TUESDAY
05 NOVEMBER, 1996
DORIAN

               As I drop onto my back beside him, Isaiah buries his sweaty smile into his mattress. Harsh exhales tug along loose laughs through his sternum, a boyish exhilaration he attempts to hide before he realises how futile the attempt is. His eyes meet mine, unguarded, and for a second, I think we've travelled back six years, I think he's forgiven me. The menthol of VapoRub that lingers on his skin disguises his cigarette smell.

Then he rolls over, lands partially on my chest to pour his gaze into me, still breathing in a way that could be mistaken for laughter. 'Did some American teach you to do that?'

The weight returns to my chest with a vengeance.

I stay silent. I'm not going to tell him I didn't as much as hug anyone during my five years in America, that it's no hyperbole when I say I didn't go outside save for school, work, and the gym. That it was him, in my dreams, who taught me everything I know, who trained me into confidence, and my only chance to make any of it real is to return the gift to him, as if he has been real this whole time, as if he's been haunted by the same dreams I have.

Still breathless, Isaiah goes to climb off the bed.

I take his wrist. 'Don't.'

He stares at our hands with vacant eyes before he tugs himself free. 'Did you want pillow talk or sum?' When his eyes flick to me, they're anything but vacant. 'You reckon we have sex once and I back go reading you poetry and you play me your music and the last six years just ain't happen?'

My hand searches the space beside me for something to pull over my chest, less to hide and more to swaddle myself. The duvet is clumped at the foot of the bed, far out of my reach, and all there is for me to find is the sweat and lube-damp towel.

Just as I reach for it, Isaiah reels it into his lap.

'One night,' I mumble. 'You said, one night. Can't we do it properly?'

I've never known how to barter. I don't know when I breach the distance my leverage gets me to, stumble over the line of take it or leave it, and end up losing any wins I had once been offered.

Isaiah balls up one corner of the towel to wipe the come from his chest before it dries, both his and mine because after his own orgasm, he rolled my condom off and asked me to come on his chest too — I want them to mix. How can the same person peer at me from an armed fortress five minutes later?

His vitiligo is near identical on his face but on his arms, it has spread from his elbows to bleach the backs of his biceps all the way to his armpits and I ache. Here, painted on his skin, is a map of all the time I missed.

My gaze travels along the scars on his back I could trace from memory to the tattoo on the base of his spine — Salva me!

I was never intended to see it. The tattoo, if anything, is a testament he considered me dead. It's a memorial. When did he get it? A year ago? Five? How long ago did his grief arrive at acceptance, not of loss but of the conviction I would never come back?

I don't ask. Any answer will gut me.

'Okay.'

It takes a lingering second for me to realise Isaiah is looking at me and another to understand what he's talking about. When I do, relief floods me so aggressively I almost whimper.

'Let's shower then.'

I study each movement as he wraps a holed t-shirt over his locs and covers it with a shower cap. These are the things I need to imprint into memory to fuel my lucid daydreams. I'll be back to dreams tomorrow.

His gaze meets mine through the mirror. 'Sorry. I know it ain't exactly sexy, but I weren't planning to wash my hair till Thursday so I ain't want it to get wet now. I've already made the mistake of going to sleep with damp locs more than once.'

I smile, a cautious flame peeking from between my lungs. 'You still wash your hair on Thursdays?'

He shrugs: Habits, I guess.

If all that's left of me in his life is a memorial tattoo and the custom of washing his hair on Thursdays because I always wash my hair on Thursday (so it's clean for Shabbat but won't require care on the day) and if he happened to stay in my dorm on a Thursday, he'd let me wash his too... I'm content. Isn't that more than I deserve?

Taking a second cap from the drawer, he covers my waves with a smile that finally exhibits his tooth gap. The warmth lets go of apprehension and suffuses from my chest to my belly and all the way to my feet.

Isaiah's shower is almost as tiny as the ones in my accommodation. I step in behind him and with no room to turn around, he looks at me over his shoulder. 'Is the temperature okay for you?'

I hum.

He hands me the unscented store-brand body wash. I do nothing with it, focus nailed to the shove of his shoulder against the wall. He's trying to be subtle about it but I don't need to see his face to recognise the fatigue. I think I feel his legs shake.

My arms slip under his to ease him off the wall. 'Lean into me.'

He shakes his head but can't find his voice. He pushes off me and into the wall again, collapsing against it this time. I wince at the impact I don't even feel. The water raps against his plastic shower cap.

I tap the body wash bottle. He's back to avoiding my touch but there's nowhere for me to go. He's the one who wanted us to shower together so why are we back to this?

'Shay?'

He shakes his head again. 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so tired.'

I reach for him and, when he doesn't protest, caress his arm while I speak. 'Why are you apologising? You're the one who always told me I shouldn't push myself to discomfort for other people. You were always lecturing to me about learning to state my needs. So why are you apologising for being tired?'

'Ain't the same.'

'How is it not the same?'

He shrugs. 'I dunno... It ain't exactly attractive.'

I stare at the node at the top of his spine with tears blending into the shower water. Because I can't come up with anything to say, I say nothing. Instead, I open his body wash and lather it onto his skin with a washcloth. The shower really is too small for us to fit and I have to turn him to face me to reach his back. This time, he allows me to drape his arms around my neck and when I say "lean into me", he does, his forehead on my chest. 

I think he's asleep until he takes the soap from me, demanding I let him wash me too. It's such a clumsy affair, we have no hope of making it without laughing.

It uplifts my mood so high I can't even find it in me to complain when he wraps a towel around his waist and excuses himself to get dressed. (I love you.) He still leaves himself to air dry. (I love you.) It's still infuriating. (I love you.) I dry myself properly before I follow only to freeze at his bedroom threshold.

Isaiah stands at his dresser in clean boxers and pulls a striped brown jumper over a ribbed tank. He scrunches the hem and holds it to his face, shuts his eyes, and breathes it in. Deep inhales of the knit tug him into a sleepy stupor that makes him sway gently.

Until he flinches and stumbles as if one foot wants to bolt and the other blots to the floor. He drops the jumper over his stomach and watches me with a grimace from a slight angle as one would when frying something in boiling oil that spits everywhere.

'Sorry. I can wear suttin else.'

In unison, we look at the jumper. Seeing him in it simultaneously boils me with a carnal lust as it does with the urge to cry.

I shake my head. 'It's okay.'

'It's weird I kept it. Fuck. Just– um... I can't afford clothes like this. It's warm. I can donate it. Or you can have it back. It's weird I kept it.'

I shake my head again. Isaiah is always cold. I don't understand how he can sleep with so many clothes on when I sleep in nothing but underwear and still regularly wake up burning under the duvet. The thought of sleeping in a woollen jumper is suffocating to me.

Though I'd like to think he kept it for more than its cashmere yarn, under no circumstance will I accept it back. Whatever the reason, he still sleeps in my clothes.

'It's too itchy for me anyway.'

Isaiah hesitates a moment but turns to the wardrobe and tugs on a pair of grey joggers. He finds a durag, the same sky blue one he had in school, and ties it over his hair. (Purple isn't your colour. ) Then pulls on a pair of knitted socks in similar browns as the jumper though with an added orange stripe. He's swallowed by the clothing and yet, he's beautiful. (Purple isn't your colour. ) (How can you think I'm not attracted to you anymore?)

I finally step into the room to grab my clean boxers from the overnight bag I took with me when Isaiah slumps onto the bed. 'Are you sleeping?'

The only response I get is a vague hum.

'When did you eat last?'

Another noise that doesn't even try to imitate words.

'Don't sleep yet. I want to cook for you.'

Without waiting for a response, I turn on my heels and head to his kitchenette. Isaiah calls after me and I hear him stumble to his feet, staggering through his anaemia haze to rush out of the room.

'Dorian, I don't–'

I open the fridge before he can finish. Aside from the lamp, there's nothing in it but two bottles of milk, a packet of Stockwell & Co margarine, and half a cucumber.

A groan rolls in his throat. His arms drop to his sides only to wrap around his body immediately after. 'I don't really cook...' he says though his attempt to turn his shame into humour falls flat.

His voice grows agitated as his arms untangle again to emphasize his words. 'And I know– I know if I ate better, I wouldn't need so many supplements. I know that. They gave me this meal plan at the hospital but I can't afford none of them tings. I got hella bills, as is. And my muma, I need to send her money. And I know it's a cycle: I ain't got no energy so I ain't eat proper so I ain't got no energy. I can't get out of it. And I just... Between uni and work and doctors–'

'Shay,' I interrupt only to grimace. 'Sorry. I meant, Isaiah. You don't need to explain yourself to me. I mean, I... I wish you took better care of yourself but...' It's not my place anymore. 'I'm not exactly the pinnacle of health.'

Isaiah laughs, a cracked gust that forecasts tears. 'You're just winding me up now. You're quite literally the pinnacle of health. Look at you!' He gestures wildly at my exposed torso.

'Physically, maybe.' Shutting the fridge, I turn to face him. 'The other day I had to renew my gym membership and I rehearsed what I'd say to the receptionist in the mirror for hours. I took hours to practice how to say "hi, I would like to renew my membership please". That's not healthy!'

Isaiah smiles and wipes his eyes with the heel of his palm. 'Fair enough.'

I open his tiny freezer where I find a grip-seal pouch of pre-cut chicken and a bag of frozen veggies, then search the cupboards until I find a box of rice. 'This is perfect,' I reassure and check the seasoning cabinet above the stove. All four shelves are stacked with jars. I look at him over my shoulder.

He shrugs at my silent question. 'You'd be surprised how decent you can make them those microwave meals if you add a bit of seasoning.'

On the bottom shelf, stand his plastic bottles of supplements. In addition to the iron and B12 I'm used to, there are two other bottles. I rotate the first to discover it's magnesium, then the second to see it's fibre.

Half-defensive, half-boastful, he quips, 'That one's just to make sex easier.' I don't have a fibre deficiency too, take that off your list. (As if it makes any difference.)

I take a moment to catch up and then nearly knock it off the spice shelf. 'Oh.'

His chin falls to his chest as he laughs. 'American couldn't shake the awkwardness out of you then?'

I don't answer. Awkward, definitely. Not jealous or heartbroken because what right do I have to be either of those?

I move on. 'Read something to me.'

Isaiah hesitates. The debate is visible behind his eyes until the affirmative wins — One night. Might as well do it properly. 'What you in the mood for?'

'Anything.'

'Trick question. I only own three books.'

I fetch a pot and a pan, which he keeps in the oven because there's no room anywhere else. The pot is too large for only two portions of rice whilst the pan is too small for the chicken and vegetables, but he has one of each so they'll have to do.

I'm washing the rice when he returns with Giovanni's Room. I watch him draw out a chair and catch his longing glance at the apple marmalade jar he uses as an ashtray. Battling his urges, he moves it to the windowsill, sits down, and finds the page he wants to read from with ease (if the spine is anything to judge by, he knows the book by heart).

'"I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright,"' he reads. '"I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power. And I felt myself flow toward him, as a river rushes when the ice breaks up."'

On occasion, he lingers a little too long at the commas and full stops and I sense his gaze on me. Several times, I glance at him just as he looks up and we turn away with suppressed smiles.

When we eventually go to sleep near three in the morning, Isaiah pulls my back to his chest, kisses my temple, and wraps himself around me. I smile as my eyes shut. As I fall asleep faster than I have in six years, I realise I've truly offered myself up for execution in the morning.