Scratch the Surface

“Jeremiah?”

“Yeah.” It came out husky, a little breathy, and I leaned in to kiss his nose, and then stepped free of his hands because they were driving me crazy. “Listen, I’m not asking you to change your home for me. That’s not fair. I’ll hardly ever be here, so––”

“No, I want both places to be ours,” he argued, stepping in close to me again.

I sidestepped him, though, and put a few feet of space between us.

“What are you doing?”

“What?” I circled around to the other side of the kitchen table.

He crossed his arms. “Am I not supposed to touch you?”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You touch me, and kiss me, and get us both all wound up, and then when I’m ready to pounce on you, you––”

“Pounce on me?” he repeated, smirking.

“Don’t make fun,” I warned, pointing at him.

“No, I––” He coughed softly. “No.”

“When I try and put you under me––”

“God,” he groaned.

“––you run off to the bathroom and use your hand instead of letting me––”

“You were hurt!”

“Well, I’m not fuckin’ hurt anymore!”

He shook his head, and I knew I wouldn’t get my point across this way. Giving him time to mull it over and work through everything he knew would take too long, though. If we were lying in bed and I rolled over on top of him, all that warm smooth skin plastered to mine, yes, I could show him my body was healed and he’d believe me, but right now he was too busy thinking. That could not be allowed to continue.

“Can we please at least settle the house thing?”

“Yes,” I conceded, and saw the relief on his face. “Like I said, it’s your home, Cameron. You can’t be wrong about your home, it’s your sanctuary. If you like everything the way it is, then––”

“No.” He stepped around the table and into my space, taking hold of the front of my shirt in his right hand, the left settling on my hip. “We’ll change it, make it our home, like we did with the apartment, because I want them to feel the same. You’ll be going back to Sacramento soon, and I don’t want that to feel like a jarring transition.”

My chest tightened at the thought of going back to Sacramento alone.

“I want it to feel like you’re here even when you’re not, and I want us to take turns driving back and forth, so it’s important that you want to be in this house.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I snapped at him. “Wherever you are is where I wanna be, so if you wanna live in this sterile nightmare, that’s okay with me.”

His gasp was loud.

“Shit.”

“Sterile nightmare? Really?”

“Well, except for your paintings. Those are all you.”

Wide eyes as he stared at me.

“What?”

“How can—how do you know?”

“They look like you.”

He continued to stare at me like I was something scary culturing in a petri dish.

“So maybe”—I drew him close, my arms around his waist, his hands now flat on my chest—“we can make some small changes.”

“Yes…let’s do—yes,” he stammered, and I watched his beautiful long-lashed eyes dip closed, as though he wanted everything to pause for a moment so he could savor my touch. It was one of my favorite things about him, that he was easy to read.

“For instance, we could donate the couch to some kind of research facility,” I suggested, trying not to smile, “see if anyone can sit on it for any extended period of time and not have their ass go numb.”

He shook his head, biting the inside of his cheek. “You’re an ass yourself, you know. Are you aware?”

I grunted and waggled my brows at him. “You’re the one who let me follow you home. The choice was yours,” I teased, and went in for a kiss.

He turned his head, but it wasn’t to avoid me. He hadn’t even noticed I’d leaned toward him because he was looking around the room again. “What if the house does feel cold, like you said. Maybe that’s why my family never wants to come over.”

Realizing I’d created a monster who was not the slightest bit interested in paying attention to me anymore, I let go of him and took the opportunity, while he was deep in his thoughts, to look at his paintings again.

The spectrum of styles and colors was interesting, though landscapes outnumbered anything else, every one of them interesting in their own right. No sunsets or fields or mountains in the bunch, but instead, scenes like a short pier that had broken off and been set adrift in the ocean, unmoored and beautiful in its collapse. Another was of a deep, lush forest that looked like it would be easy to get lost in, but if you looked closely, there was a path. The next was of a house, the back door open and looking out on tall trees in autumn, the breeze filled with falling leaves. There was a cityscape reflected in puddles on the sidewalk after the rain, but my favorite was what looked like an old traveling wagon with candles on the steps leading inside. It was serene and more than a little romantic. There were more, and as a whole, they spoke of a Cameron Gallagher I was crazy about. He liked organization, order, things in their place, because it made him confident of his ability to manage the situation, but judging from his taste in art, he had an appreciation for things he couldn’t control—like the way I came into his life—and there was a freedom he craved. I hoped he would let me help him the way he’d already helped me.