I listened to his heartbeat instead of mine. It was slow and steady as he stroked my hair.
I lay there for a while. Sable came over and put her chin on the couch beside my hip and stayed. He scratched behind her ears with his free hand. She closed her eyes. The lamp was warm. The cheesecake dish was still on the coffee table. There was a stain on his ceiling near the corner that I hadn’t seen before because I hadn’t been horizontal in this room before. The stain was small and old and well-painted over.
“What are you thinking about?” he said.
“Your ceiling has a leak history at the southwest corner. Probably an old roof valley issue. Repaired, but visible if the angle is right.”
He laughed for a long time. I listened to it through his chest. “Of course,” he said. “Of course you are.”
“And you.”
“What about me?”
“I’m thinking about you, also.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“What about me?”
“I like you a lot. I mean a lot. I can’t put it into words, and it might take a few weeks. But I wanted you to know I was working on it.”
He was quiet for a count of nine, then he said, “I’m working on things too.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
It was 9:42 when I sat up. I’d half-fallen asleep on him. We ate chili, and I hadn’t brushed my teeth in eleven hours.
“I love cuddling you, but I should go,” I said on autopilot. “Unless I can stay and cuddle.” It felt vital for him to know that I wanted to stay. “Only I don’t have a toothbrush.” That was an important thing, and I couldn’t stay if I didn’t have the chance to brush my teeth.
“I have a spare.”
“And I can stay in your bed after I’ve checked it?”
“Always.”
“I know it’s weird to have to check it, but sometimes?—”
He stopped me with a kiss. “Nothing you do or say is weird.”
I regarded him skeptically. “I know I’m weird. The ’tism is strong in me.”
“Weird by whose standards? Not mine. I like you just the way you are, stats and all.”
He gave me a clean T-shirt that was too big at the shoulders. I checked the bed. It wasn’t the nest of covers I had at home, but if I tucked in the blanket from the end of the bed around me, I could make my own weighted cover. He gave me a new toothbrush from a packet of three he had under the sink. He let me brush my teeth alone in his bathroom because I needed two minutes to pull myself together, and he didn’t make a thing of it. When I came out, the bedroom was dim and the window was cracked. He was already in bed on his back, on the side closer to the door, wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants, waiting.
“This side okay?” he said, patting the empty side.
“Yes.”
Sable settled on the rug at the foot of the bed. “She’s good here,” I said as I got in. He held up his arm. I lay down and put my head on his shoulder, and he pulled me into him.
The room was quiet. The window let in the sound of one car going past on Park Avenue and a far-off siren that wasn’t for him because he wasn’t on duty tonight. The sheets smelled clean. His skin smelled of him. I shifted a bit to tuck in the blanket on one side, and when he drew me closer again, I immediately relaxed.
He breathed out, long, against the top of my head, and settled, and his breathing went slow and even after a while. Sable sighed in her dog way, and I burrowed into his arms and closed my eyes.
