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Back At Dawn Save as PDF
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

“Nah, he’s just old and out of practice.”

“He seems really nice.”

“Yeah, he’s great. I’ve been here a month and a half and my greatest friend is a sixty-one-year-old man who I pay rent to each month. Kind of funny.”

I can’t recall now what we talked about, but I do know that we quickly grew comfortable with one another and there were no further breaks in the conversation. The longer we sat the closer we became, making subtle gestures at first—a hand to the bicep, looks that lingered—until I eventually put my hand on her thigh and kept it there. Shortly after that she dropped her head on my shoulder and I placed my cheek against the top of it. Something slow was playing, and in the warm and dimly lit bar, I was feeling romantically maudlin. After one more drink I might have even gazed into Carolyn’s green eyes and told her that I loved her.

“I’m getting sleepy,” she said.

When we left it was tacitly implied where we would go, having arrived there by some mutual understanding there was no need to voice. We held hands at first, and then I put my arm around her and pulled her to me, breathing in the freshness of her hair as we walked in tandem along the city streets as I guided us home, home to the Promised Land, to all things good and loving. Home to the very things that make this life worth living.

nine

1

A PASSING TRAIN. RATTLING windows, vibrating floor. I opened my eyes. Carolyn’s soft breaths beside me. The room flooded with light, a little after nine. She was facing me with her mouth slightly open. I wiped away a small bit of drool from her cheek. She didn’t stir. I dropped beneath the covers and nuzzled against her warm body, her lips puckering with each soft breath, the blanket rising and falling. A sense of affection paired with a desperate urge to keep her in this studio, in this bed big enough for the both of us, this girl I’d only just met.

Though we had undressed and lay naked against one another, under a self-imposed abstinence based on the absurd pretense that I was not a lecher, we hadn’t actually slept together. I had wanted to, of course, but in an odd moment of consideration, my desire to show I was a good and decent man had won a rare victory over my burning loins, which was the main reason, I’m sure, that I woke with a raging hard-on.