After my sojourn in the snow yesterday, I started thinking rationally. The pain and the sting of the cold cleared my head.
Caleb is gay. The guy I’ve been in love with all my life is gay, and I never noticed it.
Never. Not once. I’ve been so absorbed in my fantasies that I never bothered to come out of them. How selfish and stupid and unobservant do you have to be to not notice that your best friend is gay? I grew up with the guy, for God’s sake. How did I not know this?
I sat at my bench—the bench where I saw Thomas for the first time—and pondered. And cried. And pondered some more. It was an awful cycle, until I thought I’d die of the cold weather. So I trekked back, and by the time I reached home, I was itching to read or write or both.
And since then I haven’t been able to sit still, because my notebook is missing. Missing!
I know it was Thomas. He stole it when we were in the storage closet. It has to be him. I know I didn’t simply misplace it, and he’s the only human being I’ve come in contact with in the last three days.
Since it’s Tuesday, our poetry class isn’t meeting. Even so, classes are back on, so I walk to the Labyrinth. He must be there. He has other classes, after all.
I need my notebook back. I need that stupid poem back. I remember every single word of it, and I just hope he isn’t able to figure out it’s about him. I don’t want him to insult it like he did my last poem.
As I reach his door and stare at the Poet in Residence sign, I realize how stupid it is to think he doesn’t know. Of course he knows I wrote it for him. He knows everything about me. I try the knob, feel it turn, and suddenly, I’m standing in front of him.
Thomas is at his desk but he looks up as I enter. He doesn’t appear surprised to see me here, as if he knew I’d come. This makes me even more sure he’s the thief.
Without looking away, he puts his pen down and sits back in the high-backed leather chair. It creaks slightly. The sound, oddly, feels illicit, like breathy pants behind closed doors or a loud rustle caused by hasty shedding of clothes in the dark.
Should I feel shy around him now? Should I want to look away from his beautiful eyes now that he knows I’m a crazy stalker who comes on people’s legs? Because, honest to God, I don’t feel any of those things. I feel famished. My skin thrums. It’s more than awareness. It’s like he’s…in me. A part of him is breathing inside my body.
I step in and close the door behind me with a click. The hood covering my head falls, swishing down my loose curls. These inconsequential sounds feel even more illicit than the creak of the chair, something out of a thousand imaginations I’ve had.
“So, apparently you don’t even knock,” he murmurs.
Shit.
“I was just checking to see if the knob would turn.” I lick my lips. “And it did.”
“And it did,” he repeats.
My hands are at my back, gripping the very knob. I’m sorry is on the tip of my tongue, but I know it won’t do any good. Somehow I know that if Thomas is angry, no matter what I do, he won’t budge. Should have thought of that before I confessed all my crimes to him.
“You have my notebook.” My words waver.
Thomas shifts in his chair, causing it to creak again, causing my thighs to quiver against each other.
“Your notebook.”
“Yes?” I wanted to make it a statement, but my voice betrays me and comes out squeaky at the end, turning it into an unsure question.
“I’m in possession of it, yes.”
My hands fall away from the knob. Huh. That was…easy. “Are you saying you have it?” A stupid question.
He rubs his lips with his index finger. “Is there any other way of saying it?”
There’s a tiny spark in his eyes. If I hadn’t spent copious amount of time studying those twin flames and cataloging them, I would’ve missed it.
“Wow, so you did steal it from me,” I murmur to myself.
“If by stealing you mean the way you stole the book from my office, then yes, I did steal it.”
The mention of the book conjures up the image of it sitting on my nightstand. I’ve read it numerous times. I’ve read it so much that it’s mine now. I can’t give it back to him. I mean, I can go buy a copy for myself, but that won’t have his words in it. I won’t know what sentences he holds dear, how he defines himself and his unrequited love.
I grip the knob again, ready to turn it and leave, but I manage to stand my ground. “Look, I’m not here to make trouble. I just want my notebook back and you won’t…” I pause for a split second before completing the sentence. “You won’t have to see me again.”
Yes, this is the right thing to do.
He is married. He is a father. He is a teacher. He is not a distraction. He is not fleeting. I don’t understand what he is to me yet, but I know I can’t afford to find out. Already, I am in too deep. We have crossed too many lines.
“I’m going to drop the class.” I nod, having made up my mind. “Which is a relief because I obviously know nothing about poetry, or writing in general. So, if you’ll just give me my notebook, I’ll be on my way.”
Something flashes across his face that I don’t understand, and he shifts in his chair again. The creak, the whisper of his clothes against the leather gets my heart whirring. I ignore it though. He fishes out my notebook from the drawer and places it in the middle of his neatly organized desk. He uses his ring finger to slide it across the surface, until it sits at the edge.
“Take it.”
With shaking legs, I walk farther into the room. I extend my hand and curl my fingers around my notebook. It’s unusually hot to touch, as if he left his heat-print on it. I pick it up, ready to tuck it away in my coat pocket, but his fingers snap around my wrist and halt my progress.
“Not so fast,” he says softly. “Read it to me.”
“What?”
His fingers are so long that he can encircle my tiny wrist completely, and I’m shivering at his power. On top of that, he stands, towering over me. I have to crane my neck up to look at him. “The poem. Read it to me.”
My eyes bug out of my skull. I must look like a cartoon because Holy shit! I can’t.
“No.”
Thomas lets go of my hand but I’m not relieved—not when I can see how bunched up his body is, how coiled with restrained strength.
I lick my dried lips and his eyes follow the action. They are charged with erotic electricity, and a silly hiccup jerks out of my throat as I draw in a breath. I slap my hand over my mouth in mortification and walk backward.
For every inch I move away, he gains two. He is advancing on me, blocking out the meager light and the view of the snow through the windows.
Clutching the notebook to my chest, I keep walking until I’m right back where I started—at the door, my spine pressing into the wood and the knob digging into the small of my back—only this time Thomas is right there with me. He is so close that I can feel his fire and the flames dancing on his skin, but not close enough to touch and burn.
Fire-breather.