Chapter 8 #2
For once, I don’t have anyone to feed or anywhere else to be. And neither does he. There’s just Julian and me and a room full of candlelight.
“Tell me something,” he says.
“About what?”
“You.”
I glance over.
“You know a great deal about this town. Everyone in it. You make room for people before they ask you to.” His thumb moves once against the side of the mug. “I’ve wondered where you learned to do that.”
Nobody has ever asked me that. Not really. My eyes drift towards the kitchen doorway.
“That’s my grandmother’s table in there.”
Julian follows my gaze.
“Every important event in my life happened at that table. My parents got engaged at that table. Twice.”
His attention comes back to me.
“The first time was in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. My father couldn’t wait another hour, apparently. There was a turkey involved. Gran had to move it.”
“That seems unfortunate for the turkey.”
“It recovered.”
His mouth twitches.
“They got married at twenty-two. They divorced when I was twelve.”
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly.
“Don’t be. It wasn’t dramatic. No one threw anything. They were very civilized about the whole thing, which was honestly worse. They just got quieter and sadder and then my father moved out, we moved in here, and everyone kept telling me how well I was handling it.”
I pull the blanket higher over my knees.
“I was extremely well-adjusted about it at the top of the stairs.”
Julian says nothing. He does that better than anyone I’ve ever known. He doesn’t jump into a silence because it exists. He lets it have the space it needs.
“Then when I was nineteen, Dad asked her again.”
Julian raises an eyebrow.
“At the same table?”
“Same table. Another Thanksgiving. Again with everyone watching. Again because apparently the man couldn’t stand to wait through dessert.”
“Did she say yes?”
“She made him wait until she finished chewing.”
He almost laughs. I can see it behind his eyes.
“Then she said yes.”
“They remarried?”
“Three months later.”
I look down at my hands.
“For a while it was like watching something broken suddenly become whole again.”
The storm hits the house hard enough to make the windows flex. Neither of us looks up.
“Nine years ago, they went to Camden for their anniversary. Four years since the second wedding.” I swallow. “My mother bought a new coat. That’s the detail I always get stuck on. She hated buying coats.”
Julian goes very still.
“Black ice on Route 1 north of Lincolnville. A truck came around the curve.” My voice has gone flat. “I was twenty-three and working in a restaurant in Portland. Four hours away and asleep.”
“How did you find out?”
“Gran called.”
The candle nearest the hearth gutters.
“I came home the next morning, and this house was filled with people. I hardly knew half of them. Gran sat in that chair.” I point towards the armchair by the fireplace. “She didn’t speak for a day and a half.”
Julian’s eyes stay on me.
“People kept bringing casseroles, and someone kept offering them to me. She brought six of them out, one after another. She’d put a plate in front of me and touch my shoulder. Eventually she’d take it away untouched, and come back later with something else.”
Julian tilts his head slightly.
“And the seventh?”
My head snaps around to look at him so fast my neck hurts.
“How did you know there was a seventh?”
“Because you said six,” he says quietly. “And you’ve been holding your breath ever since.”
I release the breath.
“The seventh one I ate.” The words scrape a little on the way out. “I don’t know why. It didn’t fix anything. I just remember looking down and thinking that someone had decided I was still going to eat.”
My eyes sting, and I look over at the candle.
“I was already cooking by then. I thought I understood food.” I rub my thumb along the edge of the blanket. “But I think that was the first time I understood that sometimes feeding someone has almost nothing to do with whether they’re hungry.”
I glance towards the kitchen, towards Gran’s table, and then over at the cocoa Julian hasn’t touched.
“It’s a way of saying you’re here. I’m here. You matter enough for me to put something in front of you.”
Julian doesn’t tell me it isn’t. He doesn’t tell me my parents would be proud. He doesn’t tell me everything happens for a reason or that grief makes us stronger or any of the other things people say when they are desperate to get you safely to the other side of a painful conversation.
He just sits beside me. Quiet and present and still holding his untouched cocoa. Somehow that feels more like comfort than comfort usually does.
“Thank you for telling me,” he says.
I pull the blanket tighter around me. “You’re supposed to say something comforting.”
“I know what people say.”
Something in his voice makes me look at him.
“I have heard most of it, but none of it was ever any use.”
“You’ve lost people too,” I say softly.
“Yes.”
“A lot?”
His face changes. Not much. Julian never gives you much. But for one second I see something behind it that is far older and deeper than the room we’re sitting in.
“Enough,” he says.
A hundred questions rise up, and I don’t ask one of them. Not because I’m being good, but because whatever that one word cost him, it was more than I have any right to spend. I’d rather sit here with him than be right about anything.
The storm eases sometime after midnight. It doesn’t stop. It merely retreats from end of civilization to deeply unpleasant. The candles have burned low. The room has gone soft at the edges. Julian leans forward to move one farther from the curtain. His hand crosses the candlelight.
Long, strong fingers. Pale skin. No watch.
The flame catches his eyes when he straightens, and for one second the dark brown isn’t brown at all. There’s red underneath it, deep and warm. Then he turns his head, and it’s gone.
I don’t look away. Instead, my attention drops to his mouth. I have been doing this for weeks. At the Salt & Sage. At Harbor Books. At the Lantern. At the grange. Looking at his mouth, then dragging my eyes somewhere respectable.
I don’t drag them away tonight. Julian notices. Of course he notices.
His gaze drops to my mouth, and stays there. The room changes. Nothing moves. Nothing has to. The air between us draws as tight as wire.
“You keep looking at me,” he says, his voice lower than it was a second ago.
“You’re looking at me too.”
“Yes.”
No excuse. No joke. No elegant deflection. Just yes. Plain and direct, the way his yeses always are when they matter. My pulse jumps.
“Julian.”
“Penny.”
“The town has a betting pool.”
“I’m aware.”
I stare at him. “You’re aware?”
“Theo is not subtle.”
“Twelve to one on never.”
The corner of his mouth moves. Then he leans slowly towards me, so slowly that I understand what he’s doing. He’s giving me time. Every inch is a question.
I could move back. I don’t.
His hand comes up beside my face, not touching me yet.
“Then let’s cost someone their money,” he says, and he kisses me.
His mouth is cool against mine, and it should be strange and it isn’t.
Because it’s Julian, dark and controlled and careful until the second I put my hand into the front of his still-damp shirt and pull him closer.
Then his restraint breaks. His fingers slide into my hair, and his other hand closes around my waist. Not hard, but there is strength in it. So much strength.
I kiss him harder, and his mouth opens under mine. The sound he makes is small and rough and completely unlike anything I’ve heard from him before. My entire body goes warm.
Somewhere in the back hall, rain is dripping into a stockpot.
I do not care. Somewhere outside, half a rose trellis is probably headed for Canada.
I do not care about that either. I care about Julian’s mouth.
I care about the cool sweep of his thumb beneath my ear.
I care that a man who does everything carefully is kissing me like being careful has become difficult.
He pulls back, only an inch. His forehead rests against mine. For the first time since I’ve known him, his composure looks genuinely damaged. I like it more than I should.
His thumb moves once along my jaw.
“I have just made things considerably more difficult.”
My stomach flips.
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” he says immediately. His hand tightens slightly, keeping me where I am. “That is precisely the difficulty.”
I breathe out. His eyes are very dark now, red beneath the brown.
“The problem,” he says, “is that now I know what that’s like.”
I swallow.
“And?”
“And I don’t know how I’m supposed to sit next to you and pretend I don’t want to do it again.”
The whole room suddenly feels too small.
“Then don’t.”
His gaze sharpens. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t pretend.”
I close the distance between us.