Jamie was waiting in the hallway. I hadn't asked him to, but he knew I was in there, and he'd positioned himself where I'd see him when I came out.
"Two years," I said. "Team option for a third."
His face split into a real grin. The grin that made rooms warm and made me feel, every time I saw it, like the luckiest backup goalie in the history of professional hockey.
22
Jamie
Abbott had been spending nights at my place and I'd been spending nights at his, and the logistics of two separate residences was becoming less a practical arrangement and more a polite fiction.
His apartment was increasingly becoming our apartment. My books were migrating to his shelves. My extra blanket was on his couch. The green mug he'd bought, the one in his cupboard—the same weight and size as the blue one in mine—had a companion now. I'd brought the blue one over and put it beside it.
I was sitting at his kitchen table one evening in the amber-grey of a Chicago dusk. Abbott was across from me, reading something on his phone.
The silence between us was one I'd only ever been able to sit in with him. It was comfortable, the shared silence of two people who didn't need to fill the space.
I thought about the car conversation weeks ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
You ever get tired of being good at something that doesn't actually get you what you want?
I'd been talking about ice time. I hadn't known what I meant.
"I'm someone's person," I said out loud to no one in particular.
Abbott looked up from his phone. His expression did that adorable almost-smile, so small it barely registered on his face—except the amusement in his eyes.
"You have been for a while," he said, going back to his phone.
I went back to the quiet.
The extraordinary thing though, was that this was it. This was everything—not a grand gesture or a dramatic declaration, but a Tuesday evening in the kitchen with the man who knew how I took my coffee and which shoulder got tight and the exact sound I made when I actually relaxed.
"Abbott."
"Clay."
"Clay." I was getting better at it. "Come here."
He set down his phone and crossed the kitchen in three steps. He stopped in front of me.
I kissed him because I could. I was allowed to, because the door I'd kept closed for years was open now. I had a quiet apartment and a man who saw me whole.
"Take me to bed," I said.
"It's seven thirty."
"Take me to bed anyway."
His mouth curved into a full smile. Rare and devastating and mine.
It was different from the first time, and different from the morning after. The first time had been urgent, the dam breaking. The next morning had been reverent, learning each other. This was something else.
This was joy.
We laughed. That was the thing I hadn't expected—the laughter and the ease, the pleasure of two people who knew each other so well that even this, the most intimate thing, could be funny and tender and real simultaneously.
He made a joke when we couldn't get my shirt over my head because it was caught on something, and I laughed into his neck. He laughed against my shoulder, and we fell onto the bed in a graceless tangle.
