Someone put finger over my lips.
“Don’t tell me how we work,” Evan said. “We’re all just figuring it out.”
“Sex isn’t supposed to d-do this,” I wobbled.
“Be cathartic?” Alan asked. “It kind of is. At least sometimes.”
I was shaking at that point, and clung harder to Evan. “I don’t know why…”
Alan stroked hands over me and kissed my hair. “You don’t have to know why. Just let yourself feel it. It will pass.”
It was stupid that I cried tears that soaked into Evan’s skin without knowing why I was doing it. But neither of them pointed that out. They both just lay quietly, promising me it was fine, promising me they loved me, promising me, without actually saying it, that they didn’t think I was a freak.
CHAPTER 25
EVAN
If Alan hadn’t been there,I might have melted down a bit over Perry’s tears. He didn’t say where they came from and I didn’t ask. I just told him I loved him, which was true, and Alan told him everything would be okay, which had to be true as well.
Eventually, he fell asleep and I got up to fetch a hot cloth to clean him up, then stayed with him while Alan took a fast shower. When he got back into bed with him, I showered.
“Are you okay?” Alan asked when I had climbed back on Perry’s other side from him.
“Fine, why?”
“Is that normal for him?”
“Not at all.”
“But you’re not worried about it.”
“Are you?” I was, even more so if he was too.
“You know him better. I hoped you might be able to shed some light.”
I was quiet, thinking about it. Lately, he’d been so obsessed with the job he’d willingly cut back on a few months ago that he had less time for me. His practice face the past month had been more serious than his game face had ever been.
“It isn’t that he doesn’t have time for me,” I said out loud.
“Explain.”
“Working more than he has to. Practicing and training so hard. He isn’t trying to avoid me. Well, he is. Sort of. More like, he’s worried he’s going to let me down and he’s kind of doing it a little bit at a time, slowly, so it isn’t such a shock when we don’t get to the Olympics or something. I thought we’d got past that.”
“Is that what he thinks is going to happen?”
I sighed. “It is if he thinks it is.”
“Then we have to change his mind and help him get his head out of his ass.”
“Don’t be mean.”
He paused to study Perry, stoking his cheek and smiling. “I’m not. I want him to be happy. The Olympics will be nice, but that isn’t my only dream anymore.”
“That’s sweet of you to say.”
“Precious, it isn’t just something I’m saying. Olympics or no Olympics, this,us, it isn’t going away.” He moved his hand from Perry’s face to mine. “Yes?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Hundred per cent.”
