Page 93 of Puck the Coach's Son
“Yeah, you are.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Don't.”
He turns his face into my throat.
“It's just…”
“I know.”
I pull him into me. Not soft. Not hard. Just into me. His face against my throat. His whole body curling toward my chest. I hold him and I don't say anything else. I let him have a minute.
I'm apparently a man who holds people now.
The world hasn't ended.
After a few minutes of quiet, I lie down and pull him down with me. I wrap him up against my chest with the sheet bunched at our hips and I put my mouth in his hair.
“You don't have to leave yet.”
“He's going to?—”
“He's going to whether you leave in ten minutes or an hour. Stay.”
He stays.
He's quiet for a while. His hand comes to rest on my chest over my heart. His breath slows. I don't know if he's sleeping. I don't check. I lie there and I let my hand stroke up and down his back and think about what I just said and whether I meant it.
I meant it.
That's the fucked-up part. I meant every word. I didn't wake up this morning expecting to say any of that out loud. To anyone. I didn't wake up this morning expecting to care whether a twenty-year-old nepotism hire gets to be a person.
I care.
I care so much I can barely look at it directly.
His hand moves on my chest. Palm flat. He kisses my sternum. Not sexual. A press of his mouth and then nothing.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Don't thank me.”
My hand keeps moving on his back.
“I want to.”
“Don't.”
My hand stills on his back.
“Why?”
“Because thanking me makes it sound like a favor.”
He lifts his chin off my chest.
“Isn't it?”
