception not being perfect doesn’t feel like a cautionary tale or make me think I’m not ready for other responsibilities because I know she’ll be loved and cared for by me even if she hardly tolerates me, forever.
Not locked in a cage, hidden away for the rest of her life.
I don’t have to be perfect, and neither does she; I just have to love and nurture her the way a life should be.
Even if I don’t get the chance to apply this to motherhood, I can try to look at my own grief through that lens.
Keep it close and cared for whether or not it snarls and whether or not I understand it all the time.
When sleep continues to evade me, I decide to check on Calcifur and quietly make my way downstairs. I spot Silas first, asleep on his side on the couch. The cat pops up from behind his legs with a grouchy meow and darts back into her crate.
My best guess is he had the same idea and came out here to check on her, too. There’s a crumpled-up receipt and some string on the coffee table before him. I bet he was playing with her and tiring her out. Tuckered himself out first.
The thought slips into my mind like a sliver: I bet he’ll make a great dad someday.
The way he deftly manages to be two disparate people—by turns playful and solid. I have to swallow something unpleasant and it takes me a moment to recognize it as jealousy.
Up closer, I mark the tension in his brow, a light sheen of sweat covering his skin. More sweat gathers on his neck, his pulse beating visibly. A breath punches out of him in a rush, followed by a long moan that raises the hair on the back of my neck. It sounds pained, agonized. He twitches wildly.
“Silas.” I try to rouse him with my hand on his clammy shoulder.
He hisses like I’ve scalded him in his sleep.
“Si.” I jostle him harder.
He rolls just as I’m giving him another shove, and my palm slides, taking my balance over with it.
One of his hands shoots up to clamp around my arm, and I end up teetering farther and coming down hard onto his chest when he yanks me into him.
His oof fans away my hair and then we’re there, face-to-face, eye to eye, centimeters apart.
His rough breaths force his chest into mine, and .
. . and oh no. Oh shit. He’s hard against the outline of my hip.
A dizzying flood of lust washes over me.
“Bea” scrapes out of him. Our noses skim and his eyes sweep down to my lips. He swallows when mine do the same.
“You were having a dream,” I say. My head tilts a degree before I permit it to.
“I was,” he agrees. He’s still breathing hard, eyes flicking to my mouth again.
“I tried to wake you,” I murmur.
“Didn’t work,” he says. Why haven’t I gotten up?
Everything goes still, every sound muffles. His hand slowly coasts up my back and threads into my hair. We’re pressed together from shoulder to hip, one of his thighs between mine. A sound gathers at the back of my throat when his fingers slowly curl and tighten against my scalp.
“Si?”
“Yes.” It doesn’t come out like a question. He sounds like he’s answering something I didn’t ask. “Yeah, Bea. Go on.” Still not a question.
His hand curls a little tighter, his heartbeat hammering into mine.