Page 96 of Free Heart
“Why? You’re plenty strong.”
“Because I think I’m ready to go up a little wall too. Maybe more like a medium-big one even. In the daylight. When you’re ready.”
I go still. “Why?”
“I think it sounds fun.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Okay, I think it sounds scary,” Sejin admits. “But maybe I need to find out where my edge is and push it.”
I lean back against the wall again, shifting my weight to my stronger leg. I’m going to be feeling that trudge through the snow from the garage all night. I make a note to take an aspirin or something for the aches later.
I can hear Sejin washing his hair. The slap of water hitting the tub as it spills over his shoulders. I smell his tart, citrusy shampoo. The cheap kind he switched to after the accident.
“You’re already pushing an edge by being in a relationship with me.”
He laughs, but it’s not really joyful.
My brain scans the last few days. What’s changed? What’s different?
“Did Sailor find you?” I ask. She’d left here earlier in the week after we’d done a few segments for my channel and hers, saying she was going to find Sejin and get that interview she’s been wanting. When he’d returned home and said nothing about it, I assumed she’d missed him. But maybe not…
Sejin’s silence says enough.
“This is about something she said, then,” I surmise. “See, people think I’m not observant, but I am. At least when it comes to you.”
Sejin sighs loud enough to be heard over the water. “It just took you four days to come to this conclusion, but sure, you’re observant, Dan. Whatever you say.”
“Doc, I don’t know what she said now that got under your skin again, but you don’t have anything to prove to me.”
“I don’t want to be drapes.”
“Huh?”
“Or wallpaper.”
“Is this like the seahorse?”
“No! Iama seahorse. I amnotscenery.” He shuts the water off with a vehemence that rattles the pipes a little. “I refuse to be carpet.”
I nod. “Right. That makes sense. I wouldn’t want to be carpet either.”
He whips back the shower curtain, reaches past me for a towel, and I let my eyes linger on his naked body. I love how the dark hair beneath his navel trails down to that straight pubic hair, and how his sweet cock bounces around when he—
“Dan, are you going to leave it at that?” Sejin asks, sounding annoyed or disappointed that I’m dropping a subject he’d initially seemed reluctant to even entertain.
But whatever. We’re entertaining it now.
“No, just admiring you first. Such a great butt,” I say, as he leans over the sink to brush his teeth. “Maybe you’ll let me kiss it later.”
“Not with the kids here,” he gets out around toothpaste foam. He spits. “Save it for our first night back in the van.”
“Ah, that’s romance.”
He cracks a grin, almost despite himself, and then wraps a towel firmly around his waist before passing me into thebedroom. He starts looking for a clean pair of boxers and a t-shirt to sleep in. We’re behind on laundry. Again. Mainly because I can’t quite get down into the washer and dryer to get the clothes in and out without a lot of pain in my leg. Which probably means I should do it more instead of less…
“So, drapes,” I say, when we’ve both climbed into bed, and the lights are out. There’s a nightlight glowing from the corner. Sejin put it in early on in the more mobile part of my recovery so I won’t trip over the cats if I get up in the night to take a piss.
