Page 21 of Intersect
In the bright light of morning, with Nick here, grinning at me like something miraculous has occurred, the dream last night feels distant. I tell myself it was just a nightmare, a figment of my imagination. I ignore the part of me that knows itwasn’t.
I smile back. “As far as we know,anyway.”
“If I managed to have sex with you while I was asleep I’m pretty impressed with myself, given everything else we did lastnight.”
I look at him under my lashes. “I think you should be impressed with yourself eitherway.”
“Keep looking at me like that and I’m going to insist on impressing you some more,” he says, shoving his plate to theside.
The memory of Ryan hisses in my head, a poisonous snake I want to lock away in some dark corner and forget. I push my plate to the side too. “You say that as if you think I’d be threatened byit.”
“You might be,” he says, pulling me into his lap, “if you had any idea how much more I’d like to do toyou.”
I feel a hum of pleasure in the middle of my chest. “Tell me more about these things you’d like todo.”
“I’d like to have dinner with you every night,” he says softly. “And wake up with you everyday.”
My head tips back to look at him. “That’s way less filthy than I wasexpecting.”
He grins. “There are plenty of filthy things I want too, but I’m trying to focus on the bigger picture at the moment. I want you to move in withme.”
I blink, wondering if I’ve misheard him or if I’m somehow misunderstanding him. “What?”
“Move in with me,” he says, pulling away just enough that he can see my eyes. “I want your face to be the last thing I see every night and the first thing I see every morning. I haven’t even been trying to find a new place and I just realized it’s because I want it to be your choicetoo.”
My heart begins to trip in my throat, excitement that is joyful and frightened all at once. “We’re not supposed to be dating in the first place. Sharing a home might make it a little hard to keep this asecret.”
“We’ll figure something out. We’ll get a house with a back entrance and I’ll sneak in atnight.”
I allow myself to picture it, him coming home to me, sliding between the sheets of our bed in the darkness the way he did in London. I want it so badly I can taste it, but this isn’t London and there are so many consequences this time around. “But we can’t evenbetogether,” I reply, flustered. “Physically. You know what Imean.”
“That isn’t going to last forever,” he says. His eyes darken in a way that makes me momentarily forget we were ever discussing anything other than sex, and us having it. “It can’t. And we’ve found plenty of other ways to deal withit.”
We’ve found so, so many ways to deal with it since yesterday. Desire flares again and I struggle to ignore it. “But we’re only on, like, our fifth date. You cannot ask me to move in on our fifth date. God, I can’t even imagine how everyone would react if I moved in with you rightnow.”
“Fuck everyone else. And this is more like our 15thdate,” he argues. “What about the night we danced at the harbor, or when we went to Baltimore, or sat up all night at thehospital?”
I laugh. “Okay. You cannot ask me to move in because it’s only our 15thdate.”
“Fine,” he says. “You’re right. I’ll wait til our 16th. Which is tomorrow, just so we’reclear.”
I shake my head, but I also don’t say no. The sensible thing would be to wait…until we see where this goes, until my fear recedes. But I no longer have forever to put the things I want onhold.
* * *
We spendthe day out on the water. He teaches me how to paddleboard and standing there, watching him restrain his grin as I struggle to maintain my balance, it’s easy to forget about the dream last night. It’s in the quiet moments, when he’s pulling the boards out of the water and I’m standing idly by, that I’m struck by a fresh wave ofguilt.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, studying my face when he returns to the dock. I want to tell him the truth. He wouldn’t hold it against me, would he? It’s not eventhisversion of me that’s responsible for what happened, if he even blamed me in the first place. Does it count as cheating if you don’t know you’re doingit?
I smile. “Nothing. The wind is picking up. You think we’ll be cold on theboat?”
“Why don’t you grab a sweatshirt while I store this stuff?” he asks. “There’s one in my bag. It’s still in the otherroom.”
I make my way back into the house. The room he once shared with Ryan rests at the end of the long hall. A part of me doesn’t want to set foot inside it, wants to avoid any other memories thatlinger.
The room is bathed in sunlight yet feels dangerous to me. Two beds sit there, with matching navy-and-white quilts, pillows shaped like footballs. It’s still the room of children. One of whom is no longeralive.
A framed photo rests on the nightstand between the two beds. Nick and Ryan as boys. Baseball uniforms and big smiles. I put the photo back where it was, wrestling with this sense of dread in my chest. There’s more here, I know thereis.