7. Tom
— ? —
Tom
I can’t sleep.
Her hand is still in mine, small and cold. She runs cold all the time, I’ve noticed. Her breathing has finally evened out into rest, but my eyes stay open, fixed on the ceiling.
I know she’s faking the amnesia. I knew it the second I walked into that hospital room and saw how she looked at Ulises. Not confused, afraid, the exact fear that comes from knowing what a man can do.
So I should be the good guy here. The rescuer. The one who asks nothing and gives her room to heal.
The trouble is I’ve wanted her since a dinner three years ago.
A green dress and a real laugh and a joke about the crab cakes looking like they died unhappy, and the look Ulises shot me across the table that said mine, back off.
I backed off. I always backed off with him.
And I spent the rest of that night watching her smile die every time he touched her shoulder, thinking the one thought a man should never think about his brother’s wife.
She’s married to the wrong brother.
Now she’s in my bed, and the thought has teeth.
She shifts in her sleep, turning toward me, and a strand of hair falls across her face. I lift my free hand before I’ve decided to. I’m going to tuck it back, that’s all, the way you would for anyone.
I stop with my fingers an inch from her cheek.
Don’t. She’s hurt. She’s scared. She doesn’t need another man in the dark who wants more than he should.
I hold there, hand suspended, arguing with myself.
Her eyes open.
She doesn’t startle. She just looks at me, steady, my hand frozen between us where there’s no innocent way to explain it. The pale light is on her face and on mine and neither of us moves.
“You’re awake,” I say. Stupid. Obvious.
“So are you.” Her voice is rough with sleep. Her eyes drop to my hand, still hanging in the air, then come back to my face. “You were going to do something.”
“Fix your hair.” It comes out lower than I mean it to. “It was in your face.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t look away. She doesn’t tell me to. “Then fix it.”
For a long moment I don’t move, because the second I touch her I’m not sure I’ll remember all my good intentions. Then I tuck the strand behind her ear, slow, and make my hand fall back to the blanket before it can decide to stay.
She watches me do it. She watches me take my hand back. And a look I can’t read moves across her face, gone before I can name it.
“Goodnight, Tom,” she says softly.
“Goodnight.”
She closes her eyes. Her grip on my hand tightens, not loosens, and she falls back toward sleep holding on.
I lie there in the dark and make myself two promises. The first one is clean and certain. I won’t push. I won’t ask. I won’t take anything she doesn’t freely give.
The second one I don’t let myself finish. But it’s there, quieter and worse, and it has to do with the way she said then fix it and didn’t move away.
Somewhere outside, an owl calls. I close my eyes.
I don’t sleep.