He Texted Come Up

The text was two words: come up. I was twenty-five, already in bed, already pretending I would not go. I went. Four flights. A white tank I should have covered. He was on the landing in socks, slim as a sketch, phone still in his hand as if he might take it back.

“You came,” he said.

“You asked.”

His apartment smelled like detergent and the end of a shift. He locked the door and kissed me against it, careful at first, then not. I got my hands under his shirt and found the same skinny heat I had been thinking about at work like a problem I could not close.

We did not make conversation. We made a path to the mattress on the floor. He pulled the tank over my head and looked at me with a focus that felt more intimate than the kissing. “I have been trying not to send that text for nine days,” he said.

“You should have sent it on day one.”

He laughed, then got serious when I said I wanted him. Lube from a drawer that had been waiting. Fingers. Patience. When he pushed inside I grabbed his thin wrist and nodded. He moved like he was listening. I came too fast and did not apologize. He came after, quiet, a sound into my shoulder.

Later he texted from the pillow, as a joke: stay down. I stayed. The stairwell light went on and off as other people lived their smaller nights. Ours was already decided.