I draw a shaky breath, gazing at the mural again, then at this man by my side. “I obviously don’t know what it’s like to be homeless. I don’t know what it’s like to be scared or cold or hungry, or to not have a place to go. But I know how grateful I am that I had family and friends to help me, comfort me.” I sniff and push a few frizzy strands of hair from my forehead. “I hope this gives Norman and the other people who stay here some comfort too. Maybe it’ll remind them that there’s still hope out there . . . still a reason to believe that things can get better.”
Jesse wraps his arm around me. “I hope so too.” He stares at the mural glowing warmly in the last of the sunset. “I think it will. Even if someone didn’t have a great relationship with their mother or their parents, this goes deeper than that. This is about support. Connection. Unconditional love. And we can all have that, no matter what kind of family we come from.”
“Yeah,” I say, my throat tightening again. “Though, I probably should have thought about that sooner. I bet most people who end up sleeping in a place like this don’t have a lot of happy family memories in their past.”
“You might be surprised. Most of the homeless people I’ve talked to have pretty ordinary stories up until the moment things went wrong.” He sighs. “We’re all closer to the edge than we think.”
My stomach clenches, his words banishing the happy, sparkly list effect for the first time since we started this adventure. Unbidden, my thoughts turn back to this morning, to feeling so happy to be with my mom, but also . . . off. Like I was with the right person, but in the wrong place or something.
Though, how a place that serves chocolate could be wrong, I have no idea.
“Spit it out,” Jesse murmurs.
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. You went all stiff,” he says, “and you’re making your thinking sound.”
I snort. “What?”
“Your thinking sound. That little throat-grunt thing you do when you’re thinking hard.”
I jerk my head to the side, brows furrowed, even as I smile at him over my shoulder. “I do not grunt when I think.”
He smiles calmly, sexily, making me suddenly aware of how close we are and how nice it feels. “You do. It’s cute. Now, spit it out. This is the unconditional place. You can say anything here with no judgment. Not from me and not from you or anyone else.”
I bite my lip, part of me wanting to take him up on that offer, while another, far more determined part crosses its arms over its chest, sits down on top of the can of worms in the corner of my mind, and refuses to budge.
There’s something there, all right, but whatever it is, I’m not ready to get to the bottom of it.
“Is it weird that sometimes I don’t know why I’m feeling what I’m feeling?” I ask, instead of confessing that I have a can of worms in my mental closet. “That sometimes it’s almost like I’m at war with myself?” I let out a shaky little laugh. “I mean, it’s not like voices in my head or anything, but there are definitely parts of me that keep secrets and refuse to work well with each other.”
“Hell, yeah, that’s weird,” he says, laughing and then holding me tight as I try to push him away—in a playful way, since I don’t want to be apart from him. I feel closer to him as we talk like this. Closer, too, because we made art together. That’s a bonding experience.
I tug him back so he’s side by side with me again as he adds, “I’m kidding. Of course, it’s not weird. That’s why we have therapy and mentors and friends we really trust. Sometimes shit gets complicated, and you need a referee to help you play nice with yourself.”
“I’ve played with myself enough the past few years,” I mutter, eager to change the subject.
Heat flares in his eyes, the way it has every time we brushed up against each other while we were working. Until my emotional eruption, the sexual tension was thick enough to cut.
Now, it comes rushing back, making my voice breathy as I add, “I mean, there comes a time when you want to play with . . . a friend. You know?”
“I do know,” he rumbles softly, inching a little closer, moving behind me. “I absolutely fucking know. But do you, if you aren’t sure why you’re feeling what you’re feeling?”
His questions are valid to a degree.
But my uncertainty has nothing to do with him.
It’s an amorphous Big Life Questions uncertainty.
There are zero questions about Jesse Hendrix.
Especially right now, right here, with art and anticipation in the air turning me on.
“I’m unsure about some things,” I say softly, perhaps as an invitation. “Not about others.”
“What are you sure about?” he asks, his voice low and smoky.
“I know what I’m feeling about this.” I press against him, molding my back to his front, my heart stuttering as I feel the thickening behind the fly of his cargo shorts. He still wants me, and I want him more than I’ve ever wanted . . . maybe anything except to be whole again.