13. Blue
blue
When the sun went down, the sky outside the windows went black, speckled with stars that blinked and danced in the icy air.
It felt like it’d gotten even colder, in spite of the fire Wolfe had built and kept feeding strips of wood into.
I sat across from it, on the couch, feet crossed beneath me, leaning forward as though my body wanted me to roll in the flames to warm myself.
“It’s nearly forty below out there,” Wolfe said. Hunkered in front of the fire, he stared at it for a long moment, looking over his shoulder at me from time to time, sensing me there. “I’ll wash up,” he said. “Then you can. We each get a gallon of water.”
Wolfe heated up his gallon of water in a regular-sized pot, the kind you might cook spaghetti in. He poured this into a blue rubber bucket and took it into the bathroom with him. I imagined he’d bathe in the tub, standing up, using the water and soap where he needed it.
I’d flip through one of his books. I’d wait my turn. Only the light above the stove was on. The kitchen light was off and, as I discovered, the bathroom door was halfway open.
Normally, Wolfe took a shower in the evenings, with the door closed, opening it afterward to vent the damp air.
Even if it had been opened, the shower curtain would have been drawn.
But with the kind of bath he was taking, there was no need to draw the curtain, because there wasn’t that much water to splash around.
Through the opening of the door, I could see half of him, the front of him, the curve of chest muscle, the dark hair curling along the length of his legs.
The side of him, when he turned, flank sleek with just the hint of water, the slide of soap.
The dark swirl of hair at his groin, the juncture of his thighs, the hint of softer flesh when he put his foot on the side of the tub to wash there.
Blinking, I looked away. I should tell him. Let him know. Get up and close the door at the very least. He might be embarrassed that I’d seen him naked, even though shame didn’t seem to be Wolfe’s style.
He made a grunting sound. When I looked, he picked the bucket up and, with a sigh, dumped it over his head to rinse himself. Water sluiced down his body, shiny against his skin, leaving flecks of silver in his chest hair, his groin hair.
It was too late to tell him. Too late to jump up and be a good guest, the kind that would close the door, rather than the kind to spy on him, like I was.
I watched him dry himself off. He ran the towel down his arms, across his chest, between his legs, and I was flushed all over, even as I tried to focus on the book in my hands: The Civil War: An Illustrated History.
The air in my throat rasped, and I could feel the beats of my heart beneath my skin as my groin tightened.
I shifted in my seat, rolling my hips back to ease that feeling, something I could not recall feeling before.
Because, of course, I couldn’t. Every sensation was new, every act, every waking moment. All of them connected to Wolfe.
I watched him dress. Sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. Thick socks. He came out of the bathroom, stopping for a moment in the half-open doorway, his hands up as though he meant to comb through his dark hair with his fingers. Then he looked up, paused, and saw me there.
I saw in his eyes that he was putting it together. That I’d invaded his privacy, or he’d let me invade his privacy, and either might be very telling, were he to put words to the question: were you watching me?
Unable to look away, I was also unable to respond to the unspoken request. The truth was plain. I felt the heat in my face, the flush along the back of my neck. I liked men; that much was obvious.
Maybe I’d already known that. Certainly, I liked Wolfe. My body did. It was doing a slow dance on the couch, leaning into his gaze, my mouth open in hushed panting sounds that only I could hear. Snapping my attention back to the book, I said, “I didn’t know you were into the Civil War.”
“I’m not really,” he said, coming over to me, crossing the short distance between bathroom and couch, and if his voice went deep, there were only my ears to hear.
“There was a church bazaar where you could bid on a blind book box. The local Grange burned down a few years back; they’re still trying to raise money to replace it. ”
“Is that what the lanyards and keychains are for?” I asked, tipping my head way back to look up at him.
He was so close; his face was in shadow, the overhead light making a cape of darkness so that I couldn’t see his expression.
He smelled like soap and snow, bright and crisp beneath the scent of his skin.
“Yes,” he said, and then he shifted away with a last glance at the book in my lap. “Partly for the Grange and partly for me.”
“More exposure,” I said, as though I were very much experienced in the world of cottage craft and knew all about it.
“And profits to buy more supplies,” he said. Then, with a sigh, he said, “I could use something sweet. Would you like to wash up, and then we can treat ourselves to a donut, maybe with hot tea?”
If he was trying to give me a moment to collect myself, he was doing a very good job. He had no tells, not that I could see, but perhaps he was the kind of man you’d have to know a million years to discover all of him. A little bit of inscrutable beneath the friendliness.
As I put the book to one side and got off the couch, my only question was whether I would leave the door open while I took my standing bath.
I wanted to. Wanted to see the light in his eyes, the glitter of appraisal that might let me know that, in spite of the fact that I was skin and bones and scars, he might want to look again and let his gaze linger.
Shaking myself, I moved past him to the stove and did what he’d done, which was to measure out a gallon of water and heat it before pouring it into the blue plastic bucket.
“There’s plenty of soap and washcloths and towels,” he said, as if I didn’t already know this.
As I went into the bathroom, he closed the door firmly behind me. So he knew I’d seen him, and wasn’t going to say anything about it. Wasn’t going to repeat the event, not for either of us. Or maybe that was all in my head.
I washed up, being sparing with the water, using the warm cloth in places that needed it. Then, with a grunt that echoed Wolfe’s, I picked up the bucket and poured the contents over my head.
All the water splashed in the tub; no need for a curtain. But a need for a door so he couldn’t see me and I couldn’t see him as I stood there shivering, buffing myself down, pressing the heel of my hand to my crotch in an effort to get my cock to lay down and behave.
Since I’d been here, everything in my system had been shut down, and now it felt like it was gearing up. For what? For what it wanted. In preparation for when looking became action, perhaps, action I couldn’t define because it had never happened to me before. Not that I remembered.
Surely someone had touched me. Surely someone had wanted me enough. Surely I’d touched myself. But it was too cold to linger, and besides, Wolfe was waiting. He wanted something sweet, and he was polite enough to delay until I could join him.
When I stepped out of the warm fug of the bathroom, leaving the door open, he’d already boiled the water and the cherry red teapot was on the counter.
I paused, watching him put hot water in the teapot, swirl it around, and then dump it out, the way he usually did.
We were short on drinkable water, and yet, to him this was important enough that he wasn’t counting the cost. In went more hot water, and the five tea bags. Another thing he never stinted on.
“I’ll get the donuts,” I said, moving to help rather than to stare, gawping like I didn’t know any better manners.
He’d put all the donuts in a gallon plastic bag to keep them from drying out.
I put two on a small plate and put that on a table.
Sitting down, I felt like the slacker that I was as I watched him pour the brewed tea into two white china mugs.
“Sugar and milk,” he said, putting the gallon jug of milk on the table, and the sugar bowl. “Plenty of both.”
Did it help to have moments that felt normal, both of us drinking tea and munching on a dense and lovely cake donut?
Or was this feeling shaken by the fact that he wasn’t looking at me, and I was avoiding his gaze?
Which was my fault. Hopefully by tomorrow, time would have righted us to our normal selves.
And hopefully time would give me myself back, turning flickers of memory into something solid, a timeline I could follow as to where I’d been going when Wolfe found me.
Wolfe’s phone pinged. He got up to grab it from the counter and frowned at it as he sat down.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s another blizzard coming. Saturday.” He thumbed the phone and put it face down on the table. “We’re already ready, so we’ll weather the storm.”
My fingers itched to see the phone. My brain agreed and told me we could scroll and play solitaire or Angry Birds and shut out the rest of the world and forget the things said to us.
What things? I didn’t know, but they were there, those words, shouted at the back of my head, like a film that was being projected but on the wrong screen. Not one I could see.
We finished our donuts and tea. Wolfe cleaned up while I pretended to help, and as I walked back into the living room area, I said, “I just realized you don’t have a TV.”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“No Netflix,” I said. “That’s a thing, right? Netflix? Movies and stuff?”
“It is.” Wolfe wiped his hands on a towel, then laid the towel on top of the few dishes stacked there, waiting to be washed with hot water and soap in the morning. “But I don’t see the need for it. I have my work and books and rest.”
That was all he had, living off by himself, with nobody to talk to, nobody to break the silence with. My throat closed up, and I had to blink away the sudden heat in my eyes.
“What?” he asked, looking at me. “Are you okay?”
“It seems lonely,” I said. “Living this way.” Which was odd because I did not know any other way to live, so how would I know?
“It’s better than the alternative,” he said in a steady way, not breaking his gaze.
“What’s the alternative?” I asked. I had no idea what it could be.
Instead of answering, he shook his head and went to the fire to kneel down and bank it.
He’d done that every night, but it was only this time I had my full awareness of what was going on around me, what had happened in the days leading up to this one.
Wolfe’s rhythm, slow and steady in his isolation, walking toward his own goal.
Walking away from an alternative he did not want to talk about.
I would honor his unspoken request because I owed him that much, at least, and most definitely more.
But while his back was turned to me as he shifted logs and scraped ash with a short-handled shovel, I traced the line of his broad shoulders, the heft of his thighs, the way he braced his hips.
The shine of low firelight on his dark hair.
Still, I touched him with my eyes in a way that would have been invasive had I acted on what my body wanted. When he stood up, a graceful movement, I looked away, maybe trying to get my bearings, and then looked at him.
“Can I sleep with you in the bed again?” I asked. Then stammered a reason, “It’s really cold.”
It was not the real reason. It was part of it. But it was not all of it. Maybe my expression or the way I’d said it clued him into this duplicity because there was a long moment before he answered.
“Yes,” he said. “No point forcing you to sleep on a lumpy couch.”
There weren’t enough lanyards in the world for me to make it up to this kind-hearted man.