Page 170 of Proof By Contradiction
Christ.
A year and some, same forearms, same effect. Same stupid, helpless recognition I first felt in a lecture theatre at eighteen while thinking about differential equations.
He reaches for the salt, and his shirt pulls free. A strip of skin. The shadow of his spine.
Don’t look. I look.
My hands are on his waist from behind. My mouth on his shoulder. He exhales, the sound I know, the sound that means the cooking is about to become secondary.
‘Dinner is going to burn,’ he says.
‘Turn the fire off.’
I turn him. His back is against the fridge. The magnets rattle. A postcard from Greece slides sideways, the holiday this summer, the one where I swam every morning and he read on the beach.
His hands settle on my hips as I kiss him deeply, his breathing changing, his fingers finding the gap between my shirt and my jeans, and the gap is an invitation.
‘A year,’ he says, ‘and you still can’t keep your hands off me.’
‘A year and your pasta’s still slightly overdone. We’re even.’
Upstairs. Months of learning, a year of it, two bodies that have stopped surprising each other and started agreeing.
He pushes me down first. Goes for the buckle. His mouth on my collarbone, his weight on my hips, the way he likes to start when he’s been thinking about it all afternoon at his desk and the marker in his hand became insufficient.
I let him for a minute. Long enough to feel the grip on my wrist, the press of him against me through what’s left of my jeans. Then I move. Roll him under. He goes laughing.
‘Greedy,’ he says, into my mouth.
‘My turn.’
‘You said that last night.’
‘Last night was different. Yesterday you couldn’t be arsed to do the work.’
I kiss the corner of his mouth.
‘Then again, you turned out pretty arsed once I got you on your back.’
He’s grinning when he reaches for the drawer. Finds the lube. Hands it to me. The negotiation lasted nine seconds, including the joke.
The rest is the bedroom we know. The pillow he prefers on his left side. His hand goes flat against the headboard when I push the first finger in, slow, then the second. Patience mutual now, a thing we built rather than a thing one of us granted.
Pushing bare inside him, patience as obscenity.
His leg around my hip. His mouth at my ear, Lancashire already, syllables a year of cohabitation hasn’t smoothed and never will. His hand finds mine on the sheet, threads through. Steady.
I come stuttering his name—Laurence, no title, no distance, just the man.
He comes after, face in my neck, the Lancashire breaking open like it only does when he’s wrung empty.
We don’t move for a while. Downstairs, the record finishes one side and stops. The needle clicks. Neither of us gets up.
‘Dinner is definitely cold,’ he says.
‘Good.’
The sofa. A film is playing on the screen. My legs across his lap, his attention on my shin bone.
