Cross My Heart

Ryan laughed sheepishly. ‘You’ve seen worse.’

‘That’s what I told her, but I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t want to scar her for life.’

‘Thanks, I appreciate that.’

He hiked his backpack up his shoulder and watched as Seth wiped his brow with his bare forearm, and he couldn’t help remembering the last time he’d seen Seth sitting on the floor of a bathroom. Rita had been there, sitting on the toilet seat with a beer in one hand and Marco, the kitten she’d fished out of the dumpster a few weeks ago, on her lap. When sweat got in her husband’s eyes, she automatically reached out and wiped it away with her sleeve, then tucked the beer into his hand.

Ryan couldn’t begin to imagine how lonely it must be for Seth to be on his own after Rita passed. He didn’t see much of her, save for once, close to the end, when Seth was lifting her out of the car. She hadn’t even looked like herself. Even with all he’d seen at the hospital, Ryan had nearly blanched with horror at her skeletal frame before stepping forward to offer his help. He’d received a warning look from Seth and backed off, and a few weeks later she was gone.

As badly as he wanted to go upstairs and lock himself in with Evie at that moment, he found the words tugging at the tip of his tongue.

‘Hey, why don’t you come up when you’re done? There’s always too much left over.’

Seth grunted with effort. ‘It’ll be a while.’

‘Then we’ll get shitfaced on cheap wine until you’re ready. We’re fun drunks.’

The throaty sound Ryan first mistook for a chuckle revealed itself as a growl as Seth settled back. ‘I wish people would stop doing that.’

There it was, the same warning as that day outside with Rita, only with more menace. Ryan shifted uncomfortably, wishing he’d just kept his mouth shut.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I don’t need to be pitied,’ Seth went on, grimacing as he fought with the pipe. His next words came out as a hiss through his teeth. ‘I don’t need pity. I’m not some sad old man sitting around with his cat and a TV dinner, and I got enough free food after the funeral.’

‘I didn’t mean –’

‘No one ever does,’ Seth snapped, and cursed again before sitting back. He shook his head, and for a horrifying moment, as he pinched the bridge between his eyes, Ryan worried his landlord was going to cry.

‘Evie’s waiting for you. She kept checking the clock while I was up there. Go. I’ll slip a note under the door when I’m finished, though she might as well stay the night up there.’

Ryan took a step back. He lingered even though he wished he had the ability to teleport upstairs, or at the very least erase chunks of time like the last minute.

Seth shot him another warning look, and then he laughed. It seemed to Ryan as though the other man was laughing at himself.

‘Get out of here before I make you help me.’

Ryan quietly exhaled. Free with no hard feelings. ‘If you change your mind, we’ll be upstairs.’

As soon as he locked the door behind him, Ryan dropped his pack and went in search of Evie. He found her sitting on his bed, feet bare and hanging over the edge of the bed as she channel surfed. She turned and smiled, and before she could say anything he leaned down and kissed her.

Aside from the small sound of surprise at his intensity, Evie gave in to his kiss immediately. She let the remote drop and cupped his face, and when he’d leached enough good vibes from her with that kiss and lifted his head, she was ready with a smile.

‘Bad day?’

‘A little bit, but mostly I missed you,’ he said quickly, deciding instantly that he wouldn’t share the moment downstairs with Seth. He straightened and stripped off his coat and his uniform, then sat on the edge of the bed – close enough so that his shoulder pressed against hers – and removed his shoes and socks. ‘What smells so good?’

‘Chicken soup. I found the recipe online and made a huge pot. We’ll be eating it for days.’ She wrapped her arms around his neck and dropped a ring of soft kisses beneath his ear, making him shiver. ‘Did you miss me?’

‘You have no idea.’ He rested his temple against hers, then chuckled. ‘Didn’t I tell you to wash your toys in my dishwasher?’

‘Oh, shush.’ She smacked a kiss on his cheek and drew back. ‘Go shower. You smell like hospital. I’ll set the table.’

He caught her by the wrist as she drew away and hauled her into his lap. ‘Come with me.’

‘I just got out of the shower, and besides, you’ll be too relaxed to eat –’

‘I don’t mean that. I just…’ He slipped his arm around her waist, her warmth bleeding into him. ‘I just want to be closed in with you for a little while.’

She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. ‘Are you all right?’

Ryan pressed his lips together. He was suddenly breathless, desperate to wrap his arms around her so tight he couldn’t tell which was her heart beating and which was his.

‘Let’s take it easy tonight, OK? Just hang out on the couch together. I’ll let you pick the show.’ He smiled, then gave her bottom lip a delicious nibble. ‘I’m feeling a little nostalgic for the days when we just talked and talked until we fell asleep.’

‘Am I wearing you out?’ she teased, then squealed as he gave the meat of her ass a hard slap.

‘That’ll never happen, but even sex fiends like us need to take a break every once in a while.’

He kissed her again, slowly and tenderly, until she sighed against his lips, and moments later, as the hot water poured over them, he mouthed against her damp hair what he couldn’t bring himself to say to her face.

Even without the sex, Ryan was out like a light by eight o’clock. One minute they were muttering together, his head on her lap as they watched The X-Files, and the next his low snore vibrated against her.

She kept stroking his hair as he slept, and when she was sure he was in a deep enough sleep not to stir she dragged her phone from the table alongside the sofa and opened the dating app.

In total, she had received 42 messages since she created her profile. The picture she had used was completely unremarkable, just a grainy webcam shot of the lower half of her face and delving only as far as her midsection where the desk cut it off.

A few were just looking for a good time for a night, but the majority of her responses were genuinely interested in what she proposed. The quality of respondents seemed to improve as well. Only premium members could contact her unless she contacted them first.

She hadn’t seen anyone who downright scared her yet. In fact, she had kept messages from five men. The most risqué photo shared with her was of a man with his shirt open to the navel and his trousers opened to reveal an impressive bulge inside white undies.

She read through them again and studied the pictures, trying to imagine this body moving on top of her or those hands closing in Ryan’s hair, and she kept going back to one messenger who had introduced himself as David.

He had videos posted, too. Short clips of him with both men and women, and watching them had given her a queer mixture of arousal and trepidation. She could never really get aroused by the genuine porn she and Ryan sometimes watched together. Like most straight porn, it was too campy to do anything more than make her snicker. David’s shaky, grainy videos were nothing to chuckle at. For the most part he was the faceless entity behind the camera, murmuring edicts to his partner – or partners – as they knelt before him, or panting and groaning as he fucked them.

Unlike most, he had a photo of his face. Not some blurry selfie but a candid shot of him at the beach, squinting into the sun.

Glancing from the phone to her sleeping partner, Evie wondered if Ryan would say David was his type. Did he have a type? She wasn’t sure. Browsing on the free site he seemed to gravitate towards the young and fit, like him, but she suspected he had a taste for older, more experienced men. She’d catch him lingering just a few seconds longer on profiles of men who looked a little rough, and she suspected that deep down he had a thing for bad boys. REDWOLF77 had been a mixture of the two types with his polished exterior and aggressive smile.

She took one last look at David’s profile, then set her phone aside. She’d make up her mind tomorrow whether to reply to him, and then she’d decide whether to tell Ryan.

‘Hey,’ she whispered and stroked his cheek. ‘Hey, wake up.’

He sniffed and shifted on to his side, and with a deep sigh opened his eyes.

‘My legs are falling asleep,’ she told him.

He caught her fingers and pulled them to his lips. ‘Come to bed with me?’