When We Finally Exhaled

When We Finally Exhaled
The oil went into the pan. Garlic hit the heat and sizzled, filling the kitchen with something that smelled like a promise. I tossed the shrimp in and watched them curl, edges going pink-gold in the shimmering oil.

“You’re not behind,” I said. “You’re in the thick of it. There’s a difference.”

He didn’t answer, but I heard the shift in his breathing. Slower. Deeper.

The spaghetti went into the boiling water. The vegetables tumbled into the pan with the shrimp. Steam rose. The red pepper flakes went in last—just a pinch, enough to warm without burning.

By the time I slid two plates of spaghetti onto the table, the apartment smelled like garlic and sea and something spicy. Elias looked up at me, and some of the glassiness had left his eyes.

“You’re a miracle,” he said.

“I’m a business administrator who knows how to sauté.”

“You can say that again.” He smiled up into my eyes and squeezed my hand. I missed him on the forehead, then I sat down across from him.

We started eating. The pasta was good—better than it had any right to be, given the limp carrots and the day-old shrimp. Or maybe we were just hungry enough that anything warm would have tasted like heaven. Elias finished his food before I’d made it halfway through mine, and he sat back in his chair with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere ancient.

“Better?” I asked.

“Better.”

We lingered. The kitchen clock ticked. Outside, a car passed, its headlights sweeping briefly across the ceiling before vanishing. The dishes sat in the sink, abandoned, as neither of us could summon the energy to wash them.

“What time do you want to set the alarm for?” Elias asked finally.

“One a.m.” I told him. “I still had a few chapters to get through before tomorrow’s lecture. What about you?”

“Same,” he answered, stretching his body.

The bedroom was cool when we decided to go and sleep. We’d forgotten to turn the heat up, and the sheets were crisp and cold when we slid between them. I set my phone on the nightstand. 1:00 a.m. Four hours.

Four hours of testing, it was good enough.

Elias’s body found mine in the dark. His arm slid under my neck, my head settling into the hollow of his shoulder. My hand came to rest on his chest, palm flat against the place where his heartbeat lived. The hair there was soft under my fingers.

We didn’t speak.

His hand moved first. Not with purpose, not with the deliberate intent of two days before, when he’d pinned me to the mattress and called me his filthy little princess. This was different. This was comfort.

His palm slid down my stomach. Slow. Warm. His fingers traced the line of my hip bone, dipped into the hollow beside it, then smoothed back up my ribs. A circuit. A ritual. The kind of touch that said I’m here and you’re here and we’re both still breathing.

My own hand wandered. Across his collarbone. Down the trail of dark hair on his sternum. I traced the curve of his pectoral, let my thumb brush his nipple; once, lightly and felt him shiver. He was soft below the waist, and so was I. Neither of us was chasing anything.

His fingers found the dip of my lower back, just above the waistband of my briefs. He pressed there. A circle. Another circle. The tension I’d been carrying since this morning, since last week, since the semester started began to loosen.

I turned my head. Pressed my lips to his chest.

His hand came up. Tangled in my hair. Held me there.

“Crane.”

“Mm.”

A long exhale. The kind that leaves the body differently than it entered. He shifted, turning onto his side and pulling me closer, and then his forehead was against my chest and his breath was warm through the thin cotton of my shirt.

His head rose and fell with my breathing.

“God,” he whispered. “I needed this.”

My fingers combed through his hair. The strands were damp at the temples from the kitchen’s heat. His weight was solid, grounding, and I felt the last knots of the day dissolving under the rhythm of my own heartbeat.

“I know,” I said. “Me too.”

He let out a beautiful sound, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. Something between. His arm tightened around my waist.

His lips brushed my sternum.

And we lay there, tangled and warm and still, breathing together in the dark, waiting for the alarm to tell us it was time to begin again.