Broken Country (Reese’s Book Club)

12. Before

Before

The inside of Gabriel’s tent is like nothing I’ve ever seen, it feels like entering an alternate universe. There’s a double mattress made up with sheets and blankets and a very regal-looking bedspread in red velvet; I can imagine it topping Louis XIV’s four-poster. Sheepskin rugs cover the floor, there’s a little bedside cabinet with a water decanter and two glasses; he even has a small bookcase filled with paperbacks. He has pinned swathes of bright-colored silk to the ceiling and there are candles burning in glass lanterns in every corner of the tent.

“What do you think?” he says.

“It’s like Arabian Nights . If it were me, I’d never sleep anywhere else.”

Gabriel sits down on the bed and holds out a hand to me. “Come here.”

I’ve done nothing but imagine this moment and now that it is here, I freeze.

“I can’t,” I say, in a tight voice. “I’m too nervous.”

“Don’t be. We’re just talking. We might progress to holding hands at some point. But only if you want to.”

I sit down next to him and, as promised, Gabriel begins to talk. He tells me about his dog, Molly, a Labrador who lived until she was sixteen.

“She was the soppiest dog you could imagine, loved everyone, including a couple of burglars who climbed in through the kitchen window. Just wagged her tail while they lifted the family silver.”

He picks up a novel which is open, face down, beside the bed and holds it up for me to inspect. Swann’s Way , the first volume of Proust’s novel In Search of Lost Time.

“I only chose it so I could show off in my tutorials next term, but it’s better than I thought. Quite funny at times.”

Now he smiles as he looks at me. “Sometimes,” Gabriel says, “it’s almost light before I fall asleep, I’m so busy thinking about you. And all the things I’d like to do with you.”

“What things?”

In answer Gabriel takes my face in his hands and kisses me. A long, slow, intense kiss. “Better?” he says, drawing back.

“Yes.”

We lie back on the bed and turn toward each other, faces inches apart.

Gabriel reaches out to trace a line from my forehead to my nose, resting his finger above my top lip. “I think about this little dip here,” he says. “How it would be exactly the right shape and size for the tip of my finger.”

Gabriel takes hold of my hand.

“Just because you’re staying the night, don’t think that means we have to do anything more than this.”

“What if I want to?” I say.

“Then we would discuss it.”

“I want to.”

He looks at me, half laughing, but then his face changes and the desire I see in him ignites something in me. A sort of daring, a need.

“I really want to.”

I would freeze this moment, if I could, the two of us watching each other hungrily, knowing and also not quite knowing what is going to come next.

Gabriel and I continue kissing, and it’s me who takes things further, unbuttoning my shirt, reaching out to take his hand and putting it on my breast.

Everything is done slowly. The removing of my clothes, one by one. Then his. The two of us naked in each other’s arms, the electricity of that. Taking our time to look and appreciate the secrets of each other unclothed. The hardness of his muscles beneath his smooth, suntanned skin, the line of black hair that runs from his navel to his groin, the surprise of him aroused, his gasp when I run my finger lightly across his penis.

His touch is hesitant and questioning as he traces patterns across my skin but our bodies begin to drive us, the path starkly clear. I pull him down on top of me and we kiss more passionately. It’s instinct that makes me lift my hips to meet his and I feel the hardness of his erection pressing against me before he draws back.

“No, Beth, we shouldn’t,” Gabriel whispers.

“Why?” I whisper back.

“You know why.”

“Just for a second?”

He presses the tip of himself inside me.

We begin to move against each other slowly and soon we’re giving in. It wasn’t planned; it was inevitable. And it feels good until Gabriel thrusts more deeply inside me and I yelp in pain.

“Oh, God, I’m sorry.” He tries to pull away, but I clamp my thighs around him.

“Stay,” I whisper.

And so, he does.

What can I say about these long moments where we just look at each other, allowing ourselves to feel the sensation of him inside me, the two of us connected in the most intimate way? I’d imagined it so many times but it’s nothing like I thought. My heart is so full of feeling, emotions I cannot name, neither joy nor sorrow but something in between. This is us , I think. This is us.

After a while I move against him again, just a little.

“Is it OK?” he says. “Am I hurting you? Should we stop?”

“Gabriel? Please stop talking.”

“I’ll try.”

We smile at each other. Part of me still can’t believe it is happening, as if I am outside looking in.

The pain begins to shift into something more pleasurable, a kind of ache. We seem to fit perfectly together and we find a slow, gentle rhythm, rocking back and forth in our makeshift bed. Not once do his eyes ever leave my face.

“I’d stay here forever if I could,” he says.

Afterward we marvel at the fact it was the first time for both of us and yet we seemed to know exactly how to be. We lie together, heartbeats fading, wrapped up so tightly in each other’s arms I cannot see his face when Gabriel says: “By the way, I love you. I think I did from the first moment I saw you.”

“Yes,” I say, because I believe it is true.

This is a love story and it is better, by far, than any of the ones I have dreamed up in the past. If I’m allowed a wish, just one, then it is this: I wish for our story to have a happy ending.