She blinks at me slowly, her lashes going down and then up, her expression unreadable. “That’s not…I mean, we don’t—”
“You’ve known me literally your entire life, Zenny. You can’t say we barely know each other, because it’s not true. You can’t say it’s too soon because we only have a month.” I take her hands in mine. “I want you here. Say you’ll do it. Say you’ll stay with me.”
Her lips part, as if to speak, and then they close. “I have to think about it,” she finally says.
“Are you tempted to say yes?” I ask, searching her face. “Do you want to?”
The sweet middle of her mouth wrinkles slightly as she holds back a smile. “I can’t deny that there’s a certain logic to it.”
“Fuck logic,” I say, because I am. Because it might make sense on paper, but even if it didn’t, I’d still be begging her to move in with me. Because I want her, and the wanting her is sharper and bigger than anything else.
Because the idea of her leaving me tonight sends something clawing through my chest, and the idea of her leaving me every time we fuck leaves me in nothing but tatters.
Zenny seems to come to a decision. “Tonight. You can have tonight.”
“And then?”
“I said you can have tonight, Sean. Then I’ll think about the rest.”
“Meanie.”
Her hand darts out, fast as a flash, and yanks a sizable chunk of my leg hair hard enough to make my eyes water. It’s a childish move, and I respond in kind, flipping her onto her back and tickling her until her own eyes leak tears and her cheeks must hurt from laughing so hard.
I’m hard again, because of course I am, because I’m tickling and grappling with a supple, happy virgin, and I don’t bother to hide my hardness from her as I lean down to kiss her. “Did you bring a change of clothes?” I ask. “You’re more than welcome to wear my things, you know.” And I have a vision of Zenny curled up on my couch in my sweatpants and my T-shirt…and then one of her wearing nothing but a single Charvet tie of mine…
“I did bring a bag,” she says, and she says it like she’s admitting something she doesn’t want to admit. “I wasn’t sure of the etiquette, and I wasn’t even sure you’d say yes to this whole thing, but I thought it’s better to be prepared, you know, just in case—”
I’m already dropping a kiss on her cheek and rolling off her to reach for my pants. “Is it in your car? Where are you parked?”
“In a visitor’s spot in the building garage,” she says, and I make a note to get her a parking pass for my building, along with her own set of keys. The happiness I feel at the idea of her having keys to my apartment is impossible to hide or handle with a cool expression, and I keep my head ducked down, so she can’t see the carousel of near-giddy smiles as I try to wrestle back the unfamiliar sensations.
“I’ll be back fast,” I say and make an escape, grabbing her keys and going down to the garage as quickly as possible. And once I get to her car, I brace my hands on the hood and force myself to take several deep breaths.
I’ve lost my mind.
I’ve lost my mind and I haven’t even fucked her yet.
I’ve lost my mind and I don’t even care.
I realize I’m smiling like an idiot at the dented hood of a 2005 Hyundai Accent and I try to stop, but I can’t. It’s like whatever mechanism controls my mouth has stopped interfacing completely with my brain. And it’s the same with my heart, which is hammering like I’ve just gotten done fucking, like I’ve just closed a huge deal, and all I’ve done is asked her to move in with me.
I’m not Mr. Brooding Romance like Tyler and I’m not Mr. Impulsive like Aiden, and the disconnect between the man I am with Zenny and the man I always thought I was is jarring. Jarring…and pleasant. One night in and I’m like a fucking convert to the Temple of Zenny.
But then there’s the moment I unlock her car to find her bag and see all the shit piled in her backseat.
Boxes and bags, all neatly labeled with colorful Sharpie. Baby clothes - Shelter, says one box. Pads/Tampons - Shelter. Used Paperbacks - Shelter. New Bras - Shelter. There’s a bag of brand new stuffed animals from a local toy shop, the donation receipt tucked neatly inside. A bag of deodorant sticks and shampoo, also with a donation receipt inside. I must have known, vaguely, that shelters like Zenny’s ran on these kinds of donations as much as they did monetary ones, but seeing this backseat full of what must have been hours of picking up and dropping off and phone calls and emails and glad-handing, I see the scale of Zenny’s dedication to helping people in need. It’s one thing to write a check here and there, but I know the shelter’s budget from this whole Keegan fiasco, and I know they’re operating on less than a shoestring.
There’s twenty sticks of deodorant back there. How long does that last at a shelter like Zenny’s? A few days? A week? How long does a box of infant formula last? Or giant box of toothpaste? The need is so huge, so vast and unending, and the shelter doesn’t have the money to keep up, and so they must go pleading to businesses and other charities on behalf of their needy. They have to beg for the beggars.
This…this work, this thoughtfulness. This kind of relentless holding back of a tide of need…
It takes faith. Faith of a magnitude that is hard for me to comprehend.
When I grab the backpack out of the front seat, my smile is gone. I’ve remembered what I already knew but had conveniently forgotten in the rose-smell of her skin and the soft pout of her mouth, which is that I’ll never be able to compete with her god. With her mission and vocation.
I’m losing my mind over her, but for Zenny, I’m merely a stop on the road to sainthood.
I’m quiet when I get upstairs, but Zenny is quiet too, giving me a small smile as she takes her backpack and disappears into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her. After a few minutes, the shower starts running.
I spend a long moment with my fingers playing over the handle, my skin thrumming with the ache to be in the shower with her. I want her slippery skin, I want her eyelashes threaded with water droplets, and her body loose and warm against mine as I lick water from her lips and her collarbone and her neck…
But I also feel strange about the evidence of her indelible goodness in the car, strange because it makes me feel bad and selfish and clumsy, because it makes me worry that I was right all along and I’m dangerous for her, that I’m polluting her. And strange because I like her beyond all reason and she is the first woman to spin me up like this—and also the one woman I can’t keep.
I also distantly recognize that she might need some space. We didn’t fuck tonight, but we moved through a lot of firsts, not to mention candidly discussing things usually left unsaid. And I did manage to convince her to stay the night, so if she needs to shower alone to get her head on straight, it would be boorish of me to intrude.
I drop my hand from the handle and go clean up the kitchen.
Thirty minutes later, I’m also showered and I come out of the bathroom in a towel, brushing my teeth. Zenny’s in a tank top and Winnie the Pooh sleep shorts and it looks like…like she’s unfolding a pillowcase?