home, he’d been in my bedroom, but only because it was the only way to access the single bathroom in the flat. I guessed he hadn’t lingered because when I showed him through again, he took his time wandering around, looking at the little bits and pieces that transformed the place from somewhere where I laid my head at night to my home of the past four years.
Still, I wasn’t really one for collecting things, “dust collectors” as my mother called them. As far as personal items went, I had books; stacks of books on nearly every possible surface. The most precious thing in my room was the one Chris homed in on, almost as if he knew or understood its value.
He was incredibly careful with the small frame that held a picture of me and my daughter, taken a few days after she was born. There were photographs taken in the hospital, but I’d never liked them. There was a clinical, depressed, slightly desperate edge to them all. We were only nineteen. Our parents were furious with us. I was overwhelmed.
When we were allowed to take her home, things only got worse. Chloe was a colicky, fussy baby almost from the get-go. We got precious little sleep. Daylight hours were spent washing and feeding and changing and bathing and, for me, working my ass off. Lu resented me. Chloe, I was convinced, knew I wasn’t cut out to be a father.
Then, it fell into place.
I was exhausted after finishing an eight-hour shift and got home to a screaming baby and a frazzled Luisa. She shoved the child in my arms and announced she was taking a bath and there was nothing I could do except learn how to deal with my daughter.
It took a good hour, maybe more until she settled and I curled up in an armchair with her in my arms, damned if I was going to put her down in case she started screaming again. I must have fallen asleep like that because months later when we were getting the rolls of film from those first few weeks of her life developed, there was the picture.
Me, fast asleep in a dark brown leather armchair; Chloe, her face peaceful but wide awake, staring up at me. Lu had framed it and given it to me as a Christmas gift, and I cherished it as evidence that I was not a terrible father after all.
“Does she look like you?” Chris asked as he set the frame back in its place on my dresser.
“Chloe? No. Not at all. She takes after her mother.”
When he kissed me again, there was a new kind of low, constant heat that smoldered in my belly and jumped in my throat. His breath was warm and sweet; at some point in the evening, he’d clearly switched from beer to some kind of liquor.
My fingers went to the hem of his T-shirt, drawing it up over his head in a swift movement. If he was surprised at my forwardness he didn’t let it show, letting me remove my own shirt, then slowly slide leather through metal and metal through denim.
I was almost sure his breathing was faster than it should be, and it was clear that he was aroused. I wanted to know everything about him, though, all his secrets and his desires and what made him tick.
“Sorry about the bed,” I said, wondering if he’d noticed that it was a three-quarter size and not a full double. “The last owner left it here. Apparently he spent a fortune trying to get a double mattress up the stairs, and even then it wouldn’t fit around the door.”
“I’m sure we’ll manage,” Chris said as he inelegantly toed off his shoes and socks, leaving them where they fell.
He was naked and I nearly so when we finally made it to my soft, soft new sheets, and Chris looked so right there, lying on my bed where I’d imagined him so many times before that I had to take a moment to commit the sight to memory.
There were other tattoos, ones that I’d known the existence of but not the location. I wanted to touch them, so I did; the swallows that dove over his hips, following the natural contours of his body.
And he was naked, of course, so the birds were really pointing the way toward what
Still, I wasn’t really one for collecting things, “dust collectors” as my mother called them. As far as personal items went, I had books; stacks of books on nearly every possible surface. The most precious thing in my room was the one Chris homed in on, almost as if he knew or understood its value.
He was incredibly careful with the small frame that held a picture of me and my daughter, taken a few days after she was born. There were photographs taken in the hospital, but I’d never liked them. There was a clinical, depressed, slightly desperate edge to them all. We were only nineteen. Our parents were furious with us. I was overwhelmed.
When we were allowed to take her home, things only got worse. Chloe was a colicky, fussy baby almost from the get-go. We got precious little sleep. Daylight hours were spent washing and feeding and changing and bathing and, for me, working my ass off. Lu resented me. Chloe, I was convinced, knew I wasn’t cut out to be a father.
Then, it fell into place.
I was exhausted after finishing an eight-hour shift and got home to a screaming baby and a frazzled Luisa. She shoved the child in my arms and announced she was taking a bath and there was nothing I could do except learn how to deal with my daughter.
It took a good hour, maybe more until she settled and I curled up in an armchair with her in my arms, damned if I was going to put her down in case she started screaming again. I must have fallen asleep like that because months later when we were getting the rolls of film from those first few weeks of her life developed, there was the picture.
Me, fast asleep in a dark brown leather armchair; Chloe, her face peaceful but wide awake, staring up at me. Lu had framed it and given it to me as a Christmas gift, and I cherished it as evidence that I was not a terrible father after all.
“Does she look like you?” Chris asked as he set the frame back in its place on my dresser.
“Chloe? No. Not at all. She takes after her mother.”
When he kissed me again, there was a new kind of low, constant heat that smoldered in my belly and jumped in my throat. His breath was warm and sweet; at some point in the evening, he’d clearly switched from beer to some kind of liquor.
My fingers went to the hem of his T-shirt, drawing it up over his head in a swift movement. If he was surprised at my forwardness he didn’t let it show, letting me remove my own shirt, then slowly slide leather through metal and metal through denim.
I was almost sure his breathing was faster than it should be, and it was clear that he was aroused. I wanted to know everything about him, though, all his secrets and his desires and what made him tick.
“Sorry about the bed,” I said, wondering if he’d noticed that it was a three-quarter size and not a full double. “The last owner left it here. Apparently he spent a fortune trying to get a double mattress up the stairs, and even then it wouldn’t fit around the door.”
“I’m sure we’ll manage,” Chris said as he inelegantly toed off his shoes and socks, leaving them where they fell.
He was naked and I nearly so when we finally made it to my soft, soft new sheets, and Chris looked so right there, lying on my bed where I’d imagined him so many times before that I had to take a moment to commit the sight to memory.
There were other tattoos, ones that I’d known the existence of but not the location. I wanted to touch them, so I did; the swallows that dove over his hips, following the natural contours of his body.
And he was naked, of course, so the birds were really pointing the way toward what
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