27. Willow
— ? —
Willow
Pia took Archie for the night and was insufferable about it.
“I’m not asking where you’re going.”
“Out on the boat.”
“I have said I am not asking.”
“You’ve asked twice in the car and once in this kitchen.”
“Willow, I have his bag, I have the rabbit, I have a rota on my own fridge now because your husband has infected this entire family,” said Pia, “and what I would like in return is one detail, and you are giving me nothing.”
“Out on the boat and back tomorrow.”
“Out on the boat.”
“Pia.”
“I’ve said nothing,” said Pia, and picked up my son and left with an expression I will be hearing about at Christmas.
The last time I was near that boat I could not see it until it was a length away, and I was sitting on a cockpit floor with a broken wrist and a child inside my coat.
This time it was flat calm and bright, and there was a man on the foredeck in an old shirt with the cuffs gone, doing something to a line that did not need doing, because he had been early and had run out of jobs.
“You’ve been here a while.”
“I have not.”
“Michael, the fenders are perfect. Nobody’s fenders are perfect.”
“I got here at two,” he said, to the line. “I’ve done the fenders four times.”
Right, I thought. So we’re both like this. That’s going to make the afternoon very restful.
“Does it have a name?”
He looked up.
“No.”
“You’ve had a boat since you were fourteen and it hasn’t got a name.”
“I was going to name it, and then I didn’t, and then it was in a shed for a long time, and then it seemed like a strange thing to do on my own.” He coiled the line he had already coiled. “Get on the boat, Willow.”
We went out past the jetty with nothing coming.
That is the whole thing about that afternoon and I want it written down. Nothing came. No fog, no engine trouble, no telephone with anything on it, and the only emergency available to anybody was that the kettle on that boat is a disgrace.
He is completely different on the water and I had let myself forget it.
There is a thing men do on boats that is mostly noise, and he has never once done it. He does not shout instructions. He does not narrate. He puts a hand on something a second before it needs one, and everything on that deck happens quietly and in the right order.
There is also a thing he does with his forearm when he takes a turn off a cleat. I am not going to describe it. I watched him do it about six times and then I had to go and look at some water.
“You’re watching me.”
“I’m supervising.”
“That’s my line.”
“It was a good line and I’ve taken it.”
He came aft and sat down opposite with his feet up on the seat beside me, which put a great deal of forearm in my immediate area, and I do not believe for one second that was accidental.
“How’s the wrist?”
“Fine.”
“Show me.”
I showed him. He turned it over and pressed his thumb into the place where it aches and I made a noise I had not authorized.
“That’s not fine.”
“It’s fine when nobody presses it. And if you spend this afternoon being careful with me I will put you over the side, and I will do it one-handed.”
He let go of my wrist.
He did not move his feet.
We anchored in the late afternoon somewhere I am not going to name, because it is not mine to hand out.
He cooked, badly and honestly, on two rings, and made an enormous production of the fact that it was edible. We ate it on deck with the light going long and orange, and he told me about the man in Antwerp, who has now written a second letter, and I laughed until I could not breathe.
Then it went quiet the way it does out there, and we sat with our backs against opposite sides of the cockpit and did not fill it, and I watched him not look at me for about as long as I could stand.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Being good,” I said. “You’ve been being good since the pontoon. Since the shed and the sofa and the whole of a season, and I can see you doing it, and it is not working the way you think it is.”
“It isn’t working at all,” Michael said, “and I’d like that on the record.”
“Then stop.”
“No.”
“Michael.”
“You told me to ask you again when you could lift your own son.” His eyes stayed on the water. “You can. I watched you do it in a parking lot and then do it four more times because he asked. So I’m not asking, because if I ask now it’s a debt, and you have had a season of me arriving with things.”
Fine, I thought. I have done everything else this year.
“Come here.”
“Willow-”
“I’m not asking either. I’m telling you. Come here.”
He came.
Everything since that dock has been fast, or one-sided, or done against a door with the wind in the wrong direction, and this was none of it. There was nowhere to be and nobody coming. That was the entire difference and it turned out to be the whole thing.
I got him out of that shirt on the deck of his own boat with the last of the light on him and took my time about it, and he let me, and did not once try to take it over.
I put my mouth on the scar on his forearm that he got at seventeen with a scraper, and he said my name and got a hand into my hair and did not pull.
“Down.”
“Down where?”
“Below, Michael. It’s getting cold and I am not doing this on a teak seat at my age.”
He laughed so hard he had to sit down on the way to the hatch, which I have decided to allow.
He tried the careful thing once more at the bottom of the steps.
“If it’s your wrist-”
“It is not my wrist.” I got both hands flat on his chest and put him down on his back on that berth, with both of them, which I could not have done two weeks ago and which we noticed at exactly the same second.
“You have been refusing me since the shed. You have been on your knees twice this year, in a shed and on that sofa, and both times you got up and asked me for nothing, and I have worked out why, and I am not having it any longer.”
“You’ve worked out why.”
“You think if you take anything it becomes a transaction and I’ll have paid for something.” His face did what it does. “Yes. I know. I have been married to you a while. And here is the part you’ve missed, so lie still, because I am only doing this once.”
He lay still.
“I want to,” I said. “That’s the answer.
Not because you found me a house or built a boat or came out of a fog or wrote two sheets of hotel paper with no ask on the end of it.
Because I want to. It is the only thing in this entire mess that has never once been about being owed, and you have been very nobly taking it off me for months. ”
He shut his eyes.
“Say it,” I said. “You made me say it in a shed with a bag of somebody else’s cement behind you. Say what you want.”
And he said it, plainly, out loud, into the dark of a boat with no name on it.
“I want you. All of you. I want to be inside you and stay there and not think about anything else for as long as you’ll let me.”
There was nothing arranged about any of it, and I got exactly what I had been after all along, which was a man who had stopped managing the situation.
I kissed him while he was still saying it.
Soft at first, then deeper when his hands came up to hold my face like he had been waiting years for permission.
He tasted of the terrible coffee from the disgrace of a kettle and the salt air.
I felt him smile against my mouth when I bit his lower lip the way he likes.
“Still with me?” I asked.
“Yes. God, yes.”
I got the rest of his clothes off without hurry. He watched me the whole time, eyes dark and open, letting me set the pace. When I straddled him he put both hands on my hips and just held on, thumbs stroking slow circles over my skin.
“You’re beautiful,” he said quietly. “Sitting there looking at me like that. I keep thinking I must have made you up.”
“You didn’t.” I leaned down and kissed the place under his jaw where his pulse jumped. “I’m right here. And I want you to feel every second of this.”
I took him in my hand and guided him into me, sinking down inch by inch while we both watched. The stretch was perfect, familiar and new at the same time. He made a low broken sound and his fingers tightened on my hips.
“Willow. You feel like everything good I’ve ever had.”
“Stay still,” I told him, though my voice had gone unsteady. “Let me.”
He did. He lay there and let me move on him the way I wanted, slow rolls of my hips that took him deep and kept him there. His hands never left me. One stayed at my waist. The other rose to cup my breast, thumb brushing over me with a tenderness that made my throat tight.
“That’s it,” he murmured. “Just like that. You have no idea how good you look taking me. How right this feels. I’ve missed being yours like this.”
“You never stopped being mine.” I braced my good hand on his chest and rode him deeper. “Say it again.”
“I’m yours.” His breath hitched when I clenched around him on purpose. “Always have been. Even when I was useless at showing it. You’re the only thing that ever made sense.”
The boat rocked gently under us. Water lapped at the hull. I kept the rhythm unhurried, wanting him to feel how much I meant every word I had said above. When I leaned down to kiss him he met me halfway, mouth open and sweet, one hand sliding into my hair to hold me close.
“Can I touch you?” he asked against my lips.
“You’d better.”
His hand slipped between us. He found me with careful fingers and stroked in time with the way I moved on him. The dual sensation pulled a soft sound out of me that made him groan in answer.
“There you are,” he whispered. “Let me feel you come like this. I want to watch. I want to remember the exact look on your face when you stop holding everything in.”
I came that way, slow and deep, forehead pressed to his while he murmured praise into my skin. How lovely I was. How perfect I felt around him. How he could stay like this forever and call it a life. He held me through it, hips barely moving, letting me use him until the shivers eased.
When I could breathe again I lifted my head.
“Your turn. And don’t you dare be careful.”