Chapter 30 #2
He gives a choked cry, and then his mouth is on hers and he’s coming warm and wet across her stomach, his body bowed and trembling.
It lasts a long time, and when she’s not certain whether she should keep going, he kisses the corner of her mouth and says, “A little more, my darling, I’m still…
yes, there,” and it’s like he’s reached down and given her clit a firm, electric swat.
She hopes he’s not too tired to stay up for another hour. Or two.
Afterward, he gets up for tissues and her bedding, brings everything back to his side, and makes them a cozy, generous nest of covers.
He turns onto his back and pulls her across his chest. “Seven weeks,” he says, and it’s a curse and a promise.
“Seven weeks,” she replies.
“I’m moving in,” he says.
“You’re goddamn right you are.”
“Every night, Ripley. Until we’re too exhausted to carry on. We get Beauty out of the ground and into the scanner and we do this.”
“Okay,” she agrees.
“I want…” he says, and doesn’t finish.
“I know,” she says. And then, because there’s too much to say, and they both know everything anyway, she says it again: “I know.”
Ripley tries to move quietly when she wakes up.
She wants to look at him when he can’t be self-conscious.
She wants to map the freckles on his forehead.
Watch the wavelike movement of his ribs when he takes one of those deeper, sighing breaths.
Memorize the exact not-quite-black shade of his eyelashes.
When he finally rolls over, she’s flipping through his sketchbook. This makes him groan and fling an arm over his eyes. “Those are garbage, Ripley. They’re embarrassing.”
“They’re amazing.” She climbs back in bed and snuggles into his shoulder until he wraps his arm around her. She holds up the sketch of the old man and his truck. “What made you do this one?” She plans to ask him this about every single piece.
He rubs his eyes, adorably grumpy. “I don’t know. It’s very America.”
“You don’t have farmers changing tires in England?”
“They wouldn’t look like this. The truck. The hat. There’s a particular way Americans hold their shoulders.”
“Like how?” she asks, fascinated.
“It can’t be described. You’d see the difference if you ever…” He trails off.
If she ever came to England.
She doesn’t want to spend these weeks missing him before he’s gone, so she turns to the drawings of Beauty. His landscapes are good, and his Ripley series makes her ache, but these have a life all their own.
“I’d love to see your fantasy work. Your dragons.”
“I don’t do that anymore. It’s been—I don’t know. Years, maybe.”
“What? James,” she says, dismayed. “This is your best work. And I don’t mean just technically good. It’s emotionally good. People would pay money for the way your art could make them feel.”
“I’m meant to give myself to science, Ripley. To facts. This is a trivial thing I do for fun. Or, rather, I used to do it,” he corrects himself. He sounds like the impression of his father he did back at the museum.
Ripley strokes the edge of the page, Beauty’s bright, curious eye glinting back at her. She wonders if James’s father has ever truly seen his son.
Probably not. He’s a chemist who only knows how to set up a reaction, then measure how much of the desired product he’s made.
“I don’t know if your dad knew this,” Ripley says slowly, “but my dad taught me that people don’t love dinosaurs because of science.
Facts alone don’t do it—we love dinosaurs because they make us feel things.
Awe. Fear. A sense of being able to touch a lost world.
A visceral understanding of the fragility of life, of how easily our world can tip into mass extinction.
And I don’t think facts are doing it for you either, James.
You’re blocked because you can’t go on with your life without feeling. And I think you know it.”
Underneath her, his body tenses. “If my art were important, it might be different, but galleries don’t want what I make. My father would almost certainly freeze my trust. I would lose my ability to help Daisy.”
“Or you’d decide that galleries don’t get to define you and you’d become a famous commercial illustrator with a bunch of fuck-you money of your own.”
He arches a sardonic brow. “A very common career trajectory for artists, I understand.”
She closes the book and hands it to him. “I’m sure your dad and your department head and I don’t know who all else would tell you to stick to the facts. It’s better for them. But is it better for you? Would Daisy want your money if she knew what it cost you?”
He stares at the sketchbook like it might be venomous. She leans over and kisses him so she can feel his cheekbone under her lips and remember it when she’s old.
“I’m going to get us some coffee.”
A cup of coffee in each hand, Ripley walks back to the cabin with exaggerated care. She’s floating in the exhausted, near-psychedelic tranquility that comes after a lot of really excellent orgasms and not nearly enough sleep.
Get Beauty out of the ground, get her in the scanner, spend as much time with James as possible. It feels achievable.
Today, she’ll be friendlier to Mindy, because it’s important to James. Right now, she’ll bring him coffee in bed, then—
The door of James’s cabin swings open. Mindy steps onto the shallow porch.
“Ripley! Hey, you have a minute?” Mindy starts toward her, looking determined.
“Hi, Mindy,” Ripley says uncomfortably. She’s outside her cabin first thing in the morning with two mugs of coffee made extremely different ways, and Mindy’s no fool. Ripley might have ditched her rule about her name being linked with James’s, but he hasn’t said he’s ready to go public.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry yesterday got weird. James gave me quite a lot of shit about it.”
“He does that. Hey, there’s breakfast in the lean-to if you want some,” Ripley says, trying to change the subject.
A smile breaks over Mindy’s face, and it’s like she’s a totally different person. “I would love to grab breakfast and talk about your next project.”
“Um, give me ten minutes?”
“That would be amazing. Here, let me get your door,” Mindy says, darting past her.
“Mindy, no—”
Ripley watches the other woman go still at the sight of James’s pin-striped pajamas tangled with Ripley’s pink Butte vs. Everybody T-shirt.
“Oh,” she says, sounding so fucking disappointed.
James steps into view, miraculously fully clothed.
“Mindy. I’ll be out in a moment.” There’s a terrible, heartbreaking note in his voice.
Ripley recognizes it because she heard him say, I cannot, cannot be to you what my father was to my mother.
And yet a moment like this happened for his parents the first time a colleague saw them together and realized what was going on.
“No rush,” Mindy says, her voice effortfully neutral. “Excuse me.”
Ripley hurries inside and bumps the door closed with her hip. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she would do that.”
“It’s all right, Ripley.” He takes the cooling mugs from her hands and sets them on his little folding table, then wraps her in a tight embrace, his nose in her hair.
“Did you know you smell like wind? I’ve never met anyone who smells the way you do, like you store up sun and fresh air inside your skin. ”
“I can tell when you’re changing the subject, James.”
“Ah,” he says, his lips curving against her temple.
“Is it going to be a problem for you? Is this going to—I mean, your rules…” Ripley’s heart is in her throat.
“It’s all right, my darling,” he says, but she can feel the altered timbre of his voice through his chest. “Mindy and I have known each other too long for it to have stayed a secret. She would have figured it out another way.”
“Is she your ex?” God, she hates her unhinged mouth and missing filter.
“Yes,” James says steadily.
She shouldn’t ask any more questions. She should shut up and hold on to whatever fraction of her dignity is left. She should—
“Why did you break up?”
“I was…with Mindy when I met you in Atlanta. She was working on moving to London. At the time, I fancied myself the opposite of my father. Monogamous. Smugly faithful to a partner half a world away. And then I saw you.” He mimes an explosion, puffing out his cheeks—boom.
That’s thunder, she realizes with deep unease.
“I broke it off with Mindy not long afterward.”
“Oh, James.” She feels a hard pinch in her chest. Rigid, self-critical, upright James would have tried himself and come to a guilty verdict.
Beneath that, there’s an unexpected wave of sympathy for Mindy. To lose someone like James would be a thousand times worse than losing someone like Will.
“I decided to stay unmarried. I would at all costs avoid liaisons with anyone in paleontology. If I was doomed to be my father’s son, then at least I would not walk through the world carelessly destroying everything I touched.
And, well…” A low, cynical sound escapes his throat.
“You can see how brilliantly I succeeded at that.”
Ripley holds him tighter. “You’re not your father, James. I’m not your student and never will be. I’m hardly even in paleontology.”
“I know,” he says. “But I seem to keep hurting people even when I’m trying to help.”
“Should we stop—”
His arms tighten around her. “No!” he says, then a more controlled “No. We’re not bloody stopping. I will not give up a single day with you, Ripley. Not for anything or anyone.”
“Jealous much,” Ripley mutters into his shirt. She’s rewarded with a laugh.
“I’ll speak with Mindy. Again,” he says with a long, tense exhalation. “Then I’ll come work on Beauty. It’s time we get her out of the ground.”