I stayed seated. He finished. He straightened up and looked at the trash can and then looked at me, and I wanted, specifically and acutely, to be literally anywhere else, which was a new experience for me because I had never had strong feelings about anywhere being worse than wherever I currently was.
I did now.
Everywhere was better than here. The alley. The bar. The ice, the bench, the locker room at the end of a bad game. All of them better than this floor in this bedroom with this particular quality of Cross looking at me.
He reached for my shirt.
I flinched back before I'd processed it.
He stopped. Hands in the air. Not far, just stopped.
"Your shirt," he said. "It needs to come off."
I looked down. The shirt had taken some casualties when my stomach had decided to empty itself onto Cross’s shoes.
"Right," I said.
He moved and his fingers were at my shoulders, gathering the fabric, and I was acutely aware that his hands were warm.That was the first thing. Warm and certain, the same quality as everything else about him.
I had a sudden and completely unwelcome thought of what it would be like to be touched by Cross under different circumstances, in a different room, for reasons that had nothing to do with the fact that I'd destroyed his shoes.
I shut that down immediately.
My head hurt. I was in his bedroom, and I had vomited on his floor.
I held that thought very firmly while he lifted the shirt over my head and I emerged into the cool air of the room, shirtless.
He looked at me for exactly as long as he needed to. Then one beat more, which I clocked and immediately didn't know what to do with. Then the sweep, same as always. Clinical. Thorough. Nothing on his face.
I was dizzy. Still. The floor was doing its approximate thing where it wasn't quite where my brain thought it was. My hands had developed a slight tremor I was trying not to look at. I pressed them against my knees and breathed and thought about nothing, which was also the only available option.
My phone went off.
The buzz of it in my pocket was too loud and too much, and I made a noise that I was going to retroactively classify as stoic.
I reached for it. My hand wasn't entirely cooperative about the reaching. I got it out of my pocket on the second attempt and held it in a way that was technically holding it.
Cross held out his hand.
Not asking. Not suggesting. Just held it out, palm up, waiting, with the same authority assit downandstay seatedand every other directive the evening had produced.
I looked at him. He looked back.
"Under normal circumstances," I said, "I would have a thing to say about this."
"I know."
"These are not normal circumstances," I said, and put the phone in his hand, because my hands were shaking slightly and I didn't want to throw up on my phone and those were the actual reasons, documented, for the record.
Cross looked at the screen. His face did what it always did, which was nothing, absolutely nothing.
"Jenkins," he said, "would like to know if you're, and I'm quoting, deceased or just being dramatic. Capital letters. Multiple question marks."
"What did I tell you about Jenkins?"
"He's sent four follow-ups in the last eight minutes." A pause. "They escalate." Another pause. "The third one is a voice memo."
"Absolutely do not play that."
