The weekendafter ransacking my apartment, we resolved to take it easy. We grocery shopped. We went to the gym. We ordered takeout and binged a new Netflix docuseries under the weighted blanket. We talked about everything—save for the thin-ice topics of our families and his work—and it was the kind of weekend I'd always dreamed of, the kind I didn't believe could be mine. But it was mine and I was keeping it as mine, at least for now.
The weekend after that, we kicked ass at the game night hosted by Joseph and Pawl. The next morning, we held hands while waiting in line for brunch and then we kissed on the street corner. We snuggled after sex, before sex, and any time in between. We couldn't stop touching each other.
By the time our fourth weekend together rolled around, I was comfortable enough with this arrangement to introduce Wes to my meal prepping, housecleaning, and laundry routines. We also destroyed some bedsheets but shopping for linens with him was more fun than I'd expected.
We invited our friends over for a dinner party at my place the following weekend. I didn't know when I switched to thinking of them as our friends rather than mine, but change was the sort of thing that happened to you when you weren't paying attention. At some point in that evening, Wes let slip his efficacy with languages. It was true—the boy had quite a talented tongue. From there, it was decided the next party we hosted would be a full immersion event where we only spoke the chosen language and ate dishes from the culture.
And the weekend after that, when it seemed winter had made up its mind and spring was here to stay, we drove out to western Massachusetts to hike Mount Greylock. It was difficult enough to make it meaningful for me and prevent Wes from suspecting I didn't want him overexerting himself. He was well on his way to a full recovery and physical therapy was working miracles for him but I wasn't taking any chances.
I'd prepared myself for Wes to leave come spring, but spring couldn't decide if it was coming this year, and Wes hadn't left. We'd simply kept going as if not subjected to an expiration date. We cooked and argued about serial killers and hosted dinners and game nights, always crushing other couples with our trivia prowess. We checked out the farmers market but immediately decided we hated it, opting instead for lazy, overpriced brunches with bottomless Bloody Marys. We tangled our legs under a blanket on the sofa while he watched some nutty program about knives and I worked on my spreadsheets. He teased me about my precious red-soled Louboutins and I chided him for his assumption everything was a front for money laundering.
Certainly not everyone was laundering money.
We spent every weekend together and plenty of weeknights but his ongoing physical therapy sessions in Shannon's home gym kept him from fully moving in. We'd never discussed these arrangements but every time I arrived to find Wes inside my apartment—my boy didn't bother with archaic things like keys or permission—I wondered what my home had been without him. I couldn't seem to remember.
I'd succeeded in nabbing two of his UC San Diego hoodies and simply ignored the fact he'd nabbed them from Will. It wasn't Will's hoodie I wore with boxers or pajama pants or nothing at all, it was my boyfriend's. It smelled like him and it felt like him, and I didn't care about its true provenance.
We discussed the ancient—and some modern—land-based religions belonging to many indigenous people and the mythologies associated with mountains throughout the world. We debated the tension between the desire to conquer these landforms and the need to protect them from climbers and explorers as they were sacred, holy grounds. We talkedarounda summer climbing trip to Europe which was to say we planned everything down to the colors of the scooters we intended to rent in Positano—red for me, blue for Wes—but made no actual plans because we both knew the day would come when he had to go reprise his role as Jason Bourne or Jack Ryan or whichever badass hot-guy secret agent he was supposed to be this month. And now we were so much closer to that day than I'd realized, I wanted to cry.
This weekend, with winter back in all its icy glory, we chose to get lost in new documentaries and under blankets. There was no order or rhythm to the seasons' on-again, off-again dance and it was that absence of equilibrium that struck me early Sunday morning while I scrolled through my calendar for the week.
"You've been sleeping with me for six weeks," I announced.
Wes hooked his arm around my waist, dragging me back to his side. "And I'd like to continue sleeping," he rumbled into my flank.
Six weeks. Six weeks! Didn't he care? Didn't it matter to him? Wasn't this significant in awhat the hell are we doing and can we do it foreverway? And—and what of his work? Was it a waiting game, a matter of days and minutes until the call came through and he left for a shadowy, dangerous place liable to send him back to me with another broken arm, another gouge out of his torso, more pieces of his precious body surrendered to—to what? And for why? Why did they get to keep him and I didn't? He was strong and whole again, finally able to use his injured arm for simple tasks and bear his weight on it without tremendous pain. It hurt me to think about him going through anything like that again. It hurt me to think all I'd have left of him was a secondhand hoodie.
His face still pressed to my side, Wes said, "Tell me your worst things."
"Worst things?" I repeated, suddenly weary. There was a reason I'd avoided this line of thought. "What kind of worst?"
He rolled away, bending his arm and propping his head on his palm to smile up at me. "When I was a kid, I convinced my mother I was allergic to gardenias."
I was so confused. What were we talking about? "And that's your worst thing because why?"
"Because my family has a running joke that I was such a terrible toddler, my mother routinely called me an asshole and I enjoyed living up to that name. Because I'm not allergic, I just don't like the smell. She dug up ten gardenia bushes back home in San Diego and gave them away to people who promised to replant them. They're one of her favorites."
I ran my fingers through his hair. "I can't say I disagree with her. It is an asshole move."
"For what it's worth, I send her gardenias every year on her birthday. Fortunately, I haven't been within five thousand miles of her or those flowers in the past handful of years." He edged his fingers under the waistband of my boxers, smiling like I wouldn't flip him on his back as a punishment for this teasing. "I want one of yours."
Given the fingers distracting me, it took a solid minute of thought to find anything comparable to his gardenia story. "When I was Shannon's assistant, I used to get her breakfast in the morning because she'd forget to eat and then we'd all suffer. But she only liked muffins from one specific bakery. When they went out of business seven or eight years ago, I bought all their remaining bags and put muffins from Costco in them each morning. She hasn't noticed the difference yet."
Instead of shoving his hand fully into my boxers as I would've appreciated, Wes tugged me down to his pillow and circled his arm around my shoulders. "You, sir, are just as bad as I am."
"If that's what you want to believe, sure," I said. "Tell me another."
He skimmed his fingers over the space between my shoulder blades, circling and swirling as he hummed in thought. "I refuse to split a dessert with anyone at a restaurant."
"Why?" I asked, laughing.
"Because if I wanted to get inside four mouths, I'd have an orgy." The light pass of his fingers on my back intensified as if he intended to unravel my knots and smooth me out. That wouldn't happen. My knots were as much a part of me as thorns were part of a rose, as scars were part of Wes. But he was welcome to try. "And what's the point of getting only two or three bites of cake? That's outrageous."
"But I never want a whole slice," I said, still laughing. "I need someone to share it with. You wouldn't split some cake with me?"
"Baby, please. Of course I'd split cake with you. I know where your mouth has been and, with any luck, I know where it'll be going after that cake."
With my fingers hooked around the sides of his boxers, I pushed them down his legs. "You're cute."
