Page 26 of Rookie Mistake
"You're in law school. You're not a lawyer yet."
"Tell him, Eli. The word is yours. Use it."
I stand on the balcony for ten minutes after we hang up. Atlanta hums. The apartment is warm behind me. Through the glass door I can see Nikolai on the couch, the reading glasses on, the book in his hands, the specific stillness of a man who is absorbed in something and who does not know he is being watched.
I watch him. The watching is not the grin-watching, the performing-watching, the watching that is designed to be seen. This watching is private. This watching is the underneath watching the underneath: a man on a balcony looking at a man on a couch and feeling the full weight of the word he hasn't said and the weight of the word he has been carrying since he was fifteen and the weight of the truth that the word is his and the word is real and the word needs to be spoken to the person on the couch.
Not tonight. Tonight the word stays on the balcony with the city noise and the Ava-voice and the fear. Tonight I go inside and I sit next to Nikolai on the couch and he puts his arm around me without looking up from the book and the arm isthe first domestic gesture he has performed that is not coded as care-through-action (cooking, film, hockey advice) but is simply contact. Simply: I am reading and you are here and my arm is around you because my arm wants to be around you.
I lean into him. His body is warm and solid and the book is something Russian that I cannot read and his reading glasses are on and the glasses are the soft ones, the book glasses, and I close my eyes.
"How is Ava?" he asks.
"Terrifying. Brilliant. Wants to meet you."
"This is a threat."
"Yes."
"I accept."
Later. The bedroom. The light is off except for the city glow through the window and the amber lamp on the nightstand that I bought last week because the overhead was too harsh and because I needed one warm thing in this room that was mine.
The sex tonight is different from the first time.
The first time was the control detonating. The first time was the kitchen fight and the counter and the hallway and the pushing and the frantic, urgent, I-cannot-contain-this energy that produced something explosive and honest and that ended with the word "mistake."
Tonight is not frantic. Tonight is slow.
Nikolai's hands move over my body with a deliberateness that is new. Not the precision of the first time (which was the precision of a man whose hands were free for the first time and who was using the freedom desperately). This is the deliberateness of a man who has decided to be slow. Who has chosen the pace. The choosing is the difference. The choosing says: I am not losing control. I am applying the control to a new purpose, and the purpose is you, and the application is careful.
His mouth follows his hands. The mouth is warm on my throat, my collarbone, the dip above my hip. Each kiss is placed. Each kiss says: I am here and the here is not an accident and the here is not a mistake.
I am quiet at first. The quietness surprises me because the first time I was loud, the loudness involuntary, the hiding gone. Tonight the quiet is different. Tonight the quiet is the receiving. The receiving requires silence the way listening requires silence: you cannot hear if you are making noise, and Nikolai's body is telling me something and I want to hear it.
His hands find my face. His thumbs on my cheekbones. His eyes open and his eyes are on mine and the looking is sustained in a way that the first time's looking was not. The first time, the eye contact was brief, interrupted by the urgency. Tonight the eye contact holds. Tonight we look at each other and the looking is not avoidance and the looking is not urgency. The looking is presence.
"Eli," he says.
My name. Not Mercer. Eli. Said during. Said with the accent thickening around the vowels, the Russian mother's language wrapping around the American name, and the wrapping is the tenderest sound I have heard from this man's mouth.
The first time he said my name during sex it was a crack in the wall. This time it is not a crack. This time it is a door.
I pull him closer. Not the desperate closer of the first time. The settle-in closer. The closer that says: stay here. The pace that says: we have time. The having of time was missing the first time. That was stolen time, crisis time, the time of a man who believed the wanting was a mistake and who was acting before the belief could stop him.
This time the wanting is not a mistake. This time the wanting is a decision.
Afterward, he does not say "mistake." He does not say anything. He lies on his back with my head on his chest and his hand in my hair and the hand moves in slow, rhythmic strokes that are not the strokes of a man managing a situation but the strokes of a man who is comfortable. The comfort is new. The comfort is the variable that changed.
First time: frantic, free, mistake. Guest room.
This time: slow, chosen, comfortable. Staying.
I stay. The staying is the second time I have stayed in this bed after sex and the second time is different from the first time the way any second time is different: the surprise is gone. The surprise has been replaced by something steadier. Something that has a shape and a weight and that I can hold without it burning.
In the morning, he makes coffee. Two mugs.
The two mugs are the loudest thing in the apartment. The two mugs are the revision of the morning after the first time, when the coffee was for one and the one was the control and the control was the cruelty. Two mugs says: you are here and the here includes the morning and the morning includes coffee and the coffee is for both of us.
