12. Lori #2
It is the first thing I have reached for in years that is not survival — not rent, not a shift, not the next dollar. Just this. Just him.
Just because I want to.
I drop back onto my heels. My hand stays on his chest. His heart goes hard now, and the rest of him does not move — his breath held and his eyes on my face with an expression I will carry with me for a long time.
He does not kiss me back or reach for me and that restraint undoes me more than any response can.
"DADDY. JUNIE IS UPSIDE DOWN!" Cadie yells from the living room.
His eyes are still on mine. His mouth is still half-open. "She isn't, Cadie."
"She IS." A pause. "Her head is not on the pillow. Come here and see!”
He closes his eyes and breathes out half a laugh, and the sound sits in the warm air between us where the kiss just is.
He steps away and goes toward the living room, but not before putting his palm at the small of my back — warm, unhurried, with his fingers trailing last. I am alone at the counter with the key in my pocket, the taste of him in my mouth and a lightness in my chest that I don’t ever want to leave.
The rest of the day runs on a current we both feel and neither of us names. Every time he passes me, his hand finds the small of my back.
One time, as we pass each other in the hallway toward the kitchen, I finally say it. "Carson?"
"Yes?"
"Thank you for the key."
"It's not a thing to thank me for, Lori. It's a key."
"It's not just a key."
"If you ever lose it, I just leave the door unlocked. Don't tell my mother."
I laugh. He watches me laugh and the flirty version of him drops, the surface drops, and what is left is just him looking at me like he means it.
Then he looks up at the lintel.
"Mom." Low, half-laughing, half-ruined. "She didn't."
I turn and look up.
A small sprig of mistletoe — green leaves, red ribbon — looped over the lintel with thumbtack precision. Tina precision.
"When did she —"
"I don’t know. Maybe this morning, before we all woke up. I didn’t notice it before." His eyes come back to mine. "She's been planning that since November."
I step closer, pulse fast in my wrists. His eyes go wider for a moment.
Since I already kiss him this morning and the sky do not fall, I decide to do it again. I lift onto my toes with one hand on the front of his shirt, and my mouth finds his.
It is sweet at first. Brief, like the first. Then his hand finds the back of my neck and the whole thing shifts under my feet.
He angles my head back. His tongue finds mine and a sound comes out of him that I feel in my spine — low, from the back of his throat.
He walks me back until my shoulder blades meet the kitchen wall.
His other hand slides under my sweater and his fingers spread wide against my ribs, warm on bare skin where no one touches me in a long time. I fist his shirt in both hands.
He kisses the corner of my mouth, then my jaw, then the hinge of it, then the line of my throat, and the scrape of his stubble follows every press of his mouth and my skin goes tight everywhere he touches and everywhere does not.
"Carson —"
"Shhh." Low, ragged, mouth against my pulse. "The kids."
His teeth graze the side of my neck. My knees buckle and his hand at my ribs is the only reason I am still standing.
"Stop." My voice does not sound like mine. "Carson — stop making me feel so good. I can't —"
He pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes dark, mouth wet.
"Lori." Rough. "If you let me, I make sure you feel good everywhere. I do not stop until you cannot remember your own name."
My hands are still in his shirt. I do not let go.
"When I have you," he says, lower, thumb moving along the line of my ribs under my sweater, "I want every yes you have, said out loud, with an empty house and the door locked."
His mouth drops to my collarbone. I slide my hands under his sweatshirt and drag my nails across his stomach. His breath stutters against my skin and this kitchen is thirty seconds from becoming a very different room.
"Carson Wesley West."
I freeze. He freezes half a second after. Mouth still on my collarbone. Eyes shut.
"Mom," he says, defeated.
Tina is in the doorway. A grin wide enough to light the county.
"Oh — Mrs. West —" I try to get away from him. My face is the color of Tina's red tablecloth.
"Oh, honey. Don't. This is the best Christmas gift I get in years. I'm taking the kids home with me for Boxing Day. You both carry on." She walks back toward the living room with a wide smile planted on her face.
My hands are flat over my face. "Oh my God."
Carson drops his forehead against the cabinet. The sound that comes out of him is a laugh I never hear from this man — undignified, wrecked, the laugh of a thirty-one-year-old caught by his own mother.
"It's okay." He is still laughing. "You're fine. I think she knows for a while."
"She put up the mistletoe, Carson."
"I am aware."
"I am going to die."
"You are not going to die."
Tina is already through the living room — carrier, coat, diaper bag — moving like a woman who plans this exit before the thumbtack goes in. "Cadie, baby, sleepover at Grandma's tonight. Pancakes for breakfast tomorrow."
"PANCAKES???"
"With chocolate chips."
Cadie does not question any plan that involves pancakes. Tina pauses at the door with both kids bundled and ready. She looks at Carson, then at me. "Merry Christmas, you two."
The door shuts and soon her truck starts. The gravel crunches and fades. The house goes quiet without them.
Carson steps toward me with his hands in his pockets. The deliberate not-touching, after what just happens against this wall, is worse than everything that comes before it.
"Lori."
"Yes?"
"You're going to have dinner with me tomorrow night. A real one. A proper one. The one we never got to have." He holds my eyes. "My mother just cleared the deck, and I would very much like to take you out."
I’m standing in his kitchen with the taste of him still in my mouth and his key in my pocket, with the only answer I know.
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"Yes, Carson. Yes."
He comes closer and whispers in my ear. “I am not going to touch you till then.”
And the promise feels more dangerous than the kiss.
Tomorrow, the house is empty, the door is locked.
I have to decide whether I am brave enough to say yes out loud to the thing I say yes to in silence for weeks.