Does she dream of me? Not now, while her eyes are closed and she is leaning over my body like a mother. Not my mother, either, but a presence I could sink into. Absorbing everything... anything, all of it. If I get to sleep, I'll see her face all around me.

That was how she said I didn't have to tell her anything.

It doesn't matter, doesn't matter to someone, just me. Me who she cares about, not the problem, not the solution, not the damn circumstances of every second we breathe in uncalculated tandem. She doesn't want me sick, doesn't want me wet, doesn't want me to leave. She does want me. Why can't I take that feeling and carry it with me when I want to just go? Already thinking of how I am going to have to shift my shoulder just so to fit through her bedroom window three turns into four turns into five turns into sunrise. I don't want to. Her room is dark and so quiet that every sob hiding in my throat betrays me.

This is how she pretended not to hear, and just touched me, with her hands, her face, her hair. It wasn't that she didn't think it hurt. She just knows it hurts more to have it acknowledged.

Why her? Why can't I pick who knows that? She just figured it out on her own, apparently. And when she says that it will all be all right, there is no miracle, no instant solution except her soft self wrapped around me like a blanket that smells and feels to me like Maria. Nothing has been decided, no huge plans set into motion, but Maria says it will be okay.

That should not be enough to make it even a bit better.

This is how she did it.

When she sleeps over me, not even stirring when I move, restlessly, burying my face into her voiceless pillow to catch the last angry tears, she knows she is there and I am here and in that nothing is going to happen. No good.

No bad, either, and that is what matters.

Not that she couldn't see him at first through the rain, not that the pattern of droplets on her window made the breathtaking lines of his jaw smudge in runny waves across the glass. Not that her heart was in her throat and her heart was breaking with every "no" she had practiced in front of her mirror, brushing her short, damp hair. Not that holding him next to her was torture too brutal to be contemplated. Nothing exquisite about her head on his, the fine strands of their hair combining on the pillowcase.

This is how I do it.

Watching him pretend to close his eyes as I run my fingers around the side of his face, talking him into silent rest, as if my voice were a cure-all lullaby. We both know it's not. Even small children, smart ones, get too old for bedtime stories after many years.

I couldn't say that he hurts me, makes me cry, that he made me scared when he cried. I didn't know he could.

That is why I did it.

I am not thinking about the sun coming up, about a new day of pain and light and anxiousness for decision, but about every hour left in this night, while he is in my bed. Never like that. I never thought of it. I don't know why, or how, or what to do, draped over his cowering form, like I can protect him from the world.

I can't, even if he wanted me to.

Even if he wanted me, period. He came here for comfort.

Michael, at my window, Michael, sinking into the walls as I slipped off his drenched shirt, Michael, whose body is both square and strong and clumsy when I push him back onto my covers. Sometimes he needs to be told what to do.

Tomorrow morning he will disappear, and I will sleep tomorrow night in this bed, possibly twisting my neck to where he lays, at this second, on that edge. Thinking of things that don't turn out the way you hoped, expected, predicted, guessed. Things that turn up at the last second on a rainy night in your bedroom.

Michael.