Chapter 18
Easton
It was the first time I'd slept in her room.
The light came in differently than mine did. Mine had the hole in the curtain from the hanger my grandmother snagged years ago. Hers had two layers, a sheer behind a heavier one, and the light came through both into a soft gray-gold that landed across the foot of the bed.
I'd been awake for about an hour.
She was on her side, facing me, with her hand on my chest, where her hand always went. I watched it move with her breath for an hour, give or take, and I never got tired of watching it.
I'd been hosting since October. She came across Maple to stay with me, and we'd done it her way for two months. Last night, I stayed at hers because she asked me to. She said she didn't want to leave her own house. I said I wasn't gonna make her. That was the end of the conversation.
The room was her father's old room. I'd taken the side toward the door without making a thing of it. The lamp on the nightstand was the one he'd read by.
The weight had left my chest sometime after she put her hand on it, and it stayed gone. It stayed gone the night she was at my house after Penny. It stayed gone every night since.
Eighteen months in this town, of it being somewhere I couldn't put my hands on.
It had a place now.
She moved against my hand. She came up slowly, two beats of remembering where she was.
"Hi." Her voice was hoarse with sleep.
"Hey, yourself."
"What time is it?"
"Seven-thirty."
"Mmh."
"You can go back."
"Mmh."
I let her have a minute.
She came up the second time and stayed up. The gray Hartsdale Fire shirt was rumpled across her shoulders, the one I gave her the morning of the bath towel, the same one she slept in at my house and now slept in at her house, too.
She put her feet on the floor.
"You stayed."
"I did."
"Good."
She came around the bed, past Moose on the rug. I heard her bare feet down the hall and into the kitchen, and I heard the coffee start.
I rolled out of bed and pulled yesterday's shirt back on.
She had two mugs poured by the time I got to the kitchen. She handed me mine.
"What's the plan?"
"Nothing."
"That's a plan?"
"That's the plan."
She smiled at her coffee.
"I like that plan."
I drank half my coffee at her counter.
"I gotta run home for a clean shirt."
"Take your time."
I kissed the side of her head on the way out.
The house was cold at the threshold. A piece of mail on the floor by the slot. The clock in the kitchen ran at the same beat for twelve years.
The boxes were in the hallway, flat, taped at the bottom, and stacked along the wall where I set them down the day I brought them home from the storage place outside of town.
A roll of packing tape was on the floor by the side table.
A black Sharpie I bought at the hardware store on Main two days after the funeral.
Eighteen months of packing tape and a Sharpie, and neither one was used.
I stopped.
I thought about the slot at 295. Shane had given me until February.
The crew was waiting. It was a line a firefighter spent his whole career trying to get on, and Shane handed it to me over a phone call on a Tuesday morning three months ago because he needed a man he trusted at the back of the truck.
The boxes had a date on them that I set myself.
I let myself look at the date.
Then I let myself look past it.
I thought about her hand on my chest. The gray shirt on her shoulders. The yellow eye of the cat I carried across Maple in my jacket on a Tuesday night six weeks ago, and her hands patching up mine with the bone of her hip under them. Cast iron on the burner.
I didn't pick up a box. I didn't move one. I didn't call Shane.
I stood in my own hallway with my keys in my hand, looked at a bunch of flat cardboard boxes, and let myself not do any of it.
Not yet.
I let the words sit in my own head where they were, and I didn't say them out loud to a single person in this lifetime, including myself.
The guitar case was leaning against the wall by the coat hooks. I picked it up by the handle on the way out and locked the deadbolt behind me.
I crossed Maple.
She was on the couch when I came back through her front door. Feet tucked under her, the wool blanket across her lap, a book open on her thigh. Moose was on the rug at her feet.
"You're back."
"In twenty-two."
"I read four pages."
"Don't make fun of me."
I set the guitar case down by the chair across from her. She looked at it.
"You brought the guitar."
"I did."
"Are you gonna play?"
"In a minute."
I sat in the chair and took the guitar out. Astrid set her book down on her chest.
I played her the Otis Redding song my grandmother loved.
A slow one. The chords were easy. The melody sat above them with a small ache the song had been carrying for sixty years.
I played it on my back porch for ten years and on her side of Maple for two months, and I never played it in front of another person.
I played it once through.
Then I played it again.
She didn't say anything when I was done. She set her coffee down on the side table and looked at me with the same look she gave me on the kitchen counter the night of the feral cat.
"That was your grandmother's."
"It was."
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"I love your hands."
I laughed before I meant to. The Queens came up in it.
"That's what you got from that song?"
"It's not what I got. It's a thing I noticed."
"What did you get?"
She didn't answer for a beat.
"I'll tell you later."
By half past three, she stopped reading.
Her book was still open on her chest, but her eyes were closed. Her head was tucked into the side of my neck. I had a hand on her shin under the blanket, running my thumb back and forth along the bone of her ankle without thinking about it.
She breathed against my collarbone. I thought she'd gone under for a nap. I let her.
She opened her eyes.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"I love you."
She said it without lifting her head. She said it like a woman setting down something she'd been carrying for a long time. The book didn't move on her chest. Her hand on my forearm didn't tighten.
I stopped my thumb on her ankle.
I'd thought it two minutes earlier that she was somebody I loved. The words were there. I just hadn't noticed them being there until she put hers down beside them.
I looked down at her.
She lifted her head a quarter inch. She was already looking up at me. Her thumb had come to rest on the inside of my wrist, the place where her thumb had been on the drive home from the lake.
"You meant that."
"I meant that."
I lifted her off my shoulder by both elbows, gently, and brought her up to face me on the cushion. She came up willingly.
I put both hands on either side of her face.
"Astrid."
"Yes."
"I love you, too."
She closed her eyes. They stayed closed for a count of three, then opened again, and there was a small bright film along the bottom of them she didn't let move past her lashes.
"I know when," she said.
"When?"
"On the bank. After the lake. You said that wasn't boredom. You said it was me keeping myself alive." Her eyes opened. "Nobody ever said that to me before."
I tipped her chin up.
I kissed her.
Slow at first. Then less slow. She made a small sound against my mouth, moved up into my lap, and the book on her chest hit the rug.
She got her hands in my hair.
I got my arm under her knees and stood up off the couch with her against my chest.
She laughed against my mouth.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"Where are we going?"
"Bed."
"Mmh."
"Don't argue."
"I'm not arguing."
"You're laughing."
"I'm allowed."
I carried her down the hall.
The bedroom door was open. I kicked it the rest of the way and walked her in.
I dropped her on the bed. She bounced once.
"That's how you do it?"
"That's how I do it."
She came up on her elbows. Her hair was a wreck. The gray shirt had ridden up to her ribs. She was already laughing.
"That was undignified."
"Are you good?"
"I'm great."
I started to crawl up over her. She pushed at my shoulder with one hand.
"No."
"What?"
"Lie down."
"Astrid."
"On your back, Ford."
She pushed at my shoulder again, and I went where she pushed me. I rolled onto my back, laughing. She came up to her knees beside me, put one knee on either side of my hips, and sat down on me.
She looked down at me. I looked up at her.
"Hi," she said.
"Hey, yourself."
"You're staring."
"You're on me."
"Is that a problem?"
"That's not a problem."
She pulled the gray shirt up over her head.
There was nothing under it.
"Sweet Jesus."
"Yeah?"
"Astrid."
"What?"
"Have you been in just my shirt all day?"
"All day."
"All day?"
"All day, Easton."
She laughed.
She put her hands flat on my chest, the same hands flat on my chest a hundred times in the last two months, only this time she was looking down at me from somewhere I hadn't had her before. The lamp was on the nightstand on the side toward the door. The light was warm on the side of her body.
I let myself look.
"I love you," she said.
"I love you back."
"Don't move."
"I wasn't gonna."
She bent down over me.
Her hair fell forward on either side of my face. She kissed me, slow at first, her mouth warm and open, but the kiss did not stay slow for long. She tugged the shirt I was still wearing up, and I lifted to help her. It landed somewhere on the floor.
She put her mouth on my throat.
She put her hands on my ribs.
Her hands knew the places they had patched up the night of the cat at her kitchen counter. They'd been careful then. They weren't careful now. They moved down my body with the certainty of a woman who had decided she was allowed to know every part of the man under her, and was going to.
I got my hands on her hips.
I let them stay there a beat.
Then I let one of them move up her spine to the back of her neck and bring her mouth back to mine.
She made the sound against my mouth that she had made on the couch.
I rolled my hips up under hers.
She made a different sound.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"The rest of it."
"Mhm."
She came up on her knees on either side of me and undid the button of my jeans without looking. I undid hers at the back. She lifted off me long enough for me to work them down her legs, and she got mine off with the efficiency of a woman who had decided a thing was happening.
She came back down.
There was nothing between us now.
She held herself above me on her hands and looked at me. I looked at her.
I put both palms flat against her ribs and ran them up her body, slow. Her skin was warm. Her breath was high. Her hair was still falling forward on either side of my face.
She lowered herself onto me.
The whole room went still.
I'd thought about it in the eight weeks of meeting her on her porch, in her kitchen, and in her bed.
I never got the shape of it right. The shape of it was her holding herself above me on her hands, her eyes not leaving my face, the slow settle, and the small breath that came out of her at the same moment one came out of me.
She didn't move for a beat.
I didn't move for a beat.
Then she started to move.
She moved slowly.
Her hands were flat on my chest. Her hips rocked against mine. The pace was hers. The decision was hers. I never had to give her either one. She took them.
I put my hands on her waist.
I let her go.
She picked the pace up in her own time. Her hair came loose from the knot. Her breath got higher. She bent down over me, and I caught her mouth, and she said my name against my mouth. I said hers back. We weren't quiet about any of it.
I pulled her down by the back of the neck.
I rolled my hips up under hers, harder this time.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
That was the last yeah for a while.
She let go in waves on top of me. The lamp was still on. My hands were still on her waist, and I watched her face. I didn't stop watching it.
I went after her.
I held her against my chest until both of us came back to the room.
Later, the lamp was off.
She was asleep on my chest within the next breath.
I lay there a long time after.
Across Maple, my house was dark. The boxes were where I'd left them. She said it first. She told me when she fell. She pinned me to my back, and she took me at my word.
I hadn't had any of that before.
I had it now.