Touch(39)

“Well. I’m pretty stable. And tough. Got a couple of good shoulders. And you know what? I don’t think we’re that far apart with this stuff. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, either. I never had a girlfriend.”



“What? But that’s…you’re in your thirties! At least I have an excuse! That kind of makes you a loser, doesn’t it?” Oh, fuck. That was a shitty thing to say.



And he made a face. But then he chuckled. “Ow, little bit. You could turn down the brutality on that honesty, if you wanted.”



“Sorry. My mouth runs away.”



“I know. Not the first time it’s come after me.”



She felt her cheeks heat up, and she dropped her head, staring down at her hands. “What just happened here, Luca?”



For second after second, he was quiet. When Manny looked back up, Luca was watching her, his face…still. She didn’t know what it meant. Then he smiled a little, one corner of his mouth tucking back. “I don’t know. I think we decided to try to be together.”



“Why do you want that? To be with me?”



He shifted on the sofa so he has facing her. “I’m not ducking the question, but let’s turn it around first. Why do you want to be with me?”



“I…” She couldn’t look at him and think of the answer at the same time, so she turned to the table at the side of the sofa and picked up a little Hummel figurine of a girl playing a concertina and looked at that instead, rubbing her thumb over its smooth face. The black polish on her thumbnail was half worn away. “I like you. I like the way you talk to me. I think you’re honest, and that makes you easier to read than most people. And you’re hot. Plus, it’s not like applicants are lined up. Nobody’s ever asked before.”



He laughed. “You sure know how to keep a guy humble.”



She didn’t catch his meaning, but when she cocked her head, ready to say so, he took the Hummel away from her. His thumb grazed hers, and she pulled back, just a little, before she caught the reaction and made herself settle. But he’d noticed, she could tell. Without touching her again, he leaned over her to set the figurine on the table, in the place it had been, and then sat back.



Then he answered the question. “My answer’s pretty much the same. I think that’s probably a normal reason to want to spend time with somebody—you like they way they look, and you like talking to them.”



“So we’re only fucking each other? Nobody else?”



“Well, I guess it would be more than just fucking. But yeah. Just each other. You good with that?”



“Are you? Even with my thing about touching?”



“Straight up, Manny, I hope that changes. I want to touch you so bad it feels like my hands are gonna come through my skin. But I can wait. I wish I understood it better, but I can wait.”



She thought she had a way to help him understand. It had worked on the few other people she’d bothered to explain it to. More importantly, it was the way she thought about it herself. She had lots of visual metaphors for the ways her mind worked. “How do you feel about spiders?”



“Please?”



“Spiders. Arachnids. How do you feel about them?”



His forehead creased again, but he answered. “Uh, I guess…not great. I mean, I’m not a girl about ‘em, but I’d rather not have ‘em crawling on me. That threw me a curve.” He looked up. “I got one dangling over my head or something?”



She laughed—he, in fact, looked a little scared to her as he scanned the ceiling. “No, but that’s how touch feels to me. When somebody touches me, even if I’m ready for it, my body does that thing when a spider is crawling on you. When I’m not ready, it’s like the spider’s feet are electrified.”



Shock was what she saw on his face now. “Damn, little bit. That’s fucking awful. Even when I ate you out, it felt like that?”



“At first, yeah. But then what you were doing felt too intense for me to feel anything but that. But you can’t constantly be making me come—and I can’t do, like, foreplay, because it’s all spiders at first, and it gets in my way so I can’t get to the coming. It worked the other night because I could watch you and be ready, and also because you just went for it. With your mouth, and not your hands.”



His eyebrows went up. “So I could do that again.”



“Like that, where I can see everything, yeah. Probably. But I have to be ready, and I have to see, and that still doesn’t mean I’ll ever be good with other touches. Even my folks can’t touch me. Only Dimi has ever been able to touch me without the creepies. So I don’t know if it’ll ever be good for me for you to touch me. But I can get better about dealing with it.”