Chapter 29 — ZAY #2
“Hi.” The word sits between us lighter than it’s ever sat. Easier than the night of the reckoning, when the smallness of it was the first thing that felt easy in weeks. Easier than I knew a word could be.
From the living room, Parker chirps once, a sound that communicates she has assessed the emotional temperature of the apartment and is ready for the humans to resume activities that involve her.
“Bedroom?” Teo says against my mouth.
“We just left the bedroom.”
“And now we’re going back. The morning is circular.”
“That’s not how mornings work.”
“It is when I’m in charge of the morning.”
Parker watches us pass through the living room with the composed assessment of a creature who has observed this particular migration before and has already reclaimed the warm spots on the bed we’re about to reclaim from her.
“Out,” Teo says from the doorway.
She blinks. Stretches one paw forward. Begins what will be an unhurried departure.
“Parker.”
She takes her time. Crosses the bed at a pace that makes her position on the matter very clear, drops off the far end, and exits with the dignity of a cat who is leaving because she has decided to, not because anyone suggested it.
Teo pulls me down onto the bed. His hands push my sweats off and I kick them free and his mouth is on my stomach and I lie back and let the morning hold us.
“I have a theory,” he says against my skin.
“No.”
“About mornings.”
“Your last theory was about Tuesdays. You never finished it.”
“This is related research. A continuation of the Tuesday thesis.” His mouth moves lower, his breath warm on my hip. “Mornings are underrated for the same reason. No pressure. No expectations. Whatever happens on a Wednesday morning is pure.”
“Is it Wednesday?”
“I have no idea. That’s the point.” He wraps his hand around me and holds, the heat of his palm, the sure weight of his grip. “Good?”
“You know it’s good.”
“I do. But I appreciate the data.” He strokes me slow, his thumb dragging through the wetness at the head, and my head drops back and I feel the warmth of his hand and the warmth of the morning and the ease of being touched by a person who is in no hurry because there’s nowhere either of us has to go.
“Rating?” he asks, because the man will never stop being the man who rates things, and the consistency of that, the reliable absurdity of being asked for a score while his hand is on my cock, makes me laugh. The full one. The one Guy says changes my whole face.
“I’m not rating this.”
“Just a preliminary score.”
“Nine.”
His grin splits wide open. “Opening bid of nine. Very generous.”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.” He takes me in his mouth and the laugh catches in my throat and becomes a sound with no humor in it at all.
Just heat and the slow sure work of his mouth and the full focus of a man who has never been less than wholehearted about anything he’s ever done, applying that same attention to the task of taking me apart on a morning that doesn’t have a name for itself yet.
He pulls off. Kisses back up my chest. Settles over me, skin to skin, his weight warm and known.
“Come here,” I say, and pull him down. His cock hard against mine and I roll my hips and his breath goes short against my neck. I reach for the nightstand. His hand covers mine. We slick ourselves together and I wrap my hand around both of us and stroke slow, his forehead against mine.
“Stay with me,” he says. The same words from months ago. But the weight is different. Not a plea. Not asking me to hold on. Just telling me where he is. Staying.
My hand works us together. His fingers find my jaw, his thumb along my cheekbone, and he looks at me with his eyes open and I look back. Two men in a bed with nothing between their faces except the air and the fact that neither of them is going anywhere.
“Close,” he says, his voice breaking.
“Me too.” I tighten my grip and his hand covers mine and we move together and his breathing fractures and my breathing fractures and I come with his face against mine, quiet and warm and slow, the wave rolling through me without urgency.
He follows, his body shuddering, a small sound pressed into my neck that has my name in it.
We breathe. His weight settles. My hand on his back, feeling his ribs slow.
From the hallway, Parker’s measured approach, the sound of a creature whose absence from the bed has exceeded her personal tolerance.
She jumps up. Walks the full length. Settles between our feet with the absolute certainty of a cat who has never asked permission and never will.
“She came back,” he says against my shoulder.
“She always comes back.”
His arm tightens around me. The quiet settles. The coffee is cold on the counter and neither of us moves to fix it.
“Summer,” he says. Half into my shoulder. “You and me and Parker in this apartment with the windows open and nowhere to be until September.”
“That’s four months.”
“Five. Playoffs go to June if we’re lucky.”
“And then.”
“And then summer. And then September. And then all of it again.” His hand finds mine on his chest and holds. “I’m not going anywhere, Zay.”
I press my mouth to the top of his head. He doesn’t need me to say it back. I said it in a kitchen over biscotti that cracked on the edges, and that’s enough, and the fact that it’s enough is the whole point.
“Zee and Tee,” he says.
My hand stills in his hair.
“You hear that?” He lifts his head. Looks at me. His face is open and wrecked and happy and the grin underneath it is the grin from a club bathroom seven months ago, the one that took up his whole face, the one I walked away from and told myself was finished. “The universe did that on purpose.”
My chest fills with a thing I don’t have a word for.
A large, unnamed pressure behind my ribs that pushes against the inside of me like it needs more room than my body has.
Seven months. A dance floor and a bathroom and a name I gave myself so I wouldn’t have to give my real one.
And this man kept the name. Carried it through a treatment room and a secret and a reckoning and the silence that came after and the staying that came after that, and he’s saying it now in a bed where the door is just a door and the morning is just a morning and neither of us is walking away.
“That’s alphabet phonics,” I tell him, and my voice is rough and my eyes are burning and I’m smiling.
“That’s fate.” He presses his mouth to my chest. “And you are not going to ruin it for me with logic.”
He lifts his head. Looks at me. His face is open and stripped and carrying nothing except what he’s about to say.
“I love you.” No grin underneath it. No rating attached. No follow-up sentence turning it into a bit. Just Teo, in my bed, saying three words like they’re the quietest thing he’s ever said and the loudest thing he’s ever meant.
My hand stills in his hair. My breathing stops for a full beat.
Then my arm tightens around him and I press my mouth against the top of his head and I don’t say anything, because he already heard mine inside a sentence about patience and now I’ve heard his inside nothing at all, and the nothing is what makes it land.
His arms tighten. My hand comes back to his hair, moving through the thick curls that have never once done what he wanted them to. Parker purring between our feet. The morning light through the windows, warm and direct and arriving the way Atlanta arrives at everything in April, without apology.
The apartment settles. Bolognese bowls on the counter.
Biscotti on the cutting board, cracked and imperfect and there.
Nonna’s recipe on the cabinet. The playlist from last night silent on his phone.
His chest rising and falling under my hand, his breathing going slow and even, his arm heavy across me with the weight of a man who has fallen back asleep because the morning has no agenda and neither does he.
I close my eyes. His heartbeat under my palm.
Parker’s purr at our feet. My shoes by the door next to his, paired, angled, in the spot the floor learned because I kept showing up.
I’m staying. The morning is ordinary. The ordinary holds everything.
?