Page 182 of Levi

He writes down blinds and underlines it, and I let him, because watching that man make a list about a house we both own is a task I could do for the rest of my life.

There’s a box marked FRAGILE. I know Benji packed it and not Dante. Dante doesn’t label. Inside, folded the way only Benji folds, is a brand-new cashmere throw. Same gray as the one I stole off that sectional the first morning of my new life. The one Benji hollered about while I walked out the door wearing it, the one I dragged through the coldest month of my life like a kid, the one that never got returned to a living soul because it was never getting returned and every person involved knew it.

There’s a card on top.

The old one stopped being staging inventory the day you wouldn’t give it back, so keep it. Consider the paperwork closed. This one is for the house, and it has never been near a staging kit or a drunk stranger. Do not put it on the floor. — Benji

Somewhere in a file Dante keeps is an itemized bill with a six-hundred-dollar throw on it that nobody ever collected, sitting right next to a hand-knotted rug. I’m starting to sense a pattern in how this family does its accounting.

Our bedroom is upstairs. A wall of glass and a sliding door out onto a balcony that hangs over the dunes, and past the dunes the water going on out.

I’m downstairs breaking down boxes when I hear Dante go upstairs. When I come up, the bed’s made. Two sleeping bags. They’re laid out side by side in the middle of the floor, dead center of the glass, both of them facing the door.

He’s got his back to me, working a crease flat with one pass of his hand, same as he did the night I had a panic attack and he took care of me.

I don’t say anything. Neither does he.

I go get Benji’s throw out of its box and I put it across both of them, and that’s my half of the bed making.

Then he’s gone back downstairs with the measuring tape and the legal pad, and the zip and snap of that tape starts working through the house, window by window. He’s measuring for blinds. I can only listen to that annoying sound so long before I form a plan.

I get every stitch of clothes off and set my hat on my head. Benji’s throw comes right back off the bed and gets folded up safely on a box because I want to live. The lube turned up in the first box of bathroom stuff Dante unpacked, which tells you something about the man’s priorities, and it’s already been put to use today. That part, he doesn’t know about yet.

I stretch out on top of the bags, prop up on one elbow, and take myself in my free hand.

“Hey, Dante,” I yell out casually. “Come here a minute.”

The tape zips. Footsteps on the stairs. He rounds the doorway with the tape in one hand and the pad in the other, already mid-sentence. “The hall window is going to need a custom—”

He stops dead.

I’m laid out on our floor bed wearing my hat and not one other thing, stroking myself, hard as a fence post and in no hurry about it.

His mouth opens. Nothing comes out. The measuring tape retracts in his hand with a zip and a snap, like even it knows the measuring is done for the day.

“I thought we’d break the new house in cowboy style,” I say.

He still hasn’t moved. His eyes do a full walkthrough of me, crown to boots, except there’s no boots, and his jaw is somewhere around the subfloor.

I tip the brim at him.

“I’m the cowboy, not you. In case you’re wondering.” I give myself one long stroke, root to tip, and watch him track it like it’s the only moving object in the state of Florida. “Now. Tell me. Were you planning on measuring my dick with that tape measure, or are you gonna put it down and get over here?”

“I don’t need a measuring tape to know exactly how big your dick is, cowboy.” He sets the legal pad down on a box. The tape he just drops. “I’ve had every inch of you memorized since July.”

“Then come show your work.”

“Oh, I’m going to.” His belt’s already open. “I’ve been thinking about getting you naked in this house all day.” The closing shirt comes off over his head with two buttons still done, which I have never once seen him do. “Every empty room of it. Starting with this one.” Shoes kicked somewhere it’ll bother him tomorrow.

It is the least graceful I have ever seen Dante Reyes get out of his clothes, and I intend to bring it up regularly for the rest of our natural lives.

He comes down for me, and I put a hand flat on his chest and shove. He goes over onto his back on the sleeping bags, surprised, and before he can organize a response, I’m up and over him with a knee on either side of his hips.

“Uh-uh. I told you.” I settle my hat lower. “Cowboy style.”

He reaches for the lube sitting beside us and I catch his wrist.

“Already handled. What exactly did you think I was doing up here all this time while you were measuring windows?”