Michael spent a week with me, at the expense of his game broadcasts and time with his dog. He also had a series of nightmares from which he woke panting and sweating. When I cornered him about the dreams, he confessed that they involved finding me dead or nearly dead, blood everywhere, my thigh slashed open. He broke down, describing it, and I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear the fearful way he watched as I left a room, or how he trailed me into every shower or flinched when I used knives to prepare our food.
I couldn’t bear to see him in pain.
So, I offered to stay at his place while he worked and took care of his dog. He lunged at the suggestion like a man drowning. I packed a small bag and confined myself to his apartment, which made me feel vaguely claustrophobic, and Furio kept me company while Michael ran twelve-hour game streams and finished the profile.
He was palpably happier, having me close. He would have come unglued, I imagined, if I had insisted we spend time apart. But I didn’t want time apart, either, because Michael was changing me for the better. After a few days in his company, I had stopped trying to suppress my pleasure. He never let me get away without coming. He seemed to know that was the most dangerous time, when I wanted to bleed the desire from my body, and he began to find ways to make me come with him, even before him.
I started to seek out my pleasure, too. My guilt and self-loathing always faded with release, so I drove myself toward climax and then enjoyed Michael’s body at my leisure, teasing him, making him wait.
Those days reminded me of my time at the apartment with Jamie: Stolen, blissful, outside of morality. I had strayed into a dream.
We spent four and a half days at Michael’s place, which was all I could stand. I felt safer and freer and even less human in the mountains, a part of the thin air and forests. Before we headed back to Red Feather, Michael called his ex-girlfriend and offered to drop off Furio. She gave him a hard time about it, from what I could tell, and then insisted on coming to pick up the dog.
“She’s suspicious,” Michael told me afterward. “We planned to alternate weeks with Furio and I haven’t been around. I think she kind of knows there’s ... something.”
“Something.” I grinned faintly.
“Someone. Whatever.” He looked away. “Anyway, I told her I’ve just been busy with the profile. Uh, she’ll be here in twenty minutes, give or take.”
I lowered my book. I mostly read at Michael’s; I found it difficult to write there, for no clear reason. “Should I hide under your bed?”
“Oh, no. I don’t care.” He sounded like he didn’t care, and also like he had given the situation some thought. “I don’t care if you don’t care.”
“I’m fine,” I said, and I remained sprawled along his couch, reading, until the bell rang. It would have been a lie to say I didn’t care, though I understood what Michael had meant. But I did care—about him—and I wanted his ex to know. I didn’t fear her. When she stepped into the kitchen and saw me reading in the family room, she backed up a step.
“Oh,” she said.
Michael was waiting by the door with Furio on a leash.
I tossed aside my book and joined them in the kitchen. I stood beside him, close enough that our arms touched.
“Hello, Nicole,” I said.
“Hi,” she chirped. “I didn’t know you were here. I guess you guys are still working on that thing, right? The uh”—she shifted her large handbag and took the leash from Michael—“thing for the ...” She gestured. She could not compute my presence, barefoot at her ex-boyfriend’s apartment at nine in the morning.
“The profile,” I supplied, “for The New Yorker.”
“Yes. Oh my God. I haven’t had enough caffeine yet.”
“Well, I think there’s still some coffee in the pot.” I said it as if I lived there, as if I had the right to offer her a cup of coffee, and I saw the moment when it dawned on her—the possibility, the waxing realization, that Michael had discarded her for me.
Her head came up and she met my eyes. I gave her my most charming smile. Then she looked at Michael, who was watching the whole encounter in his own private state of shock.
“I’m okay,” she stammered. “Gimme a call, Mike, when, uh—we’ll figure out next week.” She retreated, unable to meet either of our gazes now.
“Sure thing,” he said. “Thanks, Nic.”
He closed the door and stared up at me.
“Something the matter?” I said.
“I think she ...” He shook his head. “She’s not an idiot, that’s all.”
I took his jaw in my hand and lifted his face. “I wanted her to know.”
His eyes widened a fraction. “Okay.”
“I wanted her to know,” I repeated, bringing my mouth close to his. “I wanted her to know you’re mine. I wanted her to know I’m fucking you.” I searched his expression. “I’m proud of you.” His breath hitched against my lips. He put a hand on my hip, another on my stomach. I kissed him and backed him into the counter.
He got hard for me so quickly. He was almost excessively sensitive, and I wondered if I owed a debt to Nicole, who had never given him as much attention as I did. As I got on my knees, he tried to tell me that he was proud of me, too, but ecstasy and his general struggle with communication made it difficult.
Still, I understood him. I understood him and I wouldn’t have cared if Nicole had returned and found me sucking him off in the kitchen. She deserved to know that I loved what had only ever been a chore to her.