Page 57 of Colt
“I don’t know that it’s true.”
“Everyone’s going to want to be part of your healing, Colt.”
There is a slight crispness to her tone, and I wonder what she did to make yourself mad at me when she went over to change.
“What have you been thinking about?”
“Nothing.”
“You have been. You’ve been thinking about me getting Get Well Soon Blow Jobs, which, as it happens, is kind of an upgrade from a mylar balloon. But a strange route to take.”
She gives me a deadly glare from the corner of her eye.
“I don’t want anyone else,” I say.
She turns toward me quickly, then turns back so that she’s facing the road. “You think that because… You feel insecure.”
“I feelinsecure. Ifeelinsecure.Ifeel insecure? I put an emphasis on a different word every time I repeated. “First of all, you’ve seen my dick.”
She surprises me by bursting out laughing. “Yes. I have.”
“So I’m not entirely sure where you think my insecurity is supposed to come from.”
“You’re just… You’re injured.”
“How many times did you come?”
“Colt,” she says. “I’m serious.”
“Listen, this is what we aren’t going to do, Allison, we are not going to minimize this. Okay? Yes, we have to keep it a secret, yes, it’s for a limited time. We both know that’s the only way that it can happen, we both know that’s the only thing. The only way that it can be. But I… Hell, I thought you were beautiful for years.”
“You have not,” she says.
“I have. I fucking have. I just suppressed it. And you know, when I move all the time, it’s easy for me to pretend that there’s nothing there. I don’t feel anything. It’s easy for me to pretend that we haven’t got a thing between us, okay? But the reality is, we do. And we’ve proven that. Solidly. This morning was… It was amazing. It was better for me, too. Different for me. Okay?”
I feel raw from admission, but it is true. And hell yeah, the circumstances might be part of it, but they aren’t the whole thing.
“Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted me before?”
“Why didn’t I tell you before this morning, or why didn’t I tell you this morning?”
“Well. This morning. Or yesterday, when you almost kissed me out in the backyard. It hurt my feelings and… You could’ve just said this then.”
“I could have. But I was still trying to figure it all out. And by the time I stormed into the house last night, I wasn’t thinking about anything. I wasn’t trying to figure anything out anymore, I was just having a fit because I felt shitty, and I didn’t know what else to do. But yeah, I have felt attraction to you before. You make it easy to steer clear of you, though, because you steer clear of me.”
“Because I’m attracted to you,” she says, sounding just as frustrated as I do. “I don’t want it, I didn’t ask for it, but I just… I am. I have been. It sucks, and I hate it. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome?” I shake my head. “I just don’t want you to run with this idea that I could just as easily take a casserole and an orgasm from Jenny down the block, okay?”
“Who’s Jenny?”
“She’s hypothetical. Okay? The point is, I haven’t felt desire for anyone else. I haven’t even felt like getting myself off, okay? You said that I was going to seduce a nurse in the hospital, but I didn’t even have an inkling toward that. It’s you. It’s not sex or just the amount of time that it’s been, it’s you. My proximity to you. I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know how to make it okay, I don’t know what to do with it exactly. But that’s where we are. And I don’t want to hurt you. But I really, really don’t want you to think you’re interchangeable. You’re not.” It’s the most heartfelt speech I’ve ever made to a woman.
But I need her to know that. Because yeah, part of this is that I’m feeling more like myself. Part of it is that this wouldn’t have happened if not for the accident, but it’s complicated. It has to do with proximity, me slowing down, it has to do with all this stuff that isn’t her being second best, or whatever she thinks this is.
“I believe you,” she says.
That means more to me than I can articulate. I didn’t realize I needed her to believe me. That I needed to feel like I wasn’t just my dad. Like I’m not just using her for my own pleasure.
