Page 32 of Boy Blue
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s another blizzard coming. Saturday.” He thumbed the phone and put it face down on the table. “We’re already ready, so we’ll weather the storm.”
My fingers itched to see the phone. My brain agreed and told me we could scroll and play solitaire or Angry Birds and shut out the rest of the world and forget the things said to us. What things? I didn’t know, but they were there, those words, shouted at the back of my head, like a film that was being projected but on the wrong screen. Not one I could see.
We finished our donuts and tea. Wolfe cleaned up while I pretended to help, and as I walked back into the living room area, I said, “I just realized you don’t have a TV.”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“No Netflix,” I said. “That’s a thing, right? Netflix? Movies and stuff?”
“It is.” Wolfe wiped his hands on a towel, then laid the towel on top of the few dishes stacked there, waiting to be washed with hot water and soap in the morning. “But I don’t see the need for it. I have my work and books and rest.”
That was all he had, living off by himself, with nobody to talk to, nobody to break the silence with. My throat closed up, and I had to blink away the sudden heat in my eyes.
“What?” he asked, looking at me. “Are you okay?”
“It seems lonely,” I said. “Living this way.” Which was odd because I did not know any other way to live, so how would I know?
“It’s better than the alternative,” he said in a steady way, not breaking his gaze.
“What’s the alternative?” I asked. I had no idea what it could be.
Instead of answering, he shook his head and went to the fire to kneel down and bank it. He’d done that every night, but it was only this time I had my full awareness of what was going on around me, what had happened in the days leading up to this one. Wolfe’s rhythm, slow and steady in his isolation, walking toward his own goal. Walking away from an alternative he did not want to talk about.
I would honor his unspoken request because I owed him that much, at least, and most definitely more. But while his back was turned to me as he shifted logs and scraped ash with a short-handled shovel, I traced the line of his broad shoulders, the heft of his thighs, the way he braced his hips. The shine of low firelight on his dark hair.
Still, I touched him with my eyes in a way that would have been invasive had I acted on what my body wanted. When he stood up, a graceful movement, I looked away, maybe trying to get my bearings, and then looked at him.
“Can I sleep with you in the bed again?” I asked. Then stammered a reason, “It’s really cold.”
It was not the real reason. It was part of it. But it was not all of it. Maybe my expression or the way I’d said it clued him into this duplicity because there was a long moment before he answered.
“Yes,” he said. “No point forcing you to sleep on a lumpy couch.”
There weren’t enough lanyards in the world for me to make it up to this kind-hearted man.
CHAPTER 14
wolfe
The last time I had anyone in my bed, it had been in prison. A guy named Vinnie Otto had been assigned to my cell prior to his release. Sometimes guys on the night before they walked would get jumped, possibly shivved, which might delay their release or postpone it altogether if they fought back.
Maybe I was known as safe, the guy who wouldn’t jump you or try to kill you just because you were getting out. Still, Vinnie didn’t sleep all night. How do I know? He had the lower bunk, and he sat there, feet on the floor, hands on his knees, watching.
“A few hours, man,” I said to him, in that small space of time between midnight and lights on. A time that felt safe, because even murderers and rapists had to sleep. I was neither. “Come on up. I’ll keep watch.”
I guess he trusted me by that point because he crawled into my bunk and into my arms, and I watched over him while he got a few hours of rest, eyes closed, his breathing deep and even.
He was wiry and skinny and smelled like old hay. No ramen noodles changed hands; no deals over bars of chocolate were made. He slept, and I deepened my reputation as a good guy. When the doors opened and we all walked to the dining hall,he got yanked out of line by the guards. I never saw him again, though I’d like to think he made his way home.
That’s almost how it felt with Blue in my bed. It was cold, so it only made sense that we would share. But it was more than that, at least to me.
Maybe he thought of me as a good guy, though I didn’t feel like one, especially not after I caught him watching through the half-open bathroom door as I washed for bed. As I wanted what I wanted, illicit thoughts of him joining me. Of sharing the bed, our bodies connecting in the dark.
Still, I behaved like a good guy. When he pushed up against me, I turned the other way and we slept like that, our spines pressed together for warmth. I could feel him breathing.
The night outside was so quiet and still. Below-zero temperatures and no wind. No cloud cover. Just cold air coming down from the north and the feel of his body, slender. Shifting to find a comfortable spot.
