“Yes.”
I pushed in. He shuddered and pushed back, straining against me. I bore up, moving inside him, slowly at first and then faster, his shoulder blades pressed to my chest, his elbow digging into me as he twisted himself in his hand. I paused, catching my breath and he bucked into me, urging me on with a soft howl. I barreled in, pushing myself deeper, seeking out the furthest part of him, the most inside, some unknown place I could tell myself no one else had ever been.
CHAPTER 7
The ecstasy of sex is also its betrayal: In the tangled and delirious heaving, the self obliterates. But only for a shattering moment before you return to your body and life, the same ones you’d left behind, but now, uncertain and depleted. These small deaths we are consigned to repeat again and again.
Tyler and I lay splayed on the floor, our damp bodies at a cross hatch, his legs over mine, his head out of view past the edge of the sofa. My hand, brown against the white of him, clutched the swell of his calf, its rough hairs shedding heat beneath my palm. The silence of the apartment was cut by the gasps of our desperate breathing, as if we had fucked the air from one another. It seemed the room was spinning but it was only me. What have I done?
Tyler snapped in his legs and jumped up. He stood over me, slick and shiny with the aftermath of our sex. “Where’s your bathroom?”
I gestured. “That way. Through the bedroom.”
“Let’s take a shower.”
I always felt uneasy sharing a shower with someone—following sex, I want to hide, not expose myself further. But Tyler jumped right in. “This is great. The showers in the dorms suck.” The water’s steam enveloped us. Tyler rambled on about a plumbing problem the previous year that left them without working toilets for two weeks. He turned into the spray and passed me the soap. “Can you get my back?”
I drew the bar in slow circles down the small curves of him, skimming a line of pimples along his spine. I knelt and continued down his ass, reaching gently to clean his hole, the lip of it softly swollen. Then his legs, carefully lifting and balancing each foot in turn. When I finished, I stood and swiveled him to face me. “Okay, rinse.”
He stepped back and shut his eyes. The water sliced past him in sheets. I watched, taking in the uncommon stillness of his face. He pushed his hair back and opened his eyes.
“What?”
I startled, caught. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You’re so quiet. You look like something’s on your mind.”
I almost laughed—the absurdity of his observation. “No, nothing. I’m just glad you’re here.”
“Me, too. I needed that.” He pulled back the curtain—“Your turn”—and stepped out, leaving me alone.
I stood at the spout and opened my mouth, water cascading down my chin and chest. What was going to happen next? It seemed, as the adult here, it was my job to start the necessary conversation, but I wanted none of it. When the hot ran out, I turned off the water and stepped into a puddle Tyler had left on the floor. I thought I heard the sound of a door opening and shutting and I wondered if he had let himself out. But when I stepped into the bedroom, following a trail of wet footprints, I found his towel in a heap next to the bed and him already in it—or on it; he was sprawled naked on top of the blanket. He was looking at his phone, leaning on one elbow, absentmindedly running his hand through his hair, slicking it from his face.
“Oh, hi.” He lowered his phone and smiled. “Is it okay if I stay here?”
I cut the lights and wiggled the covers from under him. I climbed in beside him, wrapping an arm around his waist and pulling him to me. I could smell the peppery fragrance of my soap on him and the scent of his scalp and its oils beneath that. Tyler’s breathing deepened and slowed and he passed out almost instantly. We stayed like that, his body cradled to mine, until finally, I joined him in the darkness of sleep.
I woke in the morning to Tyler burrowing beneath the blanket and sheets, his hands and mouth crawling down the surface of me. Eddies of morning light pooled in the folds of the bedclothes, burnished and shifting. I reached down and found the side of his face. It bristled with sparse, new stubble. Tyler swatted me away and pulled me into his mouth. I hissed, jolted at the sudden burst of feeling as he sucked at me, rough tongue and wet lips. I dug the flat of my palm into my brow, pushing hard, to dull the pleasure and steady myself, as if I might careen off the bed. A low moan rolled up from my stomach, into my chest and out, and I finished in his mouth.
A moment later, he pulled the covers back and emerged, hair a wild tangle, a grin across his face, crusty with sleep or semen at the corner of his mouth. I felt the world around us fold in on itself and disappear into that grin. If only we could stay here, in this bed, forever, everything might be okay.
“Good morning,” he said, still smiling. He sat cross-legged. The light caught the inside of his thigh and the memory of his taste rushed through me. I thought to pull him to me, to lie with me for a while, but he jumped up, springing to the floor. “Do you have anything to eat?” He turned into the bathroom. “I’m starving.” He left the door open and I listened to the hard stream of his piss emptying into the toilet.
In the kitchen, I started coffee and checked my phone—last night’s text from Stephen, I had forgotten it. I looked out the window to the street below, littered with trash from the fair. A truck pulled up and a moment later the driver leapt out. The side of the truck bore the name of the company that serviced the dining hall at Sawyer. A delivery for the restaurant next door. I didn’t want to think about Sawyer; I didn’t want to think about anything.
“What’s going on in here?” I turned to see Tyler settling at the table. “Is that coffee?”
I passed him a mug. “There’s milk and sugar.” I pointed to where I had set them out. He poured the sugar right from the box, a ridiculous amount; it hurt my teeth to think of it. “I’ll make some breakfast?”
“Yes, please.”
I pulled some things out, eggs and bread and butter, and then said—an uptick in my voice as if it had only occurred to me—“I just remembered.” I reached into the cabinet and grabbed the bottle of Adderall, passing it to him.
“Amazing,” he said. “I was wondering what happened to this.”
“It was in my car,” I said, and then added, “I just found it.”
“Could I have some water?”
