Heart the Lover (19)

I wish I hadn’t said it and need to change the subject. ‘Have you ever brought a girlfriend home?’



‘Never.’

‘Not even Megan.’ That was his girlfriend in high school.

‘No. Only my mom met her.’ He tells a funny story about Megan causing a small house fire with her curling iron and I tell him about the foyer fiasco in Atlanta and we are comfortable again.

We go in the house and I show him the kitchen. There aren’t as many dishes in the sink as normal and I fear it is giving him a false impression. ‘There’s one bathroom and it’s up here.’ He follows me up the stairs with his Dopp kit in the dark. ‘It’s disgusting,’ I whisper.

Outside the bathroom I tell him he can use it first.

‘Oh, okay. Thank you. Noche noche, then.’

‘Noche.’

I turn around and go into my room. I can’t bear to shut the door all the way. The bathroom door shuts. I stand there. I take off my underwear and throw it in the hamper. It’s soaked through. My whole being wants one thing, the one thing it can’t have. The clock radio says 3:33. I had nine hours with him. Why isn’t it enough? Nine hours ago we were talking about Arlo and Bean and Mrs. Kane. I think of something and laugh out loud.

He’s in the doorway. ‘What’s so funny?’ he whispers.

I go closer to whisper back. ‘I remembered this Halloween when we rang Mrs. Kane’s bell and she had no idea what day it was and gave us all old cough drops from the bottom of her purse.’

He kisses me.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

He kisses me again. ‘I’m so sorry. I want to know more about Mrs. Kane. I do.’ He walks me backward a few steps into my room. We kiss. ‘Oh my God I’ve wanted to do this for so long. You have no idea how long.’ We kiss a long time. He looks over my shoulder. ‘This entire room is bed.’ He looks at me again. ‘Am I bungling everything? You should probably tell me to go downstairs right now.’

I shake my head.

He lifts his hands to the top of my dress. ‘I have thought about doing this all night.’ He unfastens the first button and looks at me.

I nod but before he can undo the next one I pull the dress up over my head and toss it in the corner. I’m not wearing anything else.

He is kissing me and laughing. ‘You didn’t let me do the whole sexy button thing all the way down.’

‘Claudette told me to give you a sign.’

‘This is a good sign. I love this sign.’

We get his clothes off, too, and we are still standing, looking at each other and grinning.

The feeling catches me off guard.

Oh.

Love.




Yash never did look for a sublet. We bought king-sized sheets for the pushed-together twins and I raced home at night after work to join him on that big bed. Every night was hot and we slept without clothes or covers, our bodies close, our skin steaming. He got a job as a prep cook at a diner two doors down from High Five and if our breaks lined up, we’d meet out back and make out.

For my birthday in July he brings me breakfast on a tray: scrambled eggs, sausages, a biscuit, and a little fruit garnish like at the diner. My mother has sent me a package and after breakfast I open it, a thin cotton bathrobe that goes on then comes off quickly. He climbs on top of me and slides inside and we move together. I’m watching him, watching his face start to flush, start to lose control of its expression, and he looks down at me watching and it seems like he’s in pain when he says, ‘I love you. I know it’s too soon, but I do. I love you so much.’

We don’t just have sex. We read The Aeneid out loud to each other. We read Yeats and Auden. We read Proust in French because we both studied it in high school and we talk about moving to Paris. But Proust in the original is difficult, and we’ll read him in English in Gastrell’s seminar in the fall, so we read Camus in French instead. And we make up a version of Sir Hincomb Funnibuster that you can play with two people. It’s like honeymoon bridge, he says, which I’ve never heard of. Honeymoon Hincomb, we call it. Then we start calling each other Hincomb. Then Hinkie. Then Hink.

In early August I have to have my wisdom teeth out. My teeth are so impacted that the doctor has to crack apart all four teeth and take them out in pieces. I chose local anesthesia so I am awake for the whole thing. Afterward my mouth aches and bleeds but I don’t care because Yash, after a trip to Claudette at H?agen-Dazs, comes dancing through the door, a pint in each hand, singing ‘Strawberry Sorbet’ to the tune of ‘Raspberry Beret.’

Ivan comes back from Ireland and stays with Brent for a few days. Before he comes over, Yash moves his bag and books back out to the living room.

‘Brent’s futon is a lot better than this,’ Ivan says to Yash when he sits on the couch.

‘It’s only a few more weeks.’ He’s found a room to rent for the school year.

We go to a diner. Yash and I sit on the same side of the booth, knees touching under the table.



Ivan tells us tales about Bloomsday in Dublin, about meeting Joyce’s grandnephew in a barber shop in Mary Street. ‘At the barber’s, man. Like Buck Mulligan shaving on the roof. ’Twas mystical. What? What’s going on? You guys have not stopped laughing since we got here.’