Eli steps back as I throw open the front door, white dust swirling around his shoulders.
“Why do you look like a powdered donut?” I exclaim. “The ceiling fell,” he coughs out.
Oh god, of course it did. “I’m going to need way more details than that.” “Can you hose me off first?” he asks, running a hand through his white-
streaked hair.
“Oh.” I pause, making a quick sweep of his body. He’s not wearing a shirt, but I’m becoming immune to that. Or at least comfortable with how not immune I am to that. “Sure.”
He starts to turn, but I stop him, placing a hand on his chest. His skin is hot beneath my palm, heart flying.
“Are you okay?”
The moon isn’t providing much light tonight, barely touching her fingers onto the world around us, but even in the darkness I can see how blown Eli’s pupils are. His mouth is a tense, flat line.
“Yeah,” he says, voice pitched low. I don’t believe him. He raises his hand and for a second it hovers over mine, still pressed to his skin, before he drops it. “I was awake. I dodged most of it.”
I caught the time as I was coming to the door—it’s half past one. I get out a wobbly “Thank goodness” and I mean it; it’s not like I want him squished. But why was he up?
“Are you okay?” he volleys back, dipping his chin to keep my gaze. He’s not asking outright, probably knowing I won’t admit to it anyway, even though all the signs of my disappointment are glaring: I had him drive home, holed up in my cottage after telling him I was fine but tired, not hungry even though my stomach rumbled the entire ride back.
“Yeah.” I can tell he doesn’t believe me either. My mind flashes back to his soft knock earlier, the stack of to-go boxes and sweating iced tea sitting
on the porch when I opened the door a few minutes later. “Thanks for dropping off that food.”
“Your stomach sounded like a haunted house,” he replies, and when I roll my eyes, his mouth hooks into a tiny smile. It hooks me, too, sways my body closer to his, even when his mouth straightens, parts slightly.
I can’t pull away, so you’re the one who has to.
There’s a twitch against my fingers. A muscle in Eli’s chest. I still have my hand on him.
“Sorry,” I gasp, dropping it like his skin is on fire. Which it is, kind of. “Let’s go take care of this.”
I uncoil the hose hooked up to the side of my cottage, the one we used to wash the dirt off our legs after the near-nightly walks he’d beckon me out for in the vineyard blocks. It wasn’t just vines growing out there—it was our awareness of each other, the knowledge that our dynamic was shifting, as undeniable then as it is now.
Suddenly I don’t know if I’m in the past or the present. The darkness, my memories, everything that’s happened between Eli and I the past few days—they soften the divide of time, making it liquid like the pool shimmering around the corner.
“It’s going to be cold,” I warn.
“I remember,” he says, eyes on me. The most dangerous phrase when it comes to us.
I turn the hose on him. It’s like ice. An incidental spray falls onto my bare feet, and I flinch when he does.
He tells me what happened while I clean him off: that he noticed a crack in the ceiling in his bedroom almost immediately. That tonight the ceiling looked bowed, but he didn’t trust his eyes because it’d been a long day. He was planning to show it to Adam’s uncle Cal in the morning, but then it crumbled.
I stare at my handprint on his chest while he talks. I trace the skin it exposes with my eyes, the streaks at the bottom of my palm where I couldn’t quite pull away. His heart is under there.
The mark looks indelible, like a tattoo. It’s the last thing I wash away. I just want to be there for a second longer, but once we lapse into silence and the rest of the dust has been washed away, I don’t have a choice. It’ll expose what I want: his body, exactly like this. My touch, closer to the heart he’s tucked away for the last five years.
I aim the stream at his left pec. Eli dips his chin, watching the cloudy mixture run down his stomach, into the waistband of his shorts.
My handprint is gone in seconds. I drop the hose at my feet, a surge running into my veins when he looks up at me through his lashes, running a hand over his chest.
We’re here. It’s now. It’s a reminder. A warning, too.
“I think we’re good.” My heart takes off in anticipation of my next words, knowing he has nowhere else to go. “Come on in.”
 |
It’s been an hour and a half since I said good night to Eli. He insisted on setting up a makeshift bed on the loveseat, a piece of furniture that fits a medium-sized child lying in the fetal position, but what was the alternative? Have him share the bed I’m currently tossing and turning in? It’s huge, big enough that we could both sleep in it without ever touching. God knows we’ve slept in a bed together hundreds of times before.
It’s why I let him take the loveseat instead—because we’ve slept in a bed together hundreds of times before. It wouldn’t have meant the same thing tonight, but the times that it did mean something would’ve taken up residence as a third body between us.
I also let him take the loveseat because some not inconsequential part of me wanted him here, and I don’t have a valid reason for wanting that. Not one that will keep me in the halfway space I need to be in, anyway.
So instead, I have my pillow person, and Eli’s actual presence in the living room is a phantom presence right next to me.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to count sheep. But I can only picture my handprint on Eli’s chest, so I count the fingers spread out there instead.
One, two, three, four, fi—
There’s a sound on the other side of my closed door. I sit up, holding my breath, waiting.
A floorboard creaks, and time bends again. I’m back in our Manhattan apartment, waking up at three a.m. in an empty bed, listening to the sounds of the city that sleeps just as often as Eli—rarely. Even before I get out of bed and pad to the door, turn the knob, and inch it open, I know what I’ll find: Eli pacing the room, his face illuminated by his phone screen.
Except this time there’s no phone. It’s probably buried in his cottage.
Maybe that’s why he’s on the loveseat, head cradled in his hands, his mouth moving almost silently.
He’s counting, too.
When this first started happening, I’d go to him, wrap my arms around him from behind and press my hand over his heart to make sure it slowed. I’d toss his phone out of reach. But soon enough, going out there only made things worse. I knew why he was spiraling, knew the only thing that would eventually calm him down was to pick the phone back up. My awareness of it and the way I not-so-secretly hated it only made him more anxious, which he tried to hide. In return, being useless and exacerbating the problem made me retreat. I’d lay in bed, thinking, you were too much, staring at the ceiling until he slipped in next to me, a million miles away.
Now, I take a step back, unsure.
The floorboard creaks under my heel. Eli’s head whips around, his wild eyes finding me. He inhales sharply, straightening.
“I’m sorry,” we gasp out at the same time. I hesitate. “Are you okay?”
It’s the same question I asked earlier, and now I see that his expression is a more potent version of what it was before. He was panicking when the ceiling fell. It must’ve felt like the entire world was caving in on him.
There’s no reasonable way he can say he’s okay, but I expect him to anyway.
Instead, he says, “Actually, I’m having a panic attack.” My chest tightens. “Okay. Should I go?”
“No!” His voice comes out high and curt. He shakes his head with a long exhale. “Don’t go, I just— my therapist gave me a few ways to get calm, but they work best when I’m lying down.”
Well. It’s certainly a valid reason to have him in my bed. “Come in here.”
That he doesn’t hesitate underscores how panicked he must be; he was clinging hard to that loveseat earlier. I step back as he brushes past me, curling my fingers around the hem of my T-shirt so I don’t reach for him.
He sinks onto the left side of the bed on instinct, his shoulder brushing against my pillow person. My heart jumps. I used to text pictures of them on nights we weren’t together at Cal Poly, or, in the earlier New York days, when he was stuck at work late. I’d always send one word along with it:
lonely. Eli’s text back would always be, Good thing you have Sammy
to keep my spot warm ’til I’m back. The name would change every time: Tom, Milo, Diego. Each of the Golden Girls.
He’s the only one who could look at it and know what it means. I’d rip it
up if he wasn’t practically draped all over it. Instead, I circle to my side of the bed, clicking on the lamp before sitting down.
At first, I just watch as he closes his eyes, resting his hands on his stomach. His pulse beats hard and fast under the fine coil of his chain, his cheeks and ears flushed. He takes one measured breath, then another.
“What’s one of the ways you calm yourself down?” I ask after his tenth breath, eyes glued to his throbbing pulse.
Eli’s eyes flutter open, landing on me. “There’s this grounding technique called five-four-three-two-one. Amari, my therapist, taught me in one of our first sessions. You focus on five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.”
“And that works for you?”
He nods, releasing a shaky breath.
I lower my voice. “Okay, what do you see?”
Eli’s eyes bounce around the room wildly. “A painting of Blue Yonder. A perfume bottle. A white dresser. Your overpacked suitcase exploded all
over the floor.” He meets my gaze when I laugh quietly. His mouth twitches, even as his pulse continues to beat heavily in his throat. “You.”
For a second, my heartbeat matches his. “Okay. Four things you can touch.”
He closes his eyes. “The sheets. This pillow under my head. The breeze coming in from the window. Myself.”
“That’s a little personal, Mora,” I tease, trying not to imagine that. Or remember it. I know exactly what it looks like.
Focus, Georgia. His pulse is slowing already.
He squints an eye open. “My hand on my stomach, I mean. My hand is resting on my stomach, and I can feel that.”
“Specificity is your friend.”
“I’ll work on my entendres,” he mutters, closing his eyes again. “I’m not used to an audience.”
It hits me in such a tender spot that he’s letting me see him like this when no one else has, not even past me. It feels more intimate than anything we’ve ever done.
I clear my throat. “What’s next?” “Three things you can hear.”
“And?”
He sighs, his shoulders sinking further into the bed, hips settling, knees falling slightly open. His unraveling is mine, too. “Crickets outside. An owl somewhere.” He pauses. Swallows. Quietly, he says, “Your voice.”
“Two things you can smell?” I whisper.
“You’re going to start noticing a trend.” A slow smile melts across his mouth. “But you’re right there, so I smell you. That coconut lotion. Whatever’s left of your perfume.”
There’s recognition in his voice; it’s the one I’ve always worn. “And one thing you can taste.”
For this I get a flash of teeth. “Iced tea. I stole a sip when I dropped yours off earlier.”
“Excuse you.”
He laughs, shoulders shaking. “Delivery fee.”
The tension that’s left his body has suffused into mine. I’m turned inside out by his callouts, the awareness he had of me as he was pulling himself out of his spiral.
“Did that help?” I ask, rubbing a hand across my racing heart. I’d try to play the game myself, but right now every answer would be Eli, and none of them should be.
His eyes open under heavy lids, drifting to me. “It did. Thank you.” I hesitate. “Do you want to talk about it?”
This time, it’s Eli who hesitates. Some of the anxiety pulls back into his eyes and I mentally kick myself.
“Sorry, forget I said that.”
The silence pulls between us. The longer I look at him, the further I feel myself slipping from that halfway space. He’s in my bed. We’ve had a solid twenty-four hours of interaction that feels like nothing we’ve done in the past five years, but an echo of everything before that. I just helped him walk through a grounding technique he learned in therapy. He’s the same and totally different. The fifteen-year-old boy I liked and the twenty-year-old man I loved, and the twenty-eight-year-old I have to keep right here, because at one point he was the twenty-three-year-old man who broke my heart.
I’m so busy staring at him, seeing all the iterations of him like I’m hurtling through time and space, that I miss his answer.
“Georgia,” he says.
I snap into focus. “What?” “Did you hear me?”
“No, I— no.”
He lets out a breath. “I said, I quit my job.”
