Cozy is good.
Erik is doing me an enormous favor by being here, by being a wall between me and Kyle and the whole stupid city, and the very least I can do — the actual least — is build him somewhere soft to land. That’s not weird. If wanting a guest to be comfortable is weird then I don’t want to be normal. And if comfortable happens to require every soft object I own arranged into a — into a cozy — then so be it. That’s just thoroughness. I’m thorough. It’s my whole brand.
The bathroom door opens.
“Okay so.” I’m already moving, already smoothing the corner of the blue blanket that does not need smoothing, that I am smoothing anyway because my hands have decided this. “It’s — it’s not as comfortable as it looks. Probably. I actually don’t know, I’ve never slept on it, but the mattress is decent for a pull-out, which I know sounds like the lowest bar in the world, but I actually did research when I bought it because I knew I’d have people stay eventually, theoretically, and—”
I fix a pillow.
“—so there’s the blue blanket because it’s the soft one, but then the gray one’s over it in case you get cold, except it’s also kind of heavy so if you gethotyou can just kick the gray one and keep the blue, that’s the whole reason there’s two, it’s a system—” I tug the sheet straight where a corner’s gone loose. “—and there’s a throw too, if two isn’t enough, it’s on the chair, but honestly three might be excessive, I don’t know your needs, I didn’t want to assume your needs—”
I step back.
The bed looks—
“Honestly it looks really good. Like, really good.” I hear myself say it and can’t stop it. “I kind of want to sleep in it myself.”
Silence.
The good kind, I assume, the kind where a person is about to saywow, thanks, this is great.I turn around to collect mywow, thanks, this is great.
Erik is standing in the middle of my living room, and he is not looking at me. He’s looking at the bed. And his face is doing something I have never once seen it do — not in the hallway, not inthe elevator, not when he was peeling Kyle off me like adhesive. Something has come down over him, or come up in him, I can’t tell which, and his jaw is tight and his eyes are doing too much and he is very, very still.
I do not have a reference point for this expression. I’ve been collecting Erik’s expressions for three years without meaning to and this one is new and it does not go with any of the others. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it on anyone else ever before either.
“Erik?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Okay, that’s — that’s concerning.” And just like that I’m across the room, because something is clearly wrong with him, he’s gone pale and strange and statue-like and people don’t do that for no reason. “Are you okay? Do you feel sick? Did you stand up too fast? Here — come here, sit, sit down—”
I take his arm and steer him toward the bed and he comes, he just lets me move him, which scares me more than the pale face does, because Erik does not get moved. Erik is the one who moves things. I get him to the edge of the pull-out and press him gently down by the shoulder and he sits.
“Stay there. Don’t move. I’m getting you water.”
I’m back in thirty seconds with a full glass. He takes it without quite looking at me and drinks the whole thing down like a man who forgot he had a body and just remembered.
I take it from him and set it on the table.
“Better?”
He finally looks up at me.
And then he reaches out, takes my hand — his is warm, his is always so warm — and pulls me sideways down across him, easy, like I weigh nothing, until I land in the middle of the pull-out in all the blankets and all the pillows and all the soft I packed in around the edges.
I laugh, startled, and for just a second — half a second, less — there’s something on his face that looks almost like fear, raw and fast, and then shoved back down before I can be sure I saw it at all.
“Umm.” He clears his throat. His voice has gone lower. “Yeah. See? See how comfortable it is.”
I sink back into it.
Oh.
Oh, itis.The pillows take my weight and the blankets are exactly as soft as I promised and it’s warm in here, packed in on all sides, walls of soft. And whatever has had me wound-tight that I’ve been carrying since the coffee shop or maybe before lets go all at once, every muscle in me going quiet at the same time, like the whole day was just me trying to get here and not knowing it.
“I told you,” I say, into the softness.
“You did.” His voice is rough. “You did tell me.”
