24. Willow
— ? —
Willow
I sprained a wrist once before, falling off the Athertons’ wall when I was ten, and my mother put a bag of peas on it and told me to stop being theatrical.
I did not have a choice about that one. I had a choice about this one, and I would like it noted that I would make it again, and that I have said so to four separate people who have each looked at me as though I had said something sad.
“It’s only the left,” I said, in the car, coming back from the clinic with the splint on.
“It is.”
“So it’s fine. Nothing happens on the left.”
“Willow, you’re left-handed.”
“Nothing important happens on the left.”
Michael kept his eyes on the road and said nothing, which is a thing he has learned to do this season and which I resent enormously.
Archie was checked over by a woman who has known him since he was born and who pronounced him entirely unbothered and slightly overexcited. He has since told the story of the fog to everybody he has met, and in his version there is a whale.
Michael moved in on the Tuesday and did not describe it as moving in, which was clever, because if he had described it I would have had to have a position on it.
He simply did not leave.
The first night I assumed he would go once Archie was down. He did not. He slept on the bad sofa with the spring and made no remark about the spring, and in the morning he was in Ruth’s kitchen doing something with a pan and there was a chart on the fridge.
An actual chart.
“What is that?”
“That’s your medication.”
“That is a spreadsheet.”
“It’s a colorful chart.”
“Michael, there are columns.”
“Three columns and one of them is only times,” he said, without turning around. “Green means you’ve had it. Amber means it’s due. Red means you told me you’d do it in a minute, which you have now said twice, and which we both know is not a real answer.”
Do not laugh at the fridge. He will take it as a mandate.
I laughed at the fridge.
I cannot open anything, cannot do buttons, cannot pick up a two-year-old, which is the one that actually got me, because he came at me at a run on the second morning and I had to put a hand out and stop my own son, and he did not understand it and went off and got cross about it in another room.
Michael did not say anything about that either. He went in and dealt with him, and came back out and put the kettle on, and by the afternoon Archie had a new arrangement in which he climbs onto the sofa first and then onto me, which he now performs with the air of a man who invented it.
I would not have known about the first part at all if Pia had not told me, days later, that he went out to the shed and sat on a bucket for a while first.
The rota went on the fridge next to the chart.
“That’s Levi.”
“That’s Levi on Thursdays.”
“You’ve written Levi on my fridge.”
“Levi on Thursdays, Pia on Fridays and every other Sunday, Sal for anything that needs a car, and Marie Rand has offered twice and I’ve said yes on your behalf and I’d do it again.”
“You’ve said yes to Marie Rand.”
“She’s already sent something. It’s in the fridge in a jar and I don’t know what it is and I’m frightened of it.”
“That’ll be the beach plum.”
“It’s got a color, Willow.”
“It’s the best thing on this island and if you don’t want it I’ll have it with a spoon.”
“You can’t hold a spoon.”
“I can hold a spoon.”
“You cannot hold a spoon. You demonstrated that at breakfast, you were furious about it, and then you blamed the spoon.” He put the jar on the counter, out of reach, in a way that was not accidental. “I’ll do you some on toast.”
“I don’t want toast.”
“You want the jam and you can’t get the lid off,” said Michael, “and we are both going to have to live with how that makes us feel.”
Levi came on the Thursday and stood in my kitchen with his hat actually in his hands, which I have never seen and hope never to see again.
“The radio-”
“Levi.”
“I knew about the radio. Everybody knew about the radio. I’ve known about that radio for years and I have made a joke of it in front of you, and your boy was on that deck.”
“You put the anchor out,” I said. “You got everything shiny on the roof and you banged a wrench in threes until your brother came out of the fog, and you did it for an hour before I even understood what you were doing.”
“That’s the minimum.”
“That’s seamanship, and I have been on that island my whole life, and I know the difference.
” I got the kettle on with the wrong hand and made a mess of it.
“Sit down. You’re having a cup of tea and you’re going to tell me what you said to him on the way in, because Sal has already told me the summary and I want the words. ”
Levi sat down.
He has fixed the radio. He fixed it that week and then he took it out and fixed it again because he did not trust the first go. Pia says he has been down to look at it twice since and has told nobody why.
I want to describe the third afternoon, because that is when it changed.
He had the sleeves up. That is the whole crime, in the end. He had the sleeves up and he was doing the dishes one item at a time, facing away, and I was on the sofa with a book I was not reading, and it had been raining and had stopped.
He did everything with his hands that week. Everything. Buttons, jars, the pot lid, the boy’s shoes, the strapping when it got wet, my hair when I could not get it off my face and would not ask.
He never once made it a moment. He never once looked over to see whether I had noticed.
I had noticed. I had noticed for days and I was extremely tired of noticing.
“Michael.”
“Yeah.”
“Come here.”
He turned around with a plate in his hand and he had that face on, the careful one, the one that has been on since the fog.
“Are you all right? Is it-”
“It’s not the wrist.”
He put the plate down very slowly.
“I’d like to know this is a thing you want, and not a thing you’re doing instead of the other thing.”
God, I thought. You infuriating, infuriating man.
“It’s a thing I want.”
“Say it out loud, then. All of it. I’m not moving until you do, because I have got exactly one thing left in this world and it is that I did not push.”
So I said it out loud, plainly, with nothing on it, one-handed and cross about it.
“I want you. Not because I’m trying to outrun anything. Not instead of talking. I just want you. Come here and have me properly.”
He built it first. A cushion under the strapped arm, tucked in, checked twice, his fingers gentle around the edges of the splint like it might bruise if he breathed wrong. My hair off my face, smoothed back with both palms and tucked behind my ears.
The rug straightened with his foot, because I would have looked at it otherwise and he knows that about me.
He turned me along that sofa with a care that made my throat tight, eased my clothes away like they mattered, put one of my legs up over the back of it and got the other over his shoulder, and only then did he stop being careful.
And then he took my good hand.
He did not move it out of the way. He laced his fingers through it, fitting every gap, and pressed the back of it flat into the cushion beside my hip and kept it there, and I understood what he had done about four seconds too late, which was that I now had nothing in the world to hold on to.
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” he agreed, almost smiling against the inside of my thigh, and did not let go.
He was unhurried in a way that ought to be illegal.
He kissed the hinge of my knee first. Then higher.
The soft place where my leg met my body.
He kept his eyes shut at the beginning, like looking might undo him, and when he finally put his mouth on me it was with a quiet, wrecked sound that went straight through my ribs.
He did not perform one single second of it.
He simply stayed, tongue slow and sure, lips soft, learning me all over again like we had all the time in the world.
Every time I tried to get my hand free he tightened his fingers through mine and carried on, thumb stroking once across my knuckles in something that felt dangerously like comfort.
I had nothing to grip and nothing to bite and one arm in a strap. I got my heel into his back, and he made a sound against me that told me he had worked all of that out beforehand.
“You’re so lovely like this,” he murmured against me, voice low and rough. “All warm and open for me. I’ve missed the taste of you. Missed how sweet you get when I take my time.”
He hummed and I did not stop until I was shaking, until the first climax rolled through me long and helpless while he gentled me through every wave with soft kisses to my clit, my thigh, the trembling place just above. Only when I got his name out in a shape that meant more did he rise.
He came up the length of me carefully, still holding my good hand, and settled between my legs with his weight on his forearms so he would not jostle the splint. His shirt was ruined, hair destroyed, mouth shining. He looked at me like I was the only solid thing left in the room.
“Still yes?” he asked, forehead against mine.
“Still yes. All the way through. I want to feel you.”
He kissed me then deeply, tasting of me, and reached down to free himself.
The blunt head of him pressed against me, slick from his mouth and my own want.
He pushed in by degrees, watching my face the entire time, stopping whenever my breath caught so I could adjust around the thick, perfect stretch of him.
“There,” he breathed when he was seated all the way. “God, Willow. You feel like coming home.”
He laced our fingers tighter and began to move, deep rolls of his hips that filled me completely and then withdrew almost all the way before sliding home again.
A devastating rhythm of a man who had decided the only thing that mattered was being inside his wife on a rainy afternoon and making sure she felt cherished while he did it.
“You don’t have to be that gentle,” I said, voice unsteady, heels pressing into his back. “I’m not going to break.”
“I know.” He kissed the corner of my mouth, then my cheekbone, then the place beneath my ear. “I want to be. Let me. You feel too good to hurry. Look at you taking me so beautifully. My gorgeous girl.”
The sweetness of it undid me more than roughness ever could. He kept talking in that low voice between kisses.
“Harder now,” I told him when the heat started building again. “Please. I want to feel you tomorrow.”
He gave me what I asked for without ever turning careless. Deeper strokes, a little more weight, the angle adjusted until every thrust dragged over the place that made my vision blur. His free hand slid beneath my hips to hold me exactly where he needed me. Our joined hands never separated.
“Come with me,” he said against my mouth, voice fraying. “I want to feel you. Want to remember this. You under me, holding on, letting me love you properly. You’re everything, Willow. Everything.”
I broke first, clenching around him in long, sweet pulses that pulled him over with me. He buried his face in my neck and came with a shattered sound, spilling deep inside me while his hips kept moving in helpless circles, like he couldn’t bear to stop being as close as humanly possible.
He stayed there through every aftershock, still holding my hand, still kissing whatever skin he could reach until both of us were breathing like we had run a long way and finally stopped.
When he eventually eased out he did it slowly, apologetically, and immediately gathered me against him on the narrow sofa so the splint stayed safely cushioned between us.
His shirt was a lost cause. My hair was everywhere.
He pulled the throw over our hips and kept our fingers laced across his chest.
He asked for nothing at all.
“Michael.”
“No.”
“You haven’t heard the sentence.”
“I’ve heard it,” he said, mouth against my hair.
“You were going to offer to take care of me in return. You’ve got one hand, and you were on that water for two hours, and if I let this become you paying me back it turns into a transaction, and I have spent a season trying to get out of a marriage where everything was paid for.
I just wanted to be with you. That’s all this was. ”
“That is the most annoying speech-”
“It is the most annoying speech I have ever given, and I have given some.” He lifted our joined hands and kissed my knuckles, lingering. “Ask me again when you can lift your own son. Then you can have me any way you want, and I’ll say thank you afterwards like a civilized person.”
He straightened the cushion. He found my clothes and helped me back into them one-handed without making it awkward.
He checked on Archie and came back and put a glass of water where I could reach it with the correct hand, and did all of it as though nothing whatsoever had occurred except his mouth was still soft when he leaned down and kissed me once more before he straightened.
There is a folded paper that lives in his jacket. It has moved from the gray jacket to the coat and back all week, always to the inside pocket, always first, before his phone and before his keys. He handles it the way a man handles a passport, and he thinks I have not seen him do it.
“There’s a thing I want,” I said.
“Anything.”
“The letter.”
He stopped in the doorway.
“You’ve seen it.”
“You check it’s there every time you put that jacket on. I’ve watched you do it all week. Whatever it is, it’s mine, or you wouldn’t guard it like that.”
“No, and I’ll tell you exactly why, and then you can be as angry as you like.” He turned around. “You’d read it in that chair with that arm strapped, and every line of it would land in the wrong place just because you’re injured and I’m here.”
“That’s not-”
“I’d rather you never read it than have it work for that reason.”
“So when?”
“When you can carry him,” Michael said. “When you’re standing up in your own kitchen with two hands and no reason on earth to be kind to me. That’s when it’s worth anything.”
And he went and put the kettle on, and I sat on a bad sofa in a rented house with my wrist in a strap, absolutely furious, and completely unable to point at what about.