22. Blair
— ? —
Blair
Will called at seven sharp.
I was already awake, had been for an hour, staring at the ceiling of Nan’s guest room and replaying last night in my head. The gallery. The red dots. The kiss in the middle of my own show, surrounded by my own work, feeling for the first time in months like myself.
“Good morning,” he said when I answered. “I hope I’m not too early.”
“You said seven. It’s seven.”
“I know, but I’ve been sitting here since six-thirty trying to decide if seven was actually too early and maybe I should wait until seven-fifteen to seem less eager, and then I realized that trying to seem less eager was exactly the kind of game-playing that got us into trouble in the first place, so I called at seven because that’s what I said I’d do. ”
I laughed. “You’ve been overthinking this for thirty minutes?”
“I’ve been overthinking this since I left the gallery last night.”
“Will.”
“Blair.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Will you go on a date with me?”
“That depends. What did you have in mind?”
“Sailing. This morning. Just the two of us. I’ll pick you up in an hour.”
“An hour? I haven’t even showered.”
“Then you have fifty-nine minutes. I’ll be there with coffee.”
He hung up before I could argue.
I showered in record time, threw on clothes that were appropriate for a boat, and was standing on Nan’s porch when Will’s car pulled up exactly one hour after his call.
He got out holding two thermoses, dressed in sailing clothes that made him look ten years younger, his face bright with an anticipation I hadn’t seen in months.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“I look like I got ready in forty-five minutes.”
“Beautiful,” he repeated. “Ready?”
The harbor was quiet at this hour, most of the weekend sailors still sleeping off their Friday night revelries.
Second Wind was waiting at the dock, sails prepped, deck clean, everything ready to go.
Will had been here earlier. He’d come down at dawn to prepare the boat, to make sure everything was perfect.
“Permission to come aboard?” I asked.
“Always.”
He helped me onto the deck, his hand warm and steady in mine, and for a moment we just stood there, looking at each other in the early morning light. The harbor stretched out around us, boats bobbing gently at their moorings, the Newport skyline rising in the distance.
“I used to dream about this,” Will said. “When we were apart. I’d lie awake at night imagining bringing you back here. Sailing with you again.”
“Just sailing?”
“Sailing was the part I let myself imagine. The rest was too painful.”
We cast off and motored out of the harbor, the wind picking up as we cleared the breakwater. Will handled the boat with the easy competence of someone who’d been sailing since childhood, adjusting lines and reading the wind while I sat in the cockpit and watched him work.
“Remember the first time you took me sailing?” I asked.
“You were terrified.”
“I wasn’t terrified. I was appropriately cautious.”
“You held onto the rail with both hands for the entire trip.”
“The boat was moving!”
“It’s supposed to move. That’s the point.”
“Well, nobody explained that to me beforehand.”
He laughed, and the sound carried across the water, bright and free. This was the Will I’d fallen in love with. The one who laughed easily, who found joy in simple things, who looked at the world with wonder instead of suspicion.
We sailed to a quiet cove he knew, a place where the water was calm and the shore was empty and no one would disturb us. He dropped anchor and disappeared below deck, emerging a moment later with a picnic basket I hadn’t noticed.
“When did you pack this?”
“This morning. Before I picked you up.”
“You were up at five preparing a picnic?”
“Four-thirty, actually. The bakery opens early.”
He spread a blanket on the deck, in a sunny spot protected from the wind, and began unpacking the basket. The first thing he produced was a thermos, which he handed to me with obvious pride.
“Your coffee order. Exactly. I called the shop yesterday to confirm.”
I unscrewed the lid and took a sip. It was perfect. The exact ratio of milk to espresso, the specific temperature I preferred, everything just right.
“How did you remember this?”
“I pay attention.” He pulled out a container of strawberries. “These are for the baby. You mentioned craving them at the last appointment.”
“I mentioned that once. In passing.”
“I told you. I pay attention.”
Next came pastries from the bakery on Thames Street, the one I’d pointed out to him months ago, before everything fell apart. Croissants still warm from the oven. Pain au chocolat wrapped in wax paper. A Danish with some kind of berry filling that looked incredible.
And then the cheese.
So much cheese. An absurd amount of cheese. Wheels and wedges and blocks, spilling out of the basket, more cheese than two people could possibly consume in a single picnic. Brie and cheddar and a wedge that might have been gouda and several varieties I couldn’t identify.
“Will.”
“I know.”
“This is…”
“I know.”
“Did you buy the entire cheese shop?”
“I panicked.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, looking genuinely embarrassed.
“The cheese man asked what you liked, and I couldn’t remember.
I knew you liked cheese, but I couldn’t remember which kinds, and he kept asking questions about texture and age and region, and I just… I bought all of it.”
“You bought all the cheese.”
“I wanted to be thorough.”
“You wanted to be thorough.”
“In retrospect, it was excessive.”
I stared at the pile of cheese, at this ridiculous mountain of dairy products that my husband had purchased in a panic because he wanted to get our date right. And a knot inside me cracked open.
I laughed. I laughed until tears were streaming down my face, until I had to hold my stomach because the baby was kicking in protest, until I couldn’t breathe. Will watched me, his expression shifting from embarrassment to hope to helpless tenderness.
“You bought all the cheese,” I wheezed.
“I really did.”
“Because you wanted to be thorough.”
“I have a problem.”
“Will.”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
The words fell out. I didn’t plan them, didn’t decide to say them, they just emerged from somewhere deep and true. His whole body went still.
“You.”
“I love you.” It felt good to say. It felt right.
“I’ve loved you for fifteen years, and I’ve been so angry at you for so long, and I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to say it again without it hurting.
But I love you. The man who bought all the cheese because he wanted our first real date in months to be perfect.
The man who remembered my coffee order and my strawberry craving and the pastries from the bakery I pointed out once. I love that man.”
He crossed the blanket in two steps and kissed me.
This wasn’t the desperate collision of the vineyard hotel room, or the fierce claim of the gallery. This was gentler. A homecoming. A promise. His hands cradled my face, his thumbs brushing away the tears I hadn’t realized were still falling, and he kissed me like we had all the time in the world.
“I love you too,” he said against my mouth. “I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you. Even when I was being the worst possible version of myself, I never stopped loving you.”
We lay back on the blanket together, the boat rocking gently beneath us, the sun warm on our skin. For a long moment, we just held each other, existing in the peace of the morning, no complications, no history, just two people who had found their way back to each other.
His mouth found my ear. His breath was warm, his voice low.
“I’ve been thinking about you all week.”
“Is that so?”
“Every night. Lying in that empty house, remembering what it was like to have you beside me.”
His hand slid under my shirt, tracing patterns on my skin. I shivered, and not from the cold.
“We’re on a boat,” I said, though my voice came out breathless.
“We’re in a private cove. No one can see us.”
“Someone might sail by.”
“Then we’ll hear them coming.” His mouth traced a path down my neck. “We have time.”
I stopped arguing.
His hands were everywhere, relearning the topography of my body, finding places that made me gasp and arch into him. I pulled at his shirt, wanting skin, wanting closeness, wanting to forget everything except this moment, this man, this impossible second chance.
“Blair.” My name in his throat, rough with wanting. “God, I’ve missed you.”
“Show me.”
He showed me. His mouth traveled lower, beneath the blanket he’d pulled over us for warmth, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.
The boat rocked with our movements, the gentle sway adding a charge to every touch, every kiss.
I was lost in sensation, in the feeling of his hands and his mouth and his body pressed against mine.
“Right there,” I gasped. “Will, right there, I’m going to-”
A wake hit the boat.
We rolled, hard, and I yelped, grabbing for the bench as the deck tilted beneath us. Will’s arms tightened around me, keeping us both from sliding off the blanket entirely.
“MORNING, FOLKS!”
A harbor patrol boat was cruising past, some cheerful officer in uniform waving at us from behind the wheel. The wake had come from his boat, and he was clearly oblivious to what he’d just interrupted.
“Beautiful day for sailing!” he called.
Will waved back with the hand that had been, thirty seconds ago, somewhere very different. “Sure is!”
The patrol boat continued on its way, disappearing around the point. Will collapsed back onto the blanket, and I buried my face in his chest, laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
“Did that just happen?”
“That just happened.”
“We were almost arrested for indecent exposure.”
“We weren’t almost arrested. He didn’t see anything.”
“He might have seen something.”
“He saw two people having a picnic. A perfectly innocent picnic.” Will gestured at the scattered cheese. “Look at all this cheese. Who would suspect anything untoward?”