Chapter 12: Her Kitchen

On Monday night I invited him into my flat for the first time.

He stood on the doormat.

"You can come in," I said.

"I've been wondering whether I need the words."

"Do you?"

"No. I wanted to hear them."

I pulled him through the door by the lapels.

My place was two rooms and a kitchen over a dentist's office in Lakewood.

It had a radiator that knocked and a green couch I'd found on the curb.

He looked at everything.

He looked at the bookshelf, the mug tree, the photograph of my grandmother in front of her pierogi table.

"This is wonderful," he said.

"It's a dump."

"It's lived in. I've never lived in anything."

He picked up the framed photo.

"Your grandmother," he said. "She has your jaw."

"Everyone says that."

"They're right."

He set it down very carefully.

I took off my parka and tossed it on the chair, and then my boots.

Then I walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

"Do you want tea?" I called.

"I want you to stop being so far away."

I turned around.

He was standing in the kitchen doorway, with the light from the hall behind him.

His coat was off, and his sleeves were pushed up, and his eyes had gone dark.

"You've only been here ten minutes," I said.

"It feels like a decade."

He crossed the kitchen and lifted me by the waist onto the counter.

The cabinet door knocked the back of my head.

"Sorry," he said.

"Don't be sorry. Be quick."

His mouth was on mine.

I pulled at the hem of his sweater and he got it off in one motion, and I spread my hands over his chest.

He unbuttoned my flannel shirt one button at a time with his mouth against my jaw.

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