"They're about animals. You ARE an animal."
"Partially."
"Do you watch the lion ones?"
"Sometimes."
"Is it weird? Watching lions on TV when you can be one?"
"It's like watching home movies. Mildly nostalgic."
He laughs and picks something, a documentary about deep-sea creatures, which seems like a compromise nobody asked for but works. We watch bioluminescent jellyfish pulse in the dark and I'm aware of every point of contact between us: shoulders, forearms, hips, ankles. The mattress is firm, new, cheaper than good, and the floor underneath is solid and the apartment is warm because Devin turned the heat on the moment he walked in, because he's spent too many cold nights not to.
Fifteen minutes in, he's not watching the screen.
He's watching me.
"Hi," I say without looking away from a very interesting anglerfish.
"Hi."
"You're staring."
"I'm admiring." His hand finds the hem of my shirt, fingers slipping underneath to touch skin. "You're in my apartment."
"I am."
"On my mattress."
"Also true."
"I have a door that locks from the inside and you're on the other side of it. With me."
I turn to look at him. The laptop light catches his face, the bruise almost gone now, just a shadow of yellow at the cheekbone. His eyes dark and warm and looking at me with something I haven't seen before. Not the heat of the wall or the desperate need of the first time or the vulnerable openness of the second time in my bed. Something new. Settled. Proprietary.
This is his space. His mattress. His decision. He's not a guest or a boyfriend-who-stays-over or a person being sheltered. He's a man in his own apartment with a locked door and he's choosing to have me here.
"Come here," he says.
"I'm right here."
"Closer."
I roll onto my side. He mirrors me. Face to face on the mattress on the floor of his first apartment, the laptop forgotten, the jellyfish pulsing unwatched.
He kisses me first. Slow, deliberate, his hand sliding from my hem to my waist to my back, pulling me against him with a confidence that's new. Not performing confidence. Real. Thequiet authority of a person who knows what they want and has a locked door and a lease with their name on it.
"I want to try something," he says against my mouth.
"Anything."
"I want to be on top."
My breath catches. Not from surprise. From the image. From Devin, who three weeks ago had never been touched, looking at me in the blue-white light of his own apartment and asking for this.
"Yeah," I say. "Yes."
He pushes me onto my back and straddles my hips and the view from here, Devin above me, streetlight behind him, his face half-lit and certain, is something I want to remember for the rest of my life.