They were lying in Leah's bed early one Saturday morning, three months into the relationship, when Leah finally brought it up.
"You ever going to tell me about it?"
She traced a finger over Daryl's neck. He was lying on his stomach and she was resting on his back, and Daryl, he didn't have to ask what she meant – he'd known this was coming – but he asked anyway, mostly because he hoped she'd get the hint and drop it.
"'Bout what?"'
Her lips, cool and soft, pressed into his right shoulder blade. "About this." Now his left shoulder blade. "And this." Now lower on his back. "This . . ." She stopped, exhaled onto his skin. "Do I need to keep going?"
"You can."
She breathed out again, heavier this time, and rose off his back to slide up along the mattress. When she lowered herself, she was eye-to-eye with him, and she waited like that.
"You ain't stupid, Leah," Daryl finally said. He was whispering. He hadn't meant to.
She nodded and turned her gaze to the ceiling. "More than once?"
"Lot more."
"Your whole childhood?"
Now it was his turn to sigh. She didn't ask anything else after that. But she reached out to graze her fingers through his hair and down his shoulder. Daryl liked her touch. Damn near liked her eyes more, though. Pine tree eyes, that's what he called them. Green with little brown spots. Beautiful.
And now they were gone as she sat up, throwing and kicking the comforter off of her pale legs. "I'm gonna make you waffles."
Daryl watched her stand, watched her saunter around the bed and over to the armchair in the corner of the room, where she took up her favorite black robe and swung it around her body. "I ain't eatin' no gluten-free health shit."
"You'll eat it and you'll love it. Know why?" She came back and leaned over him, grinned with her perfect teeth. "Because I sleep with you and you don't even have to pay me."
His arms flew up, trapped her, and he rolled over to toss her next to him on the mattress. "Stop it!" she giggled as he started in her neck. "Daryl! No! I have to make you shitty waffles!"
He moved from her neck to her mouth and she stopped talking.
. . . . .
At ten o'clock that night, Leah sent Daryl onto her balcony and soon joined him with two shot glasses, a Jim Beam bottle, and Daryl's cigarettes. She put everything on the little iron table that separated the two iron chairs and poured the drinks while Daryl lit up. She slid one of the shots over to him and sat in the open chair, helping herself to a cigarette and gesturing for Daryl's lighter. A minute or two passed with them smoking in silence, and then Leah downed her shot and said, "Please tell me about it."
So he did.
