21. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
Later
Living with Kenneth again is strange.
I keep expecting to feel the old loneliness, the hollow ache of sharing a house with someone who’s never really there. But every morning, I wake up to the smell of breakfast cooking and the sound of him humming off-key in the kitchen.
He makes terrible coffee. The oatmeal always comes out gluey.
But the matcha is perfect every single time, frothed just right with a little honey the way I like it, and the waffles are getting better.
Strawberries sliced thin on top, because he remembered that I mentioned once, years ago, that my grandmother used to make them that way.
How did he remember that?
I don’t think I even remember telling him.
“Enjoying the view?” he says this morning, sliding a plate in front of me.
“I’m assessing your culinary skills.”
“And?”
“The waffles are slightly less criminal than last week.”
“High praise.” He sits across from me, cradling his own cup of coffee. “I’ll take it.”
We eat in comfortable silence. The baby kicks, a fluttering sensation that’s become as familiar as my own heartbeat. I press my hand to the spot, and Kenneth’s eyes track the movement with something like wonder.
“Active today?”
“She’s been doing gymnastics since about four AM.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It means she’s healthy.” I take another bite of waffle. “Also, I blame you. Your genes are clearly the athletic ones.”
“I have never done a gymnastic in my life.”
“That’s not a thing. You can’t do ‘a gymnastic.’”
“I just did.”
I laugh. I’ve been laughing more lately. The sound still surprises me sometimes, like running into an old friend I’d forgotten I had.
After breakfast, I find the note on the bathroom mirror.
You’re beautiful. Our daughter is lucky.
It’s written in his terrible handwriting, stuck to the glass with a piece of tape. There have been others over the past few weeks. Little messages that appear while I’m sleeping or showering or distracted by the baby’s acrobatics.
I’m proud of you.
Thank you for this second chance.
You’re going to be an amazing mother.
I don’t know what to do with these notes.
Part of me wants to collect them, save them in a box somewhere as evidence that this is real.
Part of me is still waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to revert to the distant workaholic who could forget our anniversary while remembering the quarterly projections down to the decimal point.
But he’s different now.
I watch him leave for therapy twice a week, and sometimes he comes home with red eyes like he’s been crying.
Sometimes he comes home with a cautious optimism that makes my heart ache, like he’s discovered something important and can’t wait to share it.
He never tells me what they talk about. I don’t ask.
Some things need to stay private for the healing to work.
He reads to the baby every night.
I pretend to be asleep while he does it, curled on my side in the master bedroom while he kneels beside the bed and presses his face to my belly. His voice drops to something soft and intimate, a tone I haven’t heard from him since our honeymoon.
“And your mother,” he says tonight, his breath warm against my skin. “Your mother is the strongest person I’ve ever known. You’re going to be just like her, and I can’t wait to watch it happen.”
My eyes burn behind my closed lids.
I don’t move. Don’t speak. Don’t give away that I’m listening.
But I hear every word.
I cook for him.
It’s a Tuesday evening, nothing special about it except that I woke up this morning with an inexplicable urge to make pasta from scratch.
My grandmother’s recipe. The one I haven’t made in years because it felt too domestic, too wifely, too much like something a woman does when she’s trying to keep a man happy.
But that’s not why I’m doing it now.
I’m doing it because I want to. Because he’s been trying so hard, and I want to try too. Because somewhere along the way, in between the therapy appointments and the mirror notes and the late-night readings to my belly, I started wanting things I’d given up on wanting.
“What’s all this?” He stops in the kitchen doorway, taking in the flour-dusted counter, the pot of sauce simmering on the stove, the garlic bread browning in the oven.
“Dinner.”
“You cooked.”
“I do know how.”
“I know, I just-” He runs a hand through his hair, looking oddly vulnerable. “You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
He doesn’t say anything else. Just washes his hands and starts setting the table without being asked, moving around me in the small kitchen like we’ve been doing this dance our whole lives.
We haven’t. We really haven’t. In the before times, we had a chef who came three nights a week and takeout the other four. I can count on one hand the number of meals we cooked together in two years of marriage.
Maybe that was part of the problem.
“This is amazing,” he says after the first bite.
“It’s just spaghetti.”
“It’s not just spaghetti.” He sets down his fork, his expression serious. “It’s you cooking for me. After everything.”
I pick at my own plate, suddenly self-conscious. “Don’t make it into a bigger thing than it is.”
“It’s a big thing to me.”
“Kenneth-”
“I don’t take it for granted, Bea. Any of it.” He holds my gaze, and there’s something raw there, something undefended. “Every day you let me be here, every moment I get to spend with you and our daughter, it matters. It all matters.”
I don’t know what to say to that.
So I reach across the table. Take his hand.
“I know you don’t.”
After dinner, we migrate to the couch.
There’s a careful distance between us at first, a few inches of cushion that feels like a boundary line. We’ve kissed a few times since he moved in - brief, soft kisses that don’t go anywhere. I’m not ready for more. He knows that. He’s been painstakingly respectful of the limits I’ve drawn.
But tonight something feels different.
Maybe it’s the pasta we made together, the flour still dusting his forearms, the domestic intimacy of feeding each other across the table.
Maybe it’s the way he’s been looking at me all evening like I’m something precious and longed-for.
Maybe it’s the memory of how thoroughly he ruined me with his mouth and cock the last time I let him into my bed.
“Can I ask you something?” I say into the comfortable silence.
“Anything.”
“The guest room.” I pause, trying to find the right words while my heart pounds. “Does it bother you? Being so close but not…”
“Not being with you?” He shakes his head slowly, honestly. “Being in the guest room is a privilege I didn’t think I’d ever have again. I’ll sleep in that room forever if it means being near you.”
“You don’t have to sleep there forever.”
He turns fully to look at me, eyes searching my face like he’s afraid he misheard.
“What?”
“I’m not saying tonight. I’m not saying tomorrow.” I meet his gaze, thighs already pressed together under my soft dress. “But I’ve been thinking. About what it would mean to really let you back in. Not just into the house. Into… everything. Into me.”
“Bea-”
“I’m not ready yet.” The words come out in a rush, but softer than before. “But I’m getting there. I wanted you to know that. I wanted you to know I feel it too - how good this is starting to feel again.”
He catches my hand. Lifts it to his lips. Presses a lingering kiss to my palm that feels like a vow… then turns it and sucks two of my fingers into the heat of his mouth, tongue swirling slowly, eyes never leaving mine. Heat floods straight between my legs, soaking my panties instantly.
“Thank you,” he murmurs against my skin.
“For what?”
“For telling me. For letting me hope again. For giving me the chance to love you the way I should have from the beginning.”
I don’t know who moves first.
One moment we’re still carefully apart on the couch; the next his mouth is on mine and the careful distance dissolves like sugar in warm water.
He kisses me like he’s drowning and I’m the only air left in the world.
Like every lonely night and broken promise has been building to this exact second - his hands cradling my face so gently it makes my chest ache, then sliding into my hair, tilting me exactly where he wants me.
I open for him with a soft sound and his tongue strokes against mine, deep and romantic and filthy all at once.
He tastes like something uniquely Kenneth that I have missed like a phantom limb.
I fist his shirt and pull him closer until he’s half-covering me on the couch. The hard, thick ridge of his cock presses against my hip. I roll against it shamelessly and he groans into my mouth like the sound was punched out of him.
“Wait.” He pulls back just far enough to speak, both of us breathing hard, lips already swollen. His eyes are dark and shining. “You said you weren’t ready-”
“I’m not ready to move you into the master bedroom permanently.
” I take his hand and deliberately guide it under my dress, pressing his palm against the soaked lace of my panties so he can feel exactly how much I need him.
“But tonight? Tonight I need you, Kenneth. I need you to touch me. Kiss me. Make love to me. Fuck me. All of it. Please.”
The last word breaks something open in both of us.
We barely make it to the guest room.
He lifts me with ridiculous ease and carries me down the hall, kissing me the entire way.
Inside the guest room he sets me on my feet beside the bed and undresses me like he’s unwrapping something precious.
Every button, every inch of fabric is accompanied by a kiss: the hinge of my jaw, the racing pulse in my throat, the upper swell of each breast, the soft crease where thigh meets hip.
When I’m completely bare he steps back just to look at me. The lamp on the nightstand casts everything in warm gold. I should feel self-conscious, but the expression on his face makes me feel like the most desired woman alive.