Perfectly Adequate(79)

“I’m overdressed for bed.”

Dorothy twists her lips. “Did you bring pajamas?”

“Yes, they’re called underwear, and I already have them on. I just need to remove my shirt and sweatpants.”

“You mean me. You need me to remove them for you.”

“Yes.”

She eases my shirt over my head. “Did Dr. Hathaway do this for you at your house? Undress you?”

“Yes.”

“Humpf.”

“Did you just humpf my answer?”

“No.” She slides my sweatpants down my legs, over my cast, and then pulls off my socks.

“Jealous that someone else has been undressing me?”

“No.” She folds my clothes and sets them on top of my bag. “Do you need extra pillows for your leg?”

“An extra one for my leg would be great.”

She positions a pillow under my leg and zips my side of the bed. Let me repeat … zips my side of the bed.

“I’m going to shower, brush and floss, and take my pills. You good?”

“I’m zipped up in Dorothy Mayhem’s bed. The only way I could be better is if you tied me to it and had your way with me—gently and with utmost caution for my injuries, of course.”

Dorothy returns a blank expression. I think she gets my humor, minus actually finding anything humorous about it. “So you’re good. Okay. I’m going to shower.”

By the time she makes it through her nighttime routine, I start to drift off to sleep.

“I can unzip just the bottom if you need air on your feet.”

I blink open my heavy eyelids, bringing wet-hair Dorothy Mayhem and her oversized Taylor Swift Reputation T-shirt into focus. “To keep my feet from getting claustrophobic in your zipper bed?”

“To allow cool air to your feet to help regulate your body temperature.” She unzips the bottom of the bed. “I can leave it like this or actually let your feet out like this.” Peeling back the bottom covers, she exposes my feet. My good one and the one with just my toes sticking out from a blue cast. So many options and unexpected surprises with the zipper bed. Same goes for Dorothy Mayhem.

“However you sleep in here will be just fine with me.”

“Oh.” She shakes her head. “I don’t actually sleep inside it. I sleep on top of it so it’s always made up. If I get chilly, I grab a blanket. I just hate dealing with making beds.”

I never let on to her just how much emotion I feel right now. She’d interpret it as me getting emotional over a zipper bed. It’s not that. Well, it is that. It’s everything. The twenty-year-old version of me might have found zipper beds a hard limit. I might have run away from a zipper-bed girl without looking back. I mean, she has a zipper bed. Just imagine what other oddities rule her life.

Right now, it crushes me to imagine the day might come where nothing fantastical like Instagram emus, chicken-less soup from a can, and zipper beds won’t be part of my life—that she won’t be part of my life.

Because … She. Chose. My. Son.

Dorothy put Roman above everyone else. And in doing so, she made me love her in a way that rips the air from my lungs, shackles my heart, and claims my soul.

“So you don’t care?”

Quelling my aching emotions, I grin. “Just get in bed.”

“Okay.” She shrugs, flips off the light, and slips onto the zipper bed next to me, pinning me in since she’s on top of the bedding and I’m zipped inside of it.

I have her exactly where I want her, and I can’t really touch her. So I close my eyes and just find comfort in her proximity.

“I love you,” I say after several minutes of her fidgeting, hoping it distracts her from the discomfort of sharing her bed with me, maybe calm her nerves a bit.

“Okay …” she replies in a breathy voice.

“Are you okay?” I try to pull down the covers, but I’m zipped in tightly and her weight beside me thwarts my attempts.

“Yes …” She swallows so hard I can hear it. And I can hear her shallow breaths, slowly quickening.

I turn my head toward her, squinting to see her face in the darkness. Jutting my chin to get as close as I can. Her face comes into enough focus that I can see her eyes close, her bottom lip trapped beneath her top teeth.

You have got to be kidding me!

“Are you…” I squint a bit more, nudging her body with my elbow to get her attention “…getting yourself off?”

“Yeah …” Pant. Pant. Pant. “No …” Pant. Pant. Pant. “Maybe … oh god …”

“This is not happening,” I mumble.

“Fu … fuck, Eli!” She grabs my thigh, holding it for dear life as her pelvis lifts from the bed.

I realize she doesn’t want me to read books on autism and generalize her into the typical stereotypes. But the part about some Aspies struggling to exhibit appropriate behavior in certain situations seems to fit Dorothy to a T. And I think I realized it the day she casually got naked in the back of her car at the pizza place.

It feels like weird timing. If I were going to masturbate in bed without including my partner, I think I would wait until they’re asleep.

After her hold on me relaxes, along with the rest of her body, she releases a contented sigh.