Chapter 17: Stay

The doctor cleared me on Wednesday at four in the afternoon.

I did not tell Eli. I let him find out when I walked past the guest room and into his.

His apartment sat on the top floor over the harbor, and the lights of the ships lay out on the black water.

I had spent three nights in the room next door.

I had listened to him walk the hall at two in the morning and stop outside my door and go away again.

Tonight I stood in his bedroom in a silk robe of mine with nothing under it.

He came in with a glass of water and stopped on the threshold.

"You're not in bed," he said.

"No."

"The doctor said rest."

"She said I was cleared, as of four o'clock."

He put the glass down on the dresser very carefully.

"Say that again."

"I'm cleared, Eli."

He did not move.

"Term one is broken," I said. "You've been so good about it. Three nights."

"I'm trying to be."

"Stop."

I crossed the floor to him and took the lapels of his shirt, as I had in the alley.

"Tonight you do what I say."

"All right."

"Say it properly."

"Tonight I do what you say," he said, and his voice had dropped.

I pushed the shirt off his shoulders.

He let me.

He had a long scar on his left side that I had not known about, pale and puckered.

I put my mouth on it.

His breath went out of him.

"Car accident," he said. "The ribs. It healed years ago."

"I know."

"You don't have to."

"I want to."

I kissed down his chest, and his hands came up and stopped in the air near my hair.

"You can touch me," I said.

His fingers went into my hair and closed.

I undid his belt. I undid his trousers.

His cock was hard already, and heavy in my hand, and when I closed my fist around him he said my name against the top of my head.

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