Chapter 16 #3
When she came, it was like a storm, and his own orgasm grabbed hold of him and took him at the same time. They clung to each other, shaking.
And she let her head fall back, water drops still sliding down her neck. He licked a trail up her wet skin, slicking away the droplets.
“I’m glad you decided to come,” he said.
She pressed her hands over her face and started laughing helplessly. “Yeah. Me too. And in more ways than one.”
“Want to make a bet on how many more times you can do it tonight?”
“I’m pretty sure the limit does not exist.”
“Happy to test the theory.”
“Were you actually about to lose your keys?”
He sat up, propped his knees up, forearms resting on them. They were both naked, on the shore, and there were about a million reasons that it wasn’t maybe the best idea, but she didn’t really care about any of them.
“Maybe,” he said, sounding dumbfounded. “But we ought to collect our clothes, and we probably need a rinse.”
She stepped into the river, and she wasn’t sure what he did with the condom, but she was happy to let him manage that.
She sluiced the water over her skin, getting rid of the dirt and plant matter that she had picked up on the shore.
He collected the clothes, grabbing hold of her underwear, her bra, and her dress.
“Thank you,” she said as he deposited everything on the shore and got back into the water.
“You’re welcome.”
She studied his face, the gorgeous angles of it. His dark whiskers, those green eyes.
She wondered if she was getting a small look at who he might’ve been. Who he might’ve been in another life, if he hadn’t been so badly wounded.
If he hadn’t lost so much.
If she could give him that, then… All of this made some sense.
And if she could be one of the few people to witness it, that felt even better.
It felt amazing. Like an honor. Truly.
They didn’t have shampoo, but still, he dipped her back in the water, scrubbed her scalp gently, washing her hair in the river, the attention he paid to her making her eyes well up.
Everything with him was like being on the edge of a knife. Brilliant and sharp, far too much. Far too much to take in.
When they were finished, he wrapped her up in his arms and carried her back toward the house. It was so private up here. Quiet. They didn’t have to worry about anybody intruding on them.
The idea of sleeping in his bed made her giddy. Of sharing a dinner with him, in his house.
He made spaghetti with ground beef, and they ate on his couch with their feet up on his coffee table. Then they went to bed. He took her again, and again. She wouldn’t say that she got a very good night’s sleep, but she had a wonderful time.
They both woke up early, and he wrapped her in a blanket and settled her on the couch while he cooked breakfast.
“This is nice,” she said. “Us trading back-and-forth like this.”
“I have manners. I think. If I think back far enough.”
“Were your grandparents very old-fashioned?”
She never knew if she was supposed to ask about his past. But she wanted to know more about him. As much as she could.
It included the time he had spent with his grandparents.
“Yeah. They were. I didn’t mind it, though. It was nice to have structure. It was nice to feel like somebody cared about me. They made me go to church every Sunday, and I didn’t especially like it.”
“Really?”
“Always an itchy suit, and I didn’t really want to hear what God had to say. I was kind of mad at him.”
“I can understand why.”
“Yeah. I think my beef with him is valid.”
He said it in the present tense. Like he was still fighting with God.
But then, how could you make sense of something like that? She couldn’t really blame him for feeling that way.
“And how did they… How did they handle all of that? I mean, it seems to me that they lost a lot, too. Their daughter. It seems like it would’ve been hard for them to reconcile their faith with that, too.”
“My grandma used to say that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. That’s in the Bible. That was what she said. Bad things happened to good people. Even if you’re good. Though I was wondering if maybe I wasn’t good.”
“Sorry. This is sort of heavy to be talking about before our first cup of coffee.”
“I guess. Or not. My life is kind of heavy, and if you want to talk about it…”
He didn’t have anyone else to talk about it with.
She really realized that then. He hadn’t told anyone about his family, and that meant he didn’t really get to talk about it.
It sounded like his grandparents had been good people, that they had taken care of him.
But it also sounded like they were the type of people who found comfort in platitudes.
She didn’t think it was right to be judgmental about how somebody handled a loss like that, but it was also easy to see how that could feel like putting a pin in it and never really digging deep.
“Yeah. I’m happy to talk about it. Maybe happy is the wrong word. But I am… Thank you for sharing with me. It isn’t too heavy for me.”
He smiled, slowly. “How about you spend the night tonight too?”