“I am like that,” he says, tilting his head, considering.
“I don’t think so,” I challenge. “You aresometimes. You were like that in therapy, on your guard. You were like that when we met in person, when you wanted to challenge me. But I think when you’re comfortable, it’s not you at all. You’re open and fun and not this spiky person you start out as with everyone.”
He lifts his tea and blows on it again, even though by now it’s probably cool enough. But I think he wants the excuse to not say anything for a moment. He’s trying to have a poker face, but the fact that he isn’t capable of that—except while playing actual poker with Kwan, apparently—is one of the best things about him. He looks caught; he looks like he’s considering an idea he’s never considered before.
It’s easy for me to stay silent and watch as the concept plays out and settles into his mind. Part of being a therapist is knowing when to go quiet and let thoughts marinate.
And finally, he sets the tea down. “I don’t know why I have that shell ... I mean, I wasn’t completely off base when I said it was probably about my father. But you’re right that it wasn’t just his job. It’s sort of who he is. My father always made me live on my toes. But not in a kooky way like your mother. His version of it is that he’s naturally combative. And I just ... well, I guess I mirrored it. Or used it to deflect and keep my mother and sister away from it.”
“That’s hard,” I say softly, wanting to give him the validation he so kindly offered to me earlier.
He lifts his shoulder, like it’s no big deal, but his body language can’t outrun the expression on his face. “I guess you have to be spiky if you’re the only one standing at the front line.”
“I like seeing what’s below the spikes,” I say and reach out to pat his hand. He doesn’t look at me, only at that simple movement.
“Thanks for the tea,” he says, abruptly standing up, a physical closing of the conversation. “Sorry I conned you into an activity that got you scraped up.”
I look down at my legs, having forgotten completely.
“Oh shit,” I say, realizing only in that moment that I’m actually now bleeding.
At my expression, Eli immediately kneels down to take a look. He lifts up my leg, and the way he’s holding it is like it’s something fragile. It’s just a small cut, but it must have come open more while we were walking.
Whatever dull sting I’d been feeling from the cuts is erased by the total awareness of where his hands are. I can’t breathe while they move up and down my leg, like he’s mapping me, taking stock of every scrape and of every curve. An electric current shivers through me at the way his hands brush me, and I wonder if the goose bumps that burst across my skin are making my internal thoughts obvious now.
“We have to clean this up,” he says, standing again, the absence of his touch now glaring.
He walks into my bathroom and roots around for a minute, noise clanging and helping to break me from whatever was happening a moment ago.
But it’s short lived, because soon he’s kneeling in front of me again. He props up my leg on his knee and assesses, taking it as seriously as a surgeon would in an emergency. He pours hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball and carefully blots it against me. I hiss, and he grips my leg, as though he’s trying to help me through the pain. And then he blows on my skin, right where it’s stinging. I know he’s simply trying to help, and maybe this is just my recent dry spell, but I swear it’s somehow the most erotic thing anyone has ever done to me.
The shiver goes beyond my legs and reaches my thighs. I’m bacon in a pan, not realizing when I started sizzling because the heat’s only gradually been turned up, but now it’s fully on high.
Our breathing is the only sound between us. In and out, a metronome of consistency belying what’s happening for me under the surface. I wish I could see belowhissurface. I wish I could poke inside and see his very simple assessment of a friend’s injury so it could maybe tamp down whatever nonsense is living inside me right now. Every time I’m convinced that by being friends, this unrequited attraction will go away, I have to have some palpable reminder that it’s still there.
He’d probably be mortified if he knew. I’ve never met a man so insistent on using the word “friends.”
And I think heneedsa friend. He started over in a whole new country, and the only person he’d had here was the one person who died and left him the apartment he moved into. Maybe he thought the place of childhood peace could be a reset.
But that attraction always seems to hum for me, no matter how much I willfully ignore it. And right now, it’s inescapable, and incredibly inconvenient. His grip on my leg is like a fire, creeping up and burning as it goes. I want to pull away, but I worry it would make it even more obvious.
He’s still looking only at my leg. His gaze doesn’t travel up. He bites his bottom lip in thought, and it just makes everything happening inside me worse.
But it’s then that I suddenly realize ... he’s feeling it too.
I’ve been so concerned with my own reactions that I haven’t noticedhim. The inability to meet my eyes. The furrow in his eyebrows. The way his jaw muscles have tensed. I thought my inconvenient gravitation was one sided, but the way he’s shifted makes me suddenlyaware.
Have I purposely missed it? Has this always been sitting between us and not just singularly in my mind?
Maybe I’ve deliberately not noticed it because my life is already too confusing and I’ve been adamant about the former-patient line. The specter of going to London and seeing J has taken up all the romantic headspace that I’m capable of. And this definitively isn’t romantic. This isn’t the weird spun fairy tale of true love I’ve woven for myself with J and remain terrified of. This is a version of desire I’m not used to.
And with his eyes deliberately not meeting mine, I can’t gauge how to get out of it. I want to laugh with him like we usually do and say,Hey, isn’t this funny?I want to brush it off; I want to have him look at me and make me realize,Oh, actually, you misinterpreted.
But I also want. I want, I want, I want. I’m at a boil, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
But thankfully, before I implode, he suddenly lets go and stands up. He douses the fire with distance. And a rigid stance I’m not used to.
He clears his throat. “Sorry again,” he says, and I know he means it about the cuts, but I also wonder if he means the prolonged holding of my leg. “Thanks for the tea.”
