He closes his mouth and looks at me like he’s waiting for me to speak. And I want to. I want to urge him on. But I stop myself. Because I need to hear him say everything. For once, I feel like the person sitting next to me will actually do that.
“I don’t want to beokayanymore.” He shifts his body a little. “I want to feel like a whole person. I want to be…I don’t know—infatuatedwith someone. When you know it’s too much and you’re probably embarrassing yourself but it feels good to act like a fool. I want you to run your fingers down my back and take up more than half of my bed. I want to feel you come and hear the way your voice breaks and your breath in my ear. I don’t want to have to put my hand over your mouth because you’re too loud.”
“That kind of does it for me, though.”
“Noted.” He takes a breath. “I’ve been sleepwalking through the last few years.”
“The coma?”
“And maybe that’s how it had to be so I could get my life in order. I want more than survival mode now. I’m—I’m in love with you. And it’s such a fucking good feeling, even though I probably look like an idiot saying all this. And the longer this monologue goes on, the more I think you’re going to slowly back off and start avoiding me in the hallway.”
I shake my head. “Can you say that again?”
“About the hallway?”
“No.” I roll my eyes. “I think you can guess the part I want to hear again.”
“I’ve been sleepwalking through the last—”
I put my hand over his mouth. “Say you’re in love with me.”
He makes a muffled sound under my palm and I release my hand. “You should have savored it a little more the first time.”
“I’m greedy,” I reply. And it’s true. I do feel like I’m taking a lot, but maybe it’s because someone is finally giving. “I guess we’re not good at savoring after all.”
I reach my hand out to the table beside the daybed, grasping for my water bottle. I feel nothing.
“Want some water?” I ask, forcing myself out of bed.
Nick stretches out as much as he can in my absence.
It feels very wrong to be walking around naked in this specific kitchen, but I can imagine how it would feelrightin my own place.
I’m so thirsty that I chug most of a glass of water while I’m filling one for Nick.
“Maybe you should tell me howyoufeel.” Nick is standing in the living room, watching me set my empty glass down on the kitchen counter.
“What?” I ask, even though I heard him. I walk toward him and hand him his water.
“Tell me how you feel,” he repeats.
My mind flips through a handful of potential responses written in neat, block writing on index cards:
I’m Scared.
I Feel So Fucking Happy With You.
I’m Not Sure About Any of This.
I Think I Love You, Too, but Also I Don’t Trust Myself Because of Everything That Happened In the Last Three Hours. The Last Five Years Really.
“Are you in love with me?” He gently takes the glass out of my hand and sets it down on the coffee table. “Forget about the daybed and the apartment and the fellowships and the rest of the world. Are you in love with me?”
“I think you know the answer to that,” I say.
He grabs at my shoulder. “I’m gonna Vulcan nerve pinch you if you don’t just say it as a sentence.”
I reach out my left hand and touch his cheek and his beard. I run my fingertips over the little scar on his forehead and the wide bridge of his nose and his beard and I just feel the truth. My heart or my gut or whatever internal organ that controls wild, illogical emotions confirmsit.
