Page 48 of Cohen's Control

I get more excited when I realize we're about to spend an entire evening together.

So excited.

We opted for dinner first, with Cohen asking me to pick the top three places I wanted to eat. Because I wanted to get to the couch shop, I chose a little takeout corner eatery, one that sells gyros—the best fucking gyros ever.

We went back and forth about our favorite and least favorite restaurants, a lot of our likes coming down to the comfort of the chairs and the kindness of the wait staff. “But I’ll get treated like shit for a good plate of fries,” he’d said, and something about that made me a little dizzy. Like I could have him between my thighs, in control of his orgasm and mine, and he’d be just fine with that.

Hope makes you heady, kind of drunken, too. So as we peruse furniture store number two, we’re laughing, hands intermittently linked.

He runs his hand along the headrest of a large sectional. “I think we need to find the two to three seater section,” he says, peering down at the massive couch.

I lift the tag from the couch and read it aloud. “Sits twelve comfortably.” My mouth falls open. “I don’t think I could find twelve people to come over at the same time. That’s so many people.”

He smiles, his eyes lifting over the couches, searching for something closer to what we need for our smaller spaces. I flop down on the mega sectional, rolling and cracking my ankles as I sink my head into the cushions.

Cohen comes around and sits next to me. “It’s soft.”

I bounce a little in my spot. “Yeah, pretty good.” I lean forward and look across the length of it again. “Maybe it’s for a big family. You know, a household with lots of kids.” I lean forward, realizing that this couch sits a little lower than the rest. “Probably for people that have small kids, too. Because little arms and legs, you know? They’re not great at reaching and grabbing, so the shorter the couch the better.”

I sit up and face Cohen, and everything in my diaphragm tightens before freefalling like bricks to my stomach.

He’s pale, white, a sheet in fact. His mouth is parted, eyes on me but also distant, lost almost. I put my hand on his knee. “Cohen, what’s wrong?”

He pops up to his feet, and walks away, circling the couch. From behind he says, “I’m going to look at the couches for our apartments.” And then he’s on the other side of the store, talking to a different sales clerk.

After I cross the store to him, I curl my hand around his bicep, but he raises his arm to motion over a salesman, breaking the contact. Dejected, aching, I question everything. We were on the best date ever. We were connecting.

I replay the last five minutes in my head. I run through the things I’ve been mentally pinning, completely aware that Cohen has more complication beneath the surface, just like me. But I’ve never known what, or who, or…

What did I say? I tune out Cohen’s conversation with the man in the gray suit and rerun everything, pulling it apart, scrutinizing every syllable.

I was talking about kids.

I look up at Cohen, knowing no more now than I did a moment ago. Did he have a sibling he lost? He said he was an only child, but did he mean now? I worry, chewing the inside of my cheek as I wonderwhatis happening.

Because the idea of him hurting physically hurts me.

“If you like this one,” the salesman says to me, and I glance over at the couch opposite where Cohen stands. It fits three. It’s blue. It’s fine.

“Great, yes,” I say, digging my wallet out, face burning from the way I’ve hurt him and because of it, been discarded.

I have to know what's going on with him. I’m not even angry. He’s helped me so much. All I want is to make him feel good, too. Make him happy, too.

I don’t push when the salesman disappears with both of our credit cards. I sit with him in silence, and then nod in silence when we make small talk about lamps and television sets. And we drive back to Crave where he picks up his car and we drive home separately. And God do I feel the distance between the two cars, even though we end up parking side by side.

We stand in the breezeway between our apartments, and my mouth falls open, ready to spill so many things, but instead, I say, “Thanks for everything tonight Cohen.”

He nods, and I step inside. He stops the door with a palm, and my pulse quickens, believing for one moment that he’s going to pour himself out right here and now for me to see. Finally.

“Lock the door, Scarlett. Right now. I need to hear it.”

Disappointment crushes me, but I force a smile. I refuse to give up or get disappointed. “I will. Goodnight. Sleep well.”

I close and lock the door, and watch through my peephole as he does the same at his place.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t sleep well that night.

“I’m so happy,” Dr. Evans comments after I tell her all about Vienna, and how I formed an organic, pure friendship without even realizing it. “That’s wonderful.”

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