Chapter Eight - Asher #3
“So, one night he had way too much. I tried to get him into bed, and he wouldn’t do it.
He said things to me…it made me angry, I was just so fed up, so I said some things back—” He pauses there.
It’s for so long, I almost speak up, but he says, “He swung at me. I got out of the way, but my glasses fell off. I went to pick them up, and he hit me. Right in the eye. Then he did it again…”
My hands ball into fists.
His chin trembles. “I pushed him…I…I was angry. He fell. He fell back, hit his head, and it scared me. And then I ran out and all the way to my aunt’s.
I didn’t know where else to go. And he called the cops on me.
Because I pushed him, and they showed up at her house.
I felt awful. She was so confused. I didn’t want them to see my face.
I didn’t want him to get arrested. I didn’t want him in any trouble, he couldn’t.
..” He stops, tongue flicking over his lips.
“And so my aunt tried to intervene, but I just lied.” He pauses again.
This time, I think he’s finished. But then he says, “I can’t go home.
I don’t want you to think — I mean…I can’t go back home. Ever.”
I don’t realize how tight my hands are clenched or my jaw until I speak. “How many times?”
“How many times what?”
“Did he hit you?”
“I don’t know. Two or three.”
“And the police?”
His voice falters. “I didn’t know if I hurt him or not. My aunt went over to get my things. She said he had a bump, but he was sober. At least there was that.”
There’s an upwelling inside me, a slow-growing wave, and it’s protective, it’s furious, it’s shocked. It all mixes together so I don’t know what to do: storm out and find his damn father. Take Paul in my arms. Call the police myself. Call his aunt. Demand that man never be allowed near him again.
One corner of his mouth lifts, just the slightest. “Guess you’re stuck with me.”
I take his hand, his fingers thread through, and his eyes meet mine, and there’s a flicker there. Pain. Fear.
I pull him into my embrace, and he slumps, clumsy spaghetti-arms around my waist, the sleeve of my shirt growing damp.
In the bluish light of evening, I see the white of his thighs gripping my hips.
I rest my hands there, the muscles tight. He doesn’t open his eyes until I’m all the way inside him — the tight, slick heat of him. It takes every ounce of control I can muster not to grab onto him and take over. But this isn’t for me.
After a moment or so, his legs stop shaking. Then his hands glide up my chest, leaning over, careful and more carefully, to kiss me. And then he moves, awkwardly and unsure, in an unfamiliar position. His eyes flutter closed, mouth opening in a gasp.
I suppose he’s searching for something. Whatever it is, it’s behind his eyelids. I gaze up into his face and see wet dark lashes fanned over fair skin. Whatever he’s searching for, and what I can give him. I don’t know if they’re the same.
He responds to a kiss like it’s the very first and the very last.
I feel like it’s burning inside me like torch. Consuming me. Consuming him. He would have to know. I choke on my own breath as it attempts to escape.
And all I can think is that I want to keep him safe. Keep him. Protect him. From all things vicious and cruel. From punches and drunks and hurt. The world and all its infinite coldness. I can be his shield.
He raises up and sinks down. He does it again. Again. Again.
Again.
I love it.
I can’t stand it.
With a deep groan, I grab him and turn us, place him on his back, his knees pushed up.
I can’t control myself. I can’t help myself.
I say his name, repeatedly, like a vow, a promise.
He breathes through bitten-red lips. He gazes at me through half-lidded eyes.
His head pushes back, presenting his neck for me to kiss, his name written there with my lips.
And I know that it means something. That as deep as my body is into him, he’s deep inside me too. In other ways. Better.
He comes with me thrusting hard, his heat pooling between us.
I would have savored it longer, let myself be given over to it easier, if it wasn’t for my last thought right before I came inside him.
I can protect him from everyone else.
But who’s going to protect him from me?
Paul pushes up from beside me, squints at the streetlight.
“You have to go?” I hope I don’t sound pathetic.
He scratches his arm, lies back down. “I said I’d be back late. I think.”
The covers are bunched between his knees. I run a hand from the base of his neck to the top of his thatch of dark hairs. I shouldn’t dare think that this is all mine. I shouldn’t dare. Not even a bit.
He’s not looking at me directly. I can see the two imprints of his glasses on either side of his nose. I haven’t even cut on the lamp yet. I lay a heavy arm across his chest and then he looks in my eyes.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He blinks. “I don’t think it will be like last time.” He lays his arm over mine, a suggestive grin. “Maybe we could later.”
“If you’re okay.”
His eyes flash. Brilliant. “I like it.”
I pull him close to me. Closer.
“Don’t you?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
He slips his fingers through the hair on my chest, his come still on my skin, and I feel a stab of guilt. He caresses me so sweetly. A wave of guilt.
“What is it?” he asks.
“What’s what, pal?”
His fingertips keep touching me, softly. “Is that how you see me?”
“Like what?”
“Like your…friend?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
I put my lips against his hair. “I know what you mean.”
His face nuzzles into my neck, his exhale warm. My skin tingles and forms goosebumps. A part of me tumbles like a fortress and he’s storming my walls.
And another part of me is desperately trying to draw up the bridge.
This is a really stupid thing to let happen right now.
But it’s like he said; I can’t help myself.
I want to see him. Really, I’d be content with just that.
Seeing him, like with my eyes in front of me, and he doesn’t even have to be naked.
I should be content with just that. I’m not in control anymore.
I’m infected, I’m sick, and it’s steering this ship right on over to his aunt’s yard.
I just find myself going over after work. It’s stupid. I forget about doing anything else. I forget to take out the trash, make the bed, empty the ashtray. I didn’t realize how routine I’d gotten until he came along and obliterated it.
We go to the abandoned store a lot just because it’s somewhere to go.
I don’t fuck him there, although I’ve thought about it, but it gets really hot inside.
Carpenter bees bore into the old wood, hover around us, suspicious.
Sweat shines on his upper lip and makes my shirt cling to my back as we move around.
Sometimes we talk and sometimes we don’t.
Sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t.
Sometimes we pick up things we find and show the other one.
None of it is that interesting. Except the wooden squirrel.
I was able to twist the nail out of its eye.
Paul puts it on top of a high shelf that looks like it used to hold tins of crackers.
We only think so because we found one, empty, in the corner.
And so the wooden squirrel watches us, with its one “good” eye, a witness as we pass each other, hands brushing, not accidentally.
We pick up all the bottle caps and create a mound of them on the countertop. It isn’t intentional. It’s something to do, and maybe a way to show respect. Make the floor not so cluttered.
In the middle of all that, I start to wonder what he does all day.
When I’m gone and his aunt is gone. He told me before that he reads, but that can’t be all he does.
I find myself looking at the clock in the garage and wondering what he’s doing that very minute.
Some evenings he’s wandering over before I’m even off my bike.
It must be dull. I don’t know how he stands it, but I’m curious, so I ask him one day.
He’s lying in the grass in the lot behind the abandoned store. Lying as if he’s going to make a snow angel. I sit next to him, tuck a cigarette behind one ear, then light another.
“I already told you,” he says, clouds reflecting off his glasses. “You asked me before. Remember?”
“Sure,” I say. “But there’s more to it than that, right?”
“I guess. But not really.”
I flick ash off my cigarette. “Do you eat? Watch the television? Listen to the radio?”
He sits up on his elbows. “Why do you want to know?” There’s a hint of a smile on his face, shy and tentative.
“I just do.”
“It’s boring. I don’t do anything.”
“I bet it’s not boring.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” he picks some grass off his shirt, “I have breakfast with my aunt. I clean it up for her after she leaves. Sometimes I go back to sleep. Sometimes I watch the soaps even though they’re dumb.” He glances over at me. “Bored yet?”
“Nah.”
He lies back down, flat. “I try to keep up with things for her, you know, like the dishes. Make the beds. It’s the least I can do, I guess.” He glances over at me again. “Now you’re really bored.”
I take a drag, exhale. “Sounds like it’s good you’re there for her.”
He chews on his lip. “I don’t really ever think about it that way. She took me in. And she can make me leave anytime she wants.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
He shrugs and there’s that pain between us again.
That tender spot being pressed, sore and bruised.
A guy his age couldn’t possibly be content staying with his old maid aunt for long.
I know I wouldn’t. Sooner or later, he’s going to itch and the urge to scratch will become unbearable. And what then?
This was a stupid thing to do.
And you know what’s really stupid? When I notice he’s got grass in his hair, I lean over to brush it away, unthinking. I don’t even look around to make sure. And he grabs my hand, also unthinking, slides his fingers through mine.