He shuts the door and leans back against it.
“You’ve been looking at me since the third,” he says.
“I always look at you. It’s a depth chart.”
“Not like that, it isn’t.”
“No.” There’s no point spending the managed version on him. We left that in a parked car a week ago. Neither of us went back for it. “Not like that.”
“It’s been eight days,” he says.
“You’re counting too.”
“I count the ones that matter. Eight days since the car, and we’ve been in the same vehicle twice a day since, and neither of us did a thing about it.”
“I was waiting for you to be sure.”
“I’ve been sure since about October. I was waiting for you to catch up to your own depth chart.”
“I caught up.”
“I noticed.” He doesn’t move off the door. Leaves the floor to me.
So I cross it.
The thing my brain does, the locking-on, turns out to have a use I never found. I never wanted anything badly enough to aim it.
I aim it now.
His jaw. His mouth when I reach it. The sound in his chest when my hands find the hem of his shirt.
“You’ve done this before,” I say against his mouth. It isn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
“A lot?”
“Enough.” He doesn’t dress it up. I appreciate that. Dressing it up would be a lie and we’re out of those. “None of it was this. Don’t go building a model out of it.”
“I build a model out of everything.”
“I know you do. Build it tomorrow.”
“Hey.” He breaks off an inch. Both hands framing my face. Steady. Reading me the way he reads a shooter at the top of the crease.
“We’ve got all the time there is. We don’t have to do anything tonight. You set the pace, and you can stop it anywhere, and I won’t ask why.”
“I know what I want.”
“Then tell me. I’m not going to guess at you. Not with this.”
And here is the sentence I’ve never said to a living person. The truest thing I own.
“I’ve never wanted anyone.” My hands have gone still against his chest. Not the counting gone quiet. The opposite. Every circuit I have is pointed at him.
“Before. Anyone. My whole life I thought wanting was a thing everyone else got issued and I’d been built without, and I made my peace with the building.”
I hold his eyes because he should get to watch me say it.
