The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

Kat

When I closethe bathroom door behind myself, I have to stand there against the wall for a moment to make sure I’m not shaking, that I’m not having some sort of alcohol-poisoning induced hallucination.

I’m, like, ninety-five percent sure it’s not alcohol poisoning. I didn’t drink that much, right? Unless I’ve also blacked out and had four more drinks, or gone into an anxiety-fueled fugue state, which might be possible but seems like it would’ve happened at least once before this.

My hands aren’t shaking. Good. Great. What the hell did I just do?

That was weird, I think as I push open the door to Silas’s bedroom, no less nervous than the first time I did this fifteen minutes ago. That was maybe the weirdest thing you’ve ever done and you’ve done some real weird shit, Kat.

Carefully, like I could set off a landmine if I step on the wrong spot, I cross his bedroom to the dresser where I got the boxers he’s wearing.

You made a man get dressed in his own shower so that you could also get in, fully clothed, and bathe him. Have you even heard of a boundary?

Silas knows everyone in this town and the second he’s in his right mind he’s going to start telling everyone about the crazy lady who got into his shower and touched him a bunch and then everyone is going to look at you strangely, all the time, because you’ll be Weird Perverted Shower Woman.

I haven’t even gotten to how I was a huge bitch earlier to some nice people who were just trying to help Silas, and also to some people who were just standing there and looking at us.

Oh God. Oh fuck. I yelled at strangers in public. The thought makes me dizzy with panic.

When I reach the dresser I take a slow, deliberate breath, imagine that my runaway thoughts are loose pieces of paper on a desk, and then I sweep them all off. In my mind. It helps, kind of.

Of course, this is also a strange thing to do and I’m not sure if I should do it or run back down the stairs and leave his house forever, like a normal person.

But he seemed okay with it, right? He said I could touch him, and he did as I asked, and when I washed his hair he kept making these soft, rumbling noises that I’m not sure he knew he was making. He kept his eyes closed. He held my wrist. He has a long-healed scar across one side of his ribcage, white but uneven, like he should’ve gotten stitches and didn’t.

I suck in a breath and blow it out, because thinking will only make things stranger, and because the only reason I’m thinking about noises and touches and scars is because I am still pretty damn drunk.

“Goddamn it,” I whisper to myself, then pull some clothes out of his dresser for him: pajama pants and a t-shirt that seems soft, because I can only imagine him getting in here in his current state and just… standing here, staring at the dresser for a good twenty minutes or something.

Then I look down at myself in my mostly-wet dress, and decide: fuck it. I help myself to a pair of gym shorts with a drawstring and a t-shirt with a soccer ball on it.

That done, I more or less flee back downstairs. The cat—Beast? Did he name his cat Beast? The thing’s the size of a horse—is bathing herself on the kitchen table, and I busy myself making tea.

Tea is calming. It is possibly un-drunkening, and it’s something I can do to not endlessly replay how I got into the shower with a half-naked man who did not want me there oh God.

“You’re still here,” he says from the doorway.

I jump a mile, one hand flying to my chest like I’m an eighty-year-old with a heart condition.

“Sorry.”

“You’re fine,” I say with lots of dignity. “Um, yeah. I made tea? You had chamomile, which is like… soothing.”

For a moment, he doesn’t move. He stands there, in the doorway to his kitchen, in plaid pajama pants and the t-shirt I got out for him.

He doesn’t lean, or cross his arms, or give me some smirky look like he’s got something smart-assed to say. He stands there and looks at me, his gaze oddly naked and sincere and distant, all at once.

After a moment I point at the two mugs on the otherwise-bare counter. Silas’s kitchen is shockingly clean. He picks one up and blows across the top, so I take the other.

“What now?” I ask, after a moment.

He’s still staring at the opposite wall, and it takes him a moment to drag his gaze back to me.

“You should probably go.”

He’s right. I’m damp, bedraggled, trampling boundaries, being weird, wearing his clothes, and breaking our agreed-upon rules that I suggested.

“Do you want me to?” I ask.