Page 14 of Rookie Mistake
His mouth moves from my lips to my neck. The mouth on my neck produces a sensation that travels from the point of contact to the base of my spine and the traveling is immediate and total and I grip his jacket harder because the grip is the only thing preventing my knees from filing a resignation.
"Nikolai," I say. His first name. In my voice. Against the mirror. The name is two syllables and each syllable is its own kind of honest.
He pulls back. An inch. His forehead against mine. His breathing is not controlled. His breathing is the breathing of someone whose control has been overrun and who has not yet rebuilt the perimeter.
"This is why you are a bad idea," he says.
I am breathing too hard to be eloquent. "Feels like maybe you're the one with the decision-making issue."
His mouth twitches. The fraction-of-a-smile. In the elevator. After the kiss. The smile is the most dangerous thing I have seen on his face because the smile says the control is not reasserting. The smile says the control lost and the losing was not entirely unwelcome.
The elevator reaches the lobby. The doors open. The mirrored box becomes a regular elevator. Two men step out, side by side, maintaining the professional distance that the mirrors just proved is a fiction.
In the car, driving back to his building (because my things are still scattered through his apartment from the one-night housing arrangement that has somehow become a five-day housing situation that neither of us has addressed), the silence is the elevator silence: dense, populated, full of the kiss and the mirror and the sound I made and the "bad idea" and the forehead and the breathing.
At the apartment, he holds the door. I walk in. The immaculate space. The bookshelf. The couch. The kitchen where he cooked pasta at 10:30 and saw through the performance in the time it took to slice garlic.
"So," I say.
"So."
"You kissed me in an elevator like you were trying to break structural code."
"Yes."
"And now your plan is what? Bedtime?"
"Yes."
"That's insane."
"It is disciplined."
"It is emotionally repressed."
"Also yes."
I stare at him. He stares at me. The staring is the standoff, the two walls facing each other: my performance and his control, my noise and his quiet, my chaos and his order. The walls are still up. The elevator put a crack in both of them but the walls are still standing.
I should push. Every instinct says push. The dramatic option. The Eli option. Cross the room, grab his shirt, finish what the elevator started.
But the video room is in my head. "Smart includes the dramatic option when the dramatic option is the right option." The right option tonight is not the dramatic option. The right option is letting the crack exist without forcing it wider. The right option is patience, which is not my best skill, but which is, I am learning from a man who controls everything, sometimes the most effective play.
"Goodnight, Sokolov," I say.
The name is the distance. The last name is the professional. The last name says: I heard you. The control needs one more night. I'll give you one more night.
"Goodnight, Mercer."
I walk to the guest room. I close the door. I lean against it and press my palm over my mouth because my mouth is still warm from his mouth and the warmth is evidence and the evidence is the best thing I have felt in twenty-two years.
In the mirror across the room, I can see myself. Nikolai's suit. Nikolai's tie. My face. My grin, which is not a grin right now. My face, which is the underneath face, the one that exists when the performance is off and the room is empty and nobody is watching.
The underneath face is happy. The underneath face is terrified. The two things are the same thing and the same thing is the beginning of something I cannot control and do not want to.
Rookie mistake. Kissing a veteran defenseman in an elevator at a team event while wearing his suit.
Best mistake I've ever made.
