It’s like he’ll never let me go.
And it’s the same for me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Asher
I DIDN’T WANTto wake him, so I wait until he stirs in my arms before I close my eyes.
Paul makes a soft groan, his leg and arm strewn across me, stretching. I do my best to be still and even out my breathing. He peels away from me, he yawns, and there’s quiet. Then a kiss to my forehead, sweet, soft. Then he’s up. A few seconds later, I hear the shower running.
I open my eyes. I reach for my pack, light one up, and lie there, bluish smoke exhaling up toward the ceiling. I think about how disorienting it is to wake up in the bed you won’t be sleeping in that night. It presents itself with an urgency and a dread. Except I’ve been awake all night. I feel as if I could stay up for days. Here. Just running on fumes.
My mind idles and wanders right into what would happen if I didn’t show up tomorrow. Absolutely nothing. I’m all caught up. There’s no one to look for me. No one to miss me.
Except for the guy in the shower. I let myself warm to that thought—as much as I want to fear it.
But if I were to get him back late, his aunt might be upset with me. I shift with the discomfort of that thought, about how I’ve taken her nephew off into the wilderness and fucked him, but that honestly was not my plan.
It really wasn’t.
I just wanted to be alone with him. Really alone. Completely. Somehow I thought I’d feel better. My head would clear out here, and it did, until now. Until last night. Why must I complicate things? It’s like I go through life just handing out invitations to trouble. And it always RSVPs.
I hear the shower cut off, and I stub out my cigarette. I lie back down and close my eyes. A second later I hear his bare feet on the rug, feel the bed sink beside me. He lies up against me, his skin clean and cool, and a feeling deep in my chest expands.
I feel the lightest touch on one eyelid. Then on the other. His lips. I pretend like I’m waking up, but I keep my eyes closed. He presses his hard chest to me and his hard dick. I turn over, make a great show of resisting, but there’s no way he can miss the smile on my face.
He cuddles up to me, long limbs wrapping around me, and wet hair brushing over my shoulder.
I grunt.
He kisses the back of my neck.
I sigh.
And then we’re still for a few minutes.
I rub my eyes and turn to him slightly. “Good morning.”
He peeks at me from over my shoulder, shakes his head.
“It’s not a good morning?”
“It’s not morning,” he says. “It’s noon.”
“Ah.”
I turn so we’re facing each other. I like seeing him in the daylight, all naked. His slim body, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and my thumb tracing a trail of dark hair from his navel to his crotch—where his dick waits in anticipation. I make it keep waiting.
His eyes blink slow and sleepy, head resting on his elbow. If I was some kind of Rembrandt, I’d paint him like this. Life-sized. People paint all kinds of stupid shit, like bowls of fruit and flowers, but what about this? I run a finger in a slow path from his cut jaw to his taut thighs.What about this?
Is there a way to capture it? In paint, in measures, in clay. Is there a way to put it all into a medium, translate what I see and how it makes me feel? Because I feel…
My heart stutters. Yes. Yes, if I were any kind of artist, I’d memorialize him this way, to remember him on the afternoon after, and I’d never have to lose this moment. It’ll be mine forever. It would be the only thing I’d let myself keep.
Without thinking, I pull him up against me, as close as I can possibly get him, as if he might vanish into thin air. He’s gazing at me in that steady way he does sometimes, so serious. In the way he looked at me out by the lake, when I promised him I wouldn’t let him go.
I won’t let you go…
