Page 71 of Levi

I’ve been in a hurry to get back since I left the apartment.

I pull out of the cul-de-sac fast, with the windows down and the win still warm on me, and I drive back to him.

Chapter 25: Levi

I wake up, and I know he’s gone before my eyes open.

You can hear an empty apartment. It’s got a different sound than one with a man in it, even a man asleep. I lie there with my face to the open door and listen to the nothing, and then I look anyway, because looking is how you make a thing official.

His sleeping bag is right where it was, eighteen inches off mine. Empty. The apartment’s dim, blinds down, and the light coming through the door says the morning’s half spent. And there’s no coffee in the air. Every morning I’ve been under this roof, that little pot of his has been going on the stove before anything else. The strong sweet Cuban stuff he offered me my first morning here, and I walked past it like a fool. I’ve been smelling it ever since, wishing I hadn’t turned it down. This morning there’s nothing. The stove’s cold and he’s gone, and he didn’t say one word to me on his way out.

I lie there a minute and think about it.

The showing. At ten o’clock. He had to go. Big day, be at the house by six. He got up in the dark, dressed without a light, and didn’t even make his coffee. Then slipped out of his own home like a man leaving a motel he’s ashamed of.

Because he saw what I am.

And when the sun came up he looked at what was lying in his doorway and he got out of the building.

I get up. I gather both sleeping bags, and carry them down the hall and lay them back out in the second bedroom, in my gap along the wall. I realize what I’m doing. If I thought this was over, I’d roll them up and set them by the door. Instead, I’m laying out a room I’ve got no claim on and hoping like hell I get a chance to sleep in it again.

Then there’s nothing left to do with my hands, and the morning gets long. I put the TV on and sit in front of it a while. There’s a fishing show, men holding up what they caught, and I couldn’t tell you one thing that happened. I turn it off.

I pace. I’m not proud of it. Up the little hall and back, past the bathroom, past his door standing open the way he leaves it, and all the while I’m running last night like a game tape, hunting for the frame where I lost him.

The balcony rail. The ice. His hand on my bare back and me letting it stay.

I’m watching over you.

A man doesn’t say that to somebody that disgusts him. Then again, a man says whatever gets the wreck off his balcony at three in the morning. I catch myself spiraling and I stop. I stand in his kitchen and I make myself say it out loud, or near enough.

He had early work with no sleep. He let me stay. He left me sleeping in his home, alone, with everything he owns, which is not a thing you do with a man you can’t stand the sight of. I need to wait for him to come back.

And I decide something, that I’ve got no business deciding and do it anyway. When he comes through that door, I’m going to do the one thing I’ve never done in my life, not once, not to anybody.

I’m going to ask him to spend time with me.

Not a date because I wouldn’t even know how to do that. Nobody’s ever asked me out either. Girl or boy. Nobody.

Just something simple. Maybe to watch a ballgame on TV again. Get a pizza. A casual evening he could say no to. Tonight there’s another game on, and I’ve got a television the size of a barn door sitting in that cold house. It can’t hurt to ask him. As long as I don’t lose my nerve.

It’s past noon when I hear him, and I know the morning went good before the door opens. His feet hit the metal stairs two at a time, taking them at a run, and that’s not how Dante climbs when it goes bad. That’s Dante coming home with a win on him. I get myself set to meet him.

The door opens, and the first thing out of him is, “Hey. You okay, Levi?”

And it knocks me flat-footed. He’s stopped just inside the door, jacket over one shoulder, tie gone, collar open, and his eyes are going over me.

Those same eyes were on me a few hours ago while I came apart on his balcony. The hand holding his keys is the one that stayed flat on my back until the shaking let go.

The biggest morning of his year. The deal of his life on the table. He should be out celebrating. And the first words through his own front door aren’t about the house. They’re about me and not in a good way.

The shame from last night gets there before anything else can. It puts me right back on that rail, soaked through and gasping, and everything in me wants out from under his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m good.” Too quick, too smooth. I wave it off and get the energy back up.

He sets the keys down, still watching me, working up to something that isn’t the house. Last night is in the room with us, taking up all the air.

“Levi. About last night—”