Chapter 36 #2
He hasn’t kissed me like this before. It’s always fast and hard and guilty, and I always feel him working not to linger.
He lets out his breath in a soft, low sound. “I need— ” he says, his voice fraying.
“Please,” I whisper, forgetting until I’m speaking that he already said this, that I am echoing him.
We run from the car through the violent, freezing rain to the house, and then we’re spilling inside, shrugging off our drenched coats. Mr. Button stretches his sleepy way up from the couch, disentangling from the shadows.
We make it all the way upstairs this time.
I get a basic impression of his bedroom in the low light from the hall—the heavy, simple wooden frame of a rumpled, white-blanketed bed; a window with feathery, sodden pine boughs just outside.
His hands are steady; he’s better at getting my soaked-through dress off me than I am.
We are kissing and kissing. His searching, patient mouth is on my ear, on my throat, on my collarbone, my shoulder, my arm.
I am kissing the side of his face, his hair, his wide, warm palm.
I investigate his stomach for some sign of the injury.
I think I feel a smoother spot, a small scar, but I can’t be sure.
We stand pressed together, wet skin sealing and warming, and he touches me with slow wonder.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know his face, the subtle span of his cheekbones, the gentle bridge of his nose.
Even after all our other nights, he still looks exposed, vulnerable without his glasses.
I feel like I’m seeing the boy he once was, like I’m seeing a secret.
And I feel chosen, remarkable for getting to see it.
Now he is lifting me onto the bed with a sigh—relief, I think. No one is fighting against anything. No more private internal wars. Just the big, delicious expanse of him against me, my skin humming a long, thrilled tone. Home, my skin thinks. This is home.
He is running his hands down my back, up my arms, burying his fingers in my hair, as though he’s trying to inventory every inch of my body, as though he hasn’t been allowed to touch me until now.
He has touched me so many times, but each one of them was a defeat.
This is different; this is freedom. I hear my trembling breath.
He touches my throat, and I arch my neck like an offering.
I hear the catch in his breath, feel the skipped beat in his touch, then the tightening of his grip.
I feel it light up the branching paths of my nerves, feel it thrumming in the interstitium of my body— the in-between places I have become so adept at closing off.
I have been closing and closing myself off.
And suddenly I am crying. It’s washing out of me—this gigantic sadness, this lifetime of sorrow. I am sobbing against his chest. “Joel,” I say. “Joel. Joel.”
He holds my face in his hands. He kisses my cheeks, my eyelids. He kisses my mouth. “Tempest,” he says. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
“I want you to have me,” I try to say. “I want to be yours.” But I’m not sure I form all the words.
I know what I’ve chosen. Of course I know. But in this moment I can’t understand how I could’ve done anything differently.
Decades of missing exactly this, of knowing that I would live out all the days of my life and die without ever having it. Maybe Al was right. Maybe I will die for having it. But I can’t help myself; I can’t help choosing it anyway.
I am clutching him, catching his hair in both fists; I am kissing him too hard, teeth clumsy, my mouth its own frantic animal.
I am crying out into his mouth, against his face.
Maybe I’m loud, maybe I’m begging, maybe I am tasting my own stinging tears.
Maybe I’m tasting his. I seize hold of his hands that are so gentle on me—I push them over my breasts, I press them against my heart.
I want my skin to absorb his touch, to soak him into me.
I want his touch to live in me, to be permanent, inextricable.
I’m afraid. I’m shaking. I might tear apart.
I might not be able to withstand this enormous, shattering need, this rabid joy and the bitter pain that chases it down.
I think of birth, of transition, when labor shifts into its final stage and bends the body to its breaking point: a violent collision of endings and beginnings, life and death wrestling.
I am on him, my hands spread-winged on his chest.
He is on me, I am gripping his heavy shoulders, his solid arms, his precious face.
He is cradling me against him, I am swallowing the low, helpless sounds he makes.
He is going slowly and I am rushing. He is holding me in place; I am spilling over the rim of myself.
It’s too much and not yet enough and I love—I love—I love.
I hold us there, legs wrapped around him, hands in his damp hair, as we breathe in desperate unison. He is looking right into my face, right into me. I am broken open. I can’t look away from him.
“Tempest,” he whispers, and my name sounds like a prayer.
The rain wears itself down to a washed-clean quiet as we settle afterward, his thick arm across my chest. I am tracing my fingertips over the hair on his forearm, looking at my brash hand on the open territory of his skin in the soft dim.
I expect his arm to shift, to withdraw itself from my body, but it doesn’t.
And then instead I expect him to stay like that; he feels immovable, permanent.
There’s such certainty in the weight of him.
I want to worry, I want to think a thousand things at once, but instead, happiness falls over me like a padded quilt.
The air is cold and fresh and fierce; the bed is so warm.
The season seems to have ended, fall giving way, giving in.
A new, clear winter is rising instantly in its place, full of its own possibility.
“Why did you tell me you couldn’t be in a relationship?” I whisper. “You didn’t know about me then.”
He shifts, his hand moving to my stomach. He strokes me, and his voice is husky and soft when he says, “Because I was hunting”—there is the slightest hesitation—“demons in my spare time. It was too big a secret to share and too big to keep.”
“Mm,” I say. “That makes sense.”
He clears his throat, traces a mole near my hip with glorious absentmindedness.
“I meant what I said, though. I haven’t been okay since Adam.
” He is silent for a moment. “But it wouldn’t have stopped me from being with you.
Even the other thing wasn’t really enough.
I swore I wouldn’t let myself pursue you, but when we ran into each other at the restaurant, I didn’t stand a chance.
The way you looked at me. The way you looked.
” He breathes in, and I love the way I can feel his ribs expand against my own, like we are taking the same breath.
“I didn’t care about anything else at that point.
” His hand strokes up my side, down again, careful and proprietary and full of praise all at once.
“If I’m being honest, it’s been hard to care about anything else ever since I saw you in that hospital room. ”
I am smiling helplessly. Like a dumb teenager who just got asked to prom by her crush. Like a woman who has a future. In that moment, I feel like I do.
When I wake up, he’s gone, which is for the best, because I am not in good shape. I know I have a fever—my skin prickles uneasily, my breath overheats my mouth. Pain wraps around my bones, peels my muscles, tweaks my veins. It could be the flu, the way it feels. It could be some random virus.
But I know it isn’t.
I sit up carefully, and I’m like a pot upended into the colander, all the boiling water rushing out at once.
For a few seconds, I can’t see. Then seeing hurts my eyes, hurts at the roots of my eyes.
There’s a note on a blue Post-it on the bedside table, next to a sci-fi novel Alice was obsessed with a few months ago.
Something about artificial intelligence starting a new religion.
The note says Got called in. Made food. Just heat it up.
Sorry to leave you. It’s the first time I’ve seen his handwriting, which is straightforward, bare-bones, more lines than curves.
He is sorry to leave me.
I stagger upright, find the bathroom. I like the pale brown tiles. They’re old, worn to a faint iridescence. It’s an old house; he didn’t change much.
I remember Dee saying Joel was exactly my type.
It’s true. If I had written a long, stupid list of things I wanted in a partner it would’ve included left the tile alone, but painted the walls white and puts his toothbrush in a mug.
Or maybe I wouldn’t have thought of those things. Maybe they only seem obviously perfect now.
I feel my way downstairs, Mr. Button sliding along with me, excited that I’m still here.
I hate how people insist on stereotyping cats as aloof—such ignorance.
I am wearing, classically, one of Joel’s shirts.
Less classically, I’m also wearing his sweatpants, the smallest ones I could find, and they’re still clownishly large on me.
My blue dress remains hanging damply over the shower rod.
He made me eggs and mushrooms with some herbs on top—thyme, I think.
It’s on a delicately chipped plate under a glass pan lid.
He left gluten-free bread out, too, and half an avocado, just waiting for me.
This is so thoughtful. My stomach has shriveled, but I force myself to eat a few bites before I throw the rest out.
I tuck the evidence under other things in the garbage so I won’t hurt his feelings. He’s a good cook.
I stand for a long moment in the entryway. This may be the last time I am ever here. Then I stagger out into the brilliance of the sun.