Chapter 16 Home #2
We've been together for months. We know each other's bodies.
We know the rhythms and the preferences and the small signals.
But tonight is different. Tonight we're married.
Tonight the word husband applies to the man standing in front of me and the word wife applies to me and those words change something, not in how we feel but in the weight of the feeling.
Nathan reaches for me. His hands find the zipper on the back of my dress. He pulls it down slowly, tooth by tooth, and his fingertips trace the length of my spine as it opens. The dress loosens around me and I feel the air on my bare back and his mouth on my shoulder where the fabric just was.
I push the jacket off his shoulders. He drops it on a chair without looking.
I work the buttons on his shirt while he watches me with dark, patient eyes and when the last button opens I push the shirt off and put my hands flat on his chest. His skin is warm and I can feel his heartbeat under my palms, faster than his calm expression would suggest.
My dress falls to the floor. His pants follow.
We stand facing each other in the low light of the room with the garden outside the window and nothing between us.
I've seen Nathan's body many times now but tonight it feels new.
Tonight everything is sharper and more vivid and I want him with an urgency that months of familiarity have done nothing to diminish.
He picks me up. Actually lifts me off the ground with his hands under my thighs, which I forget he can do easily because of his height and his build, and I wrap my legs around his waist and he carries me to the bed and lays me down and the white sheets are cool against my back and then his body covers mine and the sheets are forgotten.
He starts at my mouth and works down. His lips on my jaw.
My throat. The hollow between my collarbones.
Lower. He takes his time with my body in a way that makes me grip the headboard and close my eyes and forget my own name.
His mouth is warm and thorough and he knows exactly what I need because he learned it over months of paying attention the way Nathan pays attention to everything: completely and without distraction.
"Nathan." My voice comes out thin and strained. "I need you."
He moves back up my body. He settles between my thighs and pushes into me and we both exhale.
We know each other's rhythms by now. We know the pace and the pressure and the angle and the way his hand fits against the curve of my hip when he pulls me closer.
But tonight the familiarity makes it better, not routine.
Every movement is confident and precise because we've learned each other and the learning makes the pleasure deeper.
He braces himself above me and I dig my fingers into his shoulders and we move together.
His forehead drops against mine. Our breathing tangles.
I can taste the champagne on his mouth when I kiss him.
His pace builds and I match it and the tension in my body coils tighter with every thrust until I'm gasping and gripping and telling him not to stop, don't stop, right there, and he doesn't stop, he gives me exactly what I'm asking for with steady, deliberate focus until I come apart under him with his name on my lips and my nails in his back.
He follows me over the edge a few moments later. His body tenses above mine and he groans against my neck and his hips jerk and then still and he collapses against me with his full weight and I hold him there, both of us breathing hard, both of us damp and spent and happy.
Afterward we lie tangled together in white sheets that are no longer neatly made. His arm is behind my head. My leg is across his. His hand traces lazy patterns on my hip. The room is dark except for the faint light from the garden.
"Mrs. Johnson," he says. His voice is low and satisfied and still a little rough.
"Mr. Johnson."
"How does it feel?"
"It feels right. It feels really, really right."
He kisses my forehead. Then my mouth. Then my jaw. Then my neck in a way that suggests the evening might not be over yet. I smile against his hair.
"Already?" I say.
"We have all night."
"We have every night."
"Then we'd better get started."
I laugh and he smiles against my skin and he pulls me closer and the second time is slower and longer and even better than the first and when we finally stop it's because my body has nothing left to give and his arms are around me and the room smells like us and the garden outside the window is quiet in the dark.
I fall asleep in a bed and breakfast in the next town on my wedding night with my husband beside me and the ring on my finger and the absolute certainty that I am exactly where I belong.
We close on the house three weeks after the wedding.
The bungalow on the east side of Pinehurst. The one we drove past and parked across the street from and sat in the truck looking at without saying it was the one even though we both knew.
Three bedrooms, which is one more than we need right now and exactly the right number for later.
Front porch with a wooden railing where I can already picture two chairs and a small table for morning coffee.
Mature oak trees in a yard that gets afternoon shade.
A small kitchen with a window above the sink.
An updated bathroom. A one-car garage that needs work.
The VA loan process went smoothly because Nathan had every document organized before we even applied.
He had a folder for the application. A folder for the inspection report.
A folder for the appraisal. A folder for the closing paperwork.
The loan officer told him he was the most prepared applicant she'd worked with in years.
Nathan said, "I like to be ready." I said, "He really does. "
We sign the paperwork at a title office downtown.
Both of our names on the deed. Both of our signatures on the mortgage.
We sign twenty pages of documents side by side at a long conference table and each signature makes this more real and more permanent.
When it's done the title officer hands us the keys. Two copies. One for each of us.
Nathan holds up his key. "We own a house," he says.
"We do."
We drive from the title office to the house.
It's a ten-minute drive through town. Past the salon where Cheryl is working today.
Past the coffee shop on Green Street where Nathan asked me out in a parking lot.
Past Dorothy's place on Birch Street where I lived alone for the first time and learned that solitude is not the same thing as loneliness.
We park in the driveway of our house. Our driveway. Nathan turns off the engine and we sit in the truck for a minute looking at it through the windshield. The porch. The railing. The oak trees. The front door with a brass knocker that came with the house and that Nathan says he's going to polish.
"Ready?" he says.
"Ready."