Page 63 of These Secret Years

The bathroom itself is nothing impressive. It’s small, but it’s been updated in keeping with the rest of the house. There are some classic touches like a small hexagonal floor tile and subway shower tiles with dark grout. A spa-like experience, it is not, but that’s fine by me. Any reminder of Adrian’s spa treatments aren’t welcome in my head tonight. Using Knight’s body wash helps. It has that woodsy, leathery scent, and I cover myself in it.

I don’t know what I’m expecting when I come out of the bathroom. I didn’t think I was expecting anything in particular, which is why I don’t know why Knight sitting on the edge of the bed, his pants back on but still bare-chested, waiting for me sort of surprises me.

“Can we talk?” he asks. “I’ll still do the algebra, but before that…”

“Yeah,” I say. “What’s up?”

He pats the mattress next to him. I’m already dressed again, too, so I sit.

“Thank you,” he says.

“For...?”

“That was pretty fucking incredible. For me anyway.”

I’m not gonna sit here and gush over how good it was for me, too, for a thousand reasons, but I’m not gonna make a joke about it either. “I’m glad.”

He huffs. “Okay cool.”

All right fine. “It was good for me, too,” I admit. “Very.”

He goes on, and I let him because I can’t imagine how much this guy needs to get off his chest. “I’d been thinking a lot this summer that I might not ever get to have sex, so to have it and have it also be good and…with you… Anyway, thanks.”

“You don’t need to thank me.”

“Yeah, I guess not, but still. It’s kinda how I am.”

“I like that about you,” I confess.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a lot to like about you, Knight.”

“I’m not sure how you can say that. I basically avoided you all year.”

Sounds like we really are on the same page. “I wouldn’t say that. We live in different worlds is all.”

“But we come from the same one.”

“I wouldn’t say that, either.”

“So, in terms of what I asked before. Was this a one-time thing?”

“You tell me, champ.” I want him to say it’s only the beginning.

He rubs at his cheeks. “I’m asking what you want.”

“Without telling me what you want. Fair. Okay. Look, I’m not any less attracted to you if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I’m not any less attracted to you, either.”

Why that whole statement comes as a total shock to me, I couldn’t say. Maybe I thought I was convenient? Pushy. Sexually aggressive, and he was putting up with it because he’s hard up? Attraction wasn’t in my calculations, though. I feel so much less attractive now than when I first met him. I’m underweight, I have sketchy tattoos, my hair is longer than it’s ever been, and I don’t take care of it at all except to keep it from smelling bad. And so, like word vomit, I say, “You’re attracted to me?”

His head pops up in surprise. “Of course I am.”

I don’t ask why because I don’t want to know his answer. If he points out any physical aspect of my appearance I’ll begin obsessing over it until—I don’t know what. It won’t be healthy, though. And besides all that—we’re not a thing, him and me. Not outside of this extreme privacy that really doesn’t exist outside a town like Sunrise Point, which his family basically owns, and I’m invisible in.

“No, that’s cool,” I say. “I’m not sure why I asked that. Anyway, back to the point. I really fucking liked what we just did there, and against the door and under the table, so in terms of repeats, I’m down.”