The Witness

immediate aftermath comprised a very vulnerable time, for body and mind. She’d prided herself on being able to fully participate, and recover her control and faculties quickly. Immediately, really.
    Why was she shaken and … she wasn’t entirely sure what she was experiencing. It might have been because she knew him on a more personal level than the others she’d chosen as bedmates. But all she could be certain of was the experience had been unlike anything she’d known.
    Why did it make her weepy? If she’d been alone, she would have curled up in bed and cried this inexplicable feeling away.
    She wasn’t being rational, or smart. The sex had been very, very good. He’d enjoyed it, too. She liked his company, and maybe that was part of the worry. But she was so
damned
tired of the worry.
    “Just something I do,” she murmured, and got two bottles of cold water from the refrigerator.
    She gnawed on it all the way back upstairs, where Brooks sat propped up in her bed, watching her.
    “I don’t know how to behave.” She blurted it out—there!—and handed him a bottle of water.
    “Is there some standard you’re reaching for?”
    “Normal.”
    “Normal.” He nodded, twisted off the cap, took a couple deep gulps. “Okay, I can help with that. Get back in bed.”
    “I’d like to have sex with you again, but—”
    “Do you want me to show you normal?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then get back in bed.”
    “All right.”
    She laid down beside him, tried not to stiffen when he pulled her to him. But instead of initiating sex, he tucked her in so her head rested on his shoulder and her body curled toward his.
    “This is pretty normal, according to my standards. Or would be if you’d relax.”
    “It’s nice.” She read books, she watched movies. She knew this sort of arrangement took place. But she’d never tried it before. Never wanted to. “It’s comfortable, and your body’s warm.”
    “After the heat we generated, I don’t think I’ll cool off until I’m dead a week.”
    “That’s a joke, and a compliment.” She tipped her head up to look at him, smiled. “So, ha, ha, thank you.”
    “There you go, being funny again.” Taking her hand, he laid it on his heart. “And when I’m too weak to laugh. You turned me inside out, Abigail. That’s another compliment,” he added, when she didn’t respond.
    “I need to think of one for you.”
    “Well, if you’ve got to think about it.”
    “I didn’t mean—” She looked up again, stricken, then caught that gleam in his eyes. “You were teasing me.”
    “See, this is the part, on my scale of normal, where we tell each other how amazing we were. You especially tell me.”
    “Because a man’s ego is often correlated with his sexual prowess.”
    “That’s one way of putting it. Things like you saw God or the earth moved are clichés for a reason.”
    “The earth is in constant motion, so it’s not a good compliment. A better one would be the earth stopped moving, even though that would be impossible, and a disaster if it were possible.”
    “I’ll still take it as a compliment.”
    His hand stroked up and down her back, the way she sometimes stroked Bert. No wonder the dog loved it. Her heartbeat slowed to the rhythm, and everything inside her uncoiled.
    Normal, she thought, was as lovely as she’d always imagined.
    “Tell me one thing,” he said. “Just one thing about you. It doesn’t have to be important,” he added when she tensed. “It doesn’t have to be a secret. Just anything. It could be your favorite color.”
    “I don’t have one, because there are too many. Unless you mean primary colors.”
    “Okay, color’s too complicated. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? I’ll go first. I wanted to be Wolverine.”
    “You wanted to be a wolverine? That’s very strange.”
    “Not
a
wolverine. Wolverine—X-Men.”
    “Oh. I know who that is. The mutant superhero from the graphic novels and movies.”
    “That’s the one.”
    “But how could you be him when he already existed and his existence is fictional?”
    “I was ten, Abigail.”
    “Oh.”
    “How about you?”
    “I was supposed to be a doctor.”
    “Supposed to be?” He waited a moment. “You didn’t want to be a doctor.”
    “No.”
    “Then you didn’t answer the question. What did you want to be?”
    “I was supposed to be a doctor, and thought I’d have to be, so when I was ten, I didn’t think about being anything