"That's mine too. For as long as you let me have it."
"Yes."
He thrusts up into me.
Once. Twice. On the third one he breaks. Buries himself deep and his hand tightens on my throat and the other one presses flat on my lower belly like he's feeling himself inside me and he comes with his mouth on my shoulder and a sound in his chest I will hear for the rest of my life.
I go boneless against him.
He holds me up.
After, in the shower, he washes me again.
This time I notice all of it.
The way he soaps his hands first. The way he moves my hair off my back. The way he runs the cloth down my spine slow. The way he kneels to wash my legs and my feet and does not rush a single movement.
It is not just aftercare.
It is a man telling me with his hands that he meant it.
I stand under the water with my eyes closed and I let him.
When he's done he wraps me in a towel and carries me back to bed.
Puts me in his shirt. Clean sheets because he changed them while I was still half-awake and didn't notice. Water on the nightstand. A granola bar he unwrapped because he's learned I won't unwrap things when I'm wrung out.
He gets in behind me. Wraps himself around me. One arm under my neck. One arm across my waist.
His mouth finds the back of my neck.
"You quiet yet."
"Yeah."
"Good."
A long silence. The sky in the window is going pale at the edges. Dawn is half an hour away.
"Gray."
"Yeah."
"I'm going Tuesday."
"I know."
"And I'm coming back."
"I know."
"I don't know when."
"Okay."
"Is that okay."
"Yeah."
