PTXperience(s)

Perfectly Aligned

Avi was having a love affair.

He had to keep it quiet, though. He already knew his parents were doing everything they could to keep them apart. Esther, too, had thwarted several of his attempts to slip away unnoticed. It was frustrating to say the least.

Especially when he knew the love of his life was upstairs right now, in his room, waiting for him. So warm, so smooth, so welcoming...

Soon, he thought, trying his best not to obsess about the reunion. Soon they would be together for hours. He just had to be patient.

At least there was food in the meantime.

He filled his plate and ate like the world was ending. It was a bad habit he'd learned from tour—if you didn't eat now there might not be a chance later. His mother tapped him on the elbow more than once, urging him to slow down, but it was difficult with a spread like this one. And also because the sooner dinner was over the sooner he could sneak upstairs and find the one his body longed to rediscover. He positively ached to lay himself between those soft pillows, his skin twitching and shivering as they slid together, a perfect fit he'd never found anywhere else.

"Avi?"

He glanced up from his mashed potatoes. "Yes, Mom?"

"Would you please help me with the dishes?"

He wanted to groan with impatience. Instead he nodded with a smile. "Of course." None of them could know what he was thinking.

After the dishes his father pulled him aside to talk to him, a conversation which Josh joined eventually. Normally Avi loved discussions with his father and Josh, but tonight his heart wasn't in it. He laughed in all the right places, he asked the expected questions and responded with the correct platitudes. He smiled broadly and teased Josh when appropriate and replied with a genuine, "Thanks, Pop," when his father expressed how proud he was of his son. In other words, he put on a very convincing show.

Then, fortuitously, Esther dropped a glass in the kitchen and they all went to investigate.

All but Avi.

The lights were off. He closed the door, his bones almost liquid with anticipation. The evening light filtering through his bedroom sheers bathed his love in a soft ethereal glow. He had never seen a more beautiful sight. Hastily he stripped out of his clothing and approached.

The first touch wrung a moan from him as he lowered himself down gently, slipping between the satiny folds with a reverential sigh and nestling instinctively into the sweet spot he remembered from so many previous nights. This, he thought hazily, was probably what heaven felt like.

"Baby," he growled under his breath, "I'll never leave you again."

And then there was no more talking.

* * *

It wasn't until the shattered glass had been carefully swept out of every corner that Esther noticed who was missing from their impromptu gathering in the kitchen—he always seemed to disappear like this when he was home. And she knew exactly where to find him.

She made no sound as she crept up the stairs and tiptoed to his room. "Avi," she called through his door as loudly as she dared. "Avriel, it is six o'clock in the evening. You can't just vanish into your room. Avi..."

She opened the door.

And then, with a gasp, she slapped her hand over her eyes. "Avi!" she hissed. "You brat! Have some consideration! There are some things a sister shouldn't see!"

Avi, however, made no reply.

Not that she'd expected him to. He slept like the dead.

Quietly she moved to the bed and, doing her best to keep her eyes averted, flipped the blankets up so they covered more of him. Then she slipped out again, shaking her head. Sleep—was that all he ever thought about? Sometimes she wondered if he and his bed were having a love affair.