Chapter 9 #2
“Things could be less complicated.” But I know they won’t be. She’s right. I’m fighting against something I already know I want.
“They could be if we weren’t attracted to each other, but we are. You can’t always rewrite your story. You can’t rewire yourself to want something different. And by yourself, I mean myself. I can’t rewire it. I thought I was a late bloomer, but all this time, I was waiting for you.”
“That’s horribly poetic.”
“Life is poetry,” she says.
“We’re fucked, aren’t we?” It’s a rhetorical question, but she responds anyway.
With a grin, she says, “I think we might be.”
“Why do you sound so happy about that?”
Her smile is so soft and sweet, but filled with steel at the same time. This isn’t a woman who’s lost. She knows what she wants. It’s both terrifying and terrifyingly attractive. “Because being fucked with you is the most amazing thing I can think of.”
“I’m sure I could brainstorm something more exciting,” I say dryly.
“I’m sitting here in a champagne-soaked dress. Let’s brainstorm ideas about how to deal with that.”
“Take it off, get my clothes, find a laundromat and a hotel with a shower, take a break for the day, start out again tomorrow, and—”
She leans over and brushes a kiss across my forehead. My heart stops dead in its tracks, and my brain short-circuits. My dick hasn’t deflated since I got on this bus, but in this position, it’s entirely obvious that it’s down my leg and making a big show of it.
“It’s okay, Luca,” she breathes, my name sounding so pretty on her tongue. I’ve never really liked it, but I like the way she says it. “It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you. You can trust me.”
“We barely know each other. Trust is a big word.”
“You can trust someone before you exchange a word with them. It’s called soul trust.”
“That’s more poetry. Not reality,” I say.
I drag in the oxygen that my burning lungs are screaming for.
She could be lying to me now. This whole thing could be one big game of seduction to take me down and make me pay.
That’s a terrible thought. A paranoid one.
I know that’s not it at all. As soon as that dark shit pops into my head, I dismiss it.
I know what happened at the start of this, but that’s not what’s happening now.
Despite my protests and how irrational it is, there is trust there.
If eyes are the window to the soul, then Dulcie’s soul is so damn pure. All I see shining in her eyes is continued sincerity.
“This isn’t just about helping my dad. It’s about you too.
It’s about me. It’s about a world that’s bigger than all of us.
I really want to get to know you. I want to spend time with you because I enjoy it.
None of that has anything to do with anything you can do for me materially.
I don’t want anything from you except what you can give, and I think you have so much just waiting to be discovered.
I’ll make it simple. My heart wants to be tangled up in yours. That’s it.”
“I wouldn’t call that simple.”
“I would. For me, two minutes into meeting you, I think mine started to get lost.”
“Why aren’t you mad that I’m saying this?” I ask.
“Because you’re only trying to protect yourself,” she says earnestly.
She’s dropped everything, and all I can see is how vulnerable she is.
She’s wrapping herself up and handing it over like a gift to me, and all I’m doing is pulling away, trying to give it back.
After kissing her. I know how mixed up and messed up and wrong that is, but she’s not melting down.
She’s trying so hard to understand, reacting with kindness and compassion instead of getting defensive and telling me I’m a fucking asshole.
I feel like a fucking asshole.
“I don’t want you to get hurt.” She grazes a kiss over my forehead again.
The compression in my chest is unreal. It’s not just my lungs that are on fire.
“I don’t want to be hurt either. This is about mending pain, not causing more.
If you need more time, that’s fair. If you want us to get to know each other, that makes sense.
It’s very wise. The flesh can burn itself up, but all fires eventually just get to that point where they have to simmer.
I got carried away. I’ve never done that before.
Despite what evidence I’ve given you to go on, I’m a very rational person, and I’ve been cautious about dating.
I’ve never put my heart and soul into someone else’s hands. ”
I have nothing. No words. I’ve never been so stripped down or felt so seen. She’s speaking right to my heart and soul, and it’s a lot to process.
Just leaving my house for the first time in years and heading across the country is almost more than I can bear.
My head isn’t quite coping, and it’s giving the corresponding signals to my body. Even though I’m lying down, there’s still a distinct possibility I could pass out.
“Are you okay?” she asks, sounding concerned.
“No.” I blink up at her, trying to get my shit together. I’m the older one. I’m the one who is supposed to be mature and have all the answers. I should be the one protecting her, but instead, she’s in a soaked dress, and I’m panicking. “I’m a wreck. You?’
“I’m just wet and sticky. Let’s pull over and get some air. I think you just need to breathe, but it’s dark and airless back here, and I read somewhere that you’re not supposed to open the windows on a party bus.”
“There’s an intercom near the front.” I want to point, but my hand won’t even do that much. I’m way too hot. She’s right. It’s closed in back here, and the air is thick to the point of being humid.
She gets up and walks quietly to the front.
She finds the intercom, and the driver’s voice comes over it.
She asks so politely if we could stop at the next rest stop, but preferably a town if there’s one close by, so she can do some laundry.
He laughs like she’s joking, and she laughs too, but says she’s serious.
And she’s also starving, but if laundry is possible first, that would be great.
I think I hear him tell her that we’ll be somewhere in twenty minutes and that he’ll do his best to find what she needs, but it’s a blur.
Everything comes at me from far away until, suddenly, Dulcie is beside me again, guiding my head into her lap and pressing something cold to the side of my face. It’s a water bottle from the fridge.
The burst of frigid cold jerks me back to reality. “How are you so sure of yourself? Of me? Of this?” I groan.
“I’m not. This is just what my freaking out looks like. I tend to do it internally. I’m pretty scared, and I’m wildly out of control. But remember how I said that in times of disaster, you should put your faith in one thing? Well, that one thing is this working out.”
That’s not a good “one thing,” though.
But I can’t bring myself to tell her that. She’d find a way to refute it that would help me believe in myself. She’s full of miracles like that.
“I didn’t know I liked brutalist architecture until I saw this one building when we went to Cincinnati for a little vacation.
We can’t really ever get away from the bakery, but it was a graduation gift.
It just stopped me right in my tracks, and I wanted to know everything I could.
An instant love was born. Until that day, I didn’t even know such a thing existed.
I didn’t even know I was into architecture.
I haven’t stopped loving it, researching it, and falling deeper and deeper.
It’s a secret passion. I devour architecture books.
And furniture. I really like that too. Urban decay.
Abandoned houses. But brutalist architecture started it all, and I will always love it best.”
I force myself upright, taking the bottle of water with me. I down half of it and scrub a hand over my face. “I’m not architecture, though, Dulcie.”
“I know, sweetheart.” She rubs a small circle on my shoulder. “You’re not made of wood or stone or concrete. The soul of a building isn’t the same as the soul of a person.”
“I’m not feeling well,” I mumble.
She guides my hand with the remaining water up to my forehead and rests the other one at the back of my neck. “It’s just the anxiety.” She waits a heartbeat, then adds, “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, it’s nothing medical.” I down the rest of the water. “I’m sorry I scared you.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I scared you too. I need to slow down. This isn’t a race; it’s a marathon.”
“Slow down? Because I’m old?” I quip.
Her fingers bury into my hair at the base of my neck.
It’s so good that I can’t stop myself from arching into her hand.
“You’re incredibly fit. Way fitter than I am.
In that metaphor, I don’t want to be chased.
I don’t want to miss everything along the way.
I just want to walk right beside you. Life can be both the journey and the destination, can’t it?
I want to enjoy one with you and end up wherever we are meant to be.
Together. Or separately. But okay with that and happy all the same. ”
I lean forward, practicing regular breathing until I feel like a human being again and less like I’m suffocating and drowning. Dulcie is okay with the silence. She’s not tense or vibrating beside me.
“You’re tremendous,” I say hoarsely. She truly is, in every way.
“So are you,” she says in return.
The bus slows down. I can’t believe it’s been twenty minutes already. Maybe I didn’t hear right. Dulcie leaps up. “I’m going to tell the driver to go for food first. We can get takeout and eat on the bus.”
“What about your dress? I’m so sorry I soaked you. That was a rookie mistake.”
“The champagne was probably defective.” She laughs. “Food first. I don’t mind looking a little bedraggled. Getting you fed and watered takes priority over laundry.”
“That might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
She winks at me, then goes to ask the driver to find somewhere we can order from. Somewhere he likes, she’s quick to add. He needs a break, too, as he’s doing all the work. We’re just riding along.
She was right when she said there’s nothing more attractive than kindness. Dulcie is one of those people who thinks about everyone else before she thinks of herself.
Case in point, me. When she sits down beside me, she has another bottle of water, and she passes it over.
“My answer is yes,” I say brokenly. I swallow and clear my throat. “It sounds like I’m playing some kind of game here. I’m sorry.”
She takes my hand and folds it on her knee between both of hers.
“It doesn’t. Everything you communicated was expressed well, and it all made sense.
We’re going to slow down. That’s the mature way to handle this.
” She squeezes my hand. “We’re going to be okay.
” She phrases it half with solid conviction and half like a question.
I give her the only answer I can, but it’s straight from my bruised, healing, and hopeful heart. “Yes, we will.”