climbed off the sofa. He gave me his back, not allowing me the pleasure of seeing his war of arousal and agony. I believed I would've enjoyed that. Would've enjoyed it very much. Watching him struggle against the things he believed he wanted and the things he actually wanted was becoming one of my favorite pastimes.
"Fuck, I need to take another shower." As he stalked toward his bedroom, he called, "Do me a favor. Don't come in here, love. Even if it sounds like the ceiling has collapsed and I'm pinned under a ton of rubble, don't come in."
"Got it, boss," I replied, though I was certain he didn't hear me over the slam of his door.
For someone with an extensive track record of shattering ordinary moments with extraordinary feats of strange and unusual, I was rather skilled at smoothing over even the stickiest of situations. My method was ridiculously simple: pretend the stickiness didn't exist. Deny, deny, deny. It hadn't happened and you were nuts if you thought it did.
Nothing was easier than that.
Case in point: a handful of years ago, I was walking down the center staircase in the Clark building at Colorado State. That place had more wings than a 1970s-era maxi pad and at least a million stairs, give or take a couple thousand. There I was, descending the stairs like everyone else until I snagged the heel of my shoe on my too-long pants and went for a tumble while everyone watched. I was bruised to shit and broke several fingers in the process but I wasn't about to acknowledge that stickiness in any fashion. No, I stood up and walked away as if my ass and legs weren't already black and blue from thumping down the stairs, as if my pinky finger wasn't bent at an unnatural angle, as if I hadn't felt a damn thing.
And I did the same this morning.
While Ash showered, I rifled through his kitchen cupboards and refrigerator. For someone who'd spent the last week away from home, there was no shortage of fresh ingredients. That was curious yet not unexpected. He struck me like a man who always had everything in order.
I made him a breakfast sandwich because I was required to return the ribbing he'd given me. But I did him one better than the hastily slapped together sammy I'd packed for myself before hitting the road; I whipped up some silver-dollar pancakes in place of toast. The pancake sandwich was the top dog in my breakfast repertoire.
I didn't wait around to inform Ash of this or watch while he picked at the syrupy tower of pancake, egg, bacon, and cheese. As much as I liked watching him experience all manner of things he'd convinced himself he neither wanted nor needed, this wasn't the time for that. It was the time for pretending away the moment we shared this morning and the one from last night too, and all the other moments when we'd wandered too close to the borderlands between emotionally needy cuddling and emotionally needy fucking. Though I wasn't the one with the erection or the rhythmic thrusting, I'd dragged us straight into that land long enough for Ash to regret it.
And I couldn't leave it to him to know better. For once in my life, I had to know better. I had to avoid hurtling toward the edge with my parachute in shreds. In this reincarnation of me, I didn't rely on men to know better, to do better. I relied on me and that meant teaching myself to trust me too.
Leaving the pancake sandwich for Ash, I retreated to the guest room I had yet to use for its intended purpose. I showered and did my best to assemble a summer weekend dinner party with friends and family outfit though I'd never experienced such a thing. Then I spent five pointless minutes fussing with my hair. I knew it wasn't going to do what I wanted, not without backup from a curling wand or round brush, and neither of those had earned a spot in my luggage.
But the fussing gave me something to do. The alternative—being still and quiet and settled enough to hear my thoughts—was too daunting for a pancake sandwich Sunday kind of day.
In truth, I needed several more pancake sandwich Sundays before I could contend with my thoughts. The murky ones I only acknowledged in the worst of times, the dangerous ones that made me examine my choices and motivations in