Chapter 27 culaccino #2
It was a fact I had already turned over in my head a thousand times. My finger had hovered over the message button, and in a secret between me and the kitchen table and the Magic 8 Ball, I swiped away and went to bed.
I told myself he wouldn’t believe a random person’s outlandish story, anyway.
“Oliver said you liked strawberries, so I thought I’d treat you,” I said as Rus sat down on the checkered blanket beside me.
“So …” He picked a strawberry and twirled the stem between his fingers thoughtfully. “How is Oliver?”
“Good. He’s staying until after the bicentennial. Eula said he can go whenever he wants, but I don’t think he wants to.”
“He’s probably hiding out from work.”
I thought about all the times he disappeared into town. “I don’t think so. He just seems to be worried about Eula and wants to be around to help prepare for the bicentennial.”
He didn’t even hide his scowl. “I’m sure. Is he still dating that doctor?”
“Not that he’s said. And I hope he isn’t, since he’s been flirting with me so much.”
“Of course he has. Let me guess”—and he ate the strawberry, tossing the top into the garden—“he took you to Pinch.”
I eyed him. “You’re not jealous, are you?”
“Of him?” He scoffed. “No, I’m good. I’m not jealous.”
“Then why do you look like you’ve just sucked on a lemon?”
He poked through the basket of fruit, refusing to meet my gaze. “Why would I be jealous of him?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking you.”
“I am not jealous,” he reiterated strongly—strong enough that I knew when to stop teasing. We dropped into silence while he picked out another strawberry. He only ate the oddly shaped ones and saved the perfect ones for me.
Which was thoughtful. If I lingered too long on that thought, the butterflies in my stomach would wake up, so I distracted myself.
I looked out into the sun-drenched garden, twirling the stem off one of the perfect strawberries.
“You know, this garden doesn’t look half bad with you messing around in it. You might have talent.”
“It doesn’t look half good, either.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re the glass-is-half-empty kind of guy, aren’t you.”
“If you want a glass half full, that’s Oliver.”
There it was again. I shook my head. “You don’t have to compare yourself to him.”
He opened his mouth to argue, but then closed it again, looking back down at his strawberry. “I … just always have. Even when we were inseparable. And everyone always compared us, too, since I came from Henry’s side and Oliver came from Eula’s—it was kind of just normal for everyone to compare us.”
“I’m sure it was hard growing up like that.”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug, as if to say it didn’t bother him, but I couldn’t see how it wouldn’t.
There were enough people who compared me to Harrie that I had a taste for what that felt like.
Harrie was always the go-getter, the class rep, the star.
She was the one who excelled at everything, much like Rus, I guessed.
Gifted in anything she put her mind to, though I was the one who was tenacious enough to see it through to the end.
While she was talented, I was stubborn. I had a feeling that Rus was the stubborn one, too, along with being talented, but instead of excelling in life, he seemed to do the opposite—make himself rigid and uncaring, though I could tell he was neither of those things.
He was like a thorny rose in need of a little care and attention, though he was used to not getting either.
“Comparison is the thief of joy,” I said decisively. “Besides, you’re nothing alike.”
“I guess I am too ginger,” he replied with utter seriousness.
I rolled my eyes. “You won’t let me live that down, will you?”
His mouth twitched into a grin. “Never.”
“Well, you are ginger. I won’t take that back.”
“You like it.”
“Oh my god,” I muttered, turning my face away so he didn’t see the blush across my cheeks. “You’re the worst.”
He grinned. “Worse than Oliver?”
“So much worse than Oliver.”
“Tsk, tsk,” he said, shaking his head, “and here you just said that it was silly to compare us.”
Turning my own words against me. How utterly mortifying. I picked up another strawberry. “You’re infuriating.”
“You must like it if you keep coming back,” he teased, leaning toward me.
I met him halfway. “And what if I do?”
What if I liked it very much?
He didn’t expect me to take the bait; I could tell by the silence that followed, and the height of his eyebrows. His mouth fell open, gasping like a fish out of water, but when words wouldn’t come, his gaze dropped to my mouth.
The blush that had crawled over his cheeks was rampant now, reaching his ears. “Goodness, Sophie,” he murmured, “tease me a little less, would you?”
“Tease you?” I blinked innocently and pointed the strawberry at him. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Cyrus—”
He leaned in closer, his eyes catching mine, and holding them as he bit into the strawberry. Sank his teeth slowly into the red flesh of the fruit, the juices trickling down his chin.
I inhaled sharply. I know he heard.
I know he heard because his eyes darkened considerably.
My middle burned. Kiss me, the thought erupted, visceral and wanting, coming from somewhere so unexpected it made me lightheaded. Please—
He ate the strawberry, easing back a little, closing his eyes. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” he said, cleaning his mouth with his fingers. “It tastes like I remember, but … it’s missing something.”
“Sugar or chocolate,” I forced out. Calm down. He was just teasing, too. He wasn’t serious. “My mom eats them with Cool Whip.”
“No, it’s something else,” he said, and he certainly did seem serious, after all. I’d never seen that look before. I felt buoyant and pinned to the spot all at once. He leaned over again, his nose brushing against mine. “May I?”
“Yes.” My voice was barely a whisper against his mouth.
He pressed his lips against mine. Stern and sharp, kissing me with the sort of confidence that caught me by surprise, the boldness, the surety, as if he’d thought about kissing me for weeks and knew exactly how he wanted to.
Where to start. Where to go. Where to end.
As if he’d mapped it out. The course he’d chart, the path he’d follow, the time he’d take.
And he certainly took his time. For a man who was so afraid to waste it, he kissed me like he had all the time in the world.
The thought that he’d imagined how to kiss me, where, for how long, it coiled tight in my belly.
I leaned into him, my fingers threading into his copper hair, wanting to feel closer.
Wanting to be closer. Burrow myself into his skin, root myself there underneath his scent of lavender and fresh soil and summer rain. God, what a lovely smell he had.
He leaned into me, his hands dropping from my face, tracing down the sides of my neck, down the curve of my shoulders, fingertips snaking to my middle.
“You taste like I imagined,” he whispered, pupils blown wide, and this close I finally got the chance to look at him—to truly look.
At the freckles that dotted his cheeks in uncharted constellations, and the curl of copper hair that felt just as soft as it looked, and the mirage of a five o’clock shadow just as ginger as his hair and eyebrows and eyelashes—
Maybe, I thought, the garden keeps you because you’re golden hour made real.
“How long have you wanted to kiss me?” I murmured.
“Since I woke up,” he replied, hot words against my mouth. “I have been starving, I think.”
Around the gazebo, there was a ripple of color as the asters and cosmos and star jasmines bloomed, petals bright and lush and lovely, and he kissed me again.
He kissed me voraciously, as if, in the weeks leading up to now, he’d still been waking up, and now he was ravenous.
He cradled my face, fingers curling into the hair at the nape of my neck, his other hand sliding around my waist to bring me closer, and I let him.
Gladly, wholeheartedly, melting into the kiss like ice on a hot pavement.
His mouth captured mine like he wanted to imprint my mouth, my taste, my tongue, into his memory.
This is dangerous.
It was a sudden cold realization in my bones.
This is foolish.
What if I couldn’t find the real door and he ended up stuck here? What if we ran out of time? What if I couldn’t stop him from coming into this garden, and what if—
What if I could?
What if I was afraid of what I’d lose if I did?
If he never came into the garden, if I could stop him during the bicentennial party from getting trapped in the first place, then we’d never have this, whatever this was.
At the moment it was just a few kisses, just some flirty exchanges, some long looks, but I knew myself.
I knew that if I kept kissing him, kept touching him, kept making more and more space in my life for this man trapped in time—I’d fall.
I’d fall too far, and sink too deep, and get too comfortable with the idea of not just Sophie, but Sophie and.
A word that was hopeful and cruel. A coordinating conjunction marrying two ideas.
The one of me, dirt under my nails and sunburnt shoulders, and the one of him, borrowed glasses tucked into a pocket and button-down rolled up above his forearms. I ached when I thought about it, but I had had enough of people leaving for one lifetime.
I had had enough goodbyes for a century.
And if I wanted this, him, then that meant I wanted something again—and I’d been so good at depriving myself of everything that could make me feel. Because if I felt, then I would want to feel more, then I’d want to live and—
And if I wanted that, then time would find itself in motion again, and Harrie would be further in my past and—
What if, in my reaching for something new, I left her behind?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered against his mouth.
He froze, then slowly extracted himself from our tangled limbs, placing his hands firmly on either side of me on the checkered blanket. His eyes searched my face. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” I croaked, blinking back aggravating wetness in my eyes. I felt awful with the cosmos and asters bright in the beds around us. “I’m sorry. It’s just I—I can’t.” My throat felt tight. My lips throbbed. “Not now.”
He swallowed thickly, hurt flickering across his gaze. But then he schooled it—for my convenience? So I wouldn’t see how much I’d hurt him? I didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t fall, just to say goodbye again. “It’s okay,” he said tightly, easing away. “It’s okay.”
And he said it so gently, so forgivingly, it made it all worse.
Coward, I told myself. I’m a coward.
I was such a coward that I couldn’t sit here any longer, with him looking at me like he wanted to ask if I was okay, because then I’d be compelled to tell him the truth—that of course I wasn’t, that I wasn’t sure I had been in quite a while, and that I’d left New York City because I thought fresh air and flowers could fix me, and here was this man who made me realize I didn’t need fixing.
Here was a person who saw my failings and didn’t tell me to do better.
He thought I did my best. No one had thought that of me since . . .
Not since Harriett.
So I would do my best—for him. And that meant pushing myself to my feet, even as he called me to wait. It meant fleeing the garden with a whisper of “I’m sorry,” even as he scrambled to his feet after me, even as he knew he couldn’t follow.
I’d find that door, and I’d get him out. I promised.