Chapter 28 #2
“You fell asleep talking about bloodwork. For the record, I found that charming, because only Peter Loupier could follow sex with an elephant diagnostics and make both feel equally important.”
“Both are equally important.”
“I know. That’s why it’s charming.”
He was quiet for a moment.
His hand moved across my chest, his thumb tracing a line along my collarbone that sent information directly to every nerve ending in my body while bypassing my brain entirely.
“This is new,” he said.
“This is new.”
“I haven’t woken up next to someone in two years.”
“Thought so.” I hesitated because, well, I don’t know why. Then I said, “Me either.”
“It’s . . . Wait, you either? You haven’t slept with anyone in two years?”
I could practically feel his surprise through our conjoined forehead-neck situation.
“Nope. Not one. The gays are horndogs, but the whole Asian wrapper doesn’t do it for most of them.”
He didn’t speak for what felt like forever.
“Sorry. That’s . . . terrible. I think you’re very attractive, color-changing hair and all.”
I grinned, though he couldn’t see it. That was basically the Peter version of, “You’re the hottest man on Earth. Henry Cavill, step aside. You’re a Hollywood Hot ten out of ten, my little egg roll muffin batter Twinkie cake.”
Okay, I may have embellished.
Still, it was a huge statement in Peter speak, and I couldn’t come up with a single reply.
“It’s not as difficult as I expected,” he said. When his words registered, I let out an involuntary snort.
“What?” he asked into my neck.
“That’s the most Peter Loupier compliment I’ve ever received. ‘Waking up next to you is not as difficult as I expected.’ I’m going to needlepoint that on a pillow.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.”
“I meant that I expected my body to resist, the way it’s been resisting everything. Every time someone got too close, there was a flinch. I expected to wake up this morning and feel the flinch.”
“And?”
“And there’s no flinch, not even a flicker.”
I rolled over, carefully, so as not to disturb the hand on my chest or the cat at the foot of the bed.
I turned until I was facing him. His hand adjusted, sliding from my chest to the small of my back.
We were close enough that I could see the sleep creases on his cheek and the softness of his eyes without their usual defenses.
“Hi,” I said again.
“You said that already.”
“I’m saying it again because the first time I was facing the wrong direction. I wanted to say it to your face.”
“Hi.”
“There it is.”
He almost smiled.
“General Tso is on the bed,” I said.
Peter turned his head and observed the cat. His eyes narrowed.
“He doesn’t sleep on the bed,” Peter said.
“He’s sleeping on the bed right now.”
“He’s never slept on the bed, not once.”
“He jumped up during the night, walked across my legs, found a spot, and started purring. I think he approved.”
“He got cold. The temperature dropped. This is thermoregulation.”
“This is approval, Peter. This is a twenty-pound cat who has spent three months pretending I don’t exist before deciding that my presence in your bed is acceptable. This is the feline equivalent of a blessing.”
“Cats aren’t priests. They don’t give blessings.”
“General Tso is a spiritual authority in this apartment. His presence on this bed is a sacrament, and I will not be talked out of this.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You like impossible. You chose impossible. You lay naked on a couch for impossible.”
The color that rose along his neck was the most satisfying thing I’d ever produced in another human being.
“We’re not going to discuss the couch,” he said.
“Oh, we are going to discuss the couch extensively. You were naked on a couch, Peter.”
“I’m aware.”
“With General Tso behind your head.”
“I told him to leave.”
“And your glasses on.”
“The glasses were a tactical decision.”
“The glasses were adorable. You planned a nude romantic ambush and kept your glasses on because you wanted to see my face.”
“I wanted to see your face. That’s accurate. Can we stop talking about the couch?”
“We can pause, but the couch discussion has no expiration date. It’s like bomb shelter food.
It will never go bad. I’m also going to need, at some point, a full accounting of the thought process that led you to fold your boxers before placing them on the chair.
You folded your boxers, Peter. You were about to seduce me and you took the time to fold your underwear into a neat square. ”
“Clothes should be folded.”
“Even pre-seduction underclothes?”
“All clothes were created equal and have the unalienable right to a proper folding.”
A laugh burst out of me so suddenly that Peter’s whole body flinched.
“You folded your underwear and stacked them neatly. I’m fairly certain you aligned the edges. I saw the stack. The stack had military corners, like a bunk in a barracks, except only the ball-holding cloth and not the whole bed.”
“Most people’s clothes end up on the floor. That’s inefficient. If I’d thrown them on the floor, I would have had to pick them up later, which would have disrupted the post-encounter period.”
“Post-encounter period?” I snorted. “You were thinking about the post-encounter period while getting undressed for seduction.”
“I always think ahead. You know this.”
“I do know this, and I need you to know that the folding was the single most attractive thing I’ve ever witnessed.
More than the couch or the glasses, the folding.
I saw that little stack of squared-off clothes on the chair and I thought, This man took his clothes off for me and made them into a display case, and I almost passed out. ”
“You didn’t almost pass out.”
“You’re right. I almost died. The folding nearly killed me. I was holding a stuffed manatee and looking at your folded boxers and contemplating my own mortality.”
He pulled me closer.
His confidence was new.
It was the confidence of a man who had survived vulnerability and was learning that the walls didn’t need to go back up immediately.
“Coffee,” he said, after I kissed him and pulled back.
“God, yes. All the coffee.”
“I’ll make it.”
“I’ll make it. You made it yesterday.”
“You don’t make it correctly,” he said.
“I make it differently.”
“You overfill the French press.” He pursed his lips. “The ratio is four tablespoons per—”
“Peter, stay in bed. I’ll make the coffee. It will be slightly different from your coffee, but like Gloria Gaynor, you will survive.”
“Four tablespoons,” he said.
“I know.”
“Per twenty-four ounces.”
“I know.”
“And the water should be just off boiling. Not—”
“Peter.”
“Stopping.”
I got out of bed, then found my boxers on the floor beside the dresser and my shirt in the hallway, which made the color rise in my neck because I wasn’t used to leaving a trail throughout a home.
The stove light was still on.
The Post-it notes were on the fridge.
The whiteboard was on the wall.
Everything was exactly where Peter had placed it.
But the light hit differently, the air held differently, and the hallway felt shorter, as if the apartment had contracted overnight, pulling its rooms closer together and making the distance between his life and mine something we could cross in a few steps rather than a journey requiring months of cross-country traveling.
I made the coffee. Four tablespoons. Water just off boiling.
I pulled two non-blue mugs from the cabinet.
“Use the blue one.” It was Peter’s voice, from the bedroom doorway, where he stood stark naked, his glasses halfway down his nose, and a yawn parting his lips. Hiro sat at his feet. His face was quiet and serious and carried something underneath.
“The blue one?” I asked, because in the quarter year we’d lived together, no one—not even Peter—had used the blue mug.
“The blue mug. Use it, please.”
It was David’s mug, the mug whose handle always faced right, whose position was non-negotiable, whose existence was less that of a kitchen item and more of a sacred object.
“Peter,” I said, my voice catching.
“It’s a mug. It holds coffee. I’d like you to use it.”
“It’s not just a mug.”
“I know that.” He stepped from the doorway, around Hiro, to lean against the kitchen entrance. “That’s why I’m asking you to use it.”
I stood there with the French press in one hand and suddenly understood what was being offered.
It wasn’t the mug.
It was the space the mug occupied.
With it came entry into the innermost ring of Peter’s life, where the things that mattered most were kept and protected and never shared with anyone else.
He was sharing it.
I took the blue mug from the shelf, poured the coffee, and held it in both hands.
I felt the coffee’s warmth through the ceramic and thought about a man in Portland buying a blue mug on a Tuesday because he knew it would make another man smile.
I thought about that same someone carrying it across a country and through unbearable grief and into a kitchen where it sat for two years waiting for its owner to be ready to let it mean something new.
And I still couldn’t believe I was holding it.
Peter walked to the island and sat on his stool.
I set the blue mug in front of him, poured myself coffee in the not-blue mug, and sat across from him.
“Peter,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“You told me to use the wrong mug.”
He looked up.
“The blue mug,” I said. “You said, ‘Use the blue one.’ I poured your coffee in it and put it in front of you, because the blue mug is your mug. David gave it to you. I’m going to drink from my mug, and you’re going to drink from yours, and David’s mug is going to stay exactly where it’s been, which is in your hands, where he put it. ”
Peter looked at me.
Then at the mug.
Then at me.
“I was trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do, and it’s the most generous thing anyone’s ever offered me; but you don’t have to give up David’s mug to make room for me. There’s plenty of room. There’s been plenty of room. You made room for me months ago, whether we realized it or not.”
He wrapped both hands around the blue mug, with the grip of a man holding something precious and irreplaceable.
“Okay,” he said, and his voice cracked.
“Okay,” I echoed.
“Your coffee is overextracted.”
“My coffee is perfect.”
“You left it in the press too long.”
“Peter.”
“It’s fine. The coffee is fine.”
The morning settled as we drank, General Tso resumed his post on the refrigerator, Potato wheezed on the dog bed, Hiro lay at Peter’s feet, and the apartment held all of us.
The quiet had a different quality now, a fullness, the kind that exists between two people who have stopped circling and started landing.
A Post-it appeared on the fridge that afternoon.
The coffee was overextracted. But the company was perfect.
— P
Below it, in smaller but no less precise writing:
The mug stays with me, but you stay, too.