Let the Light Shine Through the Cracks
“Did you come up here to sleep with me?” Charles asks when he sets the cup of coffee in front of me. “Did I miss that? Was I not supposed to actually make you coffee?”
Charles is unlike any man I have dated before. He is neither alpha nor beta male. His confidence a level zeta. The concern of him rabbiting from his own apartment is the only thing that has kept me from jumping him the minute we walked through the door. But it’s date number five and time to take him for a spin.
“Yes,” I reply, smiling into my coffee mug. I don’t even drink coffee, but there will be time enough to train Charles on all the little details later. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” he smiles. “I find your face alluring.” He blushes at his own words.
I wonder if this is where he’ll confess he’s a virgin.
“Perhaps some music?” I suggest. He selects something predictable, and I dim the lights.
He turns the lights back up. “The lights stay on,” he demands. “The lights always stay on.”
“You want to see me when we make love?” I find my libido shrinking. I don’t like this forcefulness.
He shrugs. “Sure, I guess. Whatever. I just don’t like the lights out.”
I pause, process. “So you’re afraid the the dark?”
He sits on the couch and straightens the remote controls on his coffee table. He draws a swirl in the thin layer of dust there. “I wouldn’t put it that bluntly,” he finally says.
“Like, even when you sleep?” I ask.
The silence taffy stretches around us, answering for him.
“You can go if you want,” he offers. “I get it.”
I study Charles and consider the potential. Such a man couldn’t possibly shred me into a million little pieces. Such a man with such deep rooted scars as his might not even notice the way my heart has been stitched together so many times it could beat in Frankenstein’s monster’s chest.
“I can get a sleep mask,” I finally shrug, reaching for the top button of my blouse.