Page 87 of Empty Net
Caleb stares at it.
I stare at it.
Then he says, with complete seriousness, "That is not my best presentation."
The laugh comes out of me before I know it is coming.
Not a huff. Not an almost. A laugh. Real, sharp, uncontrolled. It starts in my chest and escapes before the silence can tackle it at the line.
Caleb freezes.
For one terrible second, I think I have broken something.
Then his face opens.
He laughs too.
It should stop the moment. It does not. The laughter lives inside it. His forehead drops to my shoulder. My hand stays in his hair. His body shakes once against mine, and mine answers, and the room becomes something I did not know sex could be. He is still inside me when the laughter catches us, and somehow that makes it less ridiculous instead of more. Or more ridiculous and better. Both.
Not performance. Not proof. Not a crisis with skin.
Life.
"Take off the sock," I say when I can breathe.
"Now you're bossy."
"The sock is undermining the room."
"The room will survive."
"Barely."
He kicks it off. It lands somewhere near the door with more drama than cotton deserves.
We laugh again.
The second laugh is easier. That frightens me less than it should.
After, I lie on my back with Caleb half on top of me, careful where his weight rests, his face tucked against my shoulder. His breathing slows. Mine follows. The room is warm. The TV is still on in the other room, crowd noise faint through the wall.
I ran from five seconds in January.
Now I am lying in Caleb's bed laughing about a sock.
The distance between those two facts should be impossible.
It is apparently three months.
"You laughed," Caleb says against my skin.
"No."
"I was here."
"Unreliable witness."
"Deeply biased," he says. "Still accurate."
