We Both Paid the Same Stranger to Sublet the Same One-Bedroom, and Neither of Us Would Move Out novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Real Lease
A month later, the owner's countersigned copy of the lease came in the mail, and I laid it on the kitchen table.
The table was new, or new to us, a round oak one.
Randy had bought it for forty dollars from the couple in 2C who were moving to Evanston.
He had carried it up three flights by himself, and then sanded the top on the roof on a Sunday.
Then he stood back and said, "It's yours."
Mine.
I had never had a kitchen table that was mine.
The lease lay on it in the lamplight, with the two names side by side in a pair of pen strokes.
A small sticky note from the owner said Welcome home.
It was the first week of November, and the first snow was coming down in the window over the sink.
Two mugs sat on the counter beside a casserole dish I had washed, and Gloria's tuna was in the freezer with eleven of its friends.
Randy came in from work with his hair damp and snow on his boots.
He looked at the lease, and at me, and at the lease again.
"It came," he said.
"It came."
"Both names."
"Both names. Read the line."
He read it.
He read it slowly, the way he read everything he cared about, with his lips moving.
"Term, twelve months," he said.
"Term, twelve months."
"Tina."
"Mm?"
"Can I put you on that table?"
"It's a legal document."
"I'll move it."
"Move it gently."
He moved it.
Then he picked me up by the waist and set me on the oak, in my pajama shorts and his sweatshirt.
The cold of the wood came through the cotton.
He stood between my knees.
"I can lock the door," he said.
"The door's locked."
"I know. I checked twice."
I laughed against his mouth.
He kissed me with snow still melting in his beard.
His hands slid under the sweatshirt, over my ribs, and pulled it up and off.
The cold air and his warm palms met on my skin at the same time.
I shivered.
"Cold?"
"No."
"Liar."
"You can keep me warm."
He did.
He bent and took my breast in his mouth, with his hands cupped under my ribs.
He sucked and licked in a slow circle until I let my head fall back and my hair brushed the lamp.
My shorts came off, and my underwear with them, and I sat bare on the oak, with my heels hooked behind his thighs.
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