Savor It

Chapter 20. Sage

I’m pacing back and forth across the tile in my sunroom three days after kissing Fisher (again), my mom’s advice journal in one hand and my phone in the other, following the oscillating path of the fan I plugged in. I’m stuck on one of Mom’s notes that says, People can’t follow your rules if you don’t make them clear. This applies in all your relationships: parenting, love, and friendships alike. If you don’t tell people what is and isn’t okay with you, they have no way of knowing.

I finally hit Send on the text that says, Maybe we need to establish some rules, and force myself to sit.

I bounce back up when I realize I need to elaborate. For us, I send prematurely, too, and utter a curse. For our… potential… beneficial… situation. There. That should be clear. I’m being respectful and completely chill about this.

I met Wren at the bakery yesterday morning before opening, to finally get her caught up in person on everything rather than some nondescriptive texts exchanged in something resembling a game of phone tag. We are both notoriously terrible at thorough, consistent conversations over text, and I wanted real-time advice.

“So, what is it you’re afraid of, exactly?” she asked when I told her about his proposition.

“I mean, it couldn’t go anywhere, anyway,” I said. “He’s here for a summer. It’s temporary.”

“So, I ask again,” she said, pulling things down from the walk-in and sliding them into the display case. “What are you afraid of? Specifically.”

I pushed up to sit on the counter. “Is it not obvious?” I asked, irritated with myself. “I’m afraid I’ll catch feelings.”

She nodded thoughtfully and came to lean beside me. “Did I ever tell you that Ellis is the one who helped me perfect the scones?” she asked.

I frowned and shook my head.

“For weeks, I fiddled with them. Sam was three, and we’d just moved out of your house and into the little basement apartment at my parents’. And I swear to you, Sage, I had to have made him eat hundreds of them with me. I wanted my own recipe and my own thing on the menu. It wasn’t important, but it was important to me, you know?” She cleared her throat. “And you remember, it’s not like we had any money back then or anything, but once I got the recipe cracked, Ellis went out and put the deposit down on the industrial mixer we’ve still got. You’d think he’d have been happy to not have to eat any more of them, but instead, he got me something to make huge batches at a time.” She looked at me and quietly added, “Every single time I use that thing, I remember him carrying Sam around our insanely tiny kitchen, always shirtless and always eating my ingredients or sticking their fingers in whatever batter. And I remember how good it felt.” She bunched her shoulders up. “Does it make shit hurt worse now? Sometimes. Most of the time.” She sighed. “Always.

“But,” she kept going, “I still wouldn’t change any of it. It’s cliché, but true.”

She went on to say that if she were me, she would try to establish some guidelines to mitigate the potential pain. Like, avoid getting too personal too often or limit our benefits to once or twice a week. All of it sounded unnatural to me, but I figured I’d open up the conversation with Fisher, at least.

The only thing that does feel natural is wanting it.

I scream when there’s a knock on the glass. “Shit!”

“Sorry,” Fisher laughs, leaning against the doorframe. “I was coming back from the trail when I, uh, got your text, so just figured I’d pop by.” He sounds out of breath.

“Why are you so sweaty?” my mouth asks without clearing it by my brain first. It comes out like an accusation.

He grins lopsidedly, and my stomach sharply dips. “I went running on the beach and did some push-ups and shit. But if you’re asking why I did that, I dunno? I guess because I’m on a journey of self-discovery and healing, and it seems like that’s the sort of thing one does during one of those expeditions.”

My shocked bark of laughter dies when he lifts the end of his shirt up to wipe off his brow. I glimpse a light line of hair sweeping down his stomach, a vein trailing up from his shorts. I spin on the ball of my foot and occupy myself with putting down my phone and sliding the journal away.

“That’s good,” I say. “For the race, anyhow.” I turn back to find him five feet closer, playing with the leaves on one of my peace lilies.

“Right,” he agrees. “Still want to keep training this week?”

A shot of nerves and anticipation bleeds through me. “Yes. Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugs innocently. “Just checking. The only days that I can’t are Wednesdays.”

“How come?” I ask. Then—“Shit, ignore that. You don’t need to explain yourself.”

He crosses his arms before he reaches back to rub his neck. “It’s just—”

“No, Fisher, it’s fine. You don’t need to explain. Really.”

“I, uh… I have my standing appointment with a therapist Wednesday mornings. I started seeing her a few weeks after Indy showed up. She goes to her separately, too.”

The sudden urge to leap on him has me gripping the nearest windowpane. The way that he’s trying so hard to do everything right all the time with Indy and doesn’t even comprehend that about himself has an amp plugged into my sex drive for some reason. He makes me feel like I’ve got some sort of nerve condition. Fluttering spasms all over. Maybe I should just leap on him and we don’t actually have to talk all this out first.

“I keep telling people we need a therapist to set up shop here in Spunes,” I say, voice rickety.

“Sage,” he says, and oh no. He’s coming closer. He’s closer, and I can smell him. And of course he smells even better than usual, because even though he’s sweaty, I am made of nothing logical right now, only hormones and a lust-filled haze. “You said you wanted to talk about rules?”

Rules. Yes, rules. No rules. The word starts to sound foreign in my mind the more I repeat it. There’s a term for that, I think? Semantic satiation. I can remember that, but rules? I don’t remember any of them.

I feel his stare land on my mouth. I lean into the glass at my back, feel my palms start to heat against it. His hand comes up beside my ear, and he braces himself onto it, tilting over me.

My chest lifts and falls almost comically, like I’m some distressed maiden trapped in a corset, but really I’m just trapped under my own skin and bones, desperate to fuse with his. His teeth meet his lower lip like he’s trying not to smile.

“Must be a pretty sizable list,” he says, his head and smile tilting.

“List?” I echo back dazedly.

“The rules you came up with,” he explains. “If it took three days to assemble, I’m guessing it’s big.”

He slowly runs the backs of his fingers down my shirt over my waist, over my hip at the top of the peasant skirt I yanked on this morning.

“Tell me your first rule, Byrd,” he says, voice low, and god, for the life of me, I still can’t think of one. All remaining thought whirrs and flees when the tip of his finger hooks inside my waistband. His chest works hard enough to push into mine now. “Do I need to tease it out of you?” he asks, his voice shaking through my core. Before I can answer, he says, “No, I don’t think you’d like to be teased.”

“I wouldn’t?” I struggle not to sound incredulous or to shout something brainless like, Yes, huh!

“No, Sage. I think you’d respond better to being very intentionally worked up,” he tells me. “Should I tell you how?”

I hope my nodded reply is more understated than I feel.

“I’d start by asking if it was against a rule to tell you I’ve been thinking about what you taste like every day since the library,” he says. He runs that same fingertip side to side in a path on my bare skin. I swallow with difficulty and bite my lip to stifle the noisy chuff of my breath. We both watch his hand continue to trace back and forth between us. “I’d have to see if there was a rule about me figuring out everywhere else you have freckles, too,” he says. I suck in a gasp through my teeth when his erection grazes my hip. “Am I allowed to work out everything you like? What makes you turn that pretty color here?” His other hand comes down the glass, and his thumb glides under my collarbone like he’s painting my blush with it himself. “What makes you wet?”

A mortifying noise whimpers up from my throat. But when my back bows and my hips lift against him, he looses a short, broken groan of his own.

“Kiss me,” I say. It sounds like, Please, please, please.

He brings both his palms around my ribs and lowers down to me, painstakingly slowly. Not teasing, my ass.

We both hum when our lips finally meet. His tongue slips against mine, and I smile at the overwhelming relief, gripping him closer. The respite quickly burns off into wild need, and the skin on my upper back makes a rubbing squeal against the glass. His palms cup beneath my breasts, and I groan, trying to arch into him.

“Tell me what you want, Sage,” he says. His teeth clip at a soft spot at my neck.

“That,” I say. “You telling me what you want.” I squeeze my thighs together at his responding sound. “I don’t want to think,” I add. I want to chase this pleasure until I feel like it’s running through me.

He leans back to look at me, eyes glazed and pupils blown. I tip up and nip at his ear, my teeth toying with the metal. He pins me back into the wall of glass and rewards me with a searing kiss.

“Hold up your skirt,” he says into my lips. He starts gathering it in fistfuls up my legs, his mouth still grazing mine.

When he reaches the tops of my thighs, I clutch the fabric in my trembling fingers, watch him settle down to his knees before me even as I feel like mine might give out.

“Oh, Sagebyrd,” he says with a humorless laugh. “As much as I like your crazy robes, I think I love these more.” His thumb slips inside the plain cotton thong.

I somehow flush hotter over him complimenting my robes. “Yes,” I say, “but—” I hiss when he nuzzles and kisses my thigh, his palms running up and down in soothing motions. My fingers ache to drop the skirt and comb through his hair. “One can’t grocery shop in panties alone.”

He ignores my quip, centering all his focus on the rest of me. His rough hands knead my calves, his mouth finding a sensitive spot beside one of my knees that makes it nearly cave. I’m suddenly jealous of anyone who’s ever watched him cook before, if his concentration looks anything nearly as devoted or passionate as it does right now.

The first warm press of his mouth through wet fabric makes me buck and tremble. His thumb follows his path and drags and circles. He gently tugs the material down my thighs, patiently and sweetly lifting both of my feet to step out of it.

“Okay?” he rasps.

No. I feel myself being irrevocably changed, I think. I’m more than or something other than okay. “Yes,” I say.

“You’ll tell me,” he says, planting a sucking kiss at the juncture of my hip, “if you don’t like something.”

“Yes,” I agree.

He parts me with his thumbs and sweeps his tongue through me in a hot lick that wrenches a sob from my chest. “You’ll tell me if you do,” he says as if the noises he’s stealing from me aren’t evidence enough.

There’s nothing rushed or measured about how he savors me after that. When I clumsily try to chase a certain rhythm, he hooks my leg over his shoulder and takes over. He hums that sound I love against me, and it feels like it’s inside me. It’s fucking euphoric. He laps at my nerve endings until I can’t tell if I’m peaking or plummeting, until eventually it’s both, until it’s cresting over me and sweeping under me, until I’m wrung out and breathless and pulsing all over.

I’ve dropped the skirt at some point and gripped his hair, so I let my hands slacken and smooth along his scalp. He rests his forehead against my stomach and threads my languid limbs back into my underwear, rising up from his knees as he pulls them into place. Our chests press into a tight hug, and I realize he’s just as breathless as I am, his heart pounding just as wildly. I softly kiss along his jaw and tentatively palm him through his shorts. He makes a ragged, splintered sound.

“I didn’t expect this,” he grits before he takes my lips with his. “It’s almost time for Indy to get home. We don’t…” Another kiss. “Don’t have time.”

Something pricks behind my breastbone, but I smile. “I didn’t expect you today, either,” I say. “Stay,” I add before I think otherwise. I grind against his considerable length like I’m helpless against that, too. “Let me—”

“No,” he gruffly whispers, but he smiles back. “No, I just mean it’s okay. We’ll have time, Sage.” His throat bounces on a swallow. “I want to take my time.”

In the effervescent aftermath of the orgasm, his words make me inexplicably sad. We have time, but how much of it?

“Still, stay or… come back for dinner?” I ask. “It’s my monthly dinner with my brothers tonight. Sam’s gonna be here, too, so Indy wouldn’t be miserable.” I’m not sure why asking this feels quite so vulnerable when he just had his tongue inside me.

A slash of white parts his face in a soft grin. “Okay,” he says, then kisses me abruptly once more, like he can’t help himself. “What are you making me?”

We end up making pizzas together on the grill using the store-bought dough I have in the fridge, topped with a mishmash of items from the garden that Fisher convinces me to combine.

“You sure you want pizza?” I ask him at some point while he helps me assemble. “I imagine you’ve had some of the best pizza in the world before. Doesn’t it make the more basic stuff bland?”

He picks up my glass of cheap white wine and takes a hearty swig. He might’ve dealt me a release earlier, but he’s the one who looks more relaxed, somehow. He moves around my kitchen with the ease of someone who’s in control, more at home in one.

“I think the best pizza I ever had was my senior prom night in nowhere Nebraska,” he says, his face tightening with a laugh. “The cheese was like rubber and the sauce was like acid and the crust was undercooked in the middle and burnt on the edge.”

“That sounds disgusting.”

“It was. But … there was this girl.” He gives me a sly look. Sun-kissed brow, wet lips, five o’clock shadow, and a shiny earring make him look like a rogue buccaneer. I wonder if he actually does have some hidden tattoos.

“Of course there was,” I say.

“My parents basically insisted I still go to prom even though I did not have a date. I—god, this is embarrassing—but I think my mom bought me a boutonniere and everything.” He winces. “But this girl, she was a mean thing all through elementary and middle school and a real monster in high school, too. She was also the prom queen—Lauren Chilton. Made everyone call her ‘LC.’ Her prom king date was a special kind of prick, too, but long story short, she caught him making out with the captain of the girls’ lacrosse team at the dance and started flirting with me.”

“Aha, so you already had history with that whole make-the-ex-jealous thing, huh?” I playfully say.

“Anyway,” he brushes past, “I tried to play it cool the whole night and not act like all my teenage dreams were coming true. She asked me to take her home and wanted me to run her by the local waffle house on the way. But without the dark gymnasium or the music or dancing, I was too nervous to eat in front of the girl. My stomach was in knots.” He blows out a laugh. “She made out with me for a solid seven seconds when I got her to her driveway and touched me through my slacks for a nanosecond, until my stomach immediately played a whole orchestra of ominous noises, and she quickly lost interest.” He pops a marionberry in his mouth. “I pulled into the first convenience store and ate a slice of pizza that’d probably been under a heat lamp for ten hours, and that there is the story of my first kiss.”

So the terrible pizza was the best because of the memory with it. It’s no wonder he puts so much of his own value on how good he is at his career. Food once related to experiences for him.

“Hey, before I forget to ask, where do you get these?” he says when he eats another berry. “Mine don’t taste the same.”

“Those,” I tell him, “grow right here at the back of our properties. They’re marionberries. You’re probably buying regular blackberries.”

He frowns and gives the thing a dirty look like it’s made him feel stupid, and I laugh and kiss his chin.

Silas, Ellis, Sam, and Indy show up not long after. We sit in the evening sun, eating and drinking and laughing. Silas and Ellis overshare more of my embarrassing tales, and I counterattack with a lifetime’s arsenal of my own. Indy and Sam eventually leave us and go for a walk down the trail. As the sun fades, the sky turns pink.

“That boy’s in trouble,” Silas says with a nod toward Sam in the distance.

Ellis levels a severe frown his way.

“Why do you say that?” I ask. I move to collect the empty beer bottles on the table, but Fisher presses me back into my chair by my shoulder and starts grabbing them himself.

“Anyone else want anything?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Silas says to him. “I want you to cook for us. I want some crazy shit, too. Something with foam and sugar bubbles and dry ice or something.”

“Jesus, Silas,” I groan.

Fisher gives him a passive response and carries the detritus inside.

“Why’d you say that about Sam?” I ask Silas again, backhanding him across the shoulder for good measure.

“Because,” he replies, “he looks just like Ell did with Wren. Look where that landed him.”

“Shut the fuck up, Silas,” Ellis says, but there’s no burn in it.

“According to Indy, they’re just friends,” I say. It’s none of our business what they do behind the scenes. “Wren and Ellis were in love.”

“Can we talk about literally anything else?” Ellis says.

“I’m just saying,” Silas urges, “it’s been four years. It’s time to get back out there.”

And this is where the conversation always dies. Because not all hearts break, or heal, the same. Ellis braided his life with Wren’s in too many ways not to still be frayed.

Fisher squeezes the back of my neck once when he rejoins us outside. There’s a far-off voice in a distant room of my mind that whispers to me again, Danger! You’re capsized and in over your head! Don’t get so comfortable in your inverted world that you can’t turn yourself to rights!

Another one of Mom’s phrases chases it at its heels: Don’t worry so much about the clouds that you miss the flowers at your feet.

Flowers might fade, but I think I’ll enjoy them while they’re here.