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he’s waiting for? Because I can’t find a single word.
    His palm finds my jaw, curls around it. He moves in closer to me, our bodies touching, and he kisses the corner of my mouth. I find myself reacting mechanically, but I’m too late and I end up kissing air and not him. Not that I know if I want to kiss him. He tilts his forehead into my temple.
    Breathing on me. Breathing…that’s kind of cruel, isn’t it?
    I don’t like the way he is looking at me. I can’t define it and I close my eyes, but I know I don’t like it. His lips glance off my ear. I don’t move. His hand relocates to my hip, gentle and placating all the way down, but it doesn’t work. I’m shaky and disoriented.
    He’s waiting. I know it somehow, even if I don’t know what he wants, and even if I did I couldn’t give it to him. I couldn’t give a single fucking thing at this moment. He has me all, anyway. Whether I want it or not.
    He whispers something into my ear, it might be my name, but I don’t catch it. His hand won’t stop moving over me, slow and fucking tender, like nothing I’m used to at all. Maybe he feels badly, maybe he wants to do it again and is trying to coax me or maybe I won’t ever be able to figure him out so I should just give this up. My lip is between his lips. He drags his mouth across the line of my cheek bone and then his tongue traces the bone behind my ear. He kisses the spot in front of my ear. But he doesn’t use his teeth even once. This isn’t us. We don’t behave this way. Maybe I wanted it before but not anymore.
    Or maybe that’s all bullshit. We both know that if he went for my cock right now I’d let him fuck me. That’s what I do, or that’s what we do. That’s us.
    He uses his arm to pull me close against him, tight and there’s so much…contact. He kisses my face five or six times, and I don’t respond and he sighs or groans but it’s not quite voiced. He peels himself off me.
    I watch him as he puts on his clothes, so normally. He’s at the door. He turns, looks at me watching him. He walks out. All I can do is turn away, unable to process anything except that he’s gone and I’m aching.
    And then suddenly he’s back and he’s kissing my mouth, sideways and awkwardly and he’s saying he’ll call me in a bit, OK? And I’m nodding, dumbly, and closing my eyes and he’s running fingertips over my forehead and in a few minutes I know I’ll be alone again.
    * * *
    “Remember how I told you I’d tell you when it was time to draw the line?” Shona says. I can picture her: she’s probably half-dressed, pajama pants and bra, cereal bowl on lap, cross-legged. Phone caught between her chin and shoulder causing neck pain she’ll whine at me to knead out later.
    “Yes. And I remember telling you how I would ignore you telling me to draw the line.”
    “Babe.” Shona never uses her serious voice, but she is using it now. “You need to draw the line.”
    I don’t respond.
    “Niles, come on. This isn’t me being an asshole. I know I’m not super Team Rylan but I swear I’m trying to be objective and—he…he fucking tried to strangle you.”
    “It wasn’t like that,” I protest.
    “Wow, because that doesn’t sound exactly like every abuse-victim-in-denial ever.” And I know it’s serious because Shona doesn’t do caring, but here she is.
    “Well, it wasn’t. He didn’t try to strangle me.”
    “Suffocate, then. Any way you look at it, it’s fucking weird.”
    “I didn’t tell him to stop,” I mumble, stupidly.
    “Oh, and when would you have gotten that in? Before or after he was choking you with his tongue?”
    “Shona, please.”
    “Look. Or, like, listen, OK? This has breached the kinky line. This is the here-there-be-monsters jagged edge of the map. This is the point of no return. Luckily, you’ve got me holding onto the back of your shorts, pulling you back onto dry land. Niles, please. This. Cannot. Go on.”
    I sigh. “I know.”
    There’s a long