When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

“How you doin’, Mr. Harrison.”

I’m glad that he’s nice to the doormen. He’s nice to cabdrivers and waiters too. He hasn’t turned into a dick in the last decade. That’s a relief.

The elevator is mirrored on all sides. Emboldened by the alcohol and the rush of being out at night, which I haven’t been for a long time, I remind myself that I waxed and I remember my affirmations. I am enough, goddammit, and I push him up against one wall, drop my coat and make sure he can see the reflection of my back, my leg wrapped around his waist while he watches himself kiss my shoulders, runs a finger along the tight top of my dress, teasing me, fumbling with the zipper up the back, caught off guard when I slip my hand under his belt. We’ve got thirty floors to go.

A deep inhale, he shuts his eyes. A light kiss. When we get to his floor he holds the doors open but won’t let me out. “I’m afraid I can’t let you out without a password, Miss Stanislawski,” so I bite his ear, kiss his neck, and when he still won’t move I unbuckle his belt, crouch down, and just when he thinks that what he wants to happen is about to happen, I pull his jeans down to his ankles and run. And we laugh, and I get a good head start on him while he’s still pulling up his pants by the elevator. We play chase down the halls, I’m running with my shoes in my hand until he catches me and we’re laughing and breathless.

He opens his apartment door. We keep the lights off, but the whole room is lit by the glow from the neon signs and buildings across the street throwing sharp shadows across the room. It’s a small apartment, but big for New York, with one window stretching its whole length. I brace myself with one arm against it, the other wrapped around his neck, and that’s where it happens, up against the window with the twinkling roof lights blinking at us, visible but unseen, naked but clothed in shadows, thirty-eight stories above the streets of New York City.

But there’s more than this. More than the rough, rugged sweat and smell and rocking rawness of skin-on-skin and flesh-in-flesh. There’s sleep. Sleep with him curled around my back, the rise and fall of his chest against my shoulder blades. Real sleep. Not semiconsciousness on alert for danger. Not waking up with my hand already on the hammer under the mattress when I hear a noise. Real sleep with Harry’s arms tangled around me, his hand still holding mine. I wake up and look at him, jealous of his long lashes, in love with his warm skin.

After that night we have lots more nights like that. Sometimes we have nights eating takeout and drinking wine on the roof of his building, where you can see Tenth Avenue laid out like a sparkling runway. Sometimes we have nights in my place in Brooklyn, eating pizza and watching Toy Story with Johnny. Johnny jumps off the arm of the sofa and onto Harry’s back a hundred times and Harry lets him, pretending that Johnny’s knocked him out, or that Johnny’s an astronaut and they’re landing on the Moon. And my boy laughs and laughs.

There are a thousand moments when we laugh. Harry asked me for a tea towel to clean up something Johnny spilled. I said, “What the hell is a tea towel? You mean a paper towel?”

And I held out the roll and he said, “What’s a paper towel? This is kitchen roll.”

I said, “What are you talking about?”

“No, a tea towel, this thing.”

He held it up and I said, “A dishcloth? Is that what you mean?” and whatever was spilled just sank into the sofa while Harry and Johnny chased me around the apartment waving every dishcloth that we had. We ended up in a pile on the floor, the three of us, out of breath, surveying the apartment wrapped in a whole roll of unwound paper towels, Johnny laughing into the cardboard tube, listening to the sound of his happiness amplified.

Then at bedtime, against my better judgment, we start to act like a couple, like parents, reading to Johnny and putting him to bed together.

“Harry, have you ever drove a race car?” Johnny asks him.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Where do you work?” Little face cocked sideways, suspicious.

“At a bank. It’s quite dull, I’m afraid.” Harry smiles, but shows Johnny he takes him seriously.

Johnny’s not done. “You been to Central Park?”

“Yes, I have, quite a few times.”

“D’you like trucks?” Johnny’s got a lot to cover.

“I do indeed.”

“What’s your favorite animal?” Johnny’s rubbing his eyes now. He’s tired but the answer is critical.

“The cheetah. It’s the fastest.”

“Faster than a race car?”

“Almost as fast as a normal car.”

“Good, I’m gonna put that in my bemembery.”

“In what?” Harry asks.

“Where I keep the fax. Good night. I love you.” Satisfied that he’s settled things, he pulls the covers up to his chin.

Johnny’s decided to love him. Harry’s taken aback and touched. He doesn’t want to say the wrong thing, doesn’t want to tell my son he loves him because it’s too soon, so instead he says, “And I think you’re a splendid little chap,” as he rubs Johnny’s hair and steals his nose.

Johnny, confused by Harry’s accent and the unfamiliar phrase, says, “You need to check, Harry, ’cause I don’t think those are real words you just said. G’night.”

Then Harry wraps his arms around both of us. I shouldn’t have let Johnny get so close so soon but my arms had done all the holding for so long that to have Harry’s arms around us both—I had no idea how strong I’d been until he lifted the weight from me.

A year went by, a year of laughing and playing and being together; of happiness; a man in Johnny’s life; love in both our