Page 45 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
“Because you can’t control what they think, right?”
“Right.” I took Elvis’s leash back from him, and we started up again. “But in my real life, I’m scared that if I say what I think, people won’t like me.”
“You gotta get over that. Tell me whatever. I can handle it.”
“Thanks,” I said, my breath now starting to come out in pants.
“And I really wanna get you to start swearing. There’s a heathen in you just waiting to come out.”
“I don’t know about that.”
We crossed the street, headed for another tree-lined street of old houses. “Can you swear?”
“Of course I can.”
“Let me hear it.” Elvis jingled his dog collar and started to pull in the opposite direction. Rather than get pulled along again, I handed the leash to Mikey again.
“No. I don’t have any reason to.”
“Are you scared?”
“Of swearing? No. I don’t think so. I just don’t do it.” That was the reason, right? It just wasn’t my thing.
We stopped at a street corner. “Good. Then get the big ones out of the way.”
“You’re completely ridiculous.”
“Do it.”
“Fuck,” I said, and then I giggled, because I blurted it out.
Mikey whistled and clapped. “There’s my girl.”
I liked the idea of being Mikey’s girl.
I looked at him differently when we ran back home.
After dinner, he went wherever he normally went in the evenings. But late that night, I woke up with a start.
My entire life, I’d never slept well, but since I’d moved in, I’d been sleeping soundly. No nightmares.
I woke to a weight over my waist. Mikey’s bronzed arm, blackened with tribal ink, lay across me, snuggling in close.
He’d been coming in here this whole time, calming my nightmares. Grounding me. He hadn’t tried anything on me.
Before tonight, I’d never seen him. I’d just known he’d come in.
Now that he was here, however, I didn’t want him to leave. I liked his massive man-mountain body pressing against mine. His erection poked as he spooned me, sleeping.
There was more to my new roommate than met the eye. I liked how his body felt next to mine, the soft weight of his brawny arm. The tattoos.
I turned around. He muttered, “S’okay, there there. Go to sleep, baby. Shh. Sleep, babe.”
When he slept, he looked younger than his twenty-nine years.
“Go to sleep, Mikey. I’m okay.”
He squeezed me tight and with a whiffling snore, went back to sleep.
