The Laundry Room at 2am

The basement laundry at 2am is fluorescent honesty. I went down because I could not sleep. He was already there, twenty-four, drowning in a t-shirt, sitting on a washer like it was a throne he had not asked for. I was twenty-five. We had nodded in the lobby for months.

“It's broken,” he said, kicking the dryer. “Or I am.”

I looked at the dial. He had it on air fluff. I fixed it. He looked at me like I had performed surgery. Then he said, “I'm Sam. You can stop pretending you don't live on four.”

We talked until the cycle ended. Then we did not talk. He stood, too close, and I kissed him because the alternative was folding shirts like a coward. He tasted like mint and bad decisions. The dryer hummed. Someone upstairs dropped a shoe.

“Not here,” I said.

“Four,” he said.

In my apartment the t-shirt came off and I finally saw the slim body the cotton had been lying about. I put him on his back. He pulled me down. When I asked what he wanted he said, “You. In me. I have thought about this in that basement more than is respectable.”

I opened him slowly. He was tight, vocal, honest. When I pushed inside he laughed from nerves and then stopped laughing. We found a rhythm that made the headboard a problem. He came first, surprised. I followed, buried, the laundry downstairs still tumbling like it had opinions.

In the morning we went back for the clothes. They were warm. So was he. We did not fold. We came upstairs again.