He looked at me.
"Stop," I said. "Just , stop for a second. You're allowed to stop."
He looked at me for a long time. The amber light crossed the floor between us.
Then something in him , just a fraction, just enough , let go.
He sat on his bed, facing me. The room was very quiet. The city murmured somewhere far below. His elbows went to his knees, head dropping slightly, and he dragged one hand through his hair in the gesture I had maybe three times ever seen from him , unguarded, unplanned, just tired.
I was across the room. Then I wasn't.
I didn't decide it. I crossed the strip of light between the beds and I sat down beside him on his bed and I was close enough to feel the warmth of him in the cold room and I thought: I'm so tired of the distance. Four years of managing distance, calculating it, maintaining it like a line on the ice that you weren't allowed to cross , and I was tired. I was just tired.
I kissed him.
Not gently. Not with a question in it. I turned and closed the gap and kissed him the way I had been not,kissing him for two years, like I already knew what it felt like and was finally, finally allowed to confirm it.
For one half,second he was completely still.
Then his hands came up and gripped the front of my shirt and he kissed me back.
Hard and certain and immediate, both hands , one fisted in my collar and one coming up to the back of my neck , and the noise of the city dissolved into white static and I thought with the last coherent part of my brain: oh. There it is. There you are. Sixty seconds. Maybe more. Maybe less. Time was doing something unreliable and I didn't care. His mouth was warm and sure and everything I had been not,thinking about for two years confirmed in one long devastating breath.
Then Felix pulled back.
Not away , his hands were still there, still in my shirt, still at my neck , but back enough to breathe. His eyes were open. Looking at me with an expression I had never seen on him before, something cracked open behind the control, almost relief, almost terror, the look of a man who had just done something he couldn't put back in the box it came from.
"We can't do this," he said.
His hands were still in my shirt when he said it.
I looked at him. At his hands. Back at his face.
"You just did, though," I said.
His jaw worked. Something moved behind his eyes. He let go of my shirt , slowly, the way you let go of something you don't want to put down , and sat back. Looked at the floor. Looked at the wall. Looked anywhere but at me with the focused desperation of a man rebuilding a structure that had just taken a direct hit.
"Shay,"
"It's okay," I said.
He looked at me.
"I mean it," I said. "We don't have to , I'm not pushing. It's okay." I stood up. Crossed back over the strip of light. Sat on my bed. Looked at him across the dark room. "But for the record. You kissed me back."
He didn't say anything.
"That's all," I said. "Just , for the record."
The silence had a shape now, specific and full. Felix sat on his bed with his hands on his knees and looked at the floor between us and breathed.
"Go to sleep, Shay," he said. Very quiet.
I lay back on my pillow. Looked at the ceiling , smooth, hotel,bland, no cracks, nothing to study.
"Yeah," I said. "Okay."
I turned off the lamp on my side. The room went to just the city light, the thin amber strip between us on the floor.
