29. Nolan
NOLAN
We do not go to Caleb's apartment right away.
This matters.
The body wants what the body wants, and the body has recently developed a strong opinion about Caleb Wren in rooms with doors that close, but this cannot be fixed by heat first. I know that. He knows that. Knowing is not the same as doing, but today we manage both.
We sit in the film room with the screens dark and the door open.
Not touching.
Not hiding.
The building moves around us. Footsteps in the hall. Dani arguing with someone about clip tags. A cart rolling past. A distant laugh from the locker room. The world refusing to stop because two men in a dark room have finally decided to stop punishing each other for being afraid.
Caleb tells me the outlet is stalled. Legal demanded evidence.
The photo is grainy. The source used enough language to sound close to the recusal and not enough to prove anything.
HR is auditing access. Alderman is furious in a way Caleb describes as quiet, which is the only kind of furious Alderman does.
"It may still come back," Caleb says.
"I know."
"If it does, we handle it."
We.
The word is not a plan. It is better.
"No statement today," I say.
He looks at me.
"I don't want to speak because they scared me into it," I say. "I want to speak when it's mine again."
His face softens. "Good."
"After the season."
"After the season."
The statement still exists. The date still does not. For the first time, that feels less like delay and more like choice.
I text Dana.
I apologized.
Her reply comes before I can put the phone away.
Did you do it badly?
I look at Caleb. "My sister wants to know if I apologized badly."
"Did you?"
"Probably."
"I accepted."
I type:
Professionally.
Dana:
Gross. Proud of you.
I do not tell her not to say proud this time.
At Caleb's apartment, the door closes behind us and I do not flinch.
Progress is humiliatingly specific.
We stand in the entryway for a second. Shoes by the door. Clementines in the bowl. Kitchen light on. The room is the same as it was before everything broke, which should be impossible and is somehow the point. Rooms do not save you. They wait to see who you are when you come back.
"Water?" Caleb asks.
The first night, he asked that and sounded like a hotel check-in.
Tonight he sounds like a man offering water.
"Yes."
He brings me a glass. I drink half of it. Set it down.
Then I take his face in both hands.
He goes very still.
"Nolan."
"I don't want to leave my body alone with this either," I say.
His eyes change.
"This is not like last night," I say.
"No."
"I am not trying to outrun it."
"Okay."
"I want you."
His breath catches. "Okay."
"And I want to stay after."
The catch becomes something else.
There are sentences more intimate than touch. This is one of them.
He kisses me first.
Not hard. Not careful. Both. His hands come to my wrists, holding me holding him, and for a long moment we stand in the entryway kissing like we have nowhere to be and nothing to prove and every reason to take our time.
In the bedroom, the light stays on.
This matters too.
Not bright. Lamp on the dresser. Warm light. Enough to see him. Enough to be seen.
Caleb undresses me slowly, not because I am breakable and not because grief requires ceremony, but because there is no hurry.
I undress him with hands that know more than they did the first time in this room.
The scar on his hip from college hockey.
The place behind his ribs that makes him inhale sharply.
The way he tilts his head when I say his name and mean it as a promise rather than a handhold.
"Caleb."
He closes his eyes.
"Look at me," I say.
His eyes open.
There. My words. My choice.
The sex is quiet.
Not silent.
Quiet.
There is a difference. Silent is control. Quiet is trust.
He touches me like he believes the body he is touching has a future even if the jersey does not.
I let him. I tell him when the hip wants a different angle and he adjusts without apology.
I tell him when something feels good and the words come out blunt, almost embarrassed, and he rewards each one with his mouth or his hand or the steady press of his body against mine until language becomes less embarrassing than withholding it.
I look at him the whole time.
Not perfectly. There are moments when pleasure closes my eyes before I can stop it, moments when the body goes inward because the body is allowed to have its own weather. But I come back. Every time, I come back to his face.
The last time, he is above me with one hand locked in mine and the other braced beside my head, and I can see the exact second he stops trying to be careful enough to earn staying and lets himself believe he already has.
"I love you," I say.
His face breaks.
Mine does too.
When I come, I do not bury the sound. It is not loud the way the world is loud, but it is not swallowed, not hidden in his shoulder or behind my teeth. It leaves me and stays in the room and nothing terrible happens because of it.
Caleb follows with his forehead against mine, my name in his mouth, his whole body shaking once before he lets his weight settle where it is safe to settle.
After, I cry.
Not from pain.
Not from grief.
From the enormous, precise relief of being fully known and still held.
The crying is not silent.
It starts quiet because old habits have strong legs, but then Caleb puts his arms around me and says, "I've got you," and something in me believes him before the rest can stop it. The sound that comes out of me is rough and broken and too loud for the room I used to live in.
Caleb holds me through it.
The holding is the climax.
The rest is aftermath. Warm skin. Damp face. His hand in my hair. The lamp still on. My phone somewhere in the other room, ignored. The world still uncertain beyond the door.
I sleep on the right side of the bed because Caleb sleeps on the left and because apparently the world contains more than one side that can be mine.
In the morning, the other pillow is destroyed.
Good.