9. Soyer and Amory Chat About the Subway
Soyer and Amory Chat About the Subway
soyer
T he credits of the latest episode of that show Amory and I’d been watching on my laptop flashed over the screen. He’d been using me as a pillow, but now he stretched. I hit the pause button on the auto play because he stretched in a way that told me he needed a break.
“Hey, will you tell me something?” he asked, turning his head so that I could have kissed him with minimal effort.
“Something,” I told him.
That had him smile at me, the best sight in the world. Or second best, given that I’d seen him in bed.
“Very funny. I have an actual question.”
“Ah. Then what you meant to ask was whether I would answer it,” I said and shut the laptop. If I got lucky, this would lead to making out, possibly sex. Okay if it didn’t, but I could fuck. And I pretty much always could these days. Who knew love could work such wonders for someone’s libido?
“Would you?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Probably.”
Amory leaned into me harder, and I slid backward against my couch. He slid with me. “I’ve been wondering. What you thought, back on the subway?”
Huh. Just when I thought I’d figured out what was going on in that pretty head, he said stuff like that.
“On the subway?” I tried sounding innocent.
Which he didn’t fall for. He slapped my chest with his palm and accidentally found my solar plexus. It made me smile.
“You know what I mean. When we first met. Well, when you died that time.”
I furrowed my brow as if I had to think really hard about it. “Riiiight. I recall, very faintly. The subway.”
The fingers of my right hand tangled in his hair, caressing, but my Amory was oblivious. “Right, the subway. So what did you think? When, you know. Those guys…you know.”
I hugged him closer with my other arm, resigning to simply lying here with him. “Stop thinking about them, my heart. Back then, I didn’t really think all that much. You looked…out of place. But you came over to hold my hand. That’s what mattered. That’s what stands out to me.”
He pondered that. For a long time. At one point, possibly not too far from today, Amory would be able to read me. I knew this because I knew that a part of me wanted him to, and subconscious desires were a bitch like that.
When that day came, he’d be able to call me on my bullshit, but it wasn’t today, and in the end, he said, “Okay.”
“You sound disappointed, my heart. Fine. I saw you, and—boom! Love at first sight. You were the one for me.”
He slapped my chest again, not coming close to the solar plexus this time, but instead stretching his neck. “You know, you joke. But maybe it was for me. Love at first sight, I mean. I’m not sure, but maybe.”
I’m sure , I wanted to say, but didn’t.
Instead, I said, “I’ll treasure your love, always,” and let my lips meet his.
It was the truth, and he could tell, kissed me like he felt the same.
If he would always feel the same, I dared not hope. I took the now, always. He’d burned the once, and nothing but death made you quite as focused on the now, made you cherish it as much.
“I love you,” he whispered, and in a whisper I returned it, and held him just like he did me.