I drive us home from Sky. My belly is full and my brain is fuller, and trying to wrap my mind around the reality of us as a couple is tiring and exhausting. She puts her hand on mine, on the gearshift, and squeezes. This is a restless and strange brand of happiness, and I suppose I’ll adjust to it.
When we get in I turn on the TV. She retires to the guest room early, and when I peek in it’s dark and quiet in there. I agonize for a long time about whether to go to bed in my own room, or to slip in with her. I’m never sure if it’s distance she needs, but I follow my gut, and sleep in my own bed.
Toward morning, I feel the mattress shift as she slips in next to me. I sigh happily as I feel her arms wrap around me. “Morning,” she whispers, voice husky with sleep.
“Morning.” We lie like that quietly as my brain slowly wakes.
“You awake?” she asks, stroking my hair back off my face.
“Getting there.”
“I’m thinking I’m gonna get out of your hair this weekend.”
“Huh?” I turn around, not quite awake. Out of my hair? Is she breaking up with me?
“I talked to Jenny this morning. She and Maddy found out that their roommate was filming them with hidden cameras. He’s in jail, so my old room’s available.”
“What! Filming them?”
“Yeah. He was a real sleaze. But anyway, don’t be mad.”
“Mad? Why?” I wipe sleep from my eyes, blink. Am I missing something here?
“Because I’m moving out now. You know.” She captures my pinkie toe between two of hers. I squeeze, curling my toes. Stare at her messy hair and luminous eyes. It takes me a second to get what she’s saying.
“Hottie, why would I be mad? You know I’m not the U-Haul type; I know you need your own life, your space.”
She just nods, and I’m wondering if there’s something else I’m missing. I start to feel rather sick to my stomach. She’s looking at me, calm and quiet. It’s unnerving. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Ok, you’re freaking me out.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re looking at me like there’s something else and you’re expecting me to be upset.”
“There’s nothing else.”
“Ok, so what’s the big deal? Did you think I was gonna expect that you move in with me just because we’re a couple now?”
“No… I was just afraid it would hurt you.”
“Not at all. Um, not that I don’t want you around all the time but this is way too new to tax it with something like cohabitation, you know?” Not to mention that the inequity of it being my place and of her just getting back on her feet is a clear invitation for disaster. Her ego could never handle it.
“You know what?” she says quietly.
“What?”
“I really ***** love you.”
I laugh as she burrows closer to me, her breath tickling my neck. “Well, I really ***** love you too.” All my worries from last night disappear. I’m in bliss, utter bliss. I curl toward her, inhaling her distinct Shane scent.
The next night when I come home Shane is sprawled deliciously across my couch in a wifebeater and boy briefs, reading one of my books. All that white skin makes me blink a little. “Hey D,” she says over her shoulder, and my mouth goes a little dry.
“Hey Hottie.” I stand there, watching her, set my bag down at the door, drop my keys on the table.
“You want me to make you a sandwich or something?”
“Aww. You’re so sweet.”
She grins, places a piece of paper in the book, gets up and saunters toward me. My girlfriend, I think. Holy *****. Yeah, come right here and kiss me, girl. And she does. She tastes vaguely of milk and caramel. I could get used to this kind of greeting.
I sit down at the table, feel spoiled as she makes me a ham sandwich with lettuce and mayo. She ducks into the refrigerator, pulls out a beer and a coke, holds them up nodding her head from one to the other. I can’t help but smile; she is so charming it’s scary.
“A beer would be lovely,” I say, laughing, thinking that her sweet pale skin wrapped all around me would be lovelier.
She uncaps one for herself, and sits down at the kitchen table with me. I laugh as she sets down my sandwich. I kick off my clogs and tuck my stockinged feet up under me. “You’ll make some woman a wonderful wife someday, Hotness.”
She chuckles. She’s watching me.
“What?” I say, sipping the blessedly cool beer.
“What what?” She smiles. She seems lighter somehow, and I study her as I sip my beer. Her eyes are slightly red.
“Were you crying?”
She blinks, surprised. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
“Why?” I ask, reaching to squeeze her hand. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” she shakes her hand. “You’ll never believe who I saw today.”
My heart plummets, hard like a stone. “Who?”
She looks at the ring of condensation left my her beer, traces it with a long finger. “Steve.”
“Steve…Jaffee?” I stare at her, incredulous. “They let him out?” I can feel the blood draining from my face, falling quick as gravity. *****, I should lock my doors. Check the windows…
“No, he’s not out. I visited him in jail.”
“What?”
“I needed to talk to him.”
“Shane… What the ***** were you thinking?” She was crying and now she’s acting all weird, light and calm. What the ***** is going on?
“It’s cool, D. I talked to him-”
“You can’t afford to antagonize him! He could hire someone to kill you in a heartbeat, just like that!”
“He’s not gonna kill me,” she says, steadying me with her eyes. “He’s not, okay. I just… I had to ask him why he did it.” Her gaze drifts away from me. She is crazy. Absolutely ***** crazy. And I love her.
“And what did he say?” I ask softly.
“He said…” She looks up at the ceiling, eyes glittering. “He said that he loved her and that I destroyed his family. He also said that he only did it because he walked in and found her and she was dead and blue and he was out of his mind with grief.”
Oh my god. This is not going to help her cope with Cherie’s death. *****.
“Is that what you wanted to hear?” I ask quietly.
“I guess. I never meant for any of this to happen.” She blinks and swallows and a tear rolls down her face with surprising speed.
I stand up, so quickly my beer falls over, but I just right it again and then take her into my arms, hold her. She sniffles, but I guess the bulk of her tears has already been shed. She just holds me, and I can feel every inch of her arms around me. She smells like herself, and my shampoo. I run my hand down her back, feel the warmth through the ribbed cotton of her shirt.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. I just… I feel like it was.”
“I know.” If I put my head just right on her chest, I can hear her heart beat. Steady. I realize that my breath is slowing to come in time with her heart. Four beats in, four beats out. “What else did he say?”
“I told him that I was staying away from them, that he had no reason to want to hurt me. He told me that I wasn’t worth killing.”
I hold her close, make a disgusted clicking sound in my mouth. “You’re worth everything.”
She just clings to me, wanting to believe it.
.
That weekend I bring home a dozen boxes from the hospital. Shane begins loading stuff into boxes that once carried latex gloves and Fleet enemas and gauze four by fours. Most of what she owns is clothes.
On Saturday, Jenny and Alice and I help her move the boxes back to Jenny’s place. I personally prohibit Shane from lifting with her left arm, and she just smiles and rolls her eyes. She can’t even pretend to be annoyed; she clearly likes having someone watch over her. I feel conspicuous every time Jen or Al is in the room with us, and I have to turn around so they don’t see the dopey grin on my face.
I worry that I won’t be seeing enough of her to satisfy me, that this move will cause distance. I don’t know why. Thus far I’ve felt satisfied, waking next to her, or coming home to find that she’s cooking, or making coffee. There’s no reason to think that this will hurt us. No reason to think that I’ll be seeing less of her. But still I worry.
Nonetheless, I don’t want her with me out of convenience, or due to disability. And maybe down the road we’ll come to that stage naturally.
Between the three and a half of us, the move doesn’t take long. After, we sit on their porch drinking, chilling out. Shane, who feels she has to return favors like help with moving, has bought a case of beer and a pizza and a big baggie of weed. Looking at her eyes and her relaxed smile, I feel good, and I drink until a warm buzz starts to tingle at the periphery of my consciousness.
I get up to use the bathroom and when I come back Alice has taken my seat. I move to sit down next to Shane, on her other side, but she tugs at me, arms around my waist, pulling me down so that I’m sitting on her lap. I chuckle and I know I’m grinning, and that Alice and Jenny are watching.
“Hey,” I murmur, grinning at her over my shoulder. “You got me.”
“Yep,” she says, smiling, her eyes on me feeling like a low throb somewhere deep inside me. We lean close together and I kiss her, madly, eyes closing with the heady bliss of it, peripherally aware that Jen and Alice are watching.
“Should we tell them?” I murmur into her ear, darting my tongue out to lick, just because I can.
“That’s one way for everybody to find out,” she says, not bothering to lower her voice.
“Find out what, guys?” Alice asks quietly.
“You wanna tell them?” Shane smiles.