Page 82 of After His Eulogy
“It does.”
“That’s a long time.”
“It is.”
I look at him.
“Bed,” I say.
“Bed.”
He smiles. He pulls me by the hand, out of the kitchen, down the hall, into the bedroom.
The bedroom is at the back of the house and has the same view of the maple. The bed is a queen, bigger than his old one. The sheets are white. The lamp on his side is brass; mine is ceramic. We got them at the thrift store on different weeks and we’re letting them be different.
He pulls his shirt off. He’s wearing the gray sweatshirt I bought him three weeks ago at the thrift store, because once, in another life, he’d had one I’d taken as mine, and neither of us got to bring that one. So I bought him another. He hasn’t asked why this one. I pull mine off. We do this without ceremony. The bodies we have are bodies the other person has known foralmost ten years, with two years of separation in the middle, and the separation made the bodies a little more vivid to each other than they were. He undoes my belt. I undo his.
We get on the bed. I’m on my back. He’s over me.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“Adam.”
“Yeah.”
“You called yourself Adam.”
“I did.”
“You don’t usually.”
“I was telling you it was me.”
“I know it’s you.”
“I know you know.”
I look at him.
“Hi, Adam.”
“Hi, Tomas.”
He bends down and kisses me.
His hand goes to my hip the way it has since we were twenty-one. His thumb finds the tattoo. He doesn’t have to look. He’s known where it is since the night he asked for it, the week before we left. We’d gone the next afternoon to a small shop on a side street, and he’d gotten his while I got mine in the chair next to him.
He runs his thumb over the letters. R-E-E-C-E. Plain font, black ink, two inches above the bone of my hip. In this room, with him over me, his hand is on it now.
“Hi, Reece,” he says, against my mouth.
“Hi.”
I find his hip with my hand. G-R-I-F-F-I-N. Same plain font. Same black ink. Opposite side, so when we lie together facing each other, mirror to mirror.
“Hi, Griffin,” I say.
