We fuck so long and so often that we make each other sore. We are getting to know each other’s weaknesses, the triggers that make the world stop: tonguing a particular place on the collarbone, grinding against him while he washes dishes, palming him while he’s on the phone to feel him come alive in my hand. We can smell each other on our skin when we’re apart. “I’m not getting anything done,” he teases me. “I’m having a contest with myself to see how often I can make you come. Doesn’t leave time for much else.” At night, we sleep deep, limbs thrown all over the other.
I have never had a life like this, where I felt so good so often, so perpetually safe inside my own head. I wake up with no headaches and no dream recall.
It becomes winter.
—
I’m not sure how I keep justifying postponing telling Teddy about the project, but I do. There’s always something else to talk about. There are stories about ex-girlfriends, and there’s the graphic novel he’s tried to start five times. There is the first apartment I lived in in New York and the time two middle schoolers tried to mug me on the L train platform. There was his first kiss in the eighth grade from a girl named Becky Walters, who tongued his face so hard she gave him a rash. How I met Mel. The cabin he dreamed of building in Henry County. Story on top of story; we lose whole nights of sleep talking to each other. We’ve missed twenty years of life with each other. We feel the need to catch up.
Most days, it feels wasteful to address anything that could spoil this. When it eventually comes up, he will understand, I tell myself. You two will be so far into whatever this is that he will understand what you’re doing. He’ll understand why you’re committed. It will be fine.
One night, searching through the bathroom cabinet for Q-tips, I find a girl’s scrunchie, a big, ruffled gold job of the American Apparel variety.
Before this, I haven’t experienced what a sweet sea of land mines living with a lover can be. Are you moving into their territory, or are they moving into yours? Are there areas that are off-limits to you (his workspace, for example, stacked with store ledgers and videotapes and plans for the next film festival)? Are there people who are off-limits to you? What are the necessary, unspoken truths of the house, and how unpleasant will it be when you discover that they are to remain unspoken? Mel and I had known each other so well for so long; even our surprises had the feel of the well-worn. There are times when I have to remind myself that Teddy is not Mel, that I cannot live with him in quite the way I lived with her.
I pick up the scrunchie and bring it out, waving it in the air, nose wrinkled. Expecting to get a laugh.
Teddy looks irritated instead. “Okay,” he sighs, plucking it out of my hands. “Where’d you find it?”
“Under the sink. That thing’s the size of my head. Who’d it belong to, Pebbles?”
He grimaces and turns away from me. I see crimson rising up from his shirt collar. “Victoria. An ex. She works at the bookstore.”
The girl on our walk to the bar, our first night in Louisville. That was bookstore girl. Victoria. I feel a twinge. Mystery woman’s not so funny anymore with a face and a name.
Teddy softens. “I’m not trying to be evasive,” he says. “But I did have a life before this, you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s just that you ask for a lot of information when you’re not always forthcoming, you know? It feels a little imbalanced sometimes. Look. Watch this.” He leans over, throws it in the trash, ties off the bag, and lifts it out of the bin. “Out of sight, out of mind. Okay?”
“I wasn’t trying to pry,” I say, but he’s out the door and on the balcony, back turned, lighting a Benson & Hedges. Effectively ending the conversation.
That night, he comes to bed quiet before scooting over to me and saying, grudgingly, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“I didn’t mean to get as upset as I did.”
“You were entitled to the way you felt. I was being a dick.”
“No, there was no reason to get that irritated with you.” He leans back into the pillows, runs a hand through his chest hair. “She and I broke things off not long before I met you. There wasn’t any overlap, but it cut pretty close, time-wise. I guess I feel a little guilty about it.”
I respect him for this. For sticking to his guns. For making an apology in the light when he could have snapped off the lamp and done it in the dark. I prop myself on my elbow and say, “You have a strong moral compass. You know that?”
He looks surprised. Says, “Well, so do you.”
—
Teddy is a natural manager. He changes the feeling of a room merely by walking into it. It’s in the tone of his voice, rarely loud yet arresting, and in the easy, affable way he makes decisions. He is responsible, transparent. Living with him is quieter, more controlled, than what I am used to. It feels like I can share the reins a little. I no longer have to mind the clock and pay the bills for two people. Even for all the moments of self-consciousness, wondering how I sound or seem to him, it feels nice. He has incorporated me into his home, given me not ownership—not yet—but ground, the promise of a claim in the air, that delicious, foregone conclusion. It is new and exciting. Feeling older without fear of getting old.