Page 26 of After His Eulogy
“I am not going to do that anymore.”
I look at his hands in his pockets. The hands are doing the thing they did at twenty, the night he told me on a Tuesday we were going to be together. Pockets, not loose, the knuckles working through the fabric. The hands are how I used to tell what he had decided before he told me what he had decided.
“Okay,” I say.
“I want…“ He stops.
I wait.
“I want you,” he says.
He says it flat. He says it the way he said Goodbye, Reed in this apartment a month ago. He is saying a thing he has decided to say. He is not saying it in a romantic way. He’s saying it in a way that’s structural. Laying down a rule.
“Okay,” I say.
“And I am not pretending to myself that wanting you is, that it does not mean what it means. I have been pretending for two months. I am not going to keep pretending. I want you. I do not get past the thing by sitting across a table from you twice a week and pretending I do not.”
“Okay.”
“I have decided I am going to have you.”
I look at him.
“I’m going to have you, Reed, and I’m not asking if it’s a good idea. The question of whether it’s a good idea has an answer and the answer is no. It’s not a good idea. I’m not pretending it is. I’m not going to ask you whether you want me. I’m going to look at you and make you tell me. Because if you don’t, this stops here, and we go back to the table, and we do the rest of the year. And if you do…“
He stops. He looks at me.
“Reed,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Look at me.”
I look at him.
“Do you want me.”
I look at him. His eyes give him away and the rest of him is still.Yes. I have wanted you for two years and however many days. I’m the one who came across the country to be here. The one who didn’t call Mendez. The one who came back to thebench. You’re asking me if I want you. You know the answer. You’re still asking. Because you’re making me say it.
“Yes,” I say.
“Okay.”
He takes his hands out of his pockets.
“Okay,” he says. “Come here.”
I come there. I come to him and he takes my coat off, slowly, without looking at me. Not rushing. Not breathless. Deliberate. He hangs the coat on the hook by the door, the same hook he hung his own coat on the night he came to my apartment for the first time. He turns back to me and he’s the man who has decided something. The version of him I knew before. The version that, when we were twenty, told me on a Tuesday that he’d thought about it and we were going to be together. That this was what was happening. I’d said okay because I’d wanted it too, and because the way he’d said it hadn’t invited a conversation. He’s that version now. In a sweater I don’t know, in an apartment I’ve been in three times. He kisses me. He kisses me in the entryway and his hand is on the side of my neck and his mouth is open and the kiss is not a kiss that is asking. The kiss has decided. His tongue is in my mouth and his other hand is on my hip and he is pressing me back against the door, lightly, not hard. The door is just there, behind me. His hand finds my hip and stays there. I’m someone who keeps inventory and I am keeping inventory now: his mouth, his hand on my neck, his body against mine, the door at my back, the pressure of his thigh between my legs that he’s doing on purpose and that my body is responding to faster than I’m ready for.
I make a sound into his mouth. He pulls back half an inch.
“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”
He kisses me again. Longer this time. Until I’m hard against his thigh and he can feel it and isn’t pretending he can’t. His hand moves from my hip, down, over the front of my jeans, andpresses. I make the sound again. He closes his eyes for a second like he is steadying himself. Then he opens them.
“Bedroom,” he says.
“Yes.”
