TWENTY-FIVE A New Book
T hat night, after we dropped Wyatt off at Catherine’s for the bonfire, Roman and I made a beautiful meal for two. I baked a quick rustic bread in his Dutch oven and roasted fresh asparagus spears with a balsamic glaze, and he grilled two gorgeous, fat filets to perfection. Beforehand, Roman put an LP on his turntable: Sam Cooke. We both danced and sang while we worked—him at the grill and me in the kitchen, but still together, watching each other through the windows.
When dinner was ready, he opened a bottle of pinot noir, and I spread a linen cloth over his backyard table and lit two candles. Sam Cooke had finished crooning, and now the Platters played over our meal. I don’t know whether it was the music, or the delightful calm that had settled over us since we’d left the county treasurer’s office, or we were simply focused on the delicious meal, but we didn’t talk about serious or important things while we ate. We reminisced about long-ago Bonfire Nights, we talked about the ways Bluster had changed while I was away, and the ways it hadn’t. Just aimless, comfortable chat.
It was more than small talk. It was another of those tiny intimacies, a casual, seemingly inconsequential togetherness that means so much more below its surface. It was two people growing closer. Falling in love.
After dinner, when dark had fallen and the night’s cool swept in from the ocean, we blew out the candles and carried the remains of our meal into the kitchen. We’d decided to have our dessert of champagne and strawberries in the living room.
There is something about entering a brightly lit kitchen after a candlelit outdoor meal I find deeply cozy. A powerful contentment fills me as I step from the dark into the light. Even if I’m in a bad mental place, buried in worries and distractions, that moment is calming. When I’m already content, I’m flooded with the kind of serenity that demands a sigh like a purr.
That’s how I felt that night, as Roman took the linens to his laundry room and I stood at the sink and started rinsing dishes. Flooded with peace and purring like a milk-drunk kitten.
As I stood at his kitchen sink, preparing our dishes for the dishwasher, the window over the sink was open a few inches, enough to let in the fragrant waft of breeze without pulling too much chill into the room. A beautiful, elaborate suncatcher, made of stained glass, dangled from the ceiling, twisting in the breeze and sparkling in the soft gleam of the kitchen lights. Though this was larger and much more intricate, it reminded me of those little yarn things we made in grade-school art class, around second or third grade, where we wrapped different colors of yarn around crossed popsicle sticks. The name for them escaped me that night, as I watched the suncatcher throw the light around the room, but the memory of making them did not, and I smiled.
Those I’d made when I was seven had still been hanging in my bedroom window, all faded to grey, when Wyatt and I arrived at the Sea-Mist. I’d packed them away without a thought when I’d cleared out the room for Wyatt, but now I recalled how happy I’d been to be able to make something pretty with my own hands.
“You look happy,” Roman said, his voice a low rumble, as he came up behind me and slipped his arms around my waist.
I leaned back into his embrace, and he tucked in close to press his lips to my neck. Months and months of stress was slipping away, like a fog fading into new sunlight. “I am. I was watching this gorgeous suncatcher and remembering a little art project I did in grade school. It’s a good memory. The things I made weren’t anywhere near as beautiful as this, they were just yarn and popsicle sticks, but they looked a little similar.”
“Ojo de Dios,” he said, still kissing my neck. “God’s Eye.”
“That’s right!” It was difficult to focus on word-making when his mouth roamed the terrain behind my ear and his hands traveled over my hips, my belly, my ass. “This looks like a God’s Eye, but in glass.”
His arms still snug around me, he lifted his head and looked at the suncatcher. “That’s what it is. Carla made that about a year or so before she died.”
The mention of his dead wife cooled the moment. I turned in his embrace and faced him. “You don’t talk about Carla and Gabriel very much.”
He gazed down at me, swimming, as usual, in the deep end of my eyes. “Would you like me to?”
“Only if you want to. I feel like we talk about Micah, and my life with him, a lot. I hope not too much.”
He shook his head. “Not too much. As much as you need, and I’m interested to know. If you want to know more about my life with Carla and Gabriel, I can tell you.”
I repeated what I’d said moments before. “Only if you want to. I’m interested, but not desperate to know. I want to know you as much as I can. I want us to be as close as we can be. But I don’t need to have what’s private for you. I just don’t want you to be holding it back because you’re afraid I won’t be able to deal with it. I’m not jealous of Carla.”
“I know. And I’m not jealous of Micah.” His hand came up and brushed wisps of hair from my eyes. “I think I don’t talk about them much because my loss is older than yours. That part of my life is over, and I’ve closed the book.”
That seemed a shockingly cold thing for this warm-hearted man to say, or to do.
“Closed the book? You don’t think about them anymore?”
“That’s not what I said. I think about them all the time.” He nodded at the suncatcher. “Every time I stand at the sink, I see that and think of Carla. Every photo I pass, I think of them. Every time I pass the door to the room that was Gabriel’s, I think of him. Every birthday, every Christmas. I think of them and miss them all the time. But I don’t live in my loss anymore. I live the life I have now.”
Now I understood. He wasn’t being cold, he was healed . There was a scar on his heart, a reminder of his pain, but what he felt was no longer pain.
“I want to do that,” I whispered. “Close the book, I mean.”
Roman smiled gently. “You will, querida. You are. What you did today, that’s a chapter in the next one.”
I’d known he was bilingual; as a kid and now, I’d heard him speaking Spanish at the shop or around town with other Spanish speakers. His family is from Mexico, and he’s a first generation native-born citizen. I’ve known those facts about him as long as I’ve known him. But he’d never spoken Spanish with me before. I’d taken Spanish in high school and remembered that querida meant honey or sweetheart. He’d called me honey often since we’d started dating, but this sudden switch to the Spanish version felt significant.
I knew it was too soon. We’d been together only a matter of weeks. I’d been a widow less than two years. But the relief of the day, the contentment of this night, my growing feeling that I’d truly come home , it all had my emotions in a sparkling swirl of light and color. And here was this beautiful, kind-hearted, patient man, holding me in his arms, sharing his deepest pain with me, understanding my own pain, and calling me sweetheart in the language of his family, wrapping the word in a low, rolling accent that wound around my heart.
It was too soon, I knew it was too soon, but I said, “I love you.”
He didn’t say it back, and I was glad. If he’d returned the sentiment right away, it would have felt reckless and wrong—weightless and too fast.
At first, he did nothing. He simply gazed at me, deeply. I gazed back, full of contentment and love ... and a touch of fear. Then he leaned down and kissed me.
He kissed me urgently, claiming my mouth as his own while his arms crushed me against him. In that fervor, I felt loved. It was too soon, but it was true. It was love. The books of our pasts were closed, and we stood together on the first pages of the next one.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and plunged my hands into his thick, dark curls, and I kissed him back, matching his intensity. When I moaned at the ferocious need charging through my center, he lifted me off my feet and carried me away from the sink.
I thought he’d head toward his bedroom, but he turned the other direction and instead set me down on his kitchen table.
Surprised, I pulled back a little, breaking our kiss so I could see his face.
He was grinning. “The first time we had sex, I told you I didn’t want to fuck you on the table yet .”
I laughed. “But now ...”
He kicked a chair out of his way. “If you’re into it.”
I grabbed his shirt and started unbuttoning, exposing the fit expanse of his chest. “I’m into it.”
My answer erased the question, and with it went any hesitation between us. Fervor took over, and we ripped each other’s clothes off in a frenzy we’d not yet shared in sex. When we were both naked, our clothes and shoes tossed carelessly on the floor, Roman dived into me, burying his head between my breasts as he laid me back on the cool, polished pine of his table.
All I could do was wrap my arms around his head, my legs around his waist, and fall into the sensations of his body on mine. His mouth sucking, his teeth nibbling. His beard scratching, his hands clutching. His cock brushed and bounced against my thighs, my belly, and my core, teasing, promising
Every touch, every move pulled a cry from the deepest reaches of my chest and dragged me toward mindless need, until my body writhed and rocked, pleading with his for more. I bucked my hips, growing desperate.
His breath stuttered over my skin, his groans and grunts echoed mine, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Roman! Please!” I cried, and he laughed around the nipple caught between his teeth.
“What do you want, querida?” he asked, the question fluttering coolly over my overheated flesh.
“Fuck me. Fuck me so hard,” I gasped, feeling vague surprise at my own raunchiness.
He reached out and came back with a condom—when had he gotten a condom? I didn’t care. He tore the packet open with his teeth, rolled it on, grabbed himself with one hand, my hip with the other, and sank into me hard and fast, and so deeply I cried out again, loudly, at the explosive delight of his impact.
“My god , Leo. You are fire in my hands.”
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” I chanted, not caring that it was soon, that it was fast.
Roman wrapped me up tight and fucked me hard. So hard the table juddered noisily across the terracotta tiles of his kitchen floor until it banged against the wall. So hard we both grunted with each thrust, so hard I thought I might be bruised, deep inside, before we were done and couldn’t have cared less. So hard that brilliant, colorful flashes of light filled the darkness of my closed eyes. So hard that my orgasm burst wide and bright and everywhere, the finale of a fireworks show.
Roman came seconds after me, with a long, loud groan that shook our bodies and seemed to rise from the earth itself. Then we lay together in that awkward, sweaty tangle, his forehead on my shoulder, his feet still on the floor. I brushed my fingers through his damp curls, then smoothed my hands over his back, still heaving with his panting breath. I was replete. Perfectly sated, perfectly content. Any troubles I had were miles away.
He lifted his head and looked down at me, his dark eyes serious and a bit dazed. “I love you, too,” he whispered and kissed the tip of my nose.
Smiling, I brushed a fingertip over his bottom lip. “I like this new book.”
A grin spread across his face. “It’s an instant classic.”
ROMAN AND I SLEPT TOGETHER that night for the first time, nested together like spoons.