Chapter 9 #2
"Constantly. It's distracting."
"Sorry about my argumentative eyebrows."
"Don't be. I like them."
We're on Madison now, the neighborhood changing.
Quieter, less maintained, the streetlights fewer.
Haven House is two blocks ahead. The walk is familiar, the route I take every night, but walking it with Silas next to me changes the geography.
Makes it feel less like a trudge toward necessity and more like a walk with someone who chose to be here.
"So," I say. "Italian place on Pine. What's it called?"
"Lucia's. Small, quiet, good pasta. Jason recommended it."
We're half a block from Haven House. I can see the rainbow flag, the porch light. The place I go every night. The place I'm taking him to see with full daylight still in the sky, no shadows to hide in.
"I should change," I say as we reach Haven House. "The gray henley's clean. It's not fancy but —"
"Dev." He stops walking. Turns to me. "You could show up in a garbage bag and I'd still want to have dinner with you."
"That's sweet but also a low bar."
"You know what I mean."
I do. I look at Haven House, then back at him. "You want to come up? Tyler might be there but he'll leave if I ask. The room's small and messy but —"
"I'll wait down here. Take your time."
Right. Of course. He's not going to come up to my room at the shelter. That's too much, too soon, too —
"Hey." He catches my hand. "It's not that I don't want to. It's that the first time I see your space, I want you to feel good about it. Not rushed before a date."
Oh. That's not rejection. That's thoughtfulness.
"Okay," I say. "Give me twenty minutes."
"I'll be here."
I go inside. Up the stairs. Our room is empty.
Tyler's still at Melissa's, or the warehouse, or somewhere that isn't here.
I change fast. Gray henley, cleanest jeans, the shoes that don't have holes.
Brush my teeth. Try to do something with my hair, which has never cooperated with anything in its life.
Stare at myself in the cracked mirror above the sink.
Twenty-one years old. Living in a youth shelter. Three shirts. One pair of decent shoes. Going on a date with a thirty-two-year-old lion shifter who reads fantasy novels and rides a motorcycle and kisses like he means it.
I look terrified.
I look happy.
I grab my jacket and go back downstairs.
Silas is where I left him, leaning against the wrought-iron fence, reading by the porch light.
He looks up when the door opens and his face softens into that almost-smile I've learned is his version of lighting up.
He sees me and settles, the way I settle when I see him in the library every morning.
"Ready?" he asks.
"Yeah."
But neither of us moves toward downtown. We're standing on the sidewalk outside Haven House, the porch light warm above us, and he's looking at me in the gray henley like I'm wearing something extraordinary.
"Dev."
"Yeah?"
"About last night. At the overlook."
"What about it?"
"I keep thinking about it."
"Me too."
"Not just the — I mean, all of it. But specifically —" He clears his throat. "The kiss."
"Me too." My voice comes out smaller than I intended. "That was my first real kiss. With someone I actually wanted to kiss."
He goes still. "Really?"
"I've kissed people before. But it was always, I don't know. Transactional. Or accidental. Or someone else's idea." I shrug, trying to make it lighter than it feels. "Last night was the first time I wanted it for myself."
His expression shifts. Not pity, not the careful sadness people get when I accidentally reveal too much of my history. Fiercer than that. His hand tightens around mine.
"Can I kiss you again?" he asks.
Here. Outside a youth shelter with a rainbow flag and a porch light and the distant sound of someone's Xbox through the window. Not romantic. Not scenic. Just the place I live and the man I want and the space between us closing.
"Yes," I say.
He pulls me in by our joined hands. His other hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face, and he kisses me like he's been thinking about it all day.
Slow at first, his lips soft, careful, learning me the way he learned me last night.
Then deeper when I make a sound I can't control, a small thing in my throat that makes his grip tighten.
I fist my free hand in his jacket. Pull him closer. He responds, not cautiously this time. His body presses against mine and I step backward until my shoulders hit the brick of the shelter wall and he follows, one hand bracing beside my head, the other still holding my jaw.
"Dev," he breathes against my mouth, and the way he says my name, wrecked, wanting, goes straight through me.
I kiss him harder. He makes a sound, low, almost a growl, something that vibrates in his chest and hums against my lips.
His hips pin mine against the wall and I can feel him, the length of him hard against my thigh, and the knowledge that I'm doing this to him, that this quiet man who reads fantasy novels and drinks his coffee black is hard because of me —
I roll my hips. Instinct, not strategy. He groans, and the sound is so good I do it again, seeking the friction, the pressure, the electric point of contact between us. His hand drops from the wall to my hip, gripping hard, holding me still.
"Wait," he says. "Wait, Dev —"
"Don't stop."
"I need to —" His forehead drops against mine. He's breathing hard. I can feel his heartbeat through his chest, rapid and heavy. "I need to think."
"Don't think. Just —"
"You're twenty-one." He says it like it costs him. Like the words are being dragged out of somewhere he didn't want to go. "You turned twenty-one yesterday."
The heat in my body drops by ten degrees.
"And I'm thirty-two," he continues, "and I have you against a wall and —"
"Don't." My voice comes out flat. The customer service mask. I feel it slide into place, smooth and blank, the face I've been putting on since I was eight years old and learned that showing people what you really feel just gives them something to use against you. "It's fine."
"Dev, that's not what I —"
"I said it's fine." I duck sideways, out from between him and the wall. The evening air hits the places where his body was and I'm cold immediately. Cold and stupid and twenty-one and exactly as young as he thinks I am. "Don't worry about it."
"I'm not — Dev, listen to me —"
"I'll be at Lucia's at seven." My voice is steady, polite, perfectly pleasant. The voice I use when customers complain about their drinks. The voice I use when shelter staff ask if I'm okay. "If you still want to go. If not, that's fine too."
"Of course I still —"
"Okay. Great."
I turn and walk back inside Haven House. The door closes behind me. The porch light stays on.
The common room is loud. Friday always is.
Xbox argument, someone's music too loud, two kids playing cards on the floor.
I navigate through it like a ghost and climb to the third floor.
Our room. I'm alone with the cracked mirror and the narrow bed and the laundry I folded this morning when I was happy.
I sit on the bed. Stare at the wall. My lips still feel bruised from the kiss and my hip still feels the ghost of his hand and I hate that my body is holding onto something my brain already filed under things that didn't work out.
My phone buzzes.
Silas: I'm sorry. That's not what I meant. Please let me explain.
I read it. Read it again.
Silas: I wasn't pulling away from you. I was pulling away from myself. There's a difference and I did it badly and I'm sorry.
Another one: The date still stands. I'll be at Lucia's at seven. I hope you'll be there.
And then: But if you're not, I understand. And I'll be at the library Monday morning with your coffee either way.
Four messages. I read them all. I don't reply.
It's 6:22. Lucia's is fifteen minutes away. Tyler isn't here to tell me what to wear or to drag me out the door or to say something stupid and right about how I can't hide forever.
I think about Silas's face when he pulled back.
I'd read it as rejection, the age thing, the shelter thing, the not-enough thing, the whole constellation of reasons why someone like him wouldn't want someone like me.
But his face wasn't disgusted or pitying.
It was scared. The way a person looks when they're doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
I was pulling away from myself.
Six homes. Two years of couches. Eight months at Haven House.
I've learned to leave before I'm left. To fold small and walk away and not look back.
It's survival. It works. It's kept me intact through every foster parent who promised this time would be different and every caseworker who said they'd found a permanent placement and every person who got close enough to matter and then didn't.
But Silas didn't leave. He pulled back, from the kiss, from the heat, from the wall and my hips against his and the sound he made when I moved.
He pulled back from that, not from me. And I didn't let him explain the difference because I'm twenty-one years old and I've been leaving people my whole life and it's the only skill I'm truly excellent at.
It's 6:31. Fourteen minutes to Lucia's if I walk fast.
I look at myself in the cracked mirror. Same gray henley. Same face. But the happy is gone.
I look terrified.
I don't look happy.
But I look like someone who's about to do something brave.
I grab my jacket and walk out the door.