Free Intrusion by Charlotte Stein Page B

way through a kiss he didn’t want.
    It certainly seems that way when he speaks.
    â€œThat was pretty much my limit,” he says, in a voice so hoarse it could sing the blues in a back-alley club. I see him put a hand to his mouth, and know what he’s doing even though I try not to linger on it. I glance away quick, and still see it behind my eyes.
    He’s wiping my kiss off his mouth, in a way that looks like someone tending to a bloody wound. I punched him without realizing it, and now he has to find out where it’s tender with trembling, tentative fingers. He has to steady his breathing, and relax every muscle he just had to tense—and there are a lot of them.
    The ones in his shoulders try to drop first. Then the sharp planes of his back settle down somewhat. By the time he speaks again he seems to have sagged, and my heart goes with him. Did I cause this? Am I so greedy, so invasive?
    And if so how did that happen?
    I’ve never been greedy for anyone.
    I’ve never wanted to invade anything.
    I will not start with him.
    â€œAre you okay with that?” he asks, and I answer without question.
    â€œYes,” I tell him. “Yes, absolutely, whatever you need.”
    But the trouble is—I do so before his next suggestion. I keep making promises that seem small on the face of it, but get larger and larger the longer this goes on. There are curveballs I don’t anticipate and sharp turns that almost send me off a cliff, and they all creep up on me when I least expect them.
    â€œYou maybe want to watch that documentary?” he asks—and he even does it like this is going to cool us both off. It will help with our slow progress toward total calmness. There is literally nothing sexy about watching killer whales try to eat a penguin.
    So I believe him. I nod eagerly, relieved that the fever that seemed to rise between us has died down to manageable levels. I help him clear away the rest of our meal and we idly chitchat about things that have nothing to do with kissing, completely safe in the knowledge that our little crisis has been averted.
    Soon we will be miles apart in those two chairs he has in his living room, surrounded by all kinds of bizarre junk that my eyes can never seem to get enough of, and no risk of kissing will ever come up again. My urge to ask him about all of this—to press him for horrible answers to painful questions—will die down.
    And then he calls to me as I move toward the living room, and I see him standing at the bottom of the stairs that lead up, up, up to God knows where, and I realize.
    He has no television downstairs. At least, none that I’ve ever seen. When I pictured us watching the penguins I somehow erased his fireplace and replaced it with a flat-screen. I completely forgot that those chairs faced a sooty grate and some half-burnt logs, and now I have to pay the price for my own faulty imagination.
    I have to go with him upstairs, to what will no doubt be his bedroom.
    It must be his bedroom—no one has a TV next to a toilet. But even if he did, what difference would that make? How would that be any better? The nearness to him would still be an issue, if we were both somehow crammed into his bathtub. It might actually make things worse, because people can reasonably watch a show about penguins from a bathtub only if they’re both naked and swathed in bubbles.
    Christ, why am I thinking about being swathed in bubbles?
    Now not only do I have to quite possibly lie next to him on a bed and pretend to be interested in David Attenborough, I have to do it with the mental image of him all slippery with scented oils playing behind my eyes.
    Is it any wonder that I climb those steps like I’m going to my doom? The very idea is unbearable. It seems wreathed in thorns and full of booby traps, and I really don’t want to have to deal with any of them. When we finally get to his bedroom, I just stand there in the doorway,