Replication - chapter 18 (with images) (Patreon)

The cardboard dust sticks to the sweat on my forearms.

I drop the third box near the hallway door and straighten up. The lumbar spine protests, a dull ache radiating across the lower back. The muscles there are tired from two hours of carrying loads they weren't conditioned for.

I wipe my forehead with the back of my wrist. The skin comes away slick.

We're clearing out the second bedroom of her apartment. It functioned as an office, mostly holding overflow from the living room, a desk she rarely used, a bookshelf packed two layers deep, and a collection of items Mark left behind in his gradual, uninvited colonization of the space.

Kate sits on a small aluminum step stool near the window. She is sixteen weeks pregnant. The nausea broke ten days ago. She's eating half a plain bagel, chewing slowly, watching me break down a cardboard shipping box.

"You don't have to do the heavy ones," she says.

"They aren't heavy."

"You dropped the encyclopedia box twice."

"The grip failed. The weight was fine."

She smiles. A genuine curving of the mouth. She takes another bite of the bagel.

I pull the packing tape across the bottom flaps of a fresh box. The plastic dispenser makes a ripping shriek that bounces off the bare walls of the small room.

The physical labor in this body requires a different mechanical strategy. The upper body strength I relied on for forty years is gone. The shoulders lack the packed muscle fiber. The lats offer nothing. When I bend for a stack of hardcovers, the old instinct tries to lever the weight up through the lower back and the arms, and the body won't do it that way anymore. The joints strain. The forearms shake.

I have to drop my center of gravity, bend the knees wide, and drive the power up through the glutes and the thighs. The wider pelvis handles the load when the geometry is respected.

The sports bra I bought three weeks ago is soaked through at the sternum. Every time I bend forward, the glandular tissue of the breasts presses against the tight fabric, a dense weight hanging off my chest. The friction of the damp nylon against the nipples is an abrasive hum.

I tape the top of the box. I drag it across the hardwood floor with my foot, pushing it toward the hallway.

A few weeks ago, existing as Claire required the mental focus of a surgeon closing a ruptured artery. I had to monitor the pitch of my voice, the slope of my shoulders, the exact duration of eye contact. I was running it from the outside, feeding in the right inputs to get the right result.

Now it runs on its own.

I don't think about the slope of my shoulders or calculate the eye contact. The performance wore away somewhere in the empty spaces of the last two weeks, eroded by the repetition of being in her apartment. The persona fused with the tissue.

I pull a stack of files from the bottom drawer of the desk. They're Mark's files. Gray institutional folders, labeled with his angular handwriting. Budget projections. Committee minutes.

I hold the stack in my hands.

"Put those in the plastic bin," Kate says from the stool.

I look at the bin. It already holds a pair of Mark's brown leather running shoes, a quarter-zip sweater he left on the back of the sofa in January, and a phone charger.

"The whole drawer?" I ask.

"Everything with his handwriting on it."

I drop the files into the bin. They hit the running shoes with a flat slap.

The instruction lacks the brittle edge she used when we fought.

The room is going to be a nursery.

We haven't discussed the nursery. We haven't discussed the kiss in the parking lot. The afternoon by the river sits between us, unspoken, changing the weight of everything since.

I close the empty desk drawer. The air in the room is warm, the winter heater running high to offset the draft from the window.

"Take a break," she says. "You're sweating."

"I have two more shelves."

"The shelves aren't going anywhere. Come here."

I stop, letting my arms fall to my sides. I look at her sitting on the aluminum stool.

She's wearing dark gray leggings and an oversized gray sweater. The physical changes of the second trimester are visible to the clinical eye. The skin of her face carries a higher volume of blood, a permanent flush across the cheekbones. The fatigue is gone, replaced by the hunger of a body building a skeletal structure from scratch.

Below the hem of the sweater the belly has rounded out, the uterus risen well up out of the pelvis now, the top of it halfway to her navel. There's a formed child in there, fingers and toes, starting to move in a way she'll feel any week now.

My child.

I walk across the room and sit on the edge of the window seat, facing her. The distance between my knees and hers is less than a foot.

She offers me the other half of the bagel.

"I'm fine," I say.

"You've been moving boxes for two hours. Eat it."

I take the bagel. Our fingers brush, hers warm against mine.

I chew the bread and swallow. I keep my face still.

"He called this morning," she says.

She doesn't say the name. The pronoun is enough.

"Mark."

"He wanted to know if I needed anything from the pharmacy. He offered to send a car to pick me up for dinner tonight." She brushes a crumb off her leggings. "I told him I was busy."

"He's trying to maintain the perimeter."

"He's trying to pretend the perimeter hasn't already collapsed." She looks at the plastic bin by the door. The gray files resting on the brown leather shoes.

"Have you told him?" I ask.

"That I'm pregnant? No." She leans back against the wall, her spine finding the flat surface. "I'm going to tell him on Tuesday. We have a dinner. A real one. I'm going to tell him about the baby, and then I'm going to tell him he doesn't live here anymore."

I chew the last piece of the bagel. The dry bread sticks in my throat.

When she severs the tie with Mark, the vacuum will demand filling. She will turn toward the only safe harbor left in her life. She will turn toward Claire. She's already turning.

"Tuesday," I say. The voice is soft. The unhurried cadence of the persona.

"I don't want him buying a crib," she whispers. "I don't want him standing in this room with a tape measure, planning where the changing table goes. He'll turn it into a project. A logistical hurdle to manage."

"You don't have to let him manage it."

"I know." She looks at me. The dark eyes locking onto my face. "I know that now. Because of you."

She doesn't look away when she's finished saying it.

She shifts her weight on the aluminum stool. She leans forward.

The space between us evaporates.

She raises her hand and reaches toward my face.

I go still. My heartbeat goes fast against the ribs.

Her index finger brushes against my cheek. She wipes a smear of cardboard dust from the skin just below my eye.

The touch is deliberate. She doesn't pull her hand back. She lets her fingers trail down the side of my face, tracing the curve of the jawline.

The heat in the pelvis flares and the breasts ache and I'm soaked through, and the body wants her to close the last six inches. It wants her mouth.

"You missed a spot," she whispers.

"Dust is an occupational hazard."

She smiles. Her hand drops to my shoulder. She leaves it there.

"Claire."

The name lands behind my eyes.

"Yes."

She looks down at her hands, her thumbs tracing the seam of her leggings. "Stay tonight." She says it quietly. She doesn't look up. She isn't asking for help with the boxes. She isn't asking for a friend to share a pizza.

She's asking for the person she kissed by the river.

I look at her hand resting on my shoulder, then up at her face. The lines around her eyes are smooth. The defensive tension she carried for two years in my apartment is gone.

I spent twenty-four months trying to force her to drop those defenses. Claire just sat on a couch and listened. No solutions, no flowcharts, no territory. Kate opened the door for her anyway.

If I drop the mask, I lose her. If I hold it, I lie to her every time she looks at me.

But I'm sitting in the yellow light of the empty room, and her hand is on my shoulder, and she's asking me to stay.

I reach up and place my hand over hers. My fingers cover her knuckles.

"I'll stay," I say.

She exhales a shaky breath. She leans her forehead against my collarbone.

I wrap my arms around her back and hold her in the dust and the heat of the second bedroom.

The boxes sit on the floor. Mark's files sit in the plastic bin. The afternoon light fades into the gray of a winter evening.

The Thai food arrives at eight-thirty. Pad kee mao, extra lime.

We eat sitting on the floor of the living room. The coffee table is pushed toward the wall to make space. The apartment heater kicks on, pushing dry air through the baseboard vents. The fan hums.

My sports bra is still damp from the boxes. The synthetic fabric binds the chest wall. The glandular mass of the breasts aches from two hours of shifting cardboard and files. The nylon traps the sweat against my sternum. I ignore the discomfort. I manage it the same way I manage the pressure of the female pelvis against the hardwood floor.

Kate finishes her carton. The pregnancy demands fuel, a hunger that has replaced the nausea of the first trimester. The fetus is pulling calories directly from her bloodstream.

She sets the empty carton on the rug and shifts her weight, extending her legs.

Her right knee drops against my left thigh. She doesn't pull her leg back.

The heat of her skin bleeds through the cotton into my thigh. The body answers at once, low and heavy, wetness pooling before I've moved a muscle.

I keep my face still. I chew a piece of basil. I swallow.

"I should take a shower," she says. She doesn't move.

"You did the light boxes."

"Cardboard dust gets everywhere." She rests her head against the back of the sofa. The violet shadows under her eyes are gone. Her skin looks full, flushed with the increased blood volume of the second trimester.

She looks at my face.

"You can use the shower first," she says.

"I don't have clothes to change into."

"I have a t-shirt you can sleep in."

"Okay," I say.

I stand up. My hip joints pop. The wider spread of the female pelvis requires a different mechanical alignment to rise from the floor. I find my footing.

The bathroom smells like her vanilla lotion and the sharp tang of bathroom cleaner. The mirror is a flat rectangle of glass above the sink. I turn on the overhead light.

I look at Claire.

The mesh holds the olive tone. The cartilage of the nose and the jaw require no active pressure. The ghost is buried.

I strip off the gray t-shirt. I hook my thumbs under the thick elastic band of the sports bra and pull it over my head.

The breast tissue drops against my chest. The release of the compression sends a rush of blood into the glandular mass. The skin is flushed red where the nylon dug into the ribs. The nipples contract against the cooler air of the bathroom, hardening into knots. Even my own arm brushing the nipples sets something off low in the belly.

I step out of the leggings and the damp underwear.

I turn the shower dial. The water hits the fiberglass tub.

I stand under the hot spray and wash the cardboard dust off the arms, the neck, the slope of the shoulders. I wash the breasts, my soapy hands gliding over the sensitive tissue. The body answers the heat and the soap, eager and mindless, already slick, the water rinsing it away and the body making more.

It knows who's in the next room. It remembers the river. It doesn't care what I am or what I'm doing to her. It wants her.

I turn the water off and dry the skin.

I wrap a white towel around my chest. The terrycloth is rough against the areolas.

I open the door.

Kate is standing in the short hallway, holding a faded blue cotton t-shirt.

We almost collide. I stop. She stops.

The distance between us is less than six inches. The hallway is narrow.

She looks at my bare shoulders. She looks at the white towel tucked between my breasts. Her eyes track the drops of water running down my collarbone.

She doesn't step back. She holds the blue t-shirt in her hands.

"I brought this," she whispers.

"Thank you."

I reach for the fabric. My fingers brush against hers.

She lets go of the shirt. She leaves her hand suspended in the air. Then she touches my neck.

Warmth spreads from her palm into my neck. Her fingers slide up into the damp hair at the base of my skull. She tilts her face up and kisses me.

Her mouth is soft, tasting of lime and salt.

I drop the blue t-shirt. It hits the floorboards.

I bring my hands up and grip her waist. I pull her flush against the towel.

She makes a breathless sound in the back of her throat. She opens her mouth. I kiss her deeper, pressing her backward until her spine hits the hallway wall.

The body goes off against her. My breasts crush to her chest through the towel, the wider hips aligning with hers. A soft overlap of weight and heat.

She slides her hands down my bare back. Her fingernails scrape against the spine.

It flashes through the groin and my hips tilt forward on their own, the swollen folds pressing against the seam of her leggings.

I moan, something ragged tearing loose.

Her mouth catches the sound before it can finish. She kisses me harder. Her hands grip my hips, pulling me tighter against her.

She breaks the kiss. She's breathing fast. Her eyes are dark.

"Come here," she says.

She takes my hand. She leads me into her bedroom.

The room is dark. A single lamp burns on the nightstand, casting yellow light across the sheets. The bed is unmade.

She stops at the edge of the mattress and lets go of my hand.

She reaches for the hem of her oversized gray sweater. She pulls it over her head and drops it on the floor.

She stands in a black maternity bra.

Even now I can't stop reading her, the fuller breasts, the darker areolas through the lace, the small curve at the waistband. The child is right there. My child.

She unhooks the black bra and lets it fall.

Her bare chest rises and falls. She reaches out and finds the tucked edge of my white towel.

She pulls it.

The towel drops to the floor.

I stand naked in the yellow light. The olive skin. The asymmetrical breasts. The wide curve of the hips. The dark hair at the junction of the thighs.

She steps forward and presses her bare chest against mine.

The contact goes through both of us. Our breasts press together, soft to soft, and everywhere they touch lights up at once.

I wrap my arms around her back. I bury my face in her neck. I smell the vanilla lotion. I feel the beat of her pulse against my mouth.

We fall onto the bed.

The mattress absorbs our weight. She pulls me over her.

I straddle her hips. My knees sink into the blankets on either side of her thighs.

The position forces my swollen labia against the seam of her leggings. The friction is excruciating. The slickness runs down my inner thighs and onto her leggings.

I lean down and kiss her. My hands find her wrists. I pin them against the pillows.

She arches her back. Her chest rises to meet mine. I slide my mouth from her lips down her jawline. I kiss the skin of her neck. I move lower.

I take her nipple into my mouth.

She gasps. Her hips jerk upward against mine.

The friction of her thigh against my clitoris sends a tremor through my frame. I bite down gently. I use my tongue.

I know what she likes. I know the rhythm, the pressure. I spent two years studying her nervous system.

She writhes beneath me. Her hands break free from my weak grip. She buries her fingers in my hair. She pulls me closer.

"Claire," she whispers.

The name is a knife through my ribs.

I move my mouth to her other breast. I run my hands down the skin of her stomach. I trace the firm swell of the uterus.

I feel the heat radiating from the skin. The child is suspended in the amniotic fluid just inches beneath my palm.

I drag my hand lower and find the waistband of her leggings.

I pull them down. She lifts her hips to help me. I strip the leggings and the cotton underwear down her legs and toss them off the end of the bed.

She is bare.

I move down the mattress and settle between her knees.

I look at her in the dim light. Her face is flushed, her eyes shut, her breathing ragged.

I lean forward and use my mouth.

The taste of her. The salt and the heat. The geography I know.

I know where to apply the pressure. I trace the hood. I find the node. I use broad, flat strokes of the tongue.

She cries out. Her hands grip the bedsheets. Her thighs tremble against my cheeks.

I don't rush. I maintain the pace.

I give her the patience she starved for.

Her hips lift off the mattress. She pushes against my mouth. The rhythm accelerates. Her breathing fractures into ragged sobs.

I slide two fingers inside her.

The muscle grips my fingers. I feel the pulsing contractions beginning to form in the walls of the pelvic floor.

I angle the fingers upward and strike the anterior wall.

She screams, her body going rigid, and it takes her all at once. The muscles clamp down on my hand. Her thighs crush against my ears. She thrashes against the sheets, a wave of release that rolls through her abdomen and down her legs.

I stay with her, keeping the pressure steady until the final tremors fade into small aftershocks.

She collapses against the pillows.

I pull back and crawl up the length of her body.

I lie beside her. The sweat cools on my back. The room is quiet, save for the sound of our breathing. My pelvis is swollen and wanting.

She turns her head to look at me.

She reaches out and touches my cheek.

"Come here," she whispers.

She pulls me onto my back. She rolls over, throwing her leg across my thighs. She straddles my hips.

The weight of her body pressing down on the female pelvis feels right.

She leans down and kisses my mouth. Her hands slide down my chest. She cups my breasts.

Her thumbs brush across the aching nipples. I gasp against her mouth, my hips jerking up on their own.

She smiles against my mouth.

She moves her hands lower and traces the curve of my stomach. She finds the dark hair at the junction of my thighs.

She slides off my hips as I spread them wider, then touches the swollen folds. I stop breathing. Some part of me pulls back, I'm a man, I'm Julian, her hand is on a body I never wanted, and the body doesn't wait for that part to finish. It just opens to her.

Her fingers slide through the slickness. She finds the clitoris.

She doesn't use the blunt, linear friction I used on myself in the shower. She uses the slow, circular motion.

The pelvic floor yields to her hand. The heat surges up through the lower abdomen, sinking into the thighs.

I arch my back. My breasts push upward.

"You're so wet," she whispers.

She slides two fingers inside me.

I cry out. The sound echoes off the walls of the bedroom. A broken wail.

She increases the pace. The circles tighten. The pressure builds, teasing the nerve endings.

It arrives all at once, every nerve going off in the same second instead of in sequence. The muscles of the stomach pull tight. The thighs tremble.

I grip her shoulders. My nails dig into her skin.

It breaks through me. The contractions clamp down around her fingers, pulling the breath out of me, and for the length of it there's no lie and no mask, no clinic, no tank, no loss, only this, the body coming apart under the hands of the woman I love.

The shaking takes a while to stop. She's still inside me when it does.

She pulls her hand away and collapses against my chest. Her damp skin sticks to mine.

She rests her head in the hollow of my neck. Her breathing slows, matching the rhythm of my own.

I lie in the yellow light of the lamp.

The apartment is silent. Outside the window, a car drives past on the wet asphalt.

She shifts her weight and pulls the winter comforter over our bodies.

She drapes her arm across my waist. She falls asleep within ten minutes.

I stare at the ceiling, feeling the weight of her arm. I feel the rise and fall of her chest against my ribs. I smell the vanilla lotion fading into the scent of sweat and sex.

The body is quiet, the heat in the pelvis settled into something heavy and at peace.

I press my cheek against the top of her head. The hair tickles my nose.

She doesn't know I'm here.

She kissed Claire in the hallway. She undressed Claire in the lamplight. She whispered Claire's name into the dark.

She made love to a woman she trusts. A woman who listens. A woman who demands nothing and offers safety.

If I speak in my own voice, if I drop the olive skin and let her see who's been running this, she'll look at me the way she looked at me in the bookstore, only worse.

I stare at the ceiling while the city runs its late business outside the window.