Chapter 7 #4
He keeps finding it patiently, one slow movement after another, the cedar creaking under us, the wisteria above us, the fairy lights blinking soft and pink across the underside of the trellis, the smell of the garden in the warm early-June dark — vanilla rose and wisteria honey and the small clean salt smell of him under his soap and the green wet smell of the cosmos border just on the edge of opening — and his mouth on mine, and his mouth on my throat, and his mouth at the small soft place under my ear where I am making the sounds I am making.
He whispers — I will remember this — he whispers into the bend of my neck you deserve to be treasured.
I open my eyes at the word treasured and I see a wisteria petal land on his cheekbone and stay there.
I lift my hand. I brush it off. He turns his face into my palm.
He kisses the inside of my wrist, the inside of my palm, the soft heel of my hand.
He says my name, Nora, the N soft and the a long, Nora, and the way he says it is the way the door opens.
I come apart under the wisteria.
I come apart not the way I had been told to expect but the way the slow long opening of a thing wants to come apart — petal by petal, with no particular sound to it, the whole of me unhurrying open beneath him while he holds me with his eyes still on my eyes and his hand still warm at the back of my neck and his mouth half on my mouth and his weight still slow and present and not pulling away.
It moves through me like a long warm wave through tall grass.
It is not the loud thing. It is the quiet thing.
It is a slow opening into the entire dimensions of my own body — places I had carried for twenty-six years without knowing were rooms, lighting up, one by one, in the gold lamplight of his attention.
It is his name on my breath — Rhett. Rhett.
— said twice the way you would say the name of a place you had finally found.
He keeps moving while I come apart.
He keeps moving slow, the way he has been moving the whole time, and the slow is what does it — the not-rushing of him, the holding of him, the way he watches me come apart with his face very still above mine and his thumb stroking the line of my jaw the whole way through it — and when I have come back down from it enough to look at him properly I see that he has been waiting for me to finish.
I see him wait one more breath.
Then he follows me.
He follows me with a low low sound at the back of his throat, his face going down into the place between my throat and my shoulder, his arm under my lower back gathering me up against his ribs, the long warm shudder of him I will keep inside my chest like a small bright held thing.
I feel him let go in stages — his hand at my neck loosening, his arm at my back softening, his weight settling slowly over me until his chest is full against my chest and his cheek is against my temple and his breath at my ear is the long slow ragged breath of a man who has held still for a very long time and has only just been allowed to stop.
He does not roll off.
He stays.
He lifts up only enough to brace his weight again on his forearms, only enough not to crush me, only enough to bring his face down to mine and kiss me — once, soft, on the mouth — and then to settle back down with his cheek against my temple and his arm around my ribs and the long warm steady line of him still half-over me on the cedar bench under the fairy lights and the wisteria.
The garden is very quiet around us.
Somewhere down on Main, a car goes by. Somewhere up on the ridge, an owl calls.
The wisteria continues to drop its petals. One lands on the back of his hand where his hand is open on the cedar above my head. He notices it. He picks it up between his thumb and forefinger. He looks at it.
He tucks it behind my ear.
I laugh.
It is a real laugh, small and tired and undone, and he laughs too — quiet, against my temple, the laugh going down into me and lighting up the dark in my ribs in a soft warm way.
I say, into his shoulder, "I think you just ruined the library garden for professional use."
He says, against my ear, "Good."
We lie there for a long time.
The fairy lights blink. The wisteria drops.
The roses do not move at all. The owl on the ridge calls again.
He pulls the wool blanket up over both of us against the small cool that has started to come into the air from the river, and he tucks it under my chin with the kind of care you would tuck in a child, and he settles his arm back around my ribs and his cheek back against my temple.
He says, after a long while, into the dark, "Nora."
I say, "Yes."
He says, "Thank you."
I do not say for what.
I know for what.
I say, "Yes."
I kiss the corner of his jaw.
I let myself be held in a garden I built with my own hands, by a man I built a small careful trust around with my own deliberate slow attention, under a trellis of wisteria a friend of mine taught me how to drape with the small white stars I had been saving in a box in my closet for a night I was not yet sure I was going to be brave enough to make happen.
I made it happen.
I let myself feel that, all the way down. The pride of it. The choosing of it. The small clean joy of being a woman who can decide.
I close my eyes.
Above us, the wisteria keeps dropping its slow soft petals into the warm June dark.