Chapter 15 #3
The kiss is not performed. There is no Janet Lundy. There is no leather portfolio. There is no custody case providing an alibi for what’s happening.
This kiss is just us.
His mouth meets mine and it’s slow. Deliberate.
The kind of kiss that asks a question and waits for the answer.
His hand comes to my jaw—not grabbing, guiding.
Tilting my face toward his with a gentleness that makes my chest ache in a way I didn’t know chests could ache.
It’s nothing like the sofa kiss, which was performance and adrenaline and the blur of a plan being executed.
This is specific and calculated and the kiss of a man who doesn’t want to stop at kissing.
He pulls back. An inch. His forehead rests against mine.
“How did that feel?” he asks.
“Awkward,” I lie.
“Damn, let me try again.” He smiles against my mouth.
Kisses me again. Deeper this time. His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck and something inside me—the mechanism that keeps me upright, that keeps me composed, that has been running on autopilot since my first executive meeting—shuts off.
I am not thinking about the fall or spring line.
I am not thinking about Greg or Eleanor or the caseworker.
I am not thinking about anything except the pressure of his mouth and the warmth of his hand and the fact that my body is doing things it hasn’t done in so long I’d forgotten it was capable.
I give in and kiss him back. Not carefully. Not the measured, two-second response I gave him on the burgundy sofa. I kiss him the way fabric falls when you stop fighting it—completely, without reservation, surrendering to the drape.
He pulls me across his lap and I go. I go because his hands are on my hips and his mouth is on my neck and I am thirty-eight years old and I have never in my life been kissed like I am something precious and urgent at the same time.
His fingers find the hem of my sweater. Slip beneath it.
His palm is warm and rough against my waist, against my ribs, moving upward with a patience that feels like torture and a confidence that feels like permission.
I am on his lap in a bubblegum-pink room surrounded by boy band posters and somehow at thirty-eight I’m living out a teenage dream.
It took me two extra decades to get here, but sixteen-year-old Celeste would be thrilled.
There is a guy, a hot guy, who wants me in that real way.
Kissing me in my bedroom, after dark, while all the parents sleep.
This place really is a time capsule. And yet this moment feels…
timeless. Gliding between past and present, like it doesn’t know whether it’s a moment or a memory.
His hand cups my breast over the fabric of my bra and I make a sound that I will deny making later under oath.
He grins against my mouth—I can feel it, the shape of his smile pressed to my lips—and the grin makes me want to either kill him or climb deeper into his lap.
I choose the latter, locking my hips into his, feeling his growing hard-on through his jeans, between my thighs.
I push him backward so he’s lying flat on my pink duvet.
My hand drops to his waist. Finds the button of his jeans.
My fingers graze the hard length of him through the denim and his breath hitches—a sharp, involuntary intake that tells me self-control is a thing of the past. He’s said it over and over, time and time again.
He wants me. Right now, I’m going to choose to believe it.
If he really does want me, tonight, he can have me.
I free his pants button, fingers clamped around his zipper pull when—
A shriek from the main house. Glass shattering. A thud.
We both freeze. The sound cuts through the pink room like a fire alarm in the silent dead of night—the kind of interruption that evacuates a moment and leaves nothing behind.
Saylor is off the bed before I’ve processed what I heard.
He’s out the door, crossing the yard in the dark at a dead sprint, and I’m behind him—sweater twisted, hair disheveled, moving on instinct and adrenaline toward the main house where every light is still on and something has gone terribly wrong.
He’s through the patio doors first. I’m three steps behind.
Ada is on the kitchen floor. She’s on her side, one hand pressed to the ground, the other clutching her hip.
A shattered glass is beside her—water, just water—the shards scattered across the hardwood in a constellation of broken crystal.
Her face is white. Not pale—ghost white.
The color of pain that has passed through severity and arrived at something beyond it.
“Mum.” Saylor is on his knees beside her, his hands hovering, afraid to touch the wrong place. “Mum, I’m here. What happened?”
“I’m so sorry.” Ada’s voice is small and tight, the voice of a woman who is in agony and is apologizing for it. “I forgot my medicine. The one in the fridge. I thought I could get it myself. Didn’t want to bother you two. And I just—the floor was slippery, and I—”
“It’s okay. You’re okay. Can you sit up?”
She nods. He helps her slowly, carefully, his hands under her arms, lifting with the careful precision of someone who has done this before, in other kitchens, at other hours, hundreds of times. The repetition is in his body. The grief is in his eyes.
And I see it. The thing he carries. The weight that bends him even when he’s standing straight. His mother is on the floor, in pain, because she didn’t want to interrupt his evening, and now he’s kneeling in broken glass with guilt flooding his face like water filling a room.
I move.
I don’t think about it. I don’t weigh options or calculate appearances or design my response. I move the way you move when someone needs you—immediately, completely, without the luxury of self-consciousness.
“Ada.” I’m beside them on the floor. “Let’s get you to the couch. Saylor, help me.”
We lift her together. Guide her to the living room.
I arrange the throw pillows Saylor bought, the ones that made me laugh during the caseworker visit—and help her settle.
Ada grips my forearm during the transfer.
Her fingers are ice cold and stronger than they should be. I hold on until she lets go.
“Which medicine?” I ask. “It’s in the fridge? What does it look like?”
“The small red vial. Second shelf. It should have a yellow label.”
I’m in the kitchen. Second shelf, red vial, yellow label. I find it, check the dosage on the label, grab a glass—a plastic one, not crystal—and fill it with water. I bring both to Ada and watch her take the medicine with shaking hands.
“Tea,” I say. “I’m putting the kettle on.”
I’m back in the kitchen. Kettle on the stove.
Saylor is sweeping the glass methodically, thoroughly, his jaw set in that way that means he’s not in the kitchen anymore.
He’s somewhere else. He’s in the math of his life—the equation where his happiness always subtracts from his mother’s safety, where every moment he spends with me is a moment he’s not watching her, where the guilt compounds interest on a debt he’ll never believe is paid.
I can read it on his face: this is why he can’t have this. Can’t have me. Can’t have a life. Because his mother will always need him more than any woman will tolerate being needed less.
I think for some odd reason, he’s embarrassed. I can’t fathom why, but there’s the slight hunch of his shoulders, the way he won’t meet my eyes, the quiet resignation of a man who has auditioned for happiness and been rejected so many times he’s stopped expecting callbacks.
The kettle whistles. I pour Ada’s tea. Bring it to her.
She wraps her hands around the mug and the color is starting to return to her face.
She smiles at me in a way where “thank you” seems redundant.
What a special gift. One none of the mothers I knew growing up possessed.
How to make someone feel loved with just a look.
I squeeze her hand and tell her I’ll be right back.
I find Saylor in the kitchen. He’s finished sweeping. He’s standing at the sink, gripping the edge of the counter, staring out the window at the dark yard.
“I’m going,” I tell him.
His head drops. Barely perceptible. An inch of surrender. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “I understand.”
“No you don’t.” I wait until he looks at me.
His eyes meet mine, bloodshot and weary, like a boxer who’s already taken too many hits but knows the final bell hasn’t rung yet.
“I’m going to the grocery store. There’s one about ten minutes up the road.
We need popcorn. And wine for me, and mocktails for your mum because she can’t drink after taking that medication.
I read the bottle.” I swipe my keys from the counter.
“Can you get the TV connected to Wi-Fi while I’m gone?
When I get back, we’re doing a movie marathon. All three of us.”
He stares at me.
“Is that okay?” I ask.
He stares at me some more. Something is happening behind his eyes—a recalculation, a rewiring, the slow and disbelieving recognition that the thing he expected to happen is not happening.
“That’s—” His voice catches. He clears his throat. “That’s great. Are you sure?”
“Very sure.” I grab my bag, head for the door, but Saylor catches up to me, stopping me with one hand on my shoulder. “Wait. One correction to your plan.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m coming with you to the store. Then we’ll set up the TV together.”
“You don’t trust me to go to the store by myself?”
“Well, I trust you in the store. It’s the getting there part that’s a public safety concern. I want to drive you…you know, for the safety and wellbeing of all the other drivers in Westchester who want to live past tonight.”
“Hilarious,” I deadpan.
His laugh is quiet, rough, the sound of relief disguised as amusement. He grabs his wallet off the counter and follows me to the door.
After assuring us she’ll be fine for a while, Ada watches us leave from the couch, tea in her hands, the blanket Saylor chose pulled up to her waist. She looks small in the living room—small and warm and safe in a house that’s starting to feel like something more than an unpleasant childhood memory or a stage set or a strategy for impressing a caseworker.
It’s starting to feel like what Saylor built it to be.
A home.
“Hey, Saylor?” I say as we walk through the front door.
“Yes?”
“I want to warn you, I’m picky about my brand of popcorn. I don’t compromise when it comes to movie theater butter flavor.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
“I just want to make that clear in case you want an out now. Popcorn brands matter when you move forward with someone.”
Saylor stops dead in his tracks. “What are you saying, Celeste? Because I’ll even eat nasty-ass kettle corn if it means moving forward with you.”
“You don’t like kettle corn?” I balk. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Focus, Celeste,” he says, taking one step closer to where I’m also frozen in place. Right underneath the stoop of my childhood front porch. “The forward part—what does that mean?”
Right when I need her, Whit comes in clutch.
Speaking to me through a sisterhood that clearly transcends death.
She’s gone, yet she’s still sending love my way—in the twisted form of this man, who’s too young for me to make sense, and her baby, that would only be mine in the worst of circumstances.
But it’s still…love isn’t it? Twisted, messy, new, and shaky. But real.
And then I hear her clear as day. Lessi, shoot your shot and hit that… Or I will.
I laugh to myself which must make me look unhinged, but I don’t care. Okay, Whit. Truth or dare. Truth? I want him. The dare? I’m going to do something about it.
“Saylor, it’d be a good time to ask me out again.”
“Oh yeah?” He takes another step closer.
The Westchester night is cool and dark and full of stars you can’t see from Manhattan. I feel like I’ve watched this scene a million times growing up, but I never really saw it. Not until now, with the right cast for what I’m praying is a happily-ever-after.
I fish my keys out of my purse and hold them out. Saylor closes the last sliver of distance between us. Cradles my keys in one hand.
“Celeste Brinley, do you want to go out with me sometime?”
I twirl a loose strand of my hair. “Oh my God, this is like so unexpected,” I say in my best impression of Clueless.
Saylor smiles with his whole damn face. Forehead crinkled, eyes clamped shut, uncontrollable joy.
“What do you say?” he asks again.
“I’d love to go out with you sometime.”
He kisses my forehead and it already feels different. Familiar. Possessive. Like someone can claim you with their lips pressed just below your hairline. How beautifully simple.
We don’t have answers tonight. We’re eons away from making this make sense, but for right now, with my hand in Saylor’s walking toward my car like regular-enough people without a world of guilt and burden on their shoulders, it’s enough.
It’s more than enough.
It’s a start.