Page 132 of Xavier

If only I knew he would always be here to catch my tears.

I shift, positioning him under me, and then slide my body down, feeling him fill me up. Just as I wanted. Wholly. Completely.

He exhales and drops his hands down onto my hips, looking up at me, as we start to find a rhythm.

Our eyes lock and never leave each other’s.

Not even when he lifts my dress off my body. Not when I reach down, bracing my hands on his chest. Not when I feel myself fall over the cliff, or when his whole body clenches and then releases inside me.

Not even then.

Only when my exhausted body falls against him, do we finally look away.

“What are you going to do now?” I whisper to him, when our breath is quiet.

“Try to figure out what my life is meant to be without you,” he says, brushing my hair off my neck and dropping a kiss to the top of my head.

“You’ve done it for twelve years.”

“No. There wasn’t a day you weren’t with me.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” I ask him.

“Whatever it is you want. Without the weight of the past, without the fear of me finding out, without looking over your shoulder. Free from all that. Just to do whatever it is you were meant to do.”

I slide up until my ear is just over his heart. “What if what I want is to be with you?”

“Then you’ll figure out a way to do that too.”

***

I'm not sure what time it is when I wake up, but the room is completely dark. I turn over onto my back and nothing stops me. I reach out my hand to touch the sheet and it’s cold. He is gone but I still, strangely, feel safe as I slide out of bed pulling on the dressing gown I left on the chair next to my bed and walk through my empty apartment. There is no sign of him. There's barely a sign of me left in this empty space and I'll be glad to be gone from here tomorrow.

I hear a cough on the other side of the door and I freeze just for a moment before I realize what I'm hearing. I tiptoe to the door and peep through the eyehole, and there he is, sitting in the hallway outside of my apartment on the floor, his arms wrapped around his own body. His eyes staring straight ahead, waiting, watching, always protecting.

It takes everything I have not to throw the door open and run to him.

But I know, it's not our time.

I know that now.

I know that for me, I know that for him, and I know in the morning when I step outside he won't be waiting for me anymore. I push away from the door and slide to the floor, my back against the flat, cold wood, and cry over Xavier Kent one last time.