I just nodded, though okay was the biggest understatement in the world.
After stuffing myself to the brim, I finally made myself set my fork down. I wiped my mouth with one of his fancy white cloth napkins, still not looking at him. “Thank you, Tristan. It was very nice of you to cook dinner, but I really should be going.”
“Wait, you can’t,” he burst out, sounding more than a touch panicked.
Some thread of desperation in his tone had my heart twisting in my chest, and I finally looked at him.
He was watching me, his face deceptively blank, except for his eyes, which were pleading with me in a way that I’d never been able to resist.
“Why can’t I?” I finally asked, after we’d stared at each other for an uncomfortably long time.
“You can’t skip dessert.”
“I don’t think I could take one more bite of food. You know I can never stop eating your enchiladas until I’m stuffed.”
“So stick around for a while, and I’ll make us some dessert when you’re up for it.”
“Tristan—” I began.
“Please. Just hang out for a while. What’s the harm? We can watch the new episodes of Arrested Development and just chill. No funny business. I’ll sit on a different couch, if you want. I just want to hang out with you, like old times. Like friends.”
The pleading tone he used got to me. I never could tell this man no.
“I heard about those new episodes. I haven’t had a chance to watch them yet. Are they good?” We’d watched the old seasons at least half a dozen times each and had quoted the funny parts to each other more times than I could count. It wasn’t a show I’d been able to watch without thinking of him, so I’d avoided it very deliberately over the last six years.
“I haven’t watched them, either. It wouldn’t have been any fun without you.”
I bit my lip and gave him a rueful smile.
We’d ruined each other for so many things.
“Jerry tells me they’re good,” I remarked. “Can’t compare to the original, but good, is what he said.”
“Well I’d take a bad episode of that show over a good episode of anything else.”
We shared a smile.
As though it had been inevitable, I found myself relaxing on the sofa in a cozy media room just off his kitchen and watching the show with him.
He did behave himself at first, even sitting on a different couch, as promised.
But that didn’t last long.
Had I thought it would? Best not to think about.
“Relax, put your feet up,” he ordered, when we were two episodes in, and I was still sitting with my feet flat on the floor, my hands in my lap.
His plush sofa was huge, and it had been a struggle to sit up straight on it. I put my feet up, because it was just more comfortable, and I was starting to feel ridiculous.
We were another episode in, both of us laughing, when he moved to sit at my feet.
I shot him a warning look.
“Oh, relax. I’m not going to attack you.”
I felt silly and turned my attention back to the TV. I was clutching my belly and laughing when he started to rub one of my feet. His touch was firm, hitting just the right spot, so when I looked at him to tell him to stop, my mouth was already a little slackened with pleasure.
“Tristan,” I tried to warn, but it could as easily have been construed as a plea.
He kept his eyes on the screen, ignoring me completely either way, and kept rubbing.
I was basically a relaxed puddle on his couch by the time he moved to the second foot, and when he moved his hand up to rub my bad knee, I was done for.
It was three more episodes in, all the while with his pleasurable hands rubbing my knee, my calves, my feet, when he moved to lay behind me, his arm going over my ribs, hugging.
“Tristan,” I whispered. I didn’t even know what I was trying to tell him, let alone how it was actually perceived.
“Please,” he whispered. “Just for a moment, let me hold you. Nothing else.”
Nothing else, except for everything, I thought, my mind going fuzzy.
He was pressed hard into my back, and so I could feel that he wanted to do more, but he didn’t. He just held me and it wasn’t for a moment, but many moments, and for every second of it, I trembled.
“Thank you,” he said into my hair after a time, kissing me softly on the side of the head.
He got up and went into the kitchen, but quickly returned to sit at my feet. He resumed with the rubbing.
The house quickly filled with the smell of baking cookies.
“Oh God,” I said, somehow hungry again. “Chocolate chip?”
“You know it.”
I looked at him and smiled, and his hands froze.
I started to shake my head when I saw the look on his face, but he ignored that, moving to lay behind me again. He pressed hard against me, one arm thrown over me, and his big hand moved to my stomach and started to rub. To stroke.
He lifted up my shirt and kneaded at the skin over my ribs, then snaked his hand down into my skirt to massage the flesh around my naval. I lay there, stiff but trembling. Eventually, his hand moved low enough to dig into a rope of scar tissue, and that little tinge of discomfort was enough to give me some willpower.
His fingers had begun to feel at the hard ridge of the scar, as though to determine what it was, when I grabbed his hand and pulled it away.