The way the light hits Eric’s body makes me want to cry. His skin is like a gift—the kind that makes you cry. Sometimes, at the end of the night, I find myself safe, in his bed. This feeling is how I come to define safety, and how I learned how very rare it is. He is dark and perfect, all sinew and shadow. Anatomy and spirit unnaturally combined. Sometimes Mother Nature does give with both hands.

He doesn’t approve of me. His disapproval of me prevents him from claiming me and confirms my fear that I am, somehow, innately wrong in some way. But I know that he loves me, and this knowledge is a seed I plant deep in my guts. It is also the familiar desire to be someone else. I am someone else in my heels at Cheeks, I am someone else when I am drunk;  I wonder who am I at the seminar table. I am always zipped into skin that doesn’t belong to me, and wanting to wear yours.

But here in the golden brown pool of Eric’s gaze, I am okay for a minute. I think he sees me, and I am okay. When we are done, I try to hang on to the feeling. With my head on his chest, I try to stop time, to fill the world with the sound of his heartbeat. But after the sweat has dried, he puts on his flannel shirt and opens a beer. We hear the others in the corridor, smoking on the stairs. I smile at Abram’s laugh, his umistakable cackle, echoing through the dorm. It represents another form of safety—acceptance. I pull on my clothes and we go to join the others; as we leave I dig in my pockets, looking for any breadcrumbs I could drop to help me find my way back here, to Eric’s bed. I’m always looking, but sometimes, it’s hard to find.