“However you sleep in here will be just fine with me.”
“Oh.” She shakes her head. “I don’t actually sleep inside it. I sleep on top of it so it’s always made up. If I get chilly, I grab a blanket. I just hate dealing with making beds.”
I never let on to her just how much emotion I feel right now. She’d interpret it as me getting emotional over a zipper bed. It’s not that. Well, it is that. It’s everything. The twenty-year-old version of me might have found zipper beds a hard limit. I might have run away from a zipper-bed girl without looking back. I mean, she has a zipper bed. Just imagine what other oddities rule her life.
Right now, it crushes me to imagine the day might come where nothing fantastical like Instagram emus, chicken-less soup from a can, and zipper beds won’t be part of my life—that she won’t be part of my life.
Because … She. Chose. My. Son.
Dorothy put Roman above everyone else. And in doing so, she made me love her in a way that rips the air from my lungs, shackles my heart, and claims my soul.
“So you don’t care?”
Quelling my aching emotions, I grin. “Just get in bed.”
“Okay.” She shrugs, flips off the light, and slips onto the zipper bed next to me, pinning me in since she’s on top of the bedding and I’m zipped inside of it.
I have her exactly where I want her, and I can’t really touch her. So I close my eyes and just find comfort in her proximity.
“I love you,” I say after several minutes of her fidgeting, hoping it distracts her from the discomfort of sharing her bed with me, maybe calm her nerves a bit.
“Okay …” she replies in a breathy voice.
“Are you okay?” I try to pull down the covers, but I’m zipped in tightly and her weight beside me thwarts my attempts.
“Yes …” She swallows so hard I can hear it. And I can hear her shallow breaths, slowly quickening.
I turn my head toward her, squinting to see her face in the darkness. Jutting my chin to get as close as I can. Her face comes into enough focus that I can see her eyes close, her bottom lip trapped beneath her top teeth.
You have got to be kidding me!
“Are you…” I squint a bit more, nudging her body with my elbow to get her attention “…getting yourself off?”
“Yeah …” Pant. Pant. Pant. “No …” Pant. Pant. Pant. “Maybe … oh god …”
“This is not happening,” I mumble.
“Fu … fuck, Eli!” She grabs my thigh, holding it for dear life as her pelvis lifts from the bed.
I realize she doesn’t want me to read books on autism and generalize her into the typical stereotypes. But the part about some Aspies struggling to exhibit appropriate behavior in certain situations seems to fit Dorothy to a T. And I think I realized it the day she casually got naked in the back of her car at the pizza place.
It feels like weird timing. If I were going to masturbate in bed without including my partner, I think I would wait until they’re asleep.
After her hold on me relaxes, along with the rest of her body, she releases a contented sigh.
“Why? Just … why?” I whisper, staring at the dark ceiling, praying that it won’t take all night for my erection to die down.
“It helps me relax so I can get to sleep easier. I usually journal before bed, but I didn’t figure you’d want the light on.”
“Well…” I adjust my uncomfortable erection “…you thought wrong.”
“Okay. Sorry.” She rolls to her side, planting her ass against my hip. “I’ll journal next time.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
My Baby Girl
Dorothy
“Oh … crap …” The alarm on my phone chimes. “Shit …” I cringe, peeling myself from Eli’s torso. How did this happen? He had surgery less than a month ago. And I’m on top of him!
Before I can completely ease off his body, he blinks his eyes open.
“I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you? I don’t remember crawling onto your chest. It’s not like me. I just—”
“It happened early on.”
“Oh jeez.” I wrinkle my nose, leaning over to shut off my alarm. “So I woke you up?”
“Yes.” He grins on a small yawn, covering it with his fist.
“Did I hurt you?”
“No.” He chuckles. “You’re a featherweight.”
“Did you get back to sleep easily?”
“No.”
“Eli … I’m so sorry. I’m not used to sharing space. I’ve never shared my bed with someone else.”
He runs his fingers through his dirty blond bedhead, leaving his arm resting behind his head, flexing his muscles.
God … he’s so hot.
“I struggled to stay awake.”
I shake my head. “You mean, fall asleep.”
“No. I could sleep forever with you on me like that, much like I can with Roman. But I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I wanted to smell your hair. Absorb the warmth of your body. Feel your heart close to mine.” He offers a sad smile. “I wanted to make a memory that time can’t erase.”