Page 84 of After His Eulogy
“What.”
“Nothing. Just — looking.”
“Okay.”
He moves. Slow. His hand on my hip on the tattoo, his thumb on the letters. He moves the way he moves when we have time. I make the sounds and he saysyeahand I say his old name once into his shoulder and he says mine back. We go on like that for a long time — in the white sheets at the back of the house in the town we didn’t choose, with the soup on the stove. He gets a hand between us and strokes me slow.
“Tomas. Reece. Tomas.”
He says them like a list. Like he’s saying both of me at once.
I say, “Adam. Adam. Reed.”
I say all three of him. He laughs into my shoulder. We laugh in bed in the middle of having sex. I hadn’t known we’d have this in this life. We have it.
“All of us,” he says into my neck.
“Yeah,” I say. “All of us.”
He moves harder. I close my eyes. He’s making me come slowly, with intent, the way he’s been making me come for almost ten years. My hand on his hip, my thumb on his letters, his hand on mine, his thumb on mine — we’re holding the names in our hands while he’s fucking me.
“Adam —“
“Yeah.”
“I —“
“Yeah, Reece. Come on.”
I come. Then he does, a few seconds later, his face against my neck, saying my old name into my skin. I have it. I’ll always have it. He collapses, takes his weight on his elbows but lets some of it down. I take it. His face is in my neck and my hand is in his hair and the soup is on the stove and we have an hour and ten minutes left.
After, we lie there. He’s pulled out and dealt with the condom and come back. He’s on his side facing me, his hand on my hip on the letters, his thumb moving over them slowly the way it does in his sleep. His ring catches on the sheet when he moves. It’s just a sound the bed has now.
The rings are plain. We got them on the same Tuesday at a small jeweler near the courthouse, who’d given us a deal because we’d told him we were getting married that afternoon. He’d brought out a tray of plain bands and we’d picked the same one without consulting each other, and he’d nodded as if he’d known we would. The whole thing took eleven minutes.
When I was twenty I’d imagined what wedding rings I’d have someday, the way I’d imagined I’d meet somebody and stand somewhere and have a thing. The rings I imagined had meaning. Mine cost less than the dinner we had after, and have been on our hands for six weeks. Last week I took mine off to wash dishes and forgot to put it back on for an hour, and when I noticed I felt a small wrongness without it.
We’re quiet for a while.
“Adam,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“This is the life.”
“Yeah.”
“This is what we got, then.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good.”
“It is good.”
“It’s more than I had —“
“I know.”
