“Uh-huh,” I whispered. How could I tell him that these were tears of relief? That for a long time, I had thought my body was broken or in some way deficient, but I was learning—he was teaching me—that my body was perfect, and all I had needed, this whole time, was someone to treat it as such.
I rolled on top of him, and he lay very still while I moved against him, our hands clasped. I had all the control, whereas I was used to having none, and this idea—that I could do whatever I wanted—was so erotic that within a few minutes, another small shudder of pleasure ran through me. He smiled up at me, then pulled me tight against him, and I felt his release, like a heartbeat, in the center of my body.
When I could make words again, I whispered, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and then I thought about it for a minute. “For wanting this, too, I guess.”
He kissed the top of my head, and we lay there like that for a long time.
Eventually, Teo ran us a bath. Afterward, he wrapped me in a robe and left me curled up on the sofa while he ran downstairs to Francesca’s to borrow four eggs and a block of cheese. “She didn’t suspect you were entertaining someone up here?” I asked upon his return.
“Well,” he said, with a crooked smile, “she did mention that she’d seen your car parked out front.”
I cackled at that. “I guess I’ll have to be smarter next time.”
He raised his eyebrows at the wordsnext time, then made us a frittata, which we ate on the sofa, legs entwined. When we were finished eating, he gathered me onto his lap. I could tell he was getting serious, that he had questions he’d put off asking for as long as possible.
“When do I get to see you again?” he whispered into my hair.
“When do you want to see me again?” I asked, cautiously.
“Tonight, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the day after that…”
He’d have kept going, but I kissed him, which shut him up. Then he untied my robe, and we were back where we’d started.
We fell asleep on the sofa, and I dreamed I was in a submarine that had come to rest on the bottom of the ocean floor. I didn’t know how I’d get out, or if I’d get out, and when I woke with a start, it was a quarter to six. I hurried to the bedroom to get dressed, then returned to the living room to look for my shoes, which I’d kicked off somewhere between the front door and the bedroom.
Teo stirred. “You’re leaving?”
“I have to,” I said.
He reached for me, and I moved to sit on the edge of the sofa.
“Really, when will I see you again?” he asked.
In his eyes, I could read his fears—that I would regret this afternoon, that what we’d shared in this apartment would become nothing more than a pleasant memory I pulled out and examined from time to time but otherwise kept tucked away.
“Soon,” I promised. “You’ll see me soon.”
137.
I PICKED PAUL UPat the pier that evening as if nothing had changed. But of course, everything had.
There were small signs—my damp hair, which likely smelled like Teo’s shampoo, and the fact that I was still wearing the dress I’d worn to the press conference. And then there were bigger signs, like the fact that I couldn’t keep a thought in my head.
If Paul noticed anything was amiss, he did not mention it. Jenkins and Vaughan and Volpe had been heaping praise on him all afternoon, so he, too, was distracted. “They really loved it,” he said as soon as he was in the car. “Said they’re expecting really favorable coverage.”
“That’s great,” I said.
He kept talking, something about the demonstrations and how he’d worried that the solid-state germanium detector—which had been giving him trouble lately—was going to stop working.
“Did it?” I asked.
“No,” he said, but then he was saying something else, and I couldn’t hear a word because I was thinking about how peaceful Teo had looked, asleep on that sofa, before I’d woken him.
Paul kept talking, and at some point, I realized he was talking about me. “What was up with him sitting next to you?”
