Page 5 of After His Eulogy
He hasn’t called me baby in six months. He saves it. He saves it for when I’m too far gone to be embarrassed by it, and he’s using it now because he can feel me about to go. He says it again. “Come on, baby.” I come hard between us. I cry out. He kisses me through it. His rhythm stutters. He comes inside me a few seconds later, his face in my neck, his teeth on my shoulder. He makes a sound I don’t have a name for. I know I’m taking it with me. That one is mine.
He collapses on me. I take his weight. All of it. I want to be crushed by him.
“Hey,” he says, into my neck.
“Hey.”
“That was…“
“Yeah.”
“What got into you.”
“I missed you.”
“You see me every day.”
“I missed you anyway.”
He laughs into my neck, a different laugh from before, lower, spent. I close my eyes. I’ll hear that laugh again. Not in person. I’ll hear it for the rest of my life, in the apartment I do not yet have.
“You okay?”
“Yes.”
“You sure.”
“I’m sure, Griffin.”
“You’re shaking.”
“I just came.”
“That’s never made you shake before.”
“It was a good one.”
“Mm.”
He pulls back and looks down at me. His hair is damp at the temples. There’s a flush on his chest that will go down in about six minutes. I have watched it go down a thousand times. I watch it now.
“I love you,” he says.
The way he always does. Not weighted, not a thing, not a moment. Just true. The way he has said it for six years.
“I love you,” I say.
I say it like I’ll say it tomorrow. Like I’ll say it next Wednesday. Like a man with a future. If I say it any other way he’ll hear it. He cannot hear it.
“I love you,” I say again.
He smiles. “Yeah. I know.”
He kisses my forehead. He pulls out, careful, slow. He gets up and goes to the bathroom. I hear water. I hear him rinse the condom and throw it away. I hear him brush his teeth. I lie on the couch and look at the ceiling and let myself, for one minute, let my face do whatever it’s going to do.
It does nothing. My face is still. I’m too tired to cry, or my body is saving it for later. I lie there.
He comes back with a wet washcloth. He cleans me off, gentle. Gets me a glass of water. Pulls a blanket off the back of the couch and tucks it around me. Kisses my mouth, briefly.
