“I expect nothing from you,” I say. “Nothing in return. There are no conditions. I promise you, I have no ulterior motives, and I won’t ask for anything back.”
She frowns and narrows her eyes at me. I can tell she’s trying to fit what I’ve just said into the place where men live in her head, and it doesn’t quite work. She’s not convinced, but she’s not storming out, at least. Not yet.
“All right,” she finally says.
I wait, then ask her, keeping my voice gentle:
“Can I please keep giving you gifts? You don’t have to do anything. It’s just something that gives me pleasure.”
She cocks an eyebrow.
“Fine.”
Then she turns on her heel and walks out of my bedroom, and it’s like the sun walks out with her. The warmth drains from the room, and I follow before I’ve made the decision to, my feet carrying me into the living room because I want to be close to her for a second longer.
Sorina stops at the table and lifts herself on her toes to smell the roses. She breathes them in, and her face softens, just a fraction, only around her eyes and mouth.
“They’re pretty,” she says. “Thank you.”
“Do you want me to take them to your room?”
She looks at me and considers my proposal.
“Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
I pick up the bouquet, my thick fingers barely closing around the vase, and start the walk to her room. I’m slow. Every step is a negotiation with my knees, each one catching and releasing with a sound I pretend I don’t hear. The hallway isn’t long, but it takes me a while to cover it, and I wonder if Sorina is watching me and seeing what I really am – a crumbling golem who can’t carry a bouquet of flowers down a hall without turning it into an ordeal. I wonder if she thinks I’m old, if the way I move makes her see me as something worn out and used up. The embarrassment heats me up from the inside, but I push through it because she asked me to do this for her, and if I couldn’t walk, I’d crawl if she asked me to.
I set the roses down on the table in her room, take a breath, then walk back.
When I come around the corner into the living room, I see something that stops me in my track.
Sorina is eating the cake. Her eyes are closed, her lips parted, and she makes a low sound, barely more than a breath, the kind of groan someone releases when they’re tasting something good and doesn’t care who listens. She doesn’t know I’m here. She didn’t hear me come back, and for two or three seconds, she’s completely unguarded, her face loose, open, and full of pleasure.
My cock stirs. A warm, winding shiver runs through me, and I feel myself getting hard. My body locks with the shock of it. I stand still and try to process it, letting it run through me, enjoying every bit of the thrill it gives me.
This hasn’t happened in months. The calcification took this from me along with everything else, like it took my firm grip, my long stride, and the easy movement of my jaw. I’d stopped expecting it, stopped even thinking about it, the way you stop thinking about a room you’ve locked and thrown away the key to.
But I’m hard. Right now, standing in my living room, watching my wife eat cake, I’m hard, blood flowing to my cock with urgency. The calcification is losing ground. Whatever is happening to me, whatever she’s doing to me just by being near, it’s pulling me back from the edge.
Sorina opens her eyes and sees me. She smiles, and I realize I need to move, need to act like a normal person, not like a man whose whole world just tilted on its side.
“The cake is good,” she says.
“I’m happy you like it.” After another beat, I ask: “Can I sit with you?”
“Sure.”
I sit across from her and reach for the velvet box. I open it and take out the bracelet.
“May I?”
Sorina extends her hand, palm down, wrist offered. I place the bracelet underneath and work the tiny clasp with my fingers,bending the metal hook through the loop, and I’m surprised I can do it at all. My hands have been failing me for months, seizing around tools, dropping stones, and locking mid-task. But close to her, my fingers aren’t as stiff. The clasp clicks shut, my fingertips brush her skin, and the contact steadies me the same way it did when I was struggling with the lemonade carafe. Her warmth reminds the stone in my hands that it used to be alive and flexible.
Sorina pulls her hand back and holds her wrist up, turning it so the diamonds catch the light.
“Pretty,” she says.
“Pretty like you.”
