Page 112 of Perfect
“You’ve made your point,” I hiss. Theo bends down over me, wrapping an arm around my neck and slipping his other hand between my legs, kissing my temple.
“Not yet, I haven’t,” he whispers in my ear as his fingers circle me gently, “but I’m about to.”
Theo takes his time making his point because he’s an asshole, and he makes his point more than once to show off to the people in the apartment beneath us. We lay there afterward, listening to the decidedly tense murmurs of the voices below us, and Theo looks at me with a satisfied, crooked smile.
“You’re really fun, you know that?” He tucks a bit of my hair behind my ear, and I shake my head at him, genuinely amused.
“You’re okay, I guess.” He laughs and gives me a soft, affectionate look.
“I mean outside of bed, too. I have a lot of fun with you.” I roll to my back and stare at the ceiling, unable to look at him. He’s been more vulnerable lately, and it’s a problem.
“Yeah.” His fingers twine through mine, and he squeezes my hand. I barely squeeze back, but he notices it. He notices everything.
“Have you ever faked it?” I laugh out loud and look over at him, grateful to see the vulnerability wiped off his face.
“I pretty much always faked it.”
“Fornine years?” I nod, and Theo looks horrified. “Oh, honey, you should have told me that sooner,” he says, reaching into my nightstand and grabbing a vibrator and rope. “Get the fuck over here.”
Theo would have made a very fun boyfriend, and when we’re having a good moment like right now, I let myself pretend he is.
It’s a huge problem.
***
“Alex, you can’t be fucking serious.” Theo looks at me incredulously as I chew my dinner. “You’ve lived here formonths,and you haven’t been to the Gorge?”
I shrug, sipping my wine. “I don’t have a car, Theo.”
He waves a hand dismissively towards his driveway. “I can give you a car. I have an extra that I’ve been meaning to sell, anyway.” I look at him, surprised by the offer, and for just a second, I think that having a car means that I could run from him.
He seems to realize the moment the thought crosses my mind because his smile drops off into a look of deep hurt.
We stare at each other in tense silence for a moment, aware that we’ve acknowledged that I can’t leave and he’d stop me if I tried, which is something we don’t acknowledge. The sharp reality that this isn’t just a weird relationship where Theo has unmitigated access to my life cuts through our illusion for a minute.
He grabs my hand and smiles at me weakly.
“Hey, why don’t we go out there this weekend? I haven’t been in forever. It’ll be nice.” He’s trying to push us back into what we’re doing here, the way we’re purposefully ignoring the situation he’s created, so I force a smile and nod. The rest of the night is a little awkward, but by the time we go to bed, we’re both lying to ourselves again, and it’s kind of working.
It’s working for him, anyway.
***
From the moment I get into the car after work the next day, Theo doesn’t stop touching me. We drive east for a few hours and check into a nice hotel, and I roll my eyes at the sheepish smile he gives me when there’s champagne and flowers in our room. We have a light dinner at the hotel bar, get a little drunk andlisten to the piano player, then go back to our room and have the kind of rough sex I love, the kind that makes me so physically overwhelmed that my brain shuts off and I don’t have to feel any of my feelings.
The less of my feelings I have to face when I’m around Theo, the better.
We get up early, and Theo seems excited and slightly high-strung as he grabs us coffee. It’s cold and raining, and I accept the brand-new ankle-length puffer jacket he swears he had to pick up because he forgot my rain jacket. I shoot him an exasperated look, but I take the jacket all the same.
We drive west to a gorgeous overlook point, and Theo wraps his arms around me as I take in the Columbia River Gorge. I’ve never seen anything like the steep, tree-covered rock walls that seem to shoot out from the broad, grey river, and Theo talks softly about the geology of the place as I appreciate the beauty. We start driving back east on an old scenic highway, and he stops at every waterfall along the way.
The one I like most is a sheet of water that drops down a mossy wall of columnar basalt formations. When I almost slip and fall trying to get close enough to examine the clusters of slim, hexagonal strips of rock, Theo catches me and frowns at my shoes, telling me I need hiking boots and that it’s too wet to do any of the hikes he wanted, so we’ll have to come back again in the spring. I ignore him making future plans for us, pretending not to have heard him over the roar of the water.
I just focus on the feeling of the coarse, wet rock under my fingertips.
We drive to the next waterfall, a towering thing that cascades into a small pool before pouring into another fall. It’s swarming with people, and we sip hot cider and climb the slick path to view the upper part of the falls from an old stone bridge, hand in hand like all the other couples around us.
As we drive back on the interstate, I watch the fog drift through the trees and the tiny waterfalls that run down the craggy, mossy walls of volcanic rock, and I look up to notice the barest dusting of snow at the highest peaks on either side of the river.
