He looks down at me. “Do you want to agree that we’ll shower together with no expectations or anatomical inspections because we’re just both so fucking cold?”
“Yes,” I tell him. “I’m also going to need more sweats.”
“Yeah, I figured,” he says, shaking his head. “And don’t think I didn’t notice when your ass wore them to Trader fucking Joe’s.” I poke him hard in the shoulder, embarrassed. He chuckles and grabs my hand and leads me to the bathroom.
We turn away from each other chastely as we undress. I’m so cold, I clutch my naked body, and when the hot water sprays over us, it stings, needling into my numb flesh, my back, my ass, my legs. I let out a ragged breath as he does the same. It’s almost as if I can feel my personhood rising into my body as I defrost. I close my eyes. This moment feels like the culmination of so much running around. So much flailing and confusion.
His arms encircle me, and I know my eye makeup is smearing down my face, but the warmth of his arms and the steam crowd out my thoughts. I trace the tattoos on his biceps. A palm with an evil eye. A large red stamped dojang seal on his shoulder with his Korean name: Jang Min Suk. There are smaller ones: A turtle. A cat. Blossoms blooming on his forearms. A stylized dokkaebi monster mask with horns and his tongue sticking out. We stand under the hot water for a long time. He washes his hair, and when he reaches out of the shower to grab a sample-size bottle of conditioner from his medicine cabinet, I know it belongs to her or any number of hers, but I try not to let it hurt my heart. I wash my hair, luxuriating in it, lathering up, and when he steps out first, I’m happy to have the roomy tub all to myself.
I press my palm against the tile. I push my toe up against the blue rubber mesh flower in his drain to drag my long black hairs out. I feel like crying. If I lived here, I would be so happy. It’s not even that I want to move in with Patrick. It’s that his house feels like a home in a way I’ve never experienced in New York. The pictures on the walls, the impractical number of books, the stupid avocado egg timer. It’s festooned with personal effects. Nobody’s leaving anytime soon. It feels like a place where people want to stay.
Patrick hands me a white towel as he’s brushing his teeth. I squeeze the rope of my hair, wringing it out, and wrap the towel around me, under my armpits. I toss the hair ball I’ve collected from the drain and dry my hands to grab a few squares of toilet paper and wipe my eyes. It feels rough, but I don’t want to soil his towels with eye makeup. Patrick watches me.
He hands me my toothbrush from before. The same one with his dentist’s name on the handle.
“Jayne,” he says, after a beat. “No one’s used it.”
I grin as we brush our teeth side by side. In our reflection, I think how unfair it is that men get to look the same all the time. That they don’t have to experience the rude shock of their appearance unadorned and without makeup. His mirrored face with its toothbrush dangling from his mouth buckles and swings toward me as he pops open the medicine cabinet to hand me facial moisturizer.
“I have body stuff, too, if you need,” he says. There’s a green-topped bottle of drugstore lotion on the glass shelf above the sink.
I moisturize my face, then pump some lotion into my cupped hands. With his own towel slung low around his waist, he watches me.
“Do you mind?”
He laughs and lets himself out. I lotion my arms, my legs, smearing it into my thighs, and for once I don’t stare at my face and inspect my body. I wrap the towel around myself again and go into the living room. He’s in the kitchen, drinking water, and it looks so good, I walk over. He hands the tall frosted glass to me, and it’s delicious. He refills it, and I drink that, too, and when he kisses me, our mouths are cool and slick.
I press my steam-poached body up against his as the lip of the towel under my armpits bites into me. He draws me toward him by the waist and the towel loosens, and it’s fine because I want there to be less between us. I want to feel his chest on mine and I don’t care if our chests suction cup together and make a noise, because what I want is to plunge my entire chest inside his and feel the warmth there. My senses skitter. I clutch the towel to me before it falls away entirely.
“Is this okay?” he asks, expression stormy. He grabs the glass of water left on the counter and takes another sip.
I nod. He waits. “Yes,” I tell him. I lead him into his room. It’s dark in there, which is better. I take my towel off, fold it into thirds, and lay it on the pillowcase to protect the pillow from my wet hair. Then I lift the covers and get in. He does the same on his side, flinging his towel on the chair by the window. He lies there, offering me his arm, and I snuggle against him.
“This can go however you want,” he says. His eyes are shiny in the dark.
His gaze is almost unbearable. I crane my neck, close my eyes, and kiss him.
He kisses me back, deeply. I break away. His lips are swollen, his hair is mussed. Again he asks, “Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
We’re both on our sides facing each other. I watch as his hand travels up to his cowlick to pat it down, and something forceful corkscrews inside of me. I want to eat him. He studies me openly, without any self-consciousness. I’m struck by the solemnity of him. His silence. The scrutiny’s intimidating, but it feels good too. He kisses me, and this time I roll on top of him, hair tumbling onto his face and tenting around us.
I smile. “Hi.”
“Hey.”
I kiss him. Deep. I kiss him with everything. I kiss him, and I’m struck by this insistent pouring feeling.
It’s a rubbery vertiginous swooping, and when he flips me to be on top of me, our full bodies pressed up against each other, I feel relief. I trace his face with my fingertips. His cheekbones are so close to the surface. He turns his head and kisses my hand. It’s been so long since I’ve been touched like this. I don’t know that I’ve ever been touched like this before at all.
He leans over to get a condom, and he checks in again and I say good again, and as I watch him, I realize I’ve always looked away for this part, as if not to be complicit, so later, when the regret comes, I can blame everyone but myself. But this time I watch. He smiles self-consciously. Shyly somehow, and it endears him to me all over again.
He hangs above me and covers my mouth with his, my neck, a shoulder, and at some point I’m no longer looking out of my eyes, wondering how I must appear, whether I smell okay, if I taste good, if I’m fatter or thinner with my clothes off or on, or how I rank against the billions of other images of women that exist in the world.
My heart actually aches, it’s so full.
When he presses into me, I don’t feel invaded.
I didn’t know about this. This other sensation.
A feeling of recognition. Of me claiming him.
It’s how he fits perfectly inside of me. It’s in the way his mouth tastes. The way his tongue feels. How he smells. I’ve always understood the transaction of it. That I give something up, that I endure the physical discomfort of intrusion for something in return. For him to like me. To think I’m special. Special enough that he’ll want to stick around. But this is more mysterious. The inquisition somehow mutual. I have no idea how this goes.