Chapter 24: Penalty Box

"Go," Cillian said.

I looked up from the laptop.

His face was calm, and his hand on the doorframe was white at the knuckles.

"It's Colorado, Annette. It's the lab you wanted at eighteen. Go."

"Rule three says you can't ask me to stay."

"I know. I'm not asking."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Standing in a doorway," he said, "learning how."

I put the laptop down and crossed the room.

"Rule three says you can't ask me to stay," I said again. "It doesn't say I can't ask you to come."

He stared at me.

"Fly out on weekends," I said. "Every one. I'll have a bad couch and a good view."

His whole face broke open.

"I have a plane," he said, and I laughed until I cried.

I started the program in September.

My apartment in Boulder had a bad couch, a kitchen the size of a closet, and a window that looked straight at the mountains.

Every Friday at nine at night, there was a knock at the door.

The first Friday in October, I opened it in one of his old shirts and nothing else.

He stood in the hall with a duffel bag, rain on his shoulders, and looked at me for a very long time.

"You didn't say you'd be wearing that," he said.

"You didn't ask."

He dropped the bag.

He backed me through the apartment with his hands under my thighs, until I was sitting on the closet-sized kitchen counter.

The shirt rode up around my waist.

He was already on his knees with his mouth against my inner thigh.

"Cillian, the neighbors."

"Then be quiet."

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