Cedar.
Warm underneath.
Two years of my body knowing exactly what that smell means and responding before my mind has finished forming an opinion about it.
I hate that.
I can feel his eyes on me, and then he’s buckling me in. And he starts to drive.
I inhale sharply, worried about what’s to come. He doesn't say anything, but his hand finds mine like this is an ordinary outing. I focus on the car's movement, trying to decode where we’re going. Left, right, straight for a long time, the road changing from smooth to potholes.
Eleven minutes. Maybe twelve.
The car stops, and when he opens his door, I smell water.
There’s a quiet moment while he walks to my side and opens my door. The rush of cold air hits me, and I feel his hand at my elbow guiding me out. He's careful and patient.
His hand moves to my back as we walk onto a porch and into somewhere.
Inside is warm.
It’s been heated for a while, I can tell. He must’ve planned this in advance. This morning, maybe while I was at Barnes and Noble with Theo and Gas Works Park with Theo and my dorm room with Beckett — Cody was here, planning this.
I wonder how much he truly knows. I wished I had showered instead of answering Maeve’s call.
“I'm going to change your clothes,” he says.
I don't say anything.
He takes that as permission, which it is. But I’m confused as to why I need to change my clothes.
His hands find the hem of my sweater — the gray one I noticed Theo was looking at a few times. He lifts it slowly, carefully, over my arms and over my head, and the air touches my skin, and then a large shirt that smells like him replaces it.
He changes my jeans next. The same patience. The same care. Something soft replaces them, his sweatpants with a drawstring he ties loosely at my waist, and I am now wearing his clothes.
I am wearing his smell.
I am standing with a blindfold on after I tried to break up with him.
My heart races.
I breathe.
He guides me to the bed.
I know it's a bed from the way the back of my knees find it, the way he helps me sit, and then he guides me back toward the pillows. He fluffs it under my head. I still can’t see a thing.
Should I have said no to the blindfold?
It’s too late now.
His hands close around my wrists.
I feel the soft binding before I fully understand what it is, and then I pull once — not hard, just testing — and I understand.
I'm not getting free.
“Cody?”
