“What else do you think about me?” she asked. They stared at her ceiling—whipped egg whites and sugar.
“I kept myself from thinking about a lot of things. But now since you told me that, and after the hallway, I’m thinking about other…things,” he said, tenderly readjusting himself with his wrists, still hot and smarting. His mouth tasted like Tallie, like sweet and salty fruit. Honey, too. What women tasted like. And even in the moments when he’d doubted the existence of God, he’d remember how God had made women taste. Proof alone.
If an artist had been scritching briskly in the darkness—capturing them like the Klimt—they would’ve drawn Tallie’s bedroom, lit by one lamp. M. C. Escher’s Drawing Hands come alive, penciling Emmett watching Tallie boldly shed her lace while simultaneously limning Tallie with one hand, touching herself, wet with both of them. Tallie putting her finger between his lips, into his mouth. Tallie reaching between his legs. Emmett, at the same time, hungrily kissing her mouth and breasts. Pushing his face against her. The taste of her on his tongue again and again until the crest. Tallie, scrabbling at the comforter beneath her, writhing in a rasped blur. Tallie breathless, sitting up in a fuss and carefully placing his arms above his head before licking a warm trail down his chest. Tallie sliding beneath the elastic of his underwear and taking them off, greedily destroying him. Tallie’s body and hair and redolence pouring all over him like water, him inside and on top of and underneath her. And the artist, now finished, blowing the spent scratchings across the paper before wiping it clean. Leaning back and looking at it, completely sated. Chuffed.
*
The alarm Tallie had set busily buzzed on her nightstand, waking them. They’d slept in her bed together, naked and touching. Flash to separate showers and Emmett making cheesy eggs and toast in her kitchen. Zora had texted, letting them know Lionel was in his own room now. They could see him but there was no rush; he would be sleeping for a while. Emmett had dressed in his own clothes, had his new black backpack waiting by the door. The yellow-white line of sunrise stretched across the navy of Tallie’s window.
Tallie had rebandaged his hands after his shower, and he didn’t think of suicide then. He didn’t think of suicide when they were wrapped in her blanket as they shared their post-orgasms cigarette on her deck in the rainy dark, either. He’d put Tallie’s sheets in the washing machine and started a load; he’d scrubbed the fire off him, smelled like her soap and his own deodorant. If he had to, he could go back home, surprise his parents with his existence. Let them know he was okay before leaving again, finding someone, something, somewhere to start new. He didn’t allow himself to think the someone could be Tallie. They’d begun so broken. He’d tell her everything before he left. He’d go to the hospital to see Lionel, maybe have lunch with her, but after that he’d head out. If she didn’t try to stop him, he’d leave.
He envisioned himself walking to the bridge and continuing to walk. To walk across it and turn around, walk across it again. Never wanting to jump, not once looking down at the Ohio and wishing he were in that glorious free fall, the wind whistling his ears. Or he could walk in the opposite direction and hitch a ride out, the same way he got to Louisville. Walking and thumbing down truckers, not worried about what could happen to him, because it didn’t matter. People had no control over what happened to them anyway. Everything was kismet.
*
（The happy sunflowers vased on the kitchen counter. A ceramic rooster: cream, green, and red. Silver hoop earrings next to a bright blue mug, a short fat spoon. A scalloped-glass sugar bowl.）
Tallie was wet-haired and blushing in her glasses, standing in front of him drinking the coffee he’d made for her. The steam fogged her lenses as she apologized.
“For what?” he asked.
“For crossing a line…whether you think so or not…I feel like I crossed a line with you, and that wasn’t my intent. You’re working through a lot of shit…a lot of shit you haven’t told me about, and so am I…and then Lionel and last night—”
“I’m a grown man, Tallie. Please don’t talk to me like I’m not,” he said. Maybe because she was a teacher and so used to talking to kids, it came naturally to her, but he’d had enough of it.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. This is just an extraordinary weekend, and I’m trying to honor it. That’s all,” she said. She stared into her coffee as if there were an answer in her mug to a question she hadn’t asked aloud yet.