firsts

three

He came one day drenched, clothes sticking onto his skin, but they didn't give him the warmth that he needed. He slid into the room, shaking but not truly feeling the wetness against his skin. He looked slightly sorry for the pool he made on the floor but he didn't say so, and I didn't know him well enough to say that he usually had that expression when he was apologetic.

It's strange that once a person faces death, he or she no longer feels the worldly troubles around them. I doubt Adam (already on first name basis although I don't even know his last name, and he doesn't know mine either) even carries an umbrella anymore, or much less care what rain would do to him and his clothes. I let him take a shower, while I prepared for our normal routine: beverage and silence.

When he came out, he borrowed one of my oversized shirts that I bought on internet by mistake. He thanked me. And that was the first word he said to me today. The rain continued to fall incessantly, and Adam peered out as it drenched the rest of the world. He seemed calm today, not having the usual lost look he regularly wore.

"It's raining," He said, as if he had just noticed. "Does it rain a lot here?"

It was an empty question. It didn't matter what my answer was. If I said that it was raining men, then he would take it that it would usually rain men. What mattered as the fact that he wanted to talk, start something, start anything for that matter.

"Not too often," I said. "Won't the rain trouble your way home?" I returned a question.

He frowned at that. Maybe he really wasn't thinking about the complication. But I had no idea what went through that head of his, and waited for his reaction. But he sat there, not giving me an answer, letting some possibilities float in the air about us but did not address them.

It was past midnight, but the weather did not lighten. In the end, I let him stay, let him take my bed. He refused at first, but I didn't let him argue. He was my guest I said. And my house my rules, I said. I laid a blanket on the floor, but he stopped me. He pulled me into the bed with him, his arms around me, not letting me go. When I tried to resist, he hummed a tune to a lullaby, and shut his eyes. I listened to his song and his breathing as they settled for a slower tempo, and didn't move.

It was another first. The first time a person sang me a lullaby, the first time a guy hugged me. The first time, I slept with another person.