25. Harrison
— ? —
Harrison
The zipper catches halfway down.
Geo laughs, a broken, exhausted sound, and reaches back to help me. “It’s been doing that since I bought it. You have to jiggle it.”
“I’ve got it.”
I work the fabric free, and then the zipper slides and the dress pools at her feet, gold puddling on the carpet of her apartment hallway, and she’s standing in front of me in nothing but the black lace she put on this morning when she still thought tonight might be survivable.
I don’t step back to look.
I’ve spent a year stepping back. Giving her space. Letting her set the pace.
Tonight I put my hands on her waist and walk her backward until her shoulders hit the wall, and I kiss her like I should have kissed her the first time she wore this dress. Deep. Unhurried. My thumb tracing the edge of lace at her hip while her hands fist in my shirt.
Don’t rush. You rushed the first time she wore this. You said nice. You turned away. Never again.
“Harrison, wait.”
“I need you to tell me if this is too much.”
My mouth moves to her jaw. Her throat. The freckle I wrote a verse about and never released. “I need you to tell me if you want me to stop.”
“Don’t stop.”
I drop to my knees.
The lace comes off. My mouth finds her, and she gasps, one hand braced against the wall, the other in my hair. She tastes like champagne and salt and the sweetness of her that I’d almost forgotten, and I don’t rush. I’ve spent a year rushing past her. Tonight I’m going to take my time.
She is already dripping. I lick into her like a man starving, slow broad strokes, then focused flicks on her clit until her hips jerk. I slide two fingers into her and curl, and she clamps down so hard I groan against her.
“I can’t do this standing,” she says, shaking. “I’m going to go down.”
“You can.”
I pin her hip to the wall with one hand. “I’ve got you. Come on my tongue. I’ve been dreaming about this for a year. This dress on the floor, you on my mouth.”
She comes with my name caught in her teeth, biting down on the sound so she doesn’t wake Val, her whole body shuddering against my mouth. I work her through it, gentler now, until she’s pulling me up by the collar.
“Bedroom,” she manages. “Now.”
I pick up the gold dress on the way. Drape it over a chair like it’s precious.
It is.
In the bedroom she strips me with hands that aren’t quite steady, jacket, shirt, belt, the rest, and when I finally sink into her, both of us gasping, I have to stop for a moment just to feel it.
A year of that dress hanging in a closet. A year of stepping back. I almost lost this forever. She is tight and wet and perfect and I’m going to last about thirty seconds if I move.
“Move,” she whispers. “Please. I need you to move.”
I move.
It’s her bed, her sheets, her body arching under mine while I whisper things I’ve been saving up. I see you. I’ve always seen you. I’m sorry I ever let you doubt it. You feel like coming home. You feel like every song I should have written for you instead of them…
She comes again with her face pressed into my shoulder, clenching so hard I go over right behind her, spilling into her on a groan I can’t quite muffle, hips stuttering, face buried in her hair.
I collapse beside her in the tangle of sheets, still half inside her, still pulsing.
Silence. Breathing. The distant sound of a car passing on the street.
“Okay,” she says finally. “That was worth the wait.”
“The dress is on the chair.”
“I saw.”
She turns her head to look at me. Her makeup is ruined. Her hair is wrecked. She is wrecked and radiant and back in my bed, and I can’t get a full breath. “Thank you. For sending it. For waiting.”
“Thank you for wearing it.”
She curls into my side. My arm comes around her automatically, muscle memory I never lost.
“I’m still moving back in tomorrow,” she says against my chest. “That wasn’t just post-party adrenaline talking.”
“I know.”
“And I’m still angry about tonight. About Vivian. About Patricia. About all of it.”
“I know.”
“But I’m also here. With you. And I’m not leaving.”
I press a kiss to the top of her head. My hand slides down her bare spine, possessive and gentle at once.
“Neither am I.”
***
She moves back in.
Just her and two suitcases and Val’s collection of stuffed animals, a year of living separately reduced to what fits in a trunk. I’m waiting at the door when they pull up, hands in my pockets, shoulders tense, bracing myself for the moment she changes her mind.
She doesn’t.
“You came,” I say.
“I said I would.”
“I kept expecting you to change your mind.”
“I almost did. Three times.”
She looks at the house behind me. The house she left. The house she’s coming back to. “But I’m tired of being afraid. I’m tired of protecting myself from a disaster that might never come instead of reaching for a life that could be beautiful.”
I kiss her on the doorstep. Soft, almost chaste, nothing like last night.
“Welcome home,” I say.
We put Val to bed together.
Geo reads the bedtime story while I sit on the edge of the bed, watching. Val’s eyes are drooping by the second page, heavy with the exhaustion of a long weekend and too much excitement.
“Mommy?”
Val mumbles.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Are we staying here now? For real?”
Geo glances at me. I nod.
“Yeah, sweetheart,” Geo says. “We’re staying.”
“Good.”
Val yawns hugely. “I like it when we’re all together.”
We slip out, leaving the door cracked, the nightlight casting soft shadows on the wall. In the hallway, Geo takes my hand.
“I did a thing,” I say. “I wrote a song. For us. I want you to sing on it with me.”
“What’s it called?”
“‘Golden Hour (Reprise).’”
Geo goes still. “You told the whole world you’d never sing that song again.”
“I’m not going to. You are.”
I get my guitar from the closet, settle on the edge of our bed, our bed, finally. “I’m just asking to be allowed on it.”
I play.
I thought I knew what love could be
A song someone else sang for me
But now I’ve found my voice again
And everything I sing is ours
Golden hour, golden light
I see you clearly now, for the first time
Not the shadow of what we were before
But the promise of what we could be
Something more
Her eyes are wet by the end.
“What do you think?”
I ask.
She doesn’t answer with words. She pulls me down and kisses me until neither of us can breathe.
“I think we should record it as soon as possible.”
“Yeah?”
“Tomorrow. Before I lose my nerve.”
She takes the guitar out of my hands and sets it on the floor. “Later.”