Thanks. Like I did him a favor. Like this was a service rendered, a transaction completed, and now it's time for me to leave.
My chest goes cold.
"Yeah." I sit up. Start looking for my clothes. "No problem."
"Oh." Something in his voice. Small and startled and hurt. "Okay."
I pull on my jeans. Find my shirt on the floor by the door. My jacket is downstairs somewhere. My helmet is on the lawn.
"I should go," I say, because he's not asking me to stay, and I won't beg. I won't be the one who makes this into something it's not. Robin said it himself —I flirt with everyone. It doesn't mean anything.And tonight was just — the natural conclusion of weeks of tension, a physical release, a thing that happened because his body wanted it.
Not because his heart did.
"See you around," I say from the doorway.
"Yeah." His voice is barely there. "See you."
I'm in the hallway — when I hear him.
His voice, muffled through the bedroom door. On the phone. Shaking.
"Toby, it's me. Call me back."
A breath. Ragged.
"We had sex and I'm such a fucking loser that I don't know how to cuddle after sex. He was right there. Right there, Toby. Warm and solid and perfect, and I just — lay there. Like a corpse. Because if I curl against him it means something, and if it means something then it's real, and I don't know how to do real. I don't—"
His voice cracks.
"He left. He's leaving. Because I can't — I don't know how to do any of this. I don't know how to be the kind of person who reaches for someone after. Please call me. Please."
I stand at the bottom of the stairs. My hand is on the doorknob. Every rational part of my brain says walk away. Give him space. He needs to figure this out on his own.
My lion says:Go back.
Robin doesn't know how to cuddle after sex. Not because it doesn't mean anything — because it means everything. He's lying in that bed alone right now, wanting me and not knowing how to say it, because no one ever taught him that reaching for someone is allowed.
I could leave. I should leave. He didn't ask me to stay and I have my pride and my dignity and the very reasonable expectation that if someone wants me in their bed, they'll say so.
But Robin doesn't know how to say so. That's the whole problem. That's what this whole thing has been about — a manwho learned love as performance and doesn't know how to do it for real.
I take my hand off the doorknob.
I take my jacket off.
I walk back upstairs, open his bedroom door, and find him curled on his side with his phone clutched to his chest and his eyes red.
"Vaughn?" His voice is small. Scared. "I thought you—"
"Move over."
He stares at me. I pull my shirt off, kick off my jeans, and get back into his bed. He's still frozen, eyes wide, so I do the thing he can't do — I reach for him. Pull him against my chest, wrap my arms around his shoulders, tuck his head under my chin.
He's stiff for five seconds. Ten. His whole body rigid against mine, like he's bracing for the moment I change my mind.
Then something in him breaks.
Not dramatically — not sobbing, not falling apart. Just a slow, total release. Every muscle letting go at once, his body going boneless against mine, his face pressing into my chest. His hands come up — hesitant, shaking — and grip the back of my shoulders.