13. Lori
Lori
My green dress hangs in the closet since I move out of my rental. I buy it three years ago, but only wear it for special occasions.
I plan to wear it to the Christmas party before Tina offers me the burgundy dress instead.
Olive green, fitted through the waist, a dress that says a woman tried without trying too hard. Tonight, I wear it with boots because heels and gravel are not a good match in the Hill Country. Hair down, no bun, just loose around my shoulders because I know that’s the way Carson likes it.
He knocks on the guest room door at 7 p.m. in a clean white button-down, three top buttons open, with the sleeves already rolled. He’s got on his good boots, the brown pair without the station scuffs, and a few days of stubble trimmed neat. The leather ring on his right hand.
"I told you once green looks good on you," he says in his low, private voice, the one that doesn't come out at the station or the diner or anywhere there's an audience. "Now I just need another blonde to flirt with for the full effect."
I swat his arm. He catches my hand and grins, and for a second he reminds me of the man from our first meeting, all flirty and dimples and easy charm. Then the grin settles into something quieter and he opens the truck door for me, then walks around to the driver's side.
I sit in the passenger seat thinking, Lori Jones, you are in so much trouble.
The steakhouse is two towns over, past the county line. Dark wood, low lamps, a corner booth with one candle. Carson picks up the wine list, which is taller than the menu, flips two pages, and sets it down.
"Order anything. I haven't paid for a date in two years."
"That's not the selling point you think it is."
"It's exactly the selling point I think it is." He picks the list back up. "Red or white wine?"
"Red."
He orders without looking at the price. The waiter brings a bottle and a basket of bread so warm the butter melts on contact.
We order steaks and drink the wine. For the first time since the porch incident in November, there is no baby on my arm, no six-year-old narrating the things she sees on the road, no shift to clock into, no excuse to be near each other except that we want to be.
"What did you want to be when you are twelve?" he asks.
"Honestly?"
"Honestly."
"A photographer," I say, as I watch the candlelight catch on his hands. "I have a film camera my granddad leaves me. A Pentax K1000. I go through my allowance to develop the film and my mother thinks I am wasting it. I take pictures of Ella mostly. Birds in the yard. Light through windows."
"What happens to it?"
"Sell it." The wine tastes like dark fruit and oak. "After Ryan."
Carson does not react. He holds my eyes a half-second longer than he needs to, picks up the bottle, and pours more wine into my glass. No follow-up. No pity. Just more wine to close the subject.
"You'll get another one."
"I guess."
"Yeah." No hesitation, like it is already settled.
I turn it on him before he presses. "What do you think you will do at thirty-one?"
He considers this. Turns his glass by the stem. "Still on this side of the line, probably. Maybe two kids by now instead of one. Not running a house alone."
"Are you?" The corner of my mouth lifts. "Running it alone?"
The corner of his mouth lifts. "Not for two months."
I look down at my plate so he cannot see what that does to my face.
We talk through dinner with the walls down between us. I tell him about Ella growing up, how my older sister always seems to have the answers and I always have the questions. How the gap between us turns into years before I notice it is a distance.
He tells me about his father. That the leather ring is a graduation gift from him. That the funeral happens five years ago. He tells me he remembers Tina in the kitchen the next morning, making biscuits because if she stops moving, she is going to fall apart.
Carson talks about his father with the same steady voice he uses for everything that matters.
What I hear underneath it is the man he is still trying to become.
I do not have a father at a dinner table in ages. I don't tell him that just yet. But he is patient, and he waits, and so eventually, between bites of pecan pie, I tell him, “My mother stops speaking to me six years ago. Six years and counting.”
He looks at his glass and says, "Some women are easier mothers from a distance. Mine isn't. Yours might be the other kind."
I laugh at that.
Halfway through dessert, he sets his fork down and looks at the candle.
"Captain pulls me aside last week."
"About what?"
"Lieutenant test. He thinks I should try it in the spring."
I set my fork down. "Carson, that is great."
“I do not tell anyone except my mother." He looks at me. "And you."
Two months ago, I am a waitress with twenty-six dollars in my account and a sister who stops picking up my calls.
Now, I sit across a candlelit table from a man who is telling me something he hasn't told anyone else, looking at me like I’m the person he tells things to.
"Are you going to take it?"
"Probably."
"Why probably?"
"Schedule's different. More desk job." A breath. "I keep thinking about what kind of dad I want to be when Cadie's twelve. The man who's home, or the man who isn't."
He turns his glass and looks at me. "And what kind of partner I want to be."
"Carson."
"I know."
"You can't say things like that to me without warning."
"I did warn you. I'm telling you what I'm thinking. You can do whatever you want with it.” His gaze holds mine steady. “Including nothing."
I look at him across the table and I want to climb over the candle and the wine and the pecan pie and put my mouth on his and tell him I don't want to do nothing with it.
That I want to do everything with it, and that I also want to run because wanting something this much is exactly how I end up wrecked.
I reach across the table instead. I touch the back of his hand with two fingers. He turns his palm up under mine.
We eat the rest of the dessert with our hands linked over the tablecloth and his knee pressed against mine under the table. He pays and I don't fight him for the bill. He helps me into my jacket at the door.
His thumb grazes the nape of my neck and I nearly walk into the hostess stand.
The drive home is forty minutes of dark ranch road and his large, warm hand at the back of my neck, thumb tracing slow circles against my hairline.
I’m going to lose my mind.
My entire body tunes to that single point of contact. Every circle his thumb makes sends a current straight down my spine and I grip my own knee with my free hand because otherwise I climb across the bench seat of a moving vehicle and get pulled over by the sheriff.
At a stoplight, he turns his head and looks at me. I meet his eyes. The light turns green and neither of us moves until the car behind us taps its horn.
"You're staring," I say.
"Yeah." He doesn't apologize. He puts the truck in gear and his thumb goes back to my hairline. "I am."
On the dark stretch of farm road outside town, he glances over again and I am already looking at him and the cab is dark except for the dash light on his jaw.
I look away, because if I don't, I’m going to do something we cannot take back before we reach the driveway.
He tightens his hand at the back of my neck. He knows.
The gravel crunches under the tires. He puts the truck in park and cuts the engine. The quiet that fills the cab is the loudest, most loaded thing I hear.
"Lori —"
"If you say something right now I lose it in this truck."
He lets out a breath that is almost a laugh. "Okay. I will not."
"Good."
"Let's go inside."
Inside, the house is dark and quiet.
No Cadie.
No Junie.
No Tina with an opinion and a casserole.
Just us in the hallway, with the porch light falling gold through the front window.
I can see the guest room from here. The door is open. My duffel bag sits in the corner, packed and ready, same spot since the night he brings me home. My exit. My out.
I look at the guest room. Then at him.
He is standing two feet away with his hands in his pockets, not reaching for me, not closing the distance.
This is the man who does not push me toward a single thing I am not already walking toward on my own.
"Carson."
"Yeah?"
I’m not used to asking for anything, and I don't actually know how this part goes. So I skip the part where I'm supposed to say something and take his hand instead.
I lace my fingers through his and pull, and he lets me. He lets me lead him past the guest room door, and down the hall toward his room. This is the first thing I ask anyone in years, and I ask it with my hand because my voice doesn’t know how.
At his bedroom door, he stops me. He brings two fingers under my chin, tilting my face up, looking for a change of mind.
"You sure?"
"Don't make me say it."
"I am not. I just need to know."
"I'm sure."
He pushes the door open. Walks me in. Closes it behind us.
His room is spare and clean. There is a quilt on the bed, a stack of books on the nightstand with the bedside lamp warm and low.
The room smells like him. Soap and woodsmoke and clean cotton.
I never want to leave.
He stands in front of me, unbuttons his shirt without rushing and drops it on the chair.
His undershirt goes next. Years of station ladders and turnout-coat hauls are written across his strong shoulders.
I let my gaze drift to a pale scar under his collarbone and the dark trail below his belt buckle that I pretend not notice for longer than I will ever admit.
I put both hands flat on his bare chest. He is so warm. His heart slams under my palms and mine is beating just as hard.
He exhales and lowers his mouth to my jaw. His hands find the hem of my dress and gather the fabric up slowly, his knuckles dragging up my thighs, my ribs, and I lift my arms and the dress comes off over my head in one pull and is gone.
He looks at me. My bra is plain cotton, nothing, and he unhooks the clasp with one hand and the straps slide down my arms and the fabric falls and his breath leaves him low and uneven.
"Christ." Not a curse. A fact. He cups one rough palm under my breast, lifts, brushes his thumb across the peak, watches my face while he does it. "I dream about what is under that tiny camisole. The real thing does not compare."
My face heats. My hands forget how to do anything at all.
"Real thing's better than I imagine."
He bends and takes me in his mouth, tongue circling and teeth grazing once. A sound comes out of me that I do not plan on making and he smiles against my skin and I feel it everywhere.
I undo his belt. My hands aren't steady but they know what they want. His jeans come open and I push them down and he kicks them off. When I look down, every thought I have exits the room.
He walks me backward by the hips until my knees hit the mattress and I pull him down with me.
He catches his weight on a forearm beside my head, settles between my thighs, and the first full press of his body against mine — heavy, thick and hard, still through the last layer — drags a sound from my throat I didn't know I am holding.
He helps me with the rest and I help him with his and then it is skin to skin, the whole length of us, warm and solid and everywhere.
His hand slides down my stomach. Lower. His fingers find me slick and ready and his breath breaks against my neck.
"You feel like a dream." Rough. Almost a groan.
He works one finger inside me, then two, curling up against the spot that makes my hips lift off the bed on their own.
"There it is. Easy. I've got you." His thumb finds the place above and presses, slow circles, and I am fisting the quilt and saying please, the second thing I ask for tonight, and this one comes easy.
"That's it." Low. Mouth at my ear, teeth nibbling at the lobe.
I come on his hand with my face pressed into his shoulder, his fingers still moving through every pulse of it, his mouth at my temple.
He stays patient until the last wave passes and then he doesn't let me come all the way down.
He shifts over me, forearm beside my head, and pushes himself in slowly, watching my face.
I gasp. He holds still and lets my body ease around him, my breath stuttering, my fingers digging into his shoulders.
"Lori —" Low. Strained. "Breathe."
I take a deep breath and exhale.
"Good girl."
My nails dig into his back and he starts to move.
He goes deep and unhurried. He only moves when my nails dig in to tell him to.
His forearms, braced on either side of my head.
My ankles hooking high at the small of his broad back to draw him closer, deeper, and when the angle shifts I say his name because it is the only word I have left.
What undoes me is his face. The easy grin is nowhere on him now. The public surface, stripped clean. Just the man, gone quiet and exact, a face that is entirely mine.
He drops his forehead to mine. "Lori —"
My hands slide into his hair and pull. His hips find a rhythm my body answers on its own and the second wave builds slower and deeper than the first, a long climb instead of a sharp fall.
He feels it. He holds the angle. His fingers slide between us, pressing where we're joined, and I break open around him with my teeth at his shoulder and his name in my mouth and my body pulling tight around him.
The sound that draws from his chest is low and broken and nothing I even hear before.
He follows a few strokes later, with his face buried in my hair. Says my name in the dark reverently. He holds himself deep, shaking, and what I feel underneath my own aftershock is the absolute fact of a man who spends a long time alone and finally, finally lets go.
Neither of us moves for a long time. His weight is half on me, half on the mattress. My hand is at the back of his neck where his hair is damp. The porch light puts a warm square of gold through the curtain onto the foot of the bed.
He kisses my temple. My cheekbone. The corner of my mouth, slow and sweet, with nothing left to hide or prove.
I turn my face toward him and let him kiss me properly, and his mouth is warm and tastes faintly like red wine.
There are three words sitting in my chest that I do not say.
It is loud in my head and I do not let it past my teeth. Not yet. Not when the duffel bag is still in the other room.
A moment later, he pulls the covers over us and gathers me against his ribs. His arm is heavy around my waist. His chin is at the top of my head.
I love you.
He doesn't say it either. I know, because I am listening to it with my whole body, and the quiet where it should be has its own weight. We are both holding it. Both are too careful to say it out loud.
I close my eyes. I fall asleep in three breaths.