I take one step.
"What do you want."
"I want to come home to you."
The wordhomelands in my chest and stays.
I close the distance.
Pull her into me.
She fits like she did Thursday afternoon when I carried her up the stairs and like she did yesterday morning on the porch before I was stupid and cold.
She cries quiet into my shirt.
I hold her.
Above us the sky is doing the thing it does before dawn. Black going to indigo. One star left.
"I'm sorry I was cold," I say into her hair.
"I'm sorry I was a coward."
"You were scared. It's not the same."
"It is from where I'm sitting."
"Not from where I'm sitting."
She laughs. Wet. Small.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"Take me back to bed."
"Yours or mine."
"Yours."
I pick her up.
She wraps her legs around me.
I carry her inside, close the door with my foot, lock it, and carry her up the stairs.
I don't put her down for a long time.
12
SIMONE
He sets me down on the bed and stays standing between my knees.
The lamp is off. The window's got that pre-dawn indigo that makes everything in the room a shade of blue. His chest is bare because he didn't bother with a shirt when he came out to the porch. Just jeans slung low on his hips, and me in his shirt from two nights ago, the collar stretched out because I've been sleeping in it.
He doesn't kiss me yet.
