Page 49 of Property of Thrasher
His mouth barely moved, but his eyes did. Something in them went soft and certain. “That’s the whole point,” he said. “It’s not dumb.”
I set my cup down on the dresser with a plastic thud, crossed the little square of carpet between us, and pressed my fingers to the front of his shirt. He didn’t move. He let me be the one to erase the last inch. I rose onto my toes, and when my mouth met his, he let it be what it was—slow, unrushed. The first pass was a hello, not a demand. The second was an answer.
He kissed me like reading, yes, but also like writing, each touch a word he didn’t waste. My hands went from his chest to the sides of his neck, thumbs under his jaw, and his breath changed. He was gentle with me the way a strong man remembers the weight of what he’s carrying. Firm in all the places that made my nerves settle instead of jump. I stepped back once, tugging him with me, and the backs of my knees met the bed. We sat without breaking apart.
I didn’t rush. I didn’t have to. His palms slid over my shoulder blades, down my sides. He didn’t go anywhere he hadn’t already announced, not with words but with patient touch. When I lifted my shirt over my head, it wasn’t because I felt like I ought to. It was because the air felt better on my skin, because I wanted to see his eyes change. And thankfully, they did.
“Okay?” he asked, voice low, when his hands found the bare skin at my waist.
“Yes,” I whispered firmly to make sure he heard how much I meant it.
We took our time. We learned each other in the slow language bodies speak when nobody’s translating for them. I felt it when he chose a pace that matched my breath, not the clock in his own blood. I gave back what he gave me, trying to memorize the map of what made his breath catch, the way his hand flexed on my hip when I kissed the corner of his mouth, the sound he made when I traced my fingers along the line of his shoulder. The room stayed quiet, but it wasn’t the kind of quiet that isolates. It was the kind that wraps around two people and holds.
When we finally moved together, it wasn’t a rush or a scramble. It wasn’t a thing that happened to me. It was something we did, both of us looking. My body knew more this time—less flinch, more yes—and he kept reading it, checking in, adjusting without making me name every small thing. He truly read my body, every inch. The world narrowed to warm skin and soft breath and a rhythm that had nothing in it that hurt. I let myself be there, really there, not bracing for the next bad thing or waiting for the ceiling to crack.
After, he didn’t roll away. He didn’t get up and put his boots on and draw a line in the doorway with his body. He gathered me in, my cheek on his chest where his heartbeat felt like a low drum, and tucked his chin into my hair. His hand drew a slow line up and down my spine as if the act of touch was its own sentence, not a prelude to some other demand.
“Thank you,” I said, surprised to hear the words come out. They were small and big at the same time.
“For what?” he asked, and I smiled at the repetition.
“For all of it.” I tilted my head to catch his eye. “For the ride. For this. For…not rushing. For listening. Mostly for letting this be safe.”
He nodded once, like yeah, obviously, and tightened his arm in a way that told me it wasn’t an accident, the way he was staying right here in the moment with me.
A thought flickered through me then, what he’d told me the night before last: I don’t let women I fuck sleep over. No apology. Just the rule. Yet here we were, against all that. I didn’t point it out. I didn’t want to turn it into a negotiation where I needed to win. I just let the fact exist, a warm stone under the water, smooth and solid. Maybe I’d keep it in my palm later and turn it over. Maybe not. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the way my whole body had finally sagged into sleepiness without fear. If I awoke tomorrow and he had gone, I would know why. But if by some chance the dawn of a new day cascaded in with him still holding me, then I would treasure the gift that was as well.
I breathed him in and decided what was meant to be would be.
Morning didn’t come. Not all at once. The kind of sleep I fell into had no dreams that I remembered, only the sensation of falling and landing somewhere soft. When I blinked awake, it was because a housekeeping cart squeaked somewhere down the hall and someone laughed too loud. For a second I didn’t know where I was—hotel room, yes, my room, yes—but the weight under my cheek wasn’t the pillow. It was a chest. His.
I froze, not because I was scared but because I was surprised the moment hadn’t broken in the night when I wasn’t paying attention. His arm was heavy around me, but not trapping. His hand was warm where it cupped the back of my shoulder. His breath moved my hair on the inhale. I lay very still and listened to the sound of our two bodies doing nothing together.
“Hey,” he greeted, voice roughened by sleep, without moving more than he had to.
“Hey,” I answered, my voice doing that morning-sandpaper thing it does.
“What time you gotta be up for work?”
“Later,” I said, because for once it was true. I had a late shift. “You?”
“Soon enough.” He didn’t move. “But not yet.”
We didn’t talk about what he’d said before, about sleepovers. We didn’t talk about what it meant that he was still here. That he’d broken his own line for me, or maybe just bent it. If there was a word for the thing moving between us, we didn’t say it out loud. It felt like taking a butterfly out of a jar when it just learned it could fly. Better to let it land where it wanted. Better to keep the lid off and see if it stayed.
We lay there another minute, or five, or twenty. Time changed shape when my head was on his chest. I thought about Lyric and how she’d grin when I told her I liked the ride again.
I thought about Elaina and whether she liked the smell of oil on her dad’s clothes or hated it because it meant he was out with brothers instead of with her. I thought about the road we took, the left I didn’t expect, the view with the water like a coin flashing in a field. I thought about the way he’d asked, “Okay?” and then waited for the word.
I thought about if this would work. I thought about if it wouldn’t. I let both possibilities sit beside me like quiet guests and didn’t make them leave.
Eventually he pressed his mouth to the top of my head, a touch so light I might have imagined it, and said, “I should go.”
I nodded against him, not because I wanted him gone, but because we both understood the world outside the door was real and had its own clocks. He eased out from under me the way you move a sleeping cat and stood, stretching his back until it popped. I watched him pull on his shirt, watched him tuck in the hem just a smidge the way men who ride tuck things so they don’t flap. He found his boots where he’d left them by the chair and sat to lace them, double-knot because he didn’t do loose.
I pulled the sheet higher, not for modesty, just because the room’s air had cooled and I suddenly felt the lift of the morning. He looked over once, checking on me and his mouth did that almost smile again. He crossed the room, put a palm on the side of my neck, and leaned down so his forehead touched mine.
“Text me when you’re off,” he ordered but paused with a smirk. “Well, if you want more of this.”
