Page 198 of Sexting the Pakhan

“The bed in the other room is made,” I add. “You’ll tear your leg up if you keep twisting like that.”

For a moment he says nothing.

Then, “Are you telling me to move?”

“I’m telling you I don’t want to hear you fall off that couch in the middle of the night and then have to explain to my daughters why there’s a grown man unconscious beside the coffee table.”

That almost gets a smile out of him.

“Very kind,” he says.

“I’m not kind,” I say. “I’m practical.”

He nods once, like he knows better and is choosing not to say it.

It takes longer than it should to get him down the hall. He refuses help at first, then accepts it badly, then finally lets me take some of his weight without arguing every second. The spare room is small, barely more than a bed, a narrow wardrobe, and a lamp with a crooked shade. It feels too intimate the moment we step into it.

Maybe because it is.

He sits on the edge of the mattress with a low exhale, and I kneel to check the bandage again because it’s easier than looking at his face.

“It’s fine,” he says.

“You keep saying that like it means anything.”

“It means stop fussing.”

“I’ll stop fussing when people stop getting shot in my vicinity.”

He looks down at me, and for one strange second, all the years between us feel thin.

I straighten and pull the blanket back. “Lie down,” I say.

He does.

That surprises me enough that I stand there for a second longer than necessary. Then I move to the other side of the bed.

His eyes follow me. “What are you doing?”

“Sleeping.”

“In here?”

“I’m not leaving you alone in case your fever comes back.”

“That’s not why.”

I climb into bed and turn off the lamp before he can say anything else. The room drops into darkness broken only by the strip of moonlight coming through the curtains.

I lie on my back at first, hands folded over my stomach like a corpse in a cautionary tale. He’s warm beside me. Not touching. Just there.

After a while, he says quietly, “You don’t have to do this.”

“I know.”

Silence again.

Then, because there’s no point lying in the dark with this much truth crowded between us, I say, “You found out in a grocery store.”