He waved away my apology. “Nope. No apologies. No explaining. No talking. No.”
“No . . . ? No talk—”
“Go upstairs, change, shower, whatever. Come down when you’re ready, to the basement. We’ll watch a movie.”
I shook my head, feeling my eyebrows pull together, not understanding what was happening. He won’t close the distance of three centimeters to kiss me, so he wants to watch a movie?
He must’ve read the confused anguish in my eyes and on my face, especially since I was unable and disinclined to hide them, because his left dimple made an appearance. “Look—” he brought my hand up, pressing it flat between both of his “—I trust you, so trust me. I just want to spend time with you. We don’t have to talk. You don’t need to apologize for anything. We can sit together, watch a movie, share popcorn.”
A little breath escaped me, one of wonder and distress. How was he so damn perfect all the damn time?
“There’s nothing wrong with watching a movie, people do it all the time,” he prodded gently, tilting his head, his hand coming to my hair, smoothing over the wet strands and down my back. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
*
It meant something.
Lying next to Abram on the big, red, plush love seat, tucked under his arm, my cheek on his chest, smelling his man-fragrance while we watched The Blues Brothers on the home theater screen, it definitely meant something.
But that didn’t make him a liar, because it hadn’t started out meaning anything.
After I went upstairs and showered, haphazardly blow-drying my hair and applying minimal makeup, I changed into a pair of yoga pants and a tank top. My brain on self-destruct autopilot, I didn’t think about the logical path forward or fretting about my actions. I thought about popcorn.
We’d begun the movie in the chairs, with the popcorn between us on a buffer seat. He’d given me a polite smile, saying nothing, and motioned that I should take the chair on the other side of the popcorn. The theater seats were a good size, but Abram was taller than average. He shifted in his chair several times, crossing his legs at the knee when he couldn’t stretch them out fully in front of him.
But ten minutes after the movie started, Abram sighed, picked up the popcorn and moved to the love seat at the front of the room, reclining on his back, a hand behind his head, his feet and legs stretched out toward the screen.
The love seat wasn’t a typical love seat, which was a smaller version of a sofa. It was the width of a love seat with a pull-out ottoman piece extending towards the screen that turned it into a giant chaise lounge, basically a full-sized bed with sofa cushions at the back.
“Hey,” I called out disgruntledly after he settled in, raising my voice over the action of the film.
He lifted on his elbow and twisted his neck to look at me. “What?”
“You took the popcorn.”
He held out the bag with his other arm. “Come take it if you want it.”
My frowning gaze flickered between the bag and his face. He’d made the popcorn. It didn’t make sense for me to take the whole thing. I could go to the kitchen and get a bowl so the popcorn was split evenly, or I could take several trips (up to where he held the popcorn hostage) several times during the movie to grab handfuls, or I could—
“Or just sit up here with me. Whatever.”
Well. Since he suggested it.
Clearly self-destruction autopilot was still engaged, because I crossed to the love seat, scooched back until I rested against the sofa cushions, my legs stretched out in front of me, and stuck my hand in the popcorn bag between us.
Around the halfway mark, my eyes glanced over at Abram. The popcorn was gone, so the bag wasn’t between us. His ankles were crossed. He had a hand on the T-shirt covering his stomach and an arm behind his head. His eyes were on the screen and a smile was on his mouth. A sliver of skin where his T-shirt hem had lifted away from his jeans was visible, as was the gray-and-black waistband of his boxers (which might have been boxer briefs, more data were required before a definitive classification could be made).
He looked comfortable, relaxed, happy, and I felt an answering desire to an unasked question: I wanted to be as he was.
In his own way, but in a way that was entirely alien to me, Abram was stunningly pragmatic and rational. Here he was, in a state of disappointment, and yet also in a comfortable, relaxed, and happy state. How did he do that? How could one state follow the other so seamlessly? Or exist in tandem?
I formulated no hypothesis, because a second later, he caught me staring.
As usual, I quickly tore my eyes away, a blaze of self-consciousness rushing to my cheeks. His eyes were on me. I felt them, but I also confirmed this sense with a quick glance in his direction. His eyes were on me and it wasn’t a quick scrutinizing. Now he was staring. Unabashedly.
“Hey,” he said after a protracted moment, lifting his hand from his stomach and placing it on my back. His palm moved in a slow circle over the thin fabric of my tank top. “Are you comfortable? You wanna lie down?”
I wasn’t comfortable only because I wanted to lie down. The logical path was to remain in my present position as lying down felt a little stupid and dangerous, like acknowledging the slipperiness of the slope and attempting the slope anyway.
Even so, self-destruct autopilot engaged, I nodded and lay down. His arm behind me didn’t move as I readjusted myself, which meant my head rested on his bicep when I finally reclined. The butterflies in my stomach made concentrating on the film difficult, so when his arm came around me, squeezing me to his chest during a particularly funny part, I only knew it was funny because he was laughing so hard.
That was the moment my head ended up over his heart. Instead of listening to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi tell me about their mission from God, I counted Abram’s heartbeats, slowing my breathing to see if I could match his pulse to mine.
Tangentially, I realized that listening to Abram’s heart had been a terrible idea, a critical error in judgment. Now—even with the tempo still filling my ear—I knew with absolute certainty I would never tire of the sound. In fact, I would crave it for the rest of my life, from this moment forward.
Our society warns us from an early age to eschew drugs that might be addictive, or habits and hobbies—like gambling or video games or fantasy worlds—that employ Skinner box tactics meant to target addiction-causing pleasure centers of the brain.
But no one tells you to avoid the sound of a heartbeat.
This was also the moment. Laying here with Abram was the memory I would keep, the one I would retrieve on rainy days, the one that would inspire wistful daydreams. And as beautiful as he’d been in the pool, as utterly perfect of an exterior he possessed, I wouldn’t be thinking of his body when I missed him, I would be thinking of his heart.
By the final musical act, the entire length of me was pressed against Abram’s body, one arm draped over his stomach, my other arm tucked between us, our feet tangled, his hand lazily moving up and down my side. When the end credits rolled, I didn’t notice.
“Hey,” he said eventually after the final credit had scrolled, the screen had faded to black. “The movie is over.”
“Yep.” I tightened my arm around his torso, holding on and squeezing my eyes shut. Maybe if I refused to acknowledge the existence of reality, reality would cease to exist. All hypotheses are worth exploring! Even the crazy ones.
He took a deep breath, his chest rising and lifting my head as he filled his lungs with air. I clung to him.
“Lisa.” I felt him shift, his hand that had been supporting his head came to my forearm and he caressed the length of it with his palm. “Do you want to get up?”
“No.”
He chuckled, and then sighed. “Okay. Do you want to talk?”