3. Luisa #2
“I want you to stop talking about your competency assessment.”
“Right, sorry.” He kissed me again, softer this time, slower. “You’re so beautiful. Do you know that? Every time you move it’s like watching water or fire-”
“Wade.”
“Shutting up now.”
But he didn’t, not really. He talked the whole time, a running commentary that should have been ridiculous and somehow wasn’t. Is this okay? God, you feel incredible. Tell me if I should, yes, okay, that sound means I should keep doing that-
He kissed down my throat, my collarbone, the space between my breasts. Spent an eternity there, learning me, mapping me with his mouth while his hands worked at the clasp of my bra with the focus he brought to hull equations.
“I can’t-” he muttered against my skin. “This is, who designed this-”
“Unhook it sideways.”
“Oh.” A pause. A click. “Oh, that’s much better. That’s… Luisa.”
He said my name like a prayer. Like a word he’d just learned was holy.
His mouth found my nipple and I arched into him, and he groaned, and his hips pressed into mine, and I could feel how hard he was through his clothes, how much he wanted this, how much he wanted me specifically-
“Off,” I said, tugging at his shirt. “Everything off, now.”
He practically tore the buttons getting out of it. The moonlight through the window caught the planes of his body, broad shoulders, defined chest, the kind of muscle that came from actually working, not from vanity reps at a gym. I ran my hands down his stomach and watched him shudder.
“Your hands,” he said, voice cracking. “Your hands are, I’ve been thinking about your hands for weeks.”
“What have you been thinking?”
“Things I shouldn’t say out loud. Things that would make me sound-” He broke off as my fingers found his belt buckle. “Luisa. Luisa, if you keep doing that I’m going to embarrass myself.”
“Maybe I want you to embarrass yourself.”
“That’s very unkind. I appreciate it immensely.”
I laughed, and he was laughing too, and then my dress was gone and his pants were gone and we were skin to skin in the salt-smelling dark, and the laughter faded into a heavier quiet, the kind that made my breath catch in my throat.
“You’re shaking,” he whispered.
“So are you.”
“I’m terrified,” he admitted. “Not of this. Of afterward. Of what happens when summer ends.”
I pulled him down. Kissed him until the shaking stopped. “We don’t have to think about afterward.”
“I always think about afterward. My brain doesn’t turn off.”
“Then think about this.” I shifted beneath him, wrapped my legs around his waist, felt him groan against my throat. “Think about how much I want you. Right now. Think about-”
He moved against me, and the words dissolved.
There was a moment, his forehead pressed to mine, his eyes searching my face, asking permission, and I nodded, and he pushed into me, slow and careful and devastating, and neither of us laughed anymore.
“God,” he breathed. “God, Luisa, you-”
I pulled him closer. Felt him bottom out, fill me completely, and the sound I made wasn’t dignified but I didn’t care.
“Move,” I said. “Please.”
He did.
Slowly at first, still learning the rhythm, his face tight with concentration. And then the shift came, the same one that happened when he danced, the moment his body stopped thinking and started feeling, and his hips found a rhythm that made me see stars.
“There,” I gasped. “Right there, don’t stop-”
“I’m not stopping. I’m never stopping. I’m going to do this forever, I’m going to-” His voice broke as I clenched around him. “Oh, that’s… please do that again-”
I did.
He swore. Dropped his head to my shoulder. Started moving faster, deeper, his hand sliding between us to find me, to touch me where I needed it, and the sound I made was embarrassing and perfect and exactly right.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured. “I’ve got you, let go, I want to feel you-”
I came apart under him. It hit me like a wave, elemental, and he followed seconds later with a sound that cracked my chest wide open. His whole body shuddered. His arms gave out. He collapsed onto me, heavy and warm and gasping.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
“In my next life,” I told the ceiling, “I want to come back as a gray wolf. Wild. No rules.”
He lifted his head. His glasses were gone, lost somewhere in the sheets. Without them, his eyes looked impossibly blue.
“I’ll find you,” he said. “Every life. I’ll find you.”
I thought he was ridiculous. I thought he was wonderful. I thought, I’m going to love this man for the rest of my life.
***
I woke to cold sheets.
The memory faded like fog burning off the harbor, Wade’s hands, Wade’s mouth, Wade saying I’ll find you like it was a promise, and I was in my Boston bedroom, alone, at 3 a.m., my hand on the empty space where my husband should have been.
Another emergency, probably. Another midnight text from Dolores.
I lay there in the dark and thought about the summer we fell in love. About the man who chased me down a cobblestone street to return my wallet, who grinned at me from the ground and said show me again, who learned to dance because he wanted to be close to me.
That man was gone now, and I didn’t know where.
I got up. Crossed to the closet. Opened his side, not looking for anything, just wanting to touch his shirts, smell his cologne, remember what it felt like to be loved by him.
A garment bag caught my eye. Pale pink, stamped with the logo of a boutique I didn’t recognize. It hadn’t been there yesterday.
I unzipped it.
A dress. Burgundy silk, beautiful.
Size two.
I was a size six.
I stared at it for a long time, in the dark, and didn’t feel anything at all.