Chapter 11: Uvalde

Anton's POV

She knocked on my motel door in Uvalde at midnight, in her socks, with her braid down.

We had stopped there because her back hurt after six hours in the Ford.

She had taken a room at one end of the courtyard and I had taken a room at the other.

She had said so, and I had not argued.

When I opened the door I took off my hat, and then I stood holding it.

I did not know where a man puts his hands.

"You're letting the cold in," Zora said.

"Yes," I said.

"Are you going to ask me in?"

"I thought you'd say," I said.

"I'm saying." She stepped across the sill and took the hat out of my fingers and put it on the dresser. "Come here."

I came.

She put her hands flat on my chest, over the undershirt.

She looked up at me in the light of the orange sign outside the window.

"I want to say something first," she said. "Then I want you to stop being careful."

"All right," I said.

"I'm not forgiving you. I want that clear."

"It's clear," I said.

"I'm also not leaving this room."

I laughed, once, short, because I could not help it.

She smiled, and her face changed all over.

I felt it in my hands, in my knees, in a place under the ribs I had thought was shut.

I should say what this is.

There is a part of a man that is supposed to answer a woman before he does.

Frank talks about it, and the other Betas talk about it in the barn.

Mine has been quiet for three winters.

When Zora touched me, nothing in me answered, not the way I had been told it would.

I had known that about myself for a long time, and I had kept it where I keep the bills I mean to pay.

She slid her hands up to my face and drew my head down.

She kissed me, and the quiet in me held.

Then everything answered at once, and every bit of it was mine.

It came up through my feet.

It was in my hands, and in my mouth, and in the plain stupid hammering of my own heart.

Nothing was lent to me and nothing was borrowed.

I made a sound against her mouth that I did not recognize.

"There he is," Zora said, against my lips.

She turned me by the shoulders and walked me backward to the bed.

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