Page 29 of Empty Net
Caleb stands six feet away, near the kitchen island, sleeves rolled to his forearms, glasses on, hair a mess from the wayhe keeps running one hand through it when he thinks nobody is watching. I have been watching him for months. I know this now. The knowing has stopped pretending to be professional.
"Do you want water?" he asks.
I look at him.
He looks at the kitchen, then back at me. "That was not supposed to sound like a hotel check-in."
"It did."
"I know."
He takes off his glasses and cleans them on the hem of his shirt. Three seconds. He is buying them from himself this time.
"Nolan," he says, and my name in his mouth still does something I have not developed a system for surviving.
I cross the room before he can build another careful sentence.
He sets the glasses on the counter. Good. Smart. I have enough presence of mind to register this before I put my hands on his waist and push him back against the kitchen island.
He makes one sound. Not surprise exactly. Not permission exactly. Something between the two, and then his hands are on my shoulders and his mouth is under mine and the room tilts into something simple enough for my body to understand.
This I know.
Not Caleb. Not this apartment. Not the way his fingers curl into my shirt like he is trying to hold on and let me go at the same time. But the body part. The private part. The part where the lights are low and the world narrows to heat and breath and another man's weight against mine.
I know how to do this.
I kiss him harder.
Caleb answers. The first kiss in the film room was five seconds and a door opening. This one is not five seconds. This one is the body walking through before the mind can inventorythe room. His mouth is warm. His hands slide from my shoulders to my neck and stop there, not pulling, just holding. He is careful even now. I hate him for it a little. I want him for it more.
"Tell me if your hip," he starts.
"Don't."
He stops.
Good.
I do not want the hip in this room. I do not want the trainers, the reports, the cortisone, the range-of-motion tests. I do not want cartilage degeneration sitting on the kitchen counter with Caleb's keys and a bowl of clementines.
I want his mouth. His hands. The small sound he makes when I put my teeth against his jaw. The way his carefulness fractures when I press closer.
I keep my hands on the counter on either side of him. Not on his skin. Not yet. The counter is solid. The counter does not ask anything of me. Caleb's fingers slip beneath the hem of my shirt and touch my side.
I go still.
He feels it. Of course he feels it.
"Okay?" he asks.
The question is quiet. It is also a door.
I nod.
"Words," he says.
I lift my head. His face is close. Too close. His eyes are right there, dark and open behind where the glasses are not. I look at his mouth instead.
