Collared(81)

I think it was important for me to hear that. I know it was important to him that I believed that. And I did . . . but that didn’t change that he is what he is, just like I am who I am.

In each of our own ways, we’re unavailable.

This still feels right though. So right nothing feels wrong, not even if the Vatican is calling or the media is parading through my apartment.

When his body stirs against mine again, I know he’s waking up. Torrin’s always been a heavy sleeper—he goes through a process before he can wake up. I think sometimes his consciousness thinks he belongs more in the dream world than the real one.

I want to get some breakfast ready for him this morning, and I need to find something to put on because if he wakes up and we’re still like this, getting back to what we spent most of the night doing is inevitable. We wouldn’t be able to stop it, just like a person who rolls a rock to the edge of a cliff can’t stop it from falling. We’ll get trapped on this carousel ride of touching and kissing. I know I’m incapable of stepping off it when I’m with him, and I think he is too. So I need to find a shirt.

Holding my breath, I shimmy down the mattress, kicking the sheets off of me as I move. His arms tighten for a moment—like he can feel me escaping—but when I freeze, they relax. I keep shimmying and sliding. Untucking my head from beneath his arm’s the hardest because I have to lift it a little, and it feels like it weighs fifty pounds.

When my legs are swinging over the side of the mattress, I glance back at him. He’s still asleep. Still wrapped around my phantom shell, hanging on like the nothing around him is all the substance he needs.

I hold my breath and rise so slowly even the mattress doesn’t make a noise. I have lots of practice with this from before, when Torrin would sneak into my room late at night via my roof and we’d make out until my alarm was a few minutes from going off. We both know how to move around a mattress without making a sound.

I pad across my bedroom and tuck behind the half-open door. In the hall, I grab his soccer shirt from the floor and pull it on. The lights are still on. Almost all of them. It’s roughly seven in the morning, and the sun’s streaming through all of the windows, but my whole apartment is glowing from the inside out now too. Thanks to Torrin.

I won’t crawl into bed with the lights out again for a while. I don’t care what adults are “supposed” to do. Most of them don’t know the dark the way I do.

It isn’t just the absence of light—it’s the executioner of it.

The kitchen’s white cupboards are gleaming in the morning light, and I go to the other window in front of the dining table to let in more light. Mom picked up some basic groceries for me yesterday, but I don’t know what she grabbed. Since I still have to remind myself to eat, I didn’t check the fridge or cupboards last night.

What does a girl make for the guy in her bed the next morning?

I lean into the kitchen counter and think about that. If we were still seventeen, I would sneak a can of soda from the fridge and a box of whatever sugary cereal is in the cupboard. But what would twenty-seven-year-old Torrin want? What does he eat for breakfast now? What does he drink?

I don’t know.

Leaning into that kitchen counter, I never would have expected the realization that I don’t know what he eats for breakfast anymore to hit me like it does. I still know him—the man he is at the core of it all—but I don’t know what goes beyond that. At least not much of it.

Like what he eats. What he does in his spare time. What color his toothbrush is. Who his friends are. If he visits his dad’s grave every month. If he still changes his own oil or what candy bar he’d pick from a vending machine. I know the old Torrin answers to those things, but I don’t know the current Torrin’s.

We’ve spent time together since I came back, but it hasn’t been spent going over the details—we’ve been too overwhelmed by the weight of the big things.

I know Torrin, but I don’t know the daily version of him. The seemingly inconsequential details that, when stacked together, are just as significant as the big stuff. Who he is on the surface is just as important as who he is beneath it all.

So I don’t know what he likes for breakfast, but I do know that whatever it is, I probably don’t have it. That isn’t going to stop me from trying to give him what he wants though.

I think about it for another minute. What do my parents have in the morning? What do I remember my parents’ friends having?

I feel a smile when I remember—coffee. It’s an adult staple, right? After throwing open a few cupboards, I find them mostly empty. I throw open the rest, even the ones meant for silverware and dish towels, and don’t see anything that looks like coffee. Not that I could have done anything with it since, I realize, I don’t have a coffeepot. Not that I would know what to do if I had one because—though I probably could have figured it out with a little trial and error—I’ve never made coffee in my whole life.

A pot of coffee. I never would have thought it would feel like some test I need to take to graduate into adulthood.

I grumble and head back toward my room. Maybe if I just stare at him long enough, I can figure it out. Is he still a sugar-for-every-meal guy? Or has he morphed into one of those Seattleites who only eats food that looks like it was grown for unicorns?

I’ve barely been standing there for two seconds when a sleepy smile stretches over his face. “I missed you.” His eyes are closed, and he’s still lying in bed like he’s holding me.