He didn't miss the sex. Well, fuck it, of course he did because Amy was hot and capable of surprising sultriness for someone who got turned on by Scrabble and bird-watching and sneaking around in the New York Public Library stacks as well as a sort of charmingly inarticulate dirty talk with a lot of breathy ohs interspersed with just pure Cuban-inflected obscenity that had made him blush the first time he'd heard her come. So, yeah, he missed the sex and her warm curves next to him in the morning and watching how her back arched when she dragged her silk camisole off in one effortless gesture but it wasn't what hurt. What made the Jericho prison.
He missed Amy ruffling his hair as she deposited a cup of milky, sugary coffee in front of him, just to the side of the funnies, which he insisted on reading while she listened to NPR Politics. He missed tussling over the remote on the couch and how she never hesitated to tickle him to win, how it felt to kiss her cheek, her forehead, her hand as if she were a queen, because it made her smile. He missed sharing the old-ladyish afghan her very old abuela had made for her and watching her face when she fell asleep during the climax of "Die Hard," how the light from the screen flickered on the apples of her cheeks, her full lower lip.
He missed being gently scolded for leaving dishes in the sink, for leaving dishes on the counter, for not using a coaster, whatever the hell a coaster was. He missed being reminded to take a vitamin, to text Charles just the one more time about Nico's medieval fencing class, to recycle the Fanta cans littering his car. He missed being called Pineapples, not Beef Baby, and papi and mangón when she was four-drink Amy and he had to catch her around the waist before she fell down while she was dancing between the kitchen and the hallway.
He'd read Emma now and My Ántonia and Arrowsmith, shocked the last was not about a rock band. He tried reading the law books but it didn't help him work the case. He memorized lines he liked, to whisper to Amy, to hear how she caught her breath. He stroked the beard that was coming in a little more unevenly than he'd anticipated and tried to pretend it was Amy's hand. He thought about whether he could get into solitary, whether it might be better, the risk of turning even crazier than Pimento, the lure of fantasies he might never emerge from. He tried to think about the rest of them, Rosa suddenly smaller in her jump-suit, Charles frantic, Holt like a mountain, Everest the only one he could think of, the deadly one. But it was Amy he came back to, Amy, Ames, Amalah his bubbe Ruchel would have called her, Santiago which meant a saint, which is what she was. She came to visit and he couldn't wait; it was terrible, because they weren't Jake and Amy, Peralta and Santiago, they were two miserable people who didn't get to drive off in a rented Corolla, back to paperwork and bodegas and over-priced lattes, his hand on her chino-ed thigh.
He missed being loved. He knew he'd never tell her, not even when (if) he got out, because he knew she loved him and prison was what kept him from feeling it. He missed Amy and he missed Jake.