Xavier

---

Ever since Bast met and married Dru, I had become used to the presence of women in my life. Until then, women were something that happened to other people. There were professors at Stanford and teachers in high school, and bus drivers and waitresses and strangers, but no one that penetrated the veil of my daily life.

Until Dru.

Since then, I’ve seen Dru cry, but only once—she cut herself cooking and required a large number of stitches to her left hand, and she cried as I held a towel around her injury while Bast guided her to the truck.

I’ve seen Eva cry, and Aerie, and even Claire—but I wasn’t supposed to, and she made me promise not to tell anyone.

I’ve seen them cry. But none of it was connected to me. They weren’t crying to me, or for me, or because of me, or about me.

Low was crying in all those ways right now.

And not just crying, but sobbing. As if the pain was simply too great to fathom, and the great shuddering racking sobs were the only possible outlet for them.

Her tears made me panic.

What was I supposed to do?

I glanced at Bast, and he just inclined his head toward Low in a gesture whose meaning eluded me. Go to her? But do what? Hug her? Apologize? Ask her to stop? What did one do with a woman you’d made cry?

Why was she crying?

She’d wanted a hookup. Something temporary. I understood how that worked—I’d seen my brothers carry on hookups by the dozen; they met a girl they were attracted to, used their “game” to bring them home, had sex with them, and then that was it. That was the whole of it.

I couldn’t do that.

Even if I wasn’t a virgin, such behavior was anathema to my personality.

People were either just people—outside my world, outside my life, and ephemeral—or they were inside my world, inside my life, and I was fiercely attached to them. I didn’t hug as my brothers liked to do, but I loved them all ferociously, in my own way. I could never walk away from them, never leave them. Not now. If I’d stayed in California, perhaps it would be different, but living here with them and having this ever-growing tribe of family members who knew me and loved me and accepted me despite my aberrant behavior…it wasn’t something I could ever do without.

Meaning, in my mind, in my heart, you were either family—inside, close, needed and necessary and mine—or you were no one.

And sex? How could I casually do something I’d never done before? How could I give her something like that, something important and precious to me, and then just watch her leave? I couldn’t. Even now, after what we’d shared, it was cutting me to pieces to know there could be nothing else, because I could feel an attachment to her forming.

Or, more correctly, it had already formed.

She was already inside me, wrapped around my mind and heart and soul like tangling vines of ivy.

She was still sobbing, and I had no idea what to do.

The panic was growing, mounting—do something! Make it stop. Her pain was palpable, knifing into me, merging with and becoming my own pain.

I felt my body moving forward.

She had her face covered with both hands. Shoulders shaking. Her whole body was stiff and tense and shaking. She was turned away from me, toward a wall, as if to hide her brokenness.

I wanted to comfort her and to stop her tears.

Not wanted to—I needed to. I had to.

I caught her wrists in my hands, pulling them gently away from her face. “Low, stop. Please…please stop crying. It hurts me too much to see you crying this way.”

She pulled out of my grip and turned away, crying harder, saying something the force of her tears made unintelligible to me.

Panic had me in its grip, and the need to comfort her, to stop her crying was total.

I moved up behind her, wrapped my arms around her shoulders, breathing past the initial sting of discomfort at the touch. Clasping her shoulders in my hands, I turned her around to face me. Her hands dropped, and she looked up at me, tears streaking down her cheeks.

“No more crying,” I whispered, brushing tears away from her cheeks with my thumbs.

I kissed her, then.

It was desperation, both as the only thing I could think of to quiet her, to calm her, to comfort her, and desperation of my own to simply feel the dizzying electric thrill kissing her gave me. That thrill was a drug, and I was addicted.

I knew better.

I knew she was going to leave.

But I had to kiss her anyway.

I heard shocked exclamations from my brothers and the women, but I tuned them out and focused on her, on her waist in my hands, her lips on mine, moving now, seeking mine, seeking more, on her hips nudging against mine, her hands lifting to bury in my hair, sobs escaping into the kiss, the salt of her tears on my tongue.

“Holy shit! It’s Harlow Grace!” a voice I didn’t recognize shouted, and the shout was accompanied by a flurry of smartphone camera clicks.

The moment was shattered.

A cluster of tourists had stumbled in, at least fifteen of them, all looking well on their way to inebriation.

“Bax, you lousy fuck, you forgot to lock the door,” Bast snarled.

“Hey, there was shit going on, okay?” Bax snapped back, moving toward the tourists. “And we’ve been dead all damn night, so how was I s’posed to know anyone’d come in at two thirty in the fuckin’ morning?”

Harlow was edging behind me, trying to hide surreptitiously, and I moved to stand in front of her, shielding her.

“Hey, can we get a photo?” This was a young woman, clutching her cell phone excitedly.

“Sorry guys, we’re closed,” Bax said, moving toward them with his arms outstretched to herd them out.

“Aww come on,” the girl said. “Just a couple photos with Harlow, and we’ll leave.”

“No, sorry,” Bax said, his voice firm.

“Harlow! Wanna go out with me?” This was from a guy around my age, drunk, with his arm around another girl. “You were hot as fuck in that movie where you were a lawyer.”

Another guy slapped him across the back of the head. “She’s always hot as fuck, moron.” He laughed lecherously. “Besides, she wants to go out with me.”

One of the girls in the group blew a sarcastic raspberry. “As if! You two are idiots if you think Harlow Grace would ever waste her time on morons like you. You’re like a pair of fucking Meer cats.”

Harlow had somehow gotten herself under control and stepped out from behind me. “I’m sorry, but I’m on vacation. No photographs tonight.”

Several cell phones clicked, photos snapped.

I noticed Harlow tense at the sound. “Please don’t post those,” Harlow begged. “Please.”

“Too late!” one girl said in a singsong voice. “It’s a good one, though. You look amazing for someone who was just making out.”

“And crying,” another said. “Look how puffy and red her eyes are.”

There was a commotion outside, voices shouting and laughing. One of the guys in the group shouted, “Hey assholes, get in here! Harlow Grace is in here! Legit, I swear!”

“No, please, no,” Harlow breathed, so quietly only I heard her. “I can’t do this right now.”

“Get them out,” I barked. “Now.”

Bast hopped the bar, and Zane wasn’t far behind him, and the three oldest moved toward the door, Brock joining them to form a wall between us and the crowd.

Too little, too late; the crowd was surging, swelling to at least thirty people, all pushing to get in, cell phones lifted to snap photos.

I twisted to put my back to the shouting, pushing, photographing crowd, Harlow buried in my chest. A new kind of panic hit me—this time a need to protect her, and a violent overstimulation from the noise and commotion.

“Come on,” I murmured to her. “This way.”

I led her to the stairs, trying to ignore the shouts and questions, the photographs. The noise physically hurt, making my head swell and slam and throb, making my skin feel too tight, making panic swirl in my head like a fireball.

Away, away—I had to get away.

Low was in my arms, shaking, and I yanked open the door, ushered her through, and closed the door behind us. Not realizing we were in a staircase, Low tripped on the first step, and I caught her, my hands on her hips, pulling her upright. She jogged up the steps, eager to get as far from the din as possible.

I didn’t stop, but led her to my room, closing the door behind us and locking it. Low crossed to my bed and sank down onto it, leaning over her knees, burying her face in her hands, and heaving a shuddering sigh.

“That’s why I came to Alaska,” she muttered, “to get away from that.”

“You go through that often?” I asked, incredulous.

She barked a laugh. “That’s nothing. I get swarms of hundreds of people on a daily basis. If I go out in public in LA, I need security and a getaway driver to deal with the crowds.”

My heart flipped. “That must be awful.”

She shrugged. “It’s part of the job. Usually I’ll stop and take a few selfies and sign a few autographs, but today I just…I couldn’t.”

“You really are famous,” I breathed. “Those people knew you by sight. They were…crazy. Rabid, almost.”

She laughed again. “That’s how it is, Xavier. Welcome to my life.”

“Those men…they acted like you should want to date them simply because…I don’t even know. I cannot fathom their thought processes.”

“They think because they saw me in a movie, I’ll just…I don’t know, fall in love with them and bring them into my glamorous movie star life and buy them sports cars and service their sexual desires day and night.”

“That is patently absurd,” I said.

“Yes. But that’s how most men treat me.” She sighed. “That’s not true. The vast majority of my male fans are content with a selfie or an autograph. Sometimes guys will cop a feel, or make a bad joke, but I’ve got security for that. But guys like that, back there?” She shook her head, her eyes going to mine. “That’s why I didn’t tell you who I was, Xavier. Because I was afraid of that.”

“I would never treat you like that—or anyone for that matter.”

She nodded, tearing up again. “I know. I know that now.” She breathed out shakily. “And then it was just…it was so…so amazing, so wonderful to just be Low, to be no one special, just a girl with a guy she liked, and I just couldn’t…I couldn’t tell you.”

“You are someone special,” I said. “But not because you’re famous—just because of who you are.”

She laughed through tears. “There you go again with that shit.”

“It’s not shit, Low, it’s the truth.”

“I know, I know.” She smiled at me as I stood facing her, hands shoved into my pockets to keep them from ticking or spasming or flapping or patting. “I only call it shit because I get so melty and weak when you talk to me like that.”

“Like what?” I asked. “Like I care?”

“Yes,” she laughed, through a quiet sob. “Exactly. Like you care.”

“But I do.”

“And so do I.”

The silence between us was no longer easy or comfortable but filled with a million questions, none of which seemed to have an answer. For me, at least.

“You’re still going to go back to Hollywood,” I said, eventually, sitting on the bed next to her.

“Yes.”

“So what are we supposed to do? What can this be?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she toed off her sneakers and lay back on the bed, horizontally across the width. “I’m exhausted, Xavier. I hate crying.”

“Sleep, then,” I said, standing up. “I can sleep on the couch.”

She sat up abruptly, catching at my sleeve. “Don’t. Please—don’t leave.”

“Then I will sleep on the floor.”

She stared at me. “Sleep with me.”

“I—we—” I stammered.

“I mean just sleep.”

“Won’t that only serve to confuse the issue of our emotions?”

“Probably. But I don’t want to be alone.” She lay down on the bed, on the far side, against the wall, on top of the blankets. “Please? Just…be here with me. Just for tonight.”

Has anyone ever been so torn as I was in that moment? Half of me wanted nothing more than to climb into that bed with her, to know what it felt like to simply hold her in my arms, to smell her lush, comforting, feminine scent and feel her warmth and the weight of her body against me; the other half wanted to run and hide, because that half knew if I got into that bed, I would become even more attached than I already was, which would make her departure all the more agonizing for me.

My hesitation was obvious, and Low’s face fell. “If you don’t want to, I’ll understand,” she said, sitting up again.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to,” I said.

She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes and holding her breath, and then sliding forward to rise up from my bed. “I’ll just go.” She moved across the room, grabbing her sneakers and pausing to stand beside me in the middle of the room, reaching up to lay her palm on my cheek. “I never meant to hurt you, Xavier. And I certainly don’t want to hurt you, or confuse you, more than I already have.”

She made it to the door, her hand on the knob, before I found my voice.

“Wait,” I whispered, my voice rasping. “Stay.”

I sat on my bed, unlaced my shoes, slipped them off and set them aside, I removed my socks and tossed them into my hamper, and then rose again, returning to where Low was still hesitating by the door.

I took her by the hand and led her to the bed, turned back the blankets, and sat down on the edge.

Low resisted my tug, standing by the bed in front of me. “It was a bad idea. I should go.”

“I would like you to stay. As you said, only for sleep. Nothing sexual, only mutual comfort.”

She hesitated a moment more, and then sighed as if she’d just let down a heavy weight. “Mutual comfort.”

Low sat beside me. “You want the inside or the outside?”

I wrinkled my brow. “I do not know. I have never shared a bed before.”

“Well, where on the bed do you usually sleep?”

“The middle.”

She laughed. “Oh. Well, it’s not a very big bed, so I’m not sure we’ll both fit in the middle.”

“I will take the outside,” I said. “I do not think being between a body and the wall would be restful for me.”

Low nodded, smiling. “That’s fine with me. I actually tend to prefer the right side of the bed anyway. It’s where I always end up even when I’m alone.”

My mind supplied unhelpful images of her in bed with other men, and those images made my stomach roil and my heart contract painfully. “Have you shared a bed frequently?”

Low frowned. “Um…I mean, just for sleep?”

“Yes.” I studied the floorboards under my feet.

“No…actually.” She glanced at me; I felt her gaze, but avoided looking at her, until she ducked so I had to meet her eyes. “Does the idea of me sharing a bed with someone else upset you?”

I left the bed and went to my desk, where I had a handful of robot creations I had recently finished, which only needed a few finishing touches; I sat down, opened a crate of parts, and began tinkering.

“Yes,” I said, after a moment.

“You feel jealous?”

I added a few little LED lights to one robot, creating the impression of a face. “I feel jealous of you, yes. My understanding of social boundaries informs me that to feel this jealousy of you when we have known each other for such a short time, and have not committed to any kind of relationship…is probably not acceptable.”

I felt her watching me work. “I’ve only ever had one other serious relationship, with a guy named Harrison. We dated for a couple years while I was at NYU, but we never lived together, and rarely spent the night together.” She hesitated. “And…none of my other relationships, such as they have been, were of a kind that we would sleep together.”

“They were based on a physical relationship, you mean.”

“Yeah.” A pause. “Does that upset you?”

“It causes an uncomfortable amount of jealousy, yes. But I cannot logically feel jealousy in relation to your life before you knew me. And even now, I do not think jealousy is appropriate, considering the inherently temporary nature of our relationship…such as it is.”

I heard her leave the bed; felt her beside me, kneeling on the floor next to my desk chair. “You’re back to talking to me in the Spock voice.”

I finished adding the last pieces to my creation, plugged it into my desktop computer and tested the programming. “Which is upsetting to you.”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “I like it when you look at me and talk to me like yourself.”

“The Spock voice, as you call it, is me. It’s just…” I trailed off.

“A way of expressing yourself when you’re uncomfortable with a situation, don’t know how to connect to someone, or don’t understand a social situation.”

I eyed her with interest. “Yes. Precisely.”

“After you left, I spent several hours researching Autism Spectrum Disorder, high-functioning autism, and tips for dealing with and forming relationships with someone on the spectrum.” She sat down cross-legged on the floor beside my crates of parts, picking up a piece and examining it.

“Why?” I asked.

“To try and understand you better.” She rose up on her knees, peering over the surface of my desk at the little robot. “What is this thing? What’s it do?”

It was a prototype of a new model I’d been working on, with slightly more complex movements and programming; this one featured four appendages, which had hinges in the middle. It was a small box approximately four inches to a side, with the legs at the four corners on two axes, and LED lights in the front to give it a facsimile of a face, making it look, when perched on all fours, somewhat like a very tiny dog.

I unplugged the cord, set it on the floor, and pressed the power button, which activated its simple programming loop. The four-legged box sank back on its “hind” legs, the hinges folding, and it paused, then sprang forward so the “front” legs rotated at the hinge, essentially performing a flip so it was upside down and on all fours again. It hopped forward a few steps, flipped again back the other way, and then repeated the loop.

Low watched, mesmerized, giggling. “Oh my god, Xavier! That thing is adorable!” She lay down on her stomach to watch it go through the loop again. “You made it?”

“Yes. I create them and sell them. I have a website.” I plucked one of my business cards from a pile on my desk and handed it to her.

“Procrastination Creations: robotic diversions, distractions, and eccentricities,” Low read, “A bespoke robotics boutique by Xavier Badd.”

I had never felt embarrassed by my little business before—indeed, I have always been proud of it. But now, knowing Low was a world-famous movie star, it felt a little silly.

“It’s just something I do in my spare time, for fun.”

She fiddled with the other unfinished bots on the desk. “I think it’s amazing. So they’re meant to just be fun, for a quick distraction?”

“Yes,” I said. “Most of my clients keep them on their desks, and when they need a break from work, they turn it on and watch it go, and just let their minds relax.”

I began finishing another prototype, this one a gimbal-based creation—it was a hollow disc about three inches across, thicker at the middle than the edges, like an old-timey representation of a UFO. It had been tricky to engineer, and I was rather proud of it. I added LED lights in strips of alternating colors in a concentric ring on the top and bottom, with the lights programmed to sync to the speed of its rotation, so the faster it spun, the faster the lights blinked, creating what I hoped would be a fairly mesmerizing spectacle. Once the programming was checked and tested, I unplugged it and turned it on to begin rotating on my desk.

“This is a brand-new model as well, and very different from anything else I’ve created. Assuming the sync between the lights and movement is correct, it should prove somewhat hypnotic. An electronic, automatic version of a light-up fidget spinner, sort of.”

Low watched the thing spin faster and faster, the lights swirling. “I love this thing so much,” she breathed. “It really is hypnotic.”

I took several photographs of the bot as it spun, and then a few more of it on my desk, uploaded the photos to my website, marking the new creation as prototype only and not for sale.

I then handed the bot to Low. “You may have it,” I said.

She took it, blinking up at me. “I’ll buy it.”

I shook my head. “It’s a gift. If you enjoy it, send your friends to my website, and that will be thanks enough.”

“Thank you.”

I set my tools aside, keeping my gaze away from her again. “Something to remember me by, that’s all.”

Low’s breath caught. “Xavier…” She sank back to sit on the floor. “That’s not…I never wanted to—”

“Why would you want to understand me better?” I asked, cutting her off. “To what purpose?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t understand what I’m feeling here any more than you do. I just know that after you left…what you’d said, what you’d told me, everything that had happened…it was all running through my head. I realized how selfishly I’d treated you. That I’d…that I had overlooked all the hints you’d given me about being different. I didn’t realize what you meant until you told me, and…and I hated how you left, so upset, so—I don’t know. I wanted to know more. I had to know more.” She paused. “ But…why? To what purpose? I really don’t know.”

I examined her face, trying to read her expression. “I think you are lying about that. I think you do know, but you don’t want to say, either to me or at all.”

She sniffed a sad laugh. “You’re not supposed to be that perceptive, Xavier.”

“I’m not perceptive. But for some reason, I’m more able to correctly interpret your facial expressions than I am other people.”

“I wanted to know more because I like you, and I care about you—probably more than I should. And that scares me.”

“Intense emotions are very difficult for me. It is much easier for me to live my life avoiding them. It’s easier to lose myself in robots and textbooks than to let myself get mixed up with people, because people mean emotions, and emotions confuse me and scare me and overwhelm me.” I looked at her, searching her blue eyes, and finding a wealth of emotions in her expression. “I can’t escape you, Low. You throw my whole world into chaos. You create feelings and thoughts and desires I have no experience with, no capacity to understand, and no mechanisms for dealing with. Being around you, being with you—it sometimes feels like being thrown from an airplane and told to fly. And I do not know how to fly, nor do I have wings or a parachute.”

“I don’t know how to fly either, Xavier.”

“But you have wings,” I said. “You understand emotions. You understand people.”

“That doesn’t make dealing with something this new and this…this strong any easier for me.” She reached for my hands, and I let her take them.

I searched her face again, saw tear tracks on her cheeks, sadness in her eyes, exhaustion. “Do you still want to share my bed for sleeping, Low?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Very much so.”

I went to my bed and lay down, fully clothed in jeans and a T-shirt. Low stayed on the floor, a puzzled expression on her face.

“You sleep fully clothed?” she asked.

I laughed. “No. I typically do not wear anything to bed. But to be naked with you would be to invite temptation I do not think I am strong enough to deny, and I think we are not emotionally prepared for…anything physical.”

She moved to sit on the bed near my feet. “I sleep naked too. But I think you’re right.” She paused, and then glanced at me. “I don’t know if I can sleep fully clothed, though. What if we compromised on partially clothed?”

I nodded. “That is an agreeable idea.”

“So can you sleep in a pair of shorts, and I’ll sleep in a T-shirt?”

I nodded, leaving the bed to find a pair of running shorts. I hesitated, then chastised myself for being shy when Low had already seen all of me. The chastisement didn’t stop me from blushing, or my heart from hammering as I stepped out of my jeans and tossed my T-shirt aside, and then slid the shorts on. Low’s eyes raked over me as I changed, and I wondered what it meant when her tongue slid along her lower lip, or when her teeth caught at that lip and her nostrils flared, and her fingers tangled together and tightened into a white-knuckled knot.

“You have a T-shirt I could borrow?” she asked, her voice strangely hoarse.

I opened a drawer, hesitating, and then gave her my second-favorite shirt—a faded gray one of thin, worn cotton, with the logo of a servomotor manufacturer on the right breast—the company had gifted it to me as a thank you for ordering so many parts from them, and it was the most comfortable shirt I owned, only second favorite because my first favorite was a Badd’s Bar and Grill T-shirt of Dad’s, which I’d stolen from his drawer immediately following his death. That shirt, however, I never wore, and kept out of sentiment.

Low’s eyes stayed on mine as she unzipped her jeans and stepped out of them, she took off her sweater, and peeled out of her T-shirt, standing in front of me, then, in nothing but a matching bra and underwear, deep indigo in color, lacy, revealing, provocative. My hands fisted at my sides and my heart thundered at the sight of her clad thus, tantalizing, lushly beautiful, dizzyingly perfect, a vision of pale cream skin and freckles, delicacy and strength, curves and softness. I wanted her. My hands yearned to slide over her skin.

“Put on the shirt, please,” I whispered, my throat clogged. “Before my ability to resist you is depleted.”

Moving slowly, as if reluctantly, Low slid the T-shirt over her head and it dropped into place, the hem hanging at the tops of her thighs, only just hiding the indigo lace of her underwear.

Once changed, Low sat on the edge of the bed. “You ready?”

No. I wasn’t. I was worried my control would slip. My desire was an inferno inside me, my need for her a volcanic pressure inside me. We both wore so little—mere moments and we could be naked together. Touching.

I swallowed hard, tried to pretend I wasn’t hard as a rock inside my shorts—which was clearly visible, something I knew Low saw. I sat on the edge of the bed, swung my legs over, and lay down on my back, stiff and tense. My feet nudged against Low’s thighs, and my hands were pillowed under my head.

She sighed, and crawled across the bed to lay beside me.

A foot separated us.

My heart was beating so loudly I was certain she could hear it.

After only a moment, she sat up with a hiss of irritation. “I can’t sleep in a bra.”

I watched, unable to help myself, as she slid her arms out of the sleeves and let the shirt hang loosely around her neck, reaching up behind her back to unclasp the bra, shrugging out of the undergarment and tossing it aside onto her pile of clothing. For a moment, then, her breasts were bare, hanging heavy and pale and spattered with freckles I longed to count and to kiss. Then she threaded her arms through the sleeves, and the shirt fell back into place.

She lay back down with a sigh. “Better.”

I could only swallow, teeth grinding, and work furiously at ignoring my erection.

More moments of silence.

“Xavier?” Low asked, her voice not quite a whisper, hesitant, questing.

“Yes?

“Can I…?” She rolled to her side and shimmied closer to me, lifting her head and settling it onto the hollow between my shoulder and chest, one her hands resting on my chest near her face. “Is this okay?”

Her scent filled me; her warmth billowed against me, the silk of her skin brushed against mine in a dozen tingling points of contact. Something inside my chest expanded—a metaphysical expansion, a swelling of some nebulous but fiery emotion I had no name for.

“Yes,” I murmured, wrapping my arms around her, one at her shoulders and the other around her waist. “As long as this is okay with you.”

“It’s perfect,” she whispered.

Even beyond watching the show with her, beyond being naked and exploring her body and tasting her and exploding from her touch, this moment, merely holding her…

This was a golden moment—

It was one of those memories that seem limned in a golden light, shimmering and perfect forevermore. My most potent golden moment was a memory of being three or perhaps four years old, with my mother, walking on the docks. It was raining and we were both soaked, but we were laughing and splashing in puddles. I remember her black hair wet against her spine and her green eyes dancing with laughter, and her hand in mine. I was wearing red fireman rain boots.

This, holding Low in my arms…whatever happened next, I knew I would remember this always. A golden moment, more perfect than any other.

Slowly, her breathing evened out, and she went limp against me, fingers twitching against my chest now and then.

I lay awake long after she was asleep, inking as much of this memory into my soul as I could. Unwilling to sleep, or miss any of this feeling. Unwilling to face reality, which awaited tomorrow. Wanting only to abide in this perfect affectionate warmth as long as possible, Low’s breath on my chest, a soft girlish snore, her breasts smushed softly against my ribs, a thigh over mine.

“You have to leave tomorrow,” I whispered, “because if you don’t, I’ll fall in love, and then you’ll break me completely.”