Page 62 of Only You

“You’ll show them to me, won’t you?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

We stopped talking and started kissing again. Both of us chasing the intensity between us, sharing it, taking it in, and swallowing it down, until we fell asleep exhausted, the rustle of the breeze and the buzzing of an intruding fly our early evening lullaby.

***

Around eleven atnight, I woke to an empty bed. Rising, I found Daniel on Bobby’s back patio, sitting on an outdoor slider-sofa that had seen better days, wrapped in a blanket and staring up at the moon.

“You okay?” I asked, putting my arms over my naked torso. I’d just pulled on my boxers before coming out to check on him. It was late August still, but it got chilly after the sun set.

Glancing over, Daniel opened his arms and blanket wide. “C’mere. You’re shivering.”

Sitting down next to him, I saw that he had just his boxers on as well. Skin-to-skin, he held me close and kicked the slider to make it move back and forth. I curled in closer, soaking in the heat of his body.

“What are you thinking about?” I ventured. With Adam, in the past, I might have feared he was thinking about Leslie, or worrying about telling me something else I wouldn’t like, but I felt no apprehension like that with Daniel. If he was worried, I felt secure that it wasn’t about me. Not tonight, anyway. “Bobby?”

He let out a sad sound and shrugged.

I didn’t say anything, just hugged him tighter.

“I hate that he died alone.” His voice sounded thick and tight, as if he were crying. I tried to see in the moonlight, but it was too dark in the shadows of the patio.

“Was he alone?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe some nurses were with him, but maybe they weren’t.” He wiped at his face with the heel of his hand. “I should have been there.”

I shook my head.

“He was my PWA, and I should have been by his side.”

“That’s not in the job description.” I knew that for sure, since I’d only read the forms and signed them recently. “Is it Kerri’s fault that she wasn’t there?”

“No, of course not.”

“Is it mine?”

He snorted. “I see what you’re doing.”

“Then you also see that I’m right.”

I could sense the tension in his body, his fight to claim responsibility for a burden that wasn’t his to carry. After a few moments, his shoulders slumped in surrender. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“You did the best you could by Bobby, and he didn’t want anything more from you.”

“He didn’t want that even,” Daniel said, a wobbly laugh escaping.

“Not if we believed half of the protests that came out of his mouth, no. But he was grateful for you, too.”

“I wish he could have seen Roman find out about Marlena.”

My stomach twisted up with the unfairness of it all. “Me too.”

“And I wish I could still tell him about this.” He clasped my hand under the blanket. “Us.”

“Me too.”

A beat passed. Daniel raised my fingers to his lips and kissed them. “We could still tell him,” Daniel whispered. “Right now.”

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