I run my hand through his chest hair and he shudders. How many times have we done this before? And still, today feels different. Every touch laden with meaning.
He runs featherlight fingers up my bare arms. “I’m so grateful,” he says, “that I’ll have the memory of your beauty, for however long I get to keep it.”
That’s when my tears fall.
He kisses them away, and I kiss him back, pouring everything I feel into the touch. We’re gentle with each other, each touch slow, like we’re drawing it out. Like we don’t want it to end.
When he reaches for a condom from my bedside table, I run my hand over his broad back. “I’ve booked an appointment with my ob-gyn next week.”
He pauses, chest rising with his heavy breathing. “You did?”
“For birth control,” I say. We haven’t spoken about a relationship. About making us official. But that had been where we’d been heading, at least for me, and so…
I’d made the call.
Anthony shudders, eyes glazing over. He runs a hand down the inside of my thigh. “Very good thinking,” he murmurs.
I watch him put the condom on with practiced hands, and then he’s pushing into me with delicious slowness, both of us exhaling at the pleasure.
In the weeks since we first did this, Anthony and I have explored plenty. There have been fast times. Hard times. Ones where we both laughed afterwards at how loud it had gotten, or where my skin smarted from the force.
This isn’t one of those times.
He holds himself above me as he moves, and I rise to meet him. Burying my hands in his hair and wondering if this is how it feels to fall in love with someone. To lose your footing, and plummet to that final depth, where you know you’ll never be the same person again for having had them in your life.
Tears leak out of my eyes again, sliding down my temples and dampening my hair. Anthony feels them. Lifts himself up on an elbow to look at me.
The concern and emotion on his face undoes me. I tighten my grip on him. “Anthony,” I murmur. “I love—”
He halt my words with a kiss and shudders in my arms. “Don’t, Summer. Please. I won’t be able… please.”
“Okay,” I murmur. “I won’t.”
He smooths my hair back with his free hand, still buried deep inside me. “Not until I’m back with you. Not until I’m better.”
“Okay,” I whisper. Lock my legs behind his back.
“It’s not that I don’t—”
This time, I’m the one who stops his words with my lips. They aren’t needed. Not as we cling to each other in my small bed, chasing away the future one touch at a time.
25
Anthony
My grand dedication to change starts small. Minuscule, in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t involve a cane, or braille, or any of the things I’ve avoided in the dark, curtain-drawn cave of my townhouse.
It starts with taking out old take-away boxes.
They pile up in the weeks between the cleaners, for no other reason than I don’t care about this place. Or about myself, really, when I’m… well.
But I’m going to have to start.
Summer gave me permission to leave my baggage and failing eyesight at the door. To forget about the accommodations and timelines entirely, for five minutes, for an hour, for an evening.
She was brilliant escapism, a reminder of the goodness all around us, and a few of those rays landed on me.
But I want more than evenings in her apartment. More than her having to sneak about, worrying about what her aunt will say. I want her to do all the things on her bucket list, and I want to be there for some of them. Most of them. All of them, damn it.