I stand at the espresso machine, marveling at each act. Each one feels sacred and meaningful, though I know each willbe forgotten, blurred into all the other mornings that I make him a cup or call to him about where to find the toothpaste.
When the espresso is done, Colt still hasn’t emerged from the bedroom. I find him just where I left him, though I heard him up for a few minutes.
“Come back to bed, Candy Cane,” he says, stretching his arms over his head and yawning. With his shoulder-length blond mane all messy and wild first thing in the morning, he looks like a powerful lion.
I slide under the sheets with him again, tangling my legs with his. Cool morning light streams in through the windows, and the world below is still white except for the lanes where cars are already coasting by. But here, we’re warm and cozy.
“Did you change your mind about the order of things?” I ask, scooting close and sliding my hand up the back of his thigh.
“No, but listen,” he says. “I want to apologize. I was a dick to you yesterday morning.”
I didn’t expect an apology. He came back. That’s more than enough.
“Yeah,” I say. “You were. But I get it.”
He shakes his head. “That shit I said… It wasn’t even true.”
“I know.”
“If anything, I was the one stuck on the past.”
“How so?” I ask, searching his eyes.
“Not giving you credit for how you’ve changed,” he says. “Thinking you were still that guy who bullied me in high school. You’ve obviously done a lot of work on yourself.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“I guess I’m the only part of the past you’re stuck in.”
“Hm, not yet I haven’t been,” I say, nuzzling into his neck.
“Really,” he says, nudging my shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Duke. It looks like you’ve made quite the presentandfuture for yourself. The truth is… I think I was a little jealous.”
“Don’t be,” I say, wrapping my arms around him and pulling him in. “This isn’t mine. It’s ours. I want to give it to you. All of it. Everything.”
“I can’t accept that.”
“You don’t like it?” I ask. “Because we can find somewhere else. We don’t have to stay here.”
“I like it,” he says. “It’s perfect. But I didn’t do any of the work. You did all this. Not me.”
I link my fingers through his, my right hand to his left, and graze my finger across the missing space where his middle finger should be. “Consider it payback,” I say. “I should be giving you a hell of a lot more than an apartment.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “You still owe me a finger, and a lot of skin.”
“I think I can arrange for the finger,” I say, running my nose along his jawline, inhaling the masculine scent of him mingled with the familiar scent of my sheets. It sets me on fire, the smell of us together.
“You were right, though,” he says, his tone serious again. “I was running away.”
“You were right too,” I say. “I shouldn’t have dropped all that on you at once when you just came to fuck.”
“That’s not the reason I came,” he says, then cracks a grin. “At least, not the only reason.”
“You do keep finding me,” I say. “I’m starting to think you’re my stalker. Is that how you knew I was at the market, where you could ‘accidentally’ run into me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Oh, but I love flattery,” I tease. “Maybe you’re the moth. I’m the flame. That’s why you came back.”
