Chapter 11 - Mona
MONA
We spend the next morning refreshing the catalog of his books, updating the information and sending it with new photos of some of the most valuable to his rare-book expert for revised valuations.
It’s an interesting, low-effort activity, and I enjoy it as much as anything else I’ve done with Douglas so far. We’re finished by lunchtime, so by mutual agreement, we spend the afternoon reading.
He rereads Augustine’s Confessions from his favorite armchair, and I read a cozy mystery from the window seat. We barely say a word to each other, but each time I glance up, my eyes land on him and I smile.
Sometimes he catches me and smiles back.
It’s such a delightful, cozy afternoon I’m practically giddy when we take a walk at around four. I fall into that bubbling giggle so often that Douglas finally asks me about my private joke.
There’s no joke. I’m just happy.
I try to send him away when we get back, thinking some alone time will be good for me, but he won’t go.
He wants to help me with dinner, so we have another cozy, companionable time prepping and cooking the salmon and panzanella.
He opens a bottle of excellent chardonnay, and we decide to eat in the “breakfast room”—the small dining area with a wall of windows looking out at the lake.
The winter landscape is dark and beautiful, and the moon reflects dramatically on the still water.
He asks me about my favorite views in the world, so we end up talking about travel, about nature, about the American transcendentalists, and then about the British Romantics again.
“Doesn’t it kind of counter your point about joy being found in community?” I ask him, stirring the last bits of panzanella on my plate. “That they’re so passionately finding joy all by themselves in nature?”
Douglas looks at me for a minute without speaking. I know him well enough now to understand that he’s thinking through his response before he speaks it. Finally he says, “No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because even Thoreau, all by himself at Walden Pond, understood that the purpose of taking time to commune with nature is to go back to the world and make it better. Even the Romantic poets, for all their fire and passion, ultimately put their personal experiences in the context of the people around them. At least the ones who got the chance to mature did. Keats died at twenty-five. Percy Shelley died at twenty-nine. They didn’t live long enough for time and experience to fully ground them.
But Wordsworth did. It’s no accident that in ‘Tintern Abbey,’ his own joy in nature is deepened, made richer because he’s sharing those experiences with his sister. ”
He’s been looking at me as he talks, but now he turns his head to focus out the window at the lake. “We find our joy, whatever that looks like, in community. We find it in each other. We can’t be who we’re truly meant to be when we’re alone.”
The poignant note in his voice makes my chest ache. I reach over to put a soft hand on his arm.
He glances back at me and then down at where my hand is resting on the sleeve of his shirt.
Fighting the urge to pull back self-consciously, I instead ask, “You do see the irony, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.” His mouth softens into almost a smile.
“I’ve withdrawn intentionally. But whatever you think, I’m not completely cut off from other people.
I have Colleen and Roy. I’m still connected to my sister and extended family.
I have a few good friends.” Before I can ask about that last point, he goes on.
“They don’t live around here, so I don’t see them all the time.
But we email frequently and talk on the phone sometimes. I see them at least once a year.”
“I’m glad. I didn’t know that. But before last night, when was the last time you went into town?”
He clears his throat. “I had a dentist appointment a few months ago.”
That makes me giggle.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he adds. “And I’ve also been thinking about it. I haven’t come to any conclusions yet, but like I said, I’m not unaware of the irony.”
“Okay. I’m not nagging or lecturing you. I just think we should live out what we believe as much as we can.”
He turns all the way toward me, lifting a hand to cup my cheek. “You do, don’t you?”
I blink, surprised and excited by the warmth and tenderness in his expression now. “I try.”
“You succeed. You laugh when something is funny, you cry when you’re moved emotionally, and when you believe in something strongly, you say it out loud. When you think something is good for you, you commit to it, and you try to live out what you believe to be good.”
I gulp, my cheek flushing beneath his hand. “I mean, I try to do all that, but don’t a lot of people? I’m not that special.”
“I disagree. A lot of people might want to be as authentic as you, but they’re too deeply swayed by making the right impression on the world or pursuing a strategy to get what they want or finding the easy way through the harder parts of life to live life as truly as you do.
Why do you think you were able to break through all my protective barriers? ”
My mind whirls. I can’t believe this is happening. He’s saying so much of what I desperately want to hear, expressing an appreciation of me—the real me—that no one else ever has. “I… I don’t know. I guess I just assumed because I was here and always around.”
He lets out a breathy laugh. “That’s not it at all. You’re right about me at heart. I have been hiding from life. And then suddenly you breezed into my world, all that’s best and most beautiful about life embodied in one warmhearted, intelligent, and spirited woman. How could I not wake up?”
My lips part. I lean my cheek against his hand.
“It feels like you woke me up too. Not that I was hiding from life but like I was whipping through life as fast as I could. Getting stuff done. Checking items off a list. Reaching goals. I even sometimes think about relationships as goals. They’re something I want, so I map out a plan and try to speed through getting them.
But spending time with you slowed me down.
Made me reflect. Feel. Remember life isn’t only a to-do list.”
His smile warms. His eyes are so tender. His face has leaned closer to mine.
And there’s no way in the world I can hold back the impulse.
I stretch up to kiss him.
Our kiss last night was so good that I couldn’t imagine anything topping it for pure giddy pleasure. But this one is every bit as good.
He tastes like white wine, salt, and olive oil. His hair is thick and soft as I grab his head in both hands. He makes a soft, guttural sound as he shifts position, leaning toward me, holding my jaw with one hand and spanning the side of my neck with his other.
I’m so eager I can’t keep my tongue in my mouth. I pant through my nose as I slide my tongue against his. Every pulse point in my body is throbbing, and even the blood in my veins feels like it has sprung into action.
We kiss for a minute, leaning toward each other in our individual chairs, until the distance between our bodies is no longer tolerable. Shamelessly, I climb into his lap with no regard to my dignity or the awkward maneuver.
He doesn’t mind. He helps me rearrange myself and then pulls my face—now slightly above his—down into another kiss.
This way is even better. My upper body is pressed against his, and my groin is getting some good friction. I moan into his mouth because everything is feeling so good.
He’s just as aroused as I am. I can feel his erection pressing against the constriction of his trousers. One of his hands is still at my throat, but the other is sliding up and down from my back to my butt. His breathing is as loud and fast as mine, and he feels just as hungry, just as needy.
I really think I might be able to come from nothing more than this. The sensations rise and rise and keep rising as our embrace continues.
I rub intentionally against his arousal, and Douglas groans helplessly into my mouth.
Then he’s suddenly jerking back, breaking the kiss and withdrawing so quickly I almost lose my balance.
He grabs me to hold me steady, but he doesn’t pull me back into the kiss. He stares at me, gasping and flushed and wildly rumpled.
I probably look the same. Something deep inside me starts wailing at the dramatic interruption of everything I want.
“I’m sorry, Mona,” he says gruffly, using one hand to rub his mouth and jaw. “I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t have to be sorry,” I manage to reply. I carefully climb off him. “That was fast. Too fast. Especially since our only discussion about this sort of thing was that you didn’t want to open that particular door.”
He clears his throat, his features twisting like he’s trying to control strong emotion. “The door I can’t open is a serious relationship. I am hesitant about starting something sexual with you but not for the reasons you believe.”
My body is still screaming at me for not giving it the satisfaction it craved, but I ignore it.
Because Douglas is telling me something important right now.
“It’s not? Because I understand the door is closed to a serious relationship.
But honestly I was hoping… I was hoping that our only-December deal might include more than kissing. ”
“I know. I mean, I don’t understand why you might want that with me, but I understood it was a possibility. My issues are two.”
“What’s the first?”
“I am paying you for your work this month. That complicates things. I don’t want to put you in a position where you would ever feel beholden—”
I smile at his use of beholden but make myself focus on the more important point.
“That makes sense. Maybe it should be complicated, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.
You’re not my boss. You’re my client. That’s a different situation.
My career and my financial stability are in no way reliant on your choices. I don’t feel beholden in any way.”