26. Bonnie #2
Gage asks whether I want more water. I tell him yes and watch him get it. I know the shape of his shoulders beneath a clean shirt. I know the little sound he makes when he sits after a long day. I have missed wanting him without fear of what it will cost me tomorrow.
After dinner, we leave the dishes in the sink. He sits beside me on the sofa and tells me about a diner he found near his new place. The eggs are good, he says. The coffee is terrible.
“We’ve eaten worse,” I tell him.
“The morning we got married?”
“Those eggs were fine. You were upset about the battery.”
“I was upset because you told the waitress I’d stalled the truck from nerves.”
“She gave us pie.”
“You’ve never regretted a lie that got you pie.”
I lean against him.
He turns toward me when I lift my face. I kiss him before he asks what I am thinking. His arm comes around me, and I move closer until there is no polite space left between us.
For a while, kissing is enough to occupy all my attention. He knows when I want him nearer because I pull him nearer. I know when I have surprised him because he forgets to be gentle and kisses me back as hard as I have been wanting him to.
His arm is around me, and I have chosen every part of the evening so far. I can feel how easy it would be to turn toward him and keep going. Now I am shy about letting him know that I planned it.
“I changed the sheets this morning,” I say.
He looks at me. Then he smiles so slowly that I want to cover my face.
“Did you?”
“I’m regretting telling you.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“Don’t look so pleased.”
“I can’t help it.”
I laugh against his shoulder. He holds me while I do, and the embarrassment becomes something I can enjoy.
“I nearly asked you to stay after dancing,” I tell him.
“I nearly asked.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You were tired. I thought if you wanted to, you’d tell me.”
“I might have.”
He brushes his thumb along my sleeve. “I know that now.”
I look at the place where his shirt opens at the neck. His skin is browned above the collar and lighter beneath it. I have touched him there so often that remembering it feels almost physical. I put my fingers against him, and he stops moving his thumb.
“I’m telling you now,” I say.
“I heard.”
He leans toward me, then waits because I have started to speak again.
“I don’t want you to be so careful with me that I can’t tell whether you want this.”
His answer comes before I finish looking up. “I want it.”
The words make me smile. He sees, and some of the uncertainty leaves his face.
“I’ve been trying to get through dinner without staring at you.”
“You weren’t doing very well.”
“No.”
I touch his cheek. “Neither was I.”
He kisses me with enough feeling that I forget the next thing I meant to say. I can hear myself laugh when he draws me closer. It is a relieved, startled sound, and I like that he has heard it.
We take our time on the sofa. I discover that I can move away to look at him without ending the moment. I can ask for another kiss. I can tell him I liked the last one without feeling I have given away more than I intended.
At one point he pushes my hair back because it has fallen between us. I remember him doing the same thing at a restaurant years ago. I thought we were being discreet. Beryl cleared her throat from the other side of the table until we remembered we had brought her with us.
I tell him why I am laughing.
“She made me pay for dinner,” he says.
“You offered.”
“I was trying to get her to leave.”
I kiss him because the familiar selfishness of wanting to be alone with me is something I can welcome tonight.
When I draw away again, he rests his forehead against mine.
“I want you to come to bed with me,” I say.
His answer is quiet and immediate. “Yes.”
I stand and take his hand. The bedroom door is open.
My quilt is on the bed, a book folded facedown on the nightstand, a hair tie beneath the lamp where I left it yesterday.
I have lived here long enough that the room carries my habits.
Bringing him into it feels different from returning to a bed where he has been waiting for me to take my old place.
He pauses beside the bed. I turn to him and kiss him again, then begin unbuttoning his shirt. My fingers are less steady than I want them to be. He helps with the last button and stands there with his hands open at his sides, letting me look.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” I admit.
“So have I.”
“More than was useful.”
“I got very little done after that parking lot.”
I am pleased enough to kiss him for that alone.
We undress slowly, pausing to kiss. When I hesitate over my own shirt, he waits while I decide what I want. My body has changed since we last made love. I know the changes when I dress in the morning, when I feed Cricket, when I see myself in the bathroom mirror.
I want him to want me while I am here in this body.
He kisses my shoulder after the shirt comes away. I close my eyes, then open them because I want to see him. He bends to kiss my cheek.
“Come here,” I say.
We lie down together on the bed. I reach past him and pull the nightstand drawer open far enough for him to see the box of condoms. I bought it on Monday along with diapers and a bag of oranges, and I blushed at a cashier half my age.
“You planned,” he says.
“I changed the sheets. Of course I planned.”
He looks at the box, then back at me, and the skin prickles all down my arms. My breath goes shallow.
My stomach drops like it does at the top of a run, and I press my heels into the mattress to hold still.
I am thinking about the woman I am now, the man beside me, and how long I have wanted to be touched without having to decide the rest of my life first.
He starts at my shoulder again and works down, and I stop him at my breasts with both hands on his shoulders.
“Not those. They’re not mine right now. She’ll want them at midnight, and if you start them going I’ll be leaking on you.”
“All right.” He kisses my belly instead, low, where the skin is soft and marked in a way it was not the last time he saw it. He does not hurry past it. “Here?”
“Here’s fine.”
“Good. I want here.”
He says it into my skin. Then his hand goes down between my legs, and I hear myself make a sound before he has done anything yet.
“Bonnie.”
“I know.”
“You’re already wet.”
“Since the bread.”
His fingers move and I forget the bread. He is slow, and I want faster, and I cover his hand with mine and press. He learns the pressure in two strokes. He always was a quick study when it was something he wanted. My knee comes up. The sheet bunches under my hip and I do not fix it.
“Tell me,” he says.
“Like that. Don’t change anything.”
He doesn’t. I come with his fingers on my clit and his mouth on my belly, quick and small, the first one in months, and I laugh at the end of it because I did not expect it to be that easy.
“That was fast,” he says.
“That was you.”
“Are you sore anywhere?” he asks. “I need to know before I’m inside you.”
“No. I’m nervous, and I want you anyway. Get the box.”
He gets it. His fingers are clumsy on the packet, so I take it and tear it open for him. He rolls the condom on, watching my face, and I pull him back down to me.
He kisses me while he moves between my knees, and the first push in is slow enough that I feel every bit of it.
I forgot the size of him. My body has to decide it wants this before it lets him in. I told my doctor I was fine. I am mostly fine. I’m also holding my breath.
“Hey.”
“Keep going.”
“You went somewhere.”
“I’m here. It’s been a while.” I press my palm to his chest, over the place his heart is going hard. “Go slow and don’t stop.”
He goes slow. He watches my face the whole way in. When he is all the way there he stops moving and drops his head beside mine on the pillow, breathing hard.
“All right?”
“Yes.” It comes out higher than my speaking voice. “Yes. You feel...”
I don’t finish. He kisses me instead and starts to move. The stretch turns into the good thing, the pull low in my belly that I have not felt since before Cricket. My hips lift to meet him before I decide to lift them.
“That’s it,” he says against my mouth.
“Don’t be careful with me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. I can feel you being careful.” My fingers dig into his back. “I want you. I want all of you, not the version that’s afraid of me.”
He goes still for half a second. Then he takes my hand from his back, puts it down between us, presses my own fingers to my clit with his over them, and moves.
Oh.