With My All – Chapter 3 – Momentum

By the second month I had the relationship memorized.

Not him – I want to be precise about the distinction. I was still learning him, still finding the edges of a person who revealed himself slowly, partly because he was genuinely private and partly because he did not have a strong habit of volunteering things. But the relationship itself – the shape and rhythm and texture of it – I had down completely, because I had built it and I knew my own work.

I was the one who knew what we were doing next.

This was a feeling I liked. I want to tell you that plainly because I think it matters: I was not secretly resentful of it, not secretly exhausted by being the person who made everything happen. I was genuinely, straightforwardly pleased to be that person. I am good at making things happen. I like the satisfaction of a plan that works, a dinner that is good, a weekend that is enjoyable. Doing these things for two people was not harder than doing them for one – it was just more rewarding, because the outcome had an audience.

Damian was an excellent audience.

He was appreciative in the mild, receptive way that was his mode. When I organized a Saturday trip to a market in a nearby town, he said “that was great” afterward with genuine warmth. When I found a new pasta place and made a reservation and it was excellent, he said “you’re good at finding places” with the specific appreciation of a man who has benefited from a skill he doesn’t have.

He was right. I was good at finding places.

He was also still between jobs, which he mentioned occasionally with the same mild, untroubled tone.

“Anything coming up?” I said, at the end of the second month.

“A couple of possibilities. Nothing confirmed.”

“What are they?”

“One in operations. One in – something administrative. I’m waiting to hear.”

I waited too, with him. The possibilities remained possibilities. I stopped asking because the asking seemed to stress him slightly and the not-asking cost me nothing, since the practical consequences had not yet become something I was managing.

That came later.

The evening I want to tell you about happened on a Wednesday, which was not our usual night but had become one because Wednesday was when his friend Marcus hosted a film night that Damian occasionally attended and had brought me to twice and that I had thoroughly organized our attendance of on both occasions – including, on the second visit, providing the snacks.

But that Wednesday Marcus had cancelled and we were at mine instead.

I had made dinner. Something simple but good  -the pasta with the recipe I’d found and amended and made three times until it was the version I was happy with. He ate with the appreciative, uncomplicated pleasure of someone who is always genuinely glad for a good meal and never makes one.

We were on the sofa afterward, his arm around me, some documentary I had chosen playing at low volume, and I looked at him in the lamplight – the sharp face, the messy hair, the easy looseness of him – and felt the warm, specific want of a person who is happy and wants to be closer.

I shifted down his body.

“Hi,” he said, mildly amused.

“Hi,” I said.

I undid his jeans with the efficient, comfortable confidence of someone who has been doing this for two months and knows the logistics. He was already partly hard and I wrapped my hand around him and felt him respond, his breathing changing, his hand coming into my hair.

I want to be honest about this: I like this. I am telling you an explicit thing and I want to be clear that the explicitness comes with genuine enthusiasm rather than performed enthusiasm, because there is a difference and the difference matters to the story. I like the specific, particular pleasure of watching someone come apart because of something I am doing – the specific power of it, the warmth of it, the intimacy of being the person who knows exactly how to produce a particular effect.

I took him in my mouth.

He was fully hard now, thick and warm, and I worked him slowly at first, my tongue learning the rhythm, finding the places that produced the specific, involuntary sounds I was listening for. He made one almost immediately – low and uncontrolled, his hand tightening in my hair without directing, just holding.

“Kate.” My name in his mouth with a specific quality it had when I was doing this, a rougher, more urgent version.

I looked up at him.

His eyes were dark and his jaw was slightly loose and he was looking at me with the complete, undivided focus of a man from whom everything else had temporarily vacated.

I went back to what I was doing.

I took my time. There was no urgency from my end – this was something I was enjoying, something I wanted to do thoroughly, and I let that thoroughness run. I used my hands and my mouth in the combination that worked, reading his responses the way you read something you’ve learned – quickly, accurately, with the pleasure of competence. His hips rose slightly, the involuntary press of a body seeking more, and I gave him more, taking him deeper, the low, sustained sound he made traveling through me in a warm, answering wave.

“You’re- “ he started.

“I know,” I said, against him.

He laughed, breathless, and the laugh became a groan as I returned to it with the specific, focused application of everything I knew about what he liked.

When he came it was with a full-body shudder and my name and his hand gripping my hair hard enough to be felt, and I stayed with him through it, the complete, generous giving of it, the specific satisfaction of a thing done fully rather than done partially.

I lay back beside him.

He looked at the ceiling, breathing.

“That was – “

“Good,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Very.”

He pulled me close and his arm around me had the warm, post-physical heaviness of someone who is extremely content. I lay against him and felt the pleased, settled satisfaction of a person who has just done something they enjoyed and did it well.

I liked being the one who knew what we were doing next.

In the bedroom and everywhere else.

He never chose me. He just didn’t leave.