Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The sky darkened, and a thick, white fog fell over the cottage, but inside, Kai and I were luxuriating in the heat.
Everything was golden-hued and irrepressible, like falling in love.
And maybe I was falling in love. With this place.
With life. With him. I loved his dark searching looks and consistency of character.
I loved the perfect balance between spontaneity and security he offered.
And I loved who I was with him. How relaxed, how effortless, how irresistible he made me feel.
I could not talk about him without talking about love.
He was a passionate and ambitious cook, if not a bit messy, so I mostly did the cleaning while he darted around the small kitchen chopping and stirring and checking the oven.
He made spaghetti carbonara per my request, fresh bread sprinkled with olive oil and oregano, and a delectable arugula salad with parmesan flakes, crushed walnuts, and a lemon-bright vinaigrette.
Then he went ahead and roasted a bunch of asparagus in fresh melted butter before wrapping each glazed stem in pink, petal-thin layers of prosciutto.
The house smelled delicious, and he looked more contented than I’d ever seen him be.
Not leaving me with much to do, I picked out a book from the bookshelves, a small collection of short stories, and read for a while curled up on the sofa with the blanket about my knees.
When everything was ready, I carried and set all the beautifully assorted dishes out on the coffee table before the fireplace while he unearthed the cumbersome floor pillows from the hallway closet.
We sat down opposite each other, and for a moment longer we admired our cozy little setup, the small table with the white linen and the pink candle dripping wax on the dainty porcelain saucer, before we finally dug in, both of us ravenous from a night of traveling and a day of doing chores.
Although it didn’t feel like that. It felt as though we’d already been here for days and done all kinds of marvelous things, the contraptions of time altered just for us.
It was some time before we were able to slow down enough so we could talk. “Sorry,” Kai chuckled, wiping his mouth on the cloth napkin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more hungry in my life.”
And this too was something I’d come to love about him: eating fast while nodding his head in gratification, scouring the radio for that one perfect song, taking the time to dim the lights and crack the window open to feel the cool, clean air on his skin after spending so much time in the mellowing heat of the kitchen.
His unbounded and transcendent love of enjoyment. Of enjoying life.
“Yeah, me too,” I said, mouth full of asparagus, so flavorful, so extremely pleasurable that I heard myself groan. “This is so good, Kai.”
“Sounds like it,” he teased me.
I indulged in another forkful, and a rich butter-salt flavor exploded in my mouth, my face growing hot from all the steam rising from the plates.
I could sense his eyes on me too, this feeling of being perceived, of being watched in admiration, all of my basic and cerebral desires satisfied alike. A perfect moment.
“You know,” he added, twirling his fork in his plate of spaghetti, “James always says that one of the greatest pleasures in life is eating good food while talking about how good the food is.”
“True,” I agreed, surprised a little at the mention of James, at the mention of anything that wasn’t entirely linked to the ongoing moment. As though I’d forgotten that life still existed beyond this place. “Are you and James close?”
Kai nodded, and after he swallowed and patted his mouth with the napkin, he elaborated, “If you ask him, he’d probably say he’s my best friend, but he says that about everyone.”
“Hm,” was all I contributed, too preoccupied with his fire-lit presence for the coherency of words.
His hair was still a little windblown from our walk, and I had the sensitive urge to reach across the table and brush the soft strands from his eyes.
In books they always talked about love in terms of passion, a feeling that was bigger than yourself, flammable, and self-destructive.
This wasn’t like that. I didn’t have butterflies in my stomach, but a sparrow, spreading its delicate wings and lifting itself up toward the radiant silver moon.
That was how Kai made me feel. I was the sparrow, and he was the moon.
“What is it?” he asked in a private tone of voice when he caught me staring.
“Nothing,” I replied, lowering my eyes to the table. “Tell me. How did you and James become friends?”
He paused to raise a glass of water to his lips. No wine, he’d proclaimed earlier at the store. I don’t trust us with wine. And I’d laughed, knowingly, because I didn’t trust us with wine either.
“I think there’s a certain chemistry about these kinds of things,” he said.
“The way you connect with someone, the ease with which you find yourself talking to them, or even just the way you perceive their sense of humor. It’s all very alchemical.
And then sometimes—and this is going to sound very sentimental, I know—but sometimes you just get a feeling with people. ”
“A feeling?”
“That they’re meant for you and you are meant for them.”
“And of course he believes in fate,” I laughed at the ceiling.
Kai clicked his tongue, feigning indignation. “I cook for you, and you mock me. Now, how is this right?”
“Well, I did promise to be cruel. Make it nice and easy for you,” I reminded him, feeling all hot and languid as I leaned back on my palms.
A strange intensity braced his face, his dark eyes luminous in the firelight. “Nothing about this is easy, Anya,” he rasped.
“And why is that?” I pressed him—pressed us both to lay ourselves bare, right here, where there were only the ocean and the stars above to judge us.
But he resisted, the bow of his mouth pulling into a thin, tight line. “Let’s not play this game. You know how I feel about you. You’ve known for quite some time now.”
“I never said this was a game,” I argued.
“Then what is it?”
“I guess I’m just trying to understand what it is that you want from me.”
Solemn now, without an ounce of playfulness, he said, “I don’t want anything from you, Anya. I want you. Just you.”
Pleasure spread in my limbs, a warm, heavy sensation like drifting off to sleep. And yet I wanted more, to make him say more, to strike some greater confession from him. “Why?”
Wryly he muttered under his breath, “Why, she asks.”
“Yes, why?” I persisted.
He remained solid as a statue, but something softened in his eyes when he said, “Because I like watching you think. Because I admire your intelligence and integrity, which you never sacrifice, not even for the sake of companionship. Because sometimes you say things I’ve stopped myself from saying a thousand times before.
And because I like who I am when I’m with you, seeing the world through your eyes. ”
Light-headed, half-adrift in the unshakable certainty of his voice, I whispered, “The world is much more colorful through your eyes, Kai.”
He gave me a small, sad smile. “The world is colorful through your eyes too, Anya. The colors are just different than mine.”
I wondered if this was what we represented to each other: the colors each of us couldn’t see.
And to have found that, wasn’t it more important than any abstract concept of sensibleness?
Yes, I was confused and vulnerable and in obvious denial, pretending that I could continue living my life like this forever, like half a person, while he was so complete that he could be reborn in a different body tomorrow and I would still know him.
But to have found what felt like a once-in-a-lifetime connection and to let it go all because we’d rather be sensible than happy seemed just as twisted.
For a long time, while he watched me with his dark, observant eyes, I contemplated the likelihood of him touching my face and speaking my name softly while making love to me tonight, and I decided that every possibility of heartbreak and despair was worth that.
Seized by this certainty, I stirred closer to him.
He let me, his eyes catching mine, the question stark in them.
I did not know how to answer him, not with words at least. So I leaned a little closer and felt his lips with mine.
Slowly. Carefully. Having the sense of him falling still one exchange of breath at a time.
It was barely a kiss, so not an answer after all, just a question to his question. What do we do now?
Somehow, I knew this was not my first romantic experience, and this knowing was so powerful that I felt the fingers of memory clawing at the forefront of my consciousness.
A faint, faraway image fluttered behind my closed eyelids of another time, another pair of lips, another pair of hands.
Breathless, caught in the absolute shock of this remembrance, I pulled back a little, but Kai, broken out of his composure at last, chased after me with a rough little sound of protest. His hand came up to close around my jaw, his lips moving over mine, nudging them apart.
His wanting me was so imperative and the response of my body so immediate that it had a dissolving effect on my thoughts.
The image, the memory, whatever that thing was, left me irretrievably, and the shock from it morphed into something else, a scalding feeling, a rush in my blood, an emptiness deep inside me needing to be filled.