“Have you eaten dinner?”
“No.” I find I can’t look at him.
“You want something?”
He brushes his lips over my cheek. When I don’t answer, he shifts gears. “Let’s get some clothes.” He goes through my drawers and gets sleep pants, boxer-briefs, and soft, long-sleeved shirts for us both.
While he does this, I climb back into the bed, unclothed. My eyelids shut like they’re lead-weighted. “I just want to sleep.”
A minute later, he crawls up behind me. Comes under the covers…scoots in close and wraps an arm around me.
“Sky?” His words are soft against my neck and shoulder. “You feel sick?” His hand is gentle on my back.
I shrug. Then I turn around, because I want to hold him. I inhale near his neck. He smells so good. His hand’s in my hair, his lips soft and smooth against my forehead.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. What can I do?”
I try to breathe more deeply. So I’ll feel less like I can’t. He wraps his leg and both his arms around me.
“You’re okay, Sky baby.”
My lungs do a full stop. His hand strokes my back.
“They’re voting,” I croak, “in two weeks. On gay shit.”
His hand stills. “What do you mean?”
“Whether to move toward affirming.”
“The church board of elders? I saw on the display screens that the meeting was this afternoon. That’s how I knew to come check on you.”
I nod.
“Dammit. I’m so fucking sorry.”
“It’s my fault.” My heart pounds as I say that out loud. “I’m the one who let it get like this. I was…scared.”
“You mean to lose your job and go out in a blaze of headline news hell? Jesus, Sky. Of course you are. The weird thing would be if you weren’t.”
I shake my head. I can’t find the words to explain. When I get like this, I always lose the words. Underwater. I hold onto him so that I won’t keep sinking.
I don’t even notice that I’m hyperventilating until his hand comes behind my head, pushing my face against his chest.
“Hey…” Through the fog, I feel his hand move over my back. “It’s okay. I’ve got you.” Somehow, he pulls me closer. “My Sky.” His lips press to my hair. My chest and shoulders sort of shiver—how they always do when this happens—and I feel dizzy. Too cold.
His mouth covers mine. I don’t even see or feel it coming. It’s a quick, soft kiss…and then another. Another, and I gasp air in from his lungs…and feel a thick wave of calm move through me.
“Carbon dioxide,” he murmurs.
That’s the way he brings me down—with soft, warm, perfect kisses. I don’t know how long we do it, but at last I see his face. I see his eyes—they’re watchful on me—and I taste his mouth. I feel how close our bodies are…the way his leg is pushed between mine.
I wrap him against me, and we lie back on the bed. I’m so tired now. That’s the way it always is. The tired, and then the really bad dark.
His lips brush along my jaw.
“You’re the strongest fucker I know.”
I don’t even know how I feel until I’m half asleep against him. It drifts to me in the ethereal trappings of a dream. The word is good.19VanceI don’t know what it’s like to be Luke, but I think it might be like living as a Russian nesting doll. He’s got a lot of layers of protection. When one of the outer layers cracks, there’s a backup layer underneath, but he’s lost something vital in the process. I don’t even know if he knows what’s at the center, so when he loses a bit, he feels real fear. He won’t take the layers apart on his own, ever—because he’s not sure what lies beneath. Or maybe he’s got an idea, but to him, what’s at the center seems bad, wrong.
I think the problem with burying parts of yourself is that the soil never holds. Life and stress, desire and heartache, till the soil, churning until those parts find a way back to the surface.
These aren’t things that he can say. Too much of him is in that center capsule, all locked up. The only way for me to know was to witness the layer sloughing off. Because I did—because luck or fate or God or something brought me over that night—everything after seems different.
It’s the last Thursday in April when he comes over at 6:30 PM with vegan tacos. He grins when he walks into the townhouse living room. His hair looks windblown, and he’s got on jeans, a pink Polo, and Chucks.
“Hey, dude.” I’m on the couch, barefoot in my boxer briefs—all the easier for him to fuck me—but I get up to hug him.
“Shit. I missed this today.”
He hugs me hard. “Yeah,” he says against my cheek, “the college students sucked.”