A Matter of Unimportance

27. Basil

He'd gotten quiet at that point. It came on rather suddenly, I thought. His face had got contemplative, and he was watching my every move with a silent interest. When he saw me watching from across the pillows, he spoke.

"You're really pretty," he said.

His voice sounded less stressed than I'd expected. It sounded kind, like being handed a pastry when you're starving. I felt like my body was melting.

"I think I'm in love with you," I stated.

The quiet expression on his face broke for a small smile to break through. It wasn't the wide one he normally sported when he laughed. It was more thoughtful. Behind the shine of his warm brown eyes, I could see his beautiful damaged mind spinning.

"Thank you," he said, softly.

I don't want to pretend things were picture perfect. Things with Riley just weren't like that, which is part of the draw. After lying in bed with me for a while longer, he got up and excused himself to the bathroom, and even though he didn't tell me what he was doing in there, I knew he crushed up a pill on the counter and then inhaled it. When he came back, his eyes were glossy and he wanted to bury his face into my shoulder, probably to hide it. I didn't mind. I didn't want to change him. Something of the mess was all too intriguing to me. Problems like the ones Riley carried in the cloud above his head were not things that could be fixed in a day. 

Those problems certainly couldn't stop me from loving him.

With his eyes closed, and his face smooshed into my shoulders regardless, Riley mumbled, "I should have told him I wasn't going to come home tonight."

"The man you live with?" I questioned, imagining the man in the button up; the man Riley looked at with more stars in his eyes than he'd ever reserved for me in our short time together.

"Yes."

"Does the man know you're gay?" I asked him curiously.

He sat up and looked at me with his pin point pupils.

"I'm not gay," Riley scoffed.

"Okay," I agreed, because despite having had sex with him previously, I was not one to make assumptions about how anyone should want to define themselves.

"Okay?" He questioned, pin point eyes narrowed my direction. That couldn't hide the vulnerability in his expression.

I thought about how he'd been hurt. I thought about how much he likely wanted to hide.

"It's okay," I assured him.

He clenched my hand in his iron grip again, laid back into my shoulder, and repeated what he'd said before.

"Thank you, Basil."

I would certainly never change my name again if he kept saying it like that. I thought about how he'd said it when we were having sex, once fleetingly in his otherwise timid quiet. I thought about how I was in love with him and about how impossible it was to be in love with someone I'd only just met.

Riley fell asleep like that. I was uncomfortable where I was positioned, but I couldn't bring myself to move. I had moved away from him before on the day I first saw him. He looked less stressed now. He looked less afraid, but even in sleep his grip was crushing my fingers. I wouldn't be able to feel them for a while after I woke up.

My parents had gotten fake married on the day they first met. From all accounts, love did not take Florence very long. Daniel seemed to hold similar sentiments. Love was not elusive. It did not hide until arbitrary dates on a calendar told it to come out. Love simply came when convenient. Maybe it was genetic. Maybe I was somehow predisposed to loving in an immediate type of way.