Chapter 8 #2
The green dress slides off her shoulders and down to the floor and she steps out of it carefully and she stands in front of me in only the soft pale things underneath and the dried wisteria petal still in her hair, and she is shivering a little because the morning is still cool in this room, and I pull her down into the bed with me and I cover us both with the wool blanket and I lay her down slow on the pillow and I look at her in the gray-pink early light.
I take off my henley.
She watches me.
I take off the rest of what I am wearing and I get under the blanket with her and I bring her against me skin to skin and she makes a small sound — half breath, half the soft surprised sound she made last night when I first put my mouth on her under the fairy lights — and she puts her hand on the side of my face and I put my mouth on her mouth and we go slow.
We go very slow.
The first time, last night, was new for her and I was careful and I was paying attention to whether she was all right and whether she was with me and whether I was being gentle enough, and I was, and she was, and it was beautiful — but it was new, and new is its own kind of careful, and what we do now in the gray-pink early light in my monk's cell of a room with the thrush still doing its three notes outside the window is not new.
What we do now is slow on purpose.
Slow because we have learned each other a little now and we know where the careful spots are and we know where to put our hands and we know what makes her breath catch and we know what makes me close my eyes, and slow because we have all morning and there is nowhere either of us has to be and the door is closed and the curtain is drawn and the bed is warm and the wool blanket is soft.
I take my time.
I take it the way she has taught me to take everything — slow, deliberate, one thing at a time.
I kiss her shoulder. I kiss the place at the side of her throat where her pulse is going.
I kiss the small soft hollow at the base of her collarbone where the wisteria petal had been last night.
I lay my mouth against the place where her ribs lift when she breathes in and I feel her breath move under my mouth, and she puts her hand into my hair at the back of my head and her fingers spread there and the warmth of her palm against my scalp is the warmest thing I have felt in nine years of waking up alone in this bed.
I move slow down her body in the gray-pink light.
I learn her by morning the way I learned her by lamplight.
Her skin in the dawn is paler, the small constellation of freckles along her shoulder more visible, the small white scar at her hip — the one she told me about last night, a fall from a swing when she was nine — easier to see.
I put my mouth against it. She makes a sound.
I put my mouth at the soft place at the inside of her elbow.
She makes another sound. I put my mouth at the underside of her wrist where the gold chain her grandmother gave her is still on her, and she lifts her hand up to my face and traces my jaw with her thumb the way she traces the spine of a book she is about to open, and I have to stop for a second because the inside of my chest does the wing-folding thing and I need to ride it out before I keep moving.
She notices.
She always notices.
She lifts up onto one elbow and she looks at me with the gold-pink morning light behind her hair, and she puts her palm against my cheek, and she says, very small, "Come here."
I come here.
I come back up the length of her body slow, the wool blanket sliding off my shoulder, the morning cool on the skin of my back, her hand on my face guiding me, and I settle my weight back over her with her hands cupping my face and my mouth back on her mouth and our hips fitted together the way they fit together last night under the wisteria — slowly, the long warm pressure, her hands at the small of my back gathering me toward her without pulling.
I move into her this time the way you come home.
That is the difference. That is what is different from last night.
Last night was the first time and I was crossing a threshold I had been asked to cross with all the care a man can manage.
This morning I am already inside the house.
The threshold is behind us. She has shown me the rooms. She has told me where the light switch is.
She is in the doorway of the bedroom of this house with her hand held out to me and I am walking in slow because I have all the time in the world to be here.
She closes her eyes.
She says, "Oh."
The oh is a sound I have never heard her make.
It is small and low and pleased and it sits at the bottom of her throat and it goes through me the way the first chord of a song goes through you when the song is in a key you did not know you had been waiting to hear.
I press my forehead to her forehead. I move slow.
I move with the long slow patient rhythm her body is asking me to move with, her hands at the small of my back keeping time, her breath catching against the underside of my jaw, the wool blanket sliding lower with each press of us together until it is only at the small of her back and the morning light is on the long bare line of both of us.
I do not look away from her.
That is the other thing that is different from last night.
Last night under the fairy lights I had moments where I had to close my eyes against the largeness of what was happening.
This morning in the gray-pink light I do not close my eyes.
I keep them open. I keep them on her — on the small fine flush coming up at her cheekbones, the bridge of her nose, the freckle just below her left eye, the way her lashes lift when she opens her eyes to look at me back, the way the gold morning sun has come up enough now to put a thin warm bar of light across the pillow beside her hair and the way the light catches in the small auburn ends of her hair where they have come loose from the night.
I am going to remember the bar of light.
I am going to remember it for the rest of my life.
She says my name.
She says it small, the Rhett a soft warm syllable against the inside of my jaw, and I move with the syllable, slow, deeper, the cedar bed creaking under us in the quiet of the room, the thrush outside doing its three notes again, and I feel her arms tighten at my shoulders and her legs lift against my hips and I learn — I am learning — that the slow is the part she needed.
That fast would have been the wrong language.
That all the times I have ever heard another man talk about this and laugh and say something stupid, all those men were talking about a thing that is not the thing I am doing now in this gray-pink room with this woman on my bed.
What I am doing now is not their thing.
What I am doing now is making her feel slow and careful and seen for as long as she will let me.
I move slow.
I move slow and she moves slow with me and I keep my eyes on her eyes and I do not look away, and I find — the way I found it last night, the way she taught me how to find it — the place at the angle of her hips where she gasps small against my mouth, and I stay there, and I move with her there, slow, slow, slow, until the gasp goes from small to less small, from short to longer, from a question to an answer.
She says, oh, oh, oh, against my mouth.
I have never been talked to that way in my life.
I have never wanted to be talked to any other way again.
She says my name twice.
She says it the second time on a breath that is almost laughter — relief, joy, the small undone laughter of a woman discovering she can — and her whole body lifts under mine, slow, the long warm wave of her going through her from her hips up to her shoulders, and I watch her come apart in the gray-pink morning light with the bar of gold across the pillow by her hair, and I move with her through it, slow, careful, not stopping, my forehead against her forehead, my hand still at the side of her face the way she put it there ten minutes ago and asked me to keep it there, and when the wave has finished moving through her she opens her eyes and looks at me and she puts her hand into the hair at the back of my head and she pulls me down to her mouth and she says, against my lips, "Now you. "
I let go.
I let go because she told me to, and I press my face into the soft place at the side of her throat where her pulse is going fast under the skin and I let her feel me come back to her with my whole weight settled finally against her ribs and her arms around my shoulders and her mouth at my temple saying nothing at all, only breathing.
We stay like that for a long time.
The morning light gets gold.
The thrush stops and starts again. A car door slams somewhere out on the gravel. Somewhere down the hall the kitchen comes alive — pans, voices, the radio low. I hear Hawk laugh once at something. Knox says something I cannot make out. The smell of bacon comes faint under the door.
She says, into my shoulder, "I have never in my life felt this safe."
I say, into her hair, "Stay."
I do not say stay this morning. I do not say stay tonight. I do not say stay the weekend.
I say stay and I let it mean what it means.
She lifts her head.
She looks at me.
She says, "Yes."
That is the moment.
That is the moment that comes back to me later, when the day breaks open and the rest of it happens, when the phone call comes and the truck pulls up and the world tries to take her back — that is the moment I will hold onto.
Her face in the gold morning light from the window above my bed.
Her hair on my pillow. The single dried wisteria petal finally falling out of it onto the sheet between us.
Her saying yes to the simplest question I have ever asked anyone in my life.