Sitting cross-legged on the bed, I was reading an article from a recent newspaper I found stuffed between two couches in the living room when Lee poked his head through the door. I hadn't especially felt well that morning and he seemed to be checking up on me every fifteen minutes or so. We didn't want his brothers and sisters and Gavin to know there was anything going on between us, though Gavin expressed to me through acting that he sees the way I look at Lee sometimes. The way his eyes light up and the way my mouth curls at one side showing the half dimple on my right cheek. Gavin has this thing about him where he can read a face better than anyone else I know. Perhaps because he has to read faces and lips to understand what's going on around him. I always deny it to Gavin but I can't help but know there is a small bit of truth there.
Lee squeezed into the room and shut the door behind him. He lingered in the corner of the unbearably cramped room but finally sat down beside me in the tangle of sheets and pushed the hair out of my face. I reached for his hands and they seemed cold. His hand guided mine up to my forehead. I watched his mouth twitch, and he opened his mouth as if to speak.
Many people express their passionate love through kissing, and touching, and sex but Lee and I could always just communicate through our eyes. What seems like a short time ago, I had seen his fear, and more times than enough, he had seen mine. We stared death in the face a hundreds of times every day. Each time just as scary as the last. Each time becoming increasingly dehumanizing. But the connection we had wasn't like any other connection I have had with another human being. Some would call it love but I don't think I'm ready to call it that yet. Gavin and I were just getting back on our feet after we had been through so much. It was like a journey through Dante's Inferno to get where we were today and I wasn't about to drop the words I love you to him. Maybe one day.
Funny thing love is though. The way it kind of has worked out for us. It seems like we were the plot in a book. Two characters longing for each other, but the circumstances weren't right, and the author didn't let them get together until the end. Seeing as the end of the books has come and gone, with the two lovers still not together, I'm not really recommending this book. Love, like a novel takes a lot of time to write, so maybe there is still hope for us.
