Chapter Twelve - Asher #4
As much as I want it to. I realize when we’re pulling up that even if nothing does, it’s not really the end of anything.
I can maybe make myself a comfortable life, albeit empty.
I can maybe keep myself busy with the garage and caring for this place.
I can maybe find someone else, somewhere down the road, but it’ll never be him.
I watch him as we walk into the cabin, hands in his pockets and his eyes cast down, as if nothing has just happened.
Nothing else and no one else can ever be this.
Paul and I hover around each other after I light some lanterns and get another fire going.
We hover around like we might embrace or we might not, or we might fuck or we might not, and so I wish and I hope on anything and everything that at least, at the very least, I’ll still get to see him.
Would we be able to be friends? Would I be able to stand it if he started going with someone else?
Because he would. Someone else will undoubtedly come along and love him for just who he is.
He’s stopped hovering, and I’m staring and unmoving as I think upon these things. He clears his throat and I blink.
I offer him a beer but he declines. He sits in an armchair, and I take a seat in the other.
Outside, there’s a chilly wind whipping up, but inside the fire crackles and it’s glowing and warm.
I light a cigarette and dwell on what it could be like.
The coziness on nights like this. The companionship.
The love.
It’s a long while before either of us speak, and he eventually asks, “What if you get snowed in?”
I pretend to ponder over this as if I haven’t before. “I keep plenty of food, and there’s a generator if I need it. If worse comes to worse, there’s a store down the road I can walk to.”
He holds up his hands, palms facing the stove.
“And that diner,” I add.
He smiles wistfully at that. Then he gets serious. “What would we do, if I lived here?”
“I’d go to the garage. You’d go to the soda joint if you wanted to. Then we’d go home, but home would be us here, together.”
“What else?” he says quietly.
I take a drag. “Eat here, sleep here. When it’s warm again, get a boat out on the lake maybe.”
“What else?” His voice is hardly a whisper.
I look at him for a long moment. I see what he’s really asking in his eyes, poised as if on a cliff’s edge, peering over the side.
I finish my cigarette and move closer to him.
I get on my knees in front of him. I hold his gaze, those soft green eyes that look almost like sun-kissed leaves in the lantern light.
I let the firm beats of my heart speak to him now, unguarded.
“I’d cherish you. Every single day. Love you.
Every single minute. I’d give you every single piece of my heart, every part of me, that you wanted.
I’d keep you warm, I’d keep you safe, I’d do anything to make you happy.
” I take his hand kiss his palm, his wrist. “I’d be yours and you’d be mine. In every way.”
I almost add that he can still have his time to think, that it won’t change how I feel, but he leans over and kisses me.
That thread could hold up a bridge, I think, as we make our way toward my bed. Our bed.
That thread could hold up a bridge, but it let’s him in, and let’s me feel loved at last.
I reach over and finger a curl just above his ear. “Do you like the bed over here?”
He’s lying beside me, long and lean, propped up on his side. “Sure. It’s fine.”
“I want you to be comfortable here.”
“I am.”
I look over at my uninspired arrangement of the cabin, and the trail of our clothes, haphazardly thrown all over the floor. “We can get more chairs. Two more for the table.”
He lays his hand flat over my chest. That gesture is becoming something now. He did it while I was inside him and he didn’t take his hand away, even when he came. I kiss the tip of his nose.
“I like it how it is,” he says. “You don’t really need to change anything.” He pauses, bites his lip. “I think my aunt is getting me a typewriter for Christmas, though. She hasn’t said, but I think she might. Could I bring that?”
“Of course, pal. You can bring anything you want.”
He makes wide circles around each of my nipples with his finger. There’s a mix of us still on my skin, but most of it is gone. He did something after, that he’s never done before, with his tongue. It sends a shiver through me. I kiss his cheek.
He says, “I need to stay through Christmas.” He pauses. “I mean, I guess I don’t need to, but…”
“I understand. She’s your family.”
His eyes are soft and sleepy. “What about yours?”
“It’s not so far for us to visit.”
“I know. But won’t they be short-handed?”
“Glen wants to hire a neighbor boy. And his fiancée has a nephew.” I yawn. “They can manage.”
He snuggles close to me and we start making plans. It’s easy, the whole discussion, envisioning the future. But he wants to spend part of Christmas with his aunt, and I can’t be that selfish.
After a long silence, I think he’s fallen asleep, but he says, “What are you going to tell people? If they ask why I live here?”
I lay my head against his. “I’ll say that I’m deeply in love with you, and so I asked you to live with me, so I’d never have to let you go.”
He grins and it’s the most beautiful thing, but he playfully pushes at my shoulder. “You won’t really say that.”
“Maybe not exactly that. Maybe that we’re best pals. That should be enough.”
He snuggles up against me, his body all naked and warm, and this is truly bliss. It really truly is.
And the best part? As we fall asleep in our home together, with a crackling fire, in my bed and under my covers, the best part, the one I wouldn’t have been able to live without, the part that has made me love him now and forever, that part is his voice soft and breathing into my ear.
I won’t let you go.
I was going to go see my mother and Glen on Christmas Eve, but Paul’s aunt invites me over for Christmas dinner.
It makes me nervous. I don’t know if I should dress up, and the only suit I have is the one I wore to my dad’s funeral.
I wear slacks and a dress shirt, thinking it’s how Paul would dress and I haven’t been invited to Christmas dinner anywhere before, but when I get there he’s wearing denim and his shirt untucked.
“You look really swell,” he says, smiling that sweet smile of his.
I feel my face heat. “Thanks.”
There are people inside. It’s not just the three of us.
Paul takes me into the sitting room. There’s a gentleman perched on one of his aunt’s wing-chairs, his taupe mustache trimmed impeccably, his suit and tie pinstriped.
There’s a woman with short, graying hair on the sofa, and another fella beside her.
But I double take when I realize the other fella isn’t a fella at all.
He’s a woman dressed like a man. She wears navy slacks and pomade in her hair.
In the front pocket of her cream button-up is a pack of Chesterfields.
She crosses her ankle over her knee and nods at me and winks.
The other lady smiles and so does the fella.
Paul links his arm through mine, and there’s an instinct to tug my arm away in front of others.
But his gaze is reassuring and he introduces me.
I forget myself for a second, a feeling of familiarity coming over me as I look at each person gathered in his aunt’s sitting room. I tell them hello, my voice unsure.
The spread on the dining table is impressive.
There’s a ham and punch. About three Jell-O molds—red and green of course—and oranges and cranberries.
In the corner is a Christmas tree, lit up and strung with a garland of popcorn.
Someone puts on a Pat Boone record and we all take our seats at the table, Paul sitting beside me.
Everyone knows each other it seems, but they politely include me in conversation.
No one notices or says a word when Paul takes my hand in his, when he leans into me a little too close, or puts a hand on my thigh.
I begin to realize, perhaps absurdly too late, what this is and what it means. I feel myself begin to relax.
The woman dressed like a man is named Dot. She grins at me and gives me another wink. “Paulie here says you’re keen on those bikes.”
I see Paul’s cheeks flush a little bit.
“You were talking about me?” I tease him.
“Maybe a little,” he says.
“This one here has a Sportster.” She nods to her gal, Penny. “Got it…” She looks at Penny questioningly. “Last year?”
Penny nods enthusiastically. “Outside of Pittsburgh. We fixed up the engine and it runs just swell now.”
We chat about our bikes for a little bit.
The guy with the mustache, who went on this long spiel about how he’s Frank Edwards of the Boston Edwards and promptly asked if I played golf, compliments Paul’s aunt on the food and her kitchen.
Paul’s aunt says it wasn’t all her. She glances at Penny and at Paul, her smile proud.
It’s really a pleasant evening. The food is wonderful, the company kind, the punch delicious. And strong.
We gather in the sitting room after dinner, watch the television, and have coffee. There’s some pie and conversation. I have too much punch, and I’m so comfortable and happy that I press my lips to Paul’s hair without thinking. I see his aunt watching us, and I pull away quickly, but she smiles.
Paul squeezes my hand. “It’s okay.”
“I gathered that it was okay. But…how?”
“My aunt has friends.”
“I can see that.”
“She knows about you and me.” He pauses. “She had a um, pal before.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” The lights from the tree flicker in his irises. “She likes you.”
“I would hope.”
“And I like you.”
“I would really hope.”
His smile is so wide, so happy, that I could die. He kisses my cheek and lays his head on my shoulder. Conversation continues around us unhurried and undisturbed. Outside, a few flurries of snow fall. It’s perfect really. Everything. All of it.
I settle into the idea that this is my life now. That he’s my life now. That it could have been this way all along, but how it’s ended up is just as well. Better, in fact. I know there will be many more nights like this, and this is only the beginning.
Our story unfolding, still unwritten, and never-ending.