Page 59 of Mr. Match

Oliver Shrike is tender and caring. Deep and complicated. He is poetry incarnate. There is not one damn thing about him that requires adjustment or modification. Not his temperament. Not his body. Not his mind.

He is perfection.

“Sit here,” he says, patting the seat of one of the low-back, ultra-modern barstools lined up along the counter. “I have something to show you.”

I sit on the stool and his hands are instantly on my knees. They are warm and rough. The hands of a man who works for a living. Fixes things like motorcycles and the carburetor on his classic Camaro. Creates things. Like this place. This building someone abandoned and took the life it used to have with them. Oliver remade this pile of bricks and concrete into a home.

God, if I only had him like I used to have him. I would be complete.

His hand travels up my leg. Slides between them to caress my inner thighs. He leans into me, his head dipping down to my neck so his lips can find that spot he loves so much. My scar. The beginning and the end of everything I’m made of.

I lean into his embrace, just as his fingertips find the wet spot between my legs. He presses up against my underwear, pushing the soft cloth aside so my eagerness can coat his fingers with slick want.

“I thought you had something to show me,” I say.

“Stay here,” he says, taking his kisses to my mouth. “And I mean it this time.” He’s hinting at my disobedience this morning when I left this house and went to his sister’s.

But he doesn’t mean it in a bad way. It’s not about controlling me and he doesn’t want to hurt me with those words.

He just wants me to stay. It’s that simple. He’s always been that simple. He says what he means, even when his words are ambiguous poetry.

He backs away, tucking away his cock and zipping up his jeans just enough to keep his pants in place. His eyes only leave mine when he has to turn and walk towards the loft. I bite my lip as I watch him take the stairs two at a time and then I lose sight of everything but his head and shoulders between the iron rails that separate the loft from the open air of the tall ceiling.

He starts rummaging through a chest of drawers, whispering curse words as he searches for the thing he needs me to see.

He sighs up above me, his shoulders relaxing as he holds something small in front of his face. He turns and walks over to the railing where a small table holding some kind of electronic equipment sits.

“Did you make me a mix tape?” I ask, trying to imagine what he’s doing up there.

He grins over the railing. Thunderstorm eyes bright like the sun breaking through the clouds. And then he ducks his head and messes with the equipment.

A whirring noise, above and to my left, makes me turn a little to see what’s happening.

There’s a projector mounted on the ceiling. It powers up and then a movie starts to flicker on the massive twenty-foot white brick wall that separates the living space from the garages.

Music begins and I laugh. “It is a mix tape.”

Oliver is smiling so big as he leans forward on the railing in the loft. His forearms resting comfortably. Hands clasped together. His tattoos half-hidden in the shadows. One foot resting on the other. Those sexy fucking white strings hanging from the hem of his jeans.

I want to fucking eat him up.

“Don’t look at me,” he says. “Look at you.”

He nods to the white wall of brick and I turn.

“Jesus fuck,” I say, appalled. There is a ten-foot image of me on the wall. I am naked and on my back on the air mattress we pretended was a bed that summer four years ago. We had the tripod set up and we used it. Nightly.

“I’m so goddamned young,” I say, unable to take my eyes off the girl from back then. A girl I barely remember these days.

“Just old enough,” Oliver says.

Not quite, but close enough.

Oliver comes into the picture just as the music starts. A dark, deep, electronic thrum of organ, and bass, and slow tech synth beats. The vocals claim they want more. And I can relate.

“I want more,” Younger Oliver sings to Younger Katya in his low voice. He lowers his naked body over hers. “More… gimme more… gimme more.”

Then Older Oliver is walking down the stairs, hunger—nothing but complete and utter hunger—in his expression as he looks at Older Me.