CHAPTER TWENTY
One day after Christmas
The morning of Boxing Day, I wake up before Jake does. My body must know that my time here is ticking down fast, and it doesn’t want to waste it in sleep. It’s another way I’ve started to become unrecognizable to myself.
He’s on his belly with his face turned towards me, hands stacked under his pillow.
One leg is straight, the other bent at the knee with his hip rotated outwards.
Like he’s in freefall. The thin sheet that covered him in the night is pooled at his waist, clinging to the taut curves of his ass.
He’s a study in textural contrasts. His lips are pushed into a gentle pout, and his thick hair is a soft wave across his forehead.
But his cheekbones and jaw are almost geometric in their angles.
He rolls over onto his back, and rumbles, “Morning,” without opening his eyes.
“Morning,” I say back.
He arches his back to stretch, making a throaty growling sound that ends on an explosive sigh.
Then he yawns, squeezing his eyes shut. I love vulnerable morning-Jake.
His softness is an invitation for me to meet him with my own.
A vulnerability, that’s what our collective noun would be.
A parade of elephants. A flamboyance of flamingoes. A vulnerability of us.
He cracks an eyelid. “How can I surprise you with breakfast in bed if you’re awake before me? Who are you, and what have you done with my Evie?”
* * *
There’s a brisk tap at the bathroom door, even though it’s half open. Through the steam-fogged shower glass a moment later, I see Jake pop his head in. “Can I come in?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “There’s no part of me left that you haven’t already seen.”
I’ve just closed my eyes and lathered cleanser onto my face when he says, “You all right?” Warm water streams down my forehead, over my cheeks. I hear a brief shuffling sound. A beat later, I feel Jake step into the shower behind me. His big hands settle on my shoulders.
When my face is fully rinsed, I turn to face him, slinging my arms loose around his waist. “Why do you ask?”
“I heard one of your epic sighs from the kitchen. The sighs you do when your mind is racing about something.” He cups his hands on either side of my head, smoothing my wet hair back from my forehead, coasting his thumbs across my cheekbones and over my brows.
“Ah. That was the sigh of a woman who finally believes she could fall in love.” I stare at the notch between Jake’s collarbones. His pulse is visible, steady, and strong. He swallows hard and slow, and I watch his Adam’s apple plunge and rebound beneath glistening wet skin.
“With Christmas,” he adds, almost too quietly to hear over the fall of water around us.
“Of course,” I murmur, pressing my forehead to his sternum. “Obviously.”
He tilts my head up to press his mouth to mine in a lush, lingering kiss.
Sensual instead of sexual. Steam billows around us in the small space.
Jake slowly guides my head back so the water cascades over my hair.
He bends to trail his lips along the exposed column of my throat, murmuring, “Let me take care of you.”
He shampoos my hair, untangling the strands with far greater tenderness than I ever afford myself.
Working firm fingertips into my scalp, he finds all the tiny places my tension hides—the base of my skull, the narrow threads of muscle behind my ears that ache from clenching my teeth in my sleep.
He lathers my body with swirls of a washcloth loaded with soap scented like peppermint cream.
His movements are tender, deliberate. Intended to calm as much as to clean.
He cups warm water between my thighs, soothing the lovely ache left by a week of exuberant sex.
How wonderfully odd and unexpected that I arrived at this moment with him. A month ago, we didn’t know the other existed. I’m sure there’s still yogurt in my fridge in Queens that’s older than my relationship with him. But still, here we are.
I’ve spent enough time in therapy to logically understand the concept of a mindset shift.
But I’ve always been able to intellectualize my skepticism to a point that it’s made any sort of change feel dangerously na?ve.
Safety was the missing ingredient. Now, I can play with mindset shifts like I’m a DJ and my brain is a console of sliders and knobs.
No matter what I choose, the outcome will still be music.
This entire trip, I’ve clung to the version of myself that resists attachment, thinking it will protect me from the pain and exhaustion of an inevitable rupture. But after yesterday, I realize I’m already attached. I have been for a while. And I’m exhausted by pretending I’m not.
It’s time to learn how to rest.
* * *
We get to the house so late for Boxing Day lunch, everyone is leaving the table by the time we arrive.
Jake manages to snag a turkey sandwich as Miles pulls him away to split firewood.
Helena and Gladys have already left for the village to sledge with the boys, and Maeve disappears around a corner with both baby girls asleep on her shoulders.
I go with Genny, Cait, and Indi to the living room, where a hearth fire fills the air with sweet warmth.
Ewan comes in, dipping down to give Genny a tender kiss before heading to the boot room to bundle up.
A moment after I snuggle into a cozy chair, Jake comes into the room, silently.
In three purposeful strides, he’s got a hand hooked around the back of my head, and with one hand planted on the armrest, he kisses me.
Thoroughly. Then, he doesn’t say a word as he sweeps out of the room again.
Gently, Genny says, “The way he looks at you, it’s like he’s been searching for a key he lost ages ago, and he finally found it. Every time, Evie.”
Indi leans back on her hands. “What she’s trying to say is—he’s obsessed with you.”
“God, I know.” The words trip past my teeth before I can bite them back. I can’t believe I just said that out loud to Jake’s sisters.
Cait makes a cartoonishly lascivious face at Indi. “Oh, she knows.”
“Ugh,” Genny groans. “Cease and desist, tarts. I was trying to have a sweet moment with our Evie.”
I’m definitely sweating now. “I just meant … he’s, ah, a very clear communicator.”
Indi cackles and drums her feet against the rug.
Not helping. I’m definitely making it worse.
“Right.” Genny slaps her hands down on her thighs and starts to get up. “Ta-ta, then. I’m late for my flight to the far side of the moon.”
“Sit down, spoilsport. As if you’ve never had sex. You’ve got three kids,” Indi teases.
I can’t imagine this kind of connection with my own sisters. Being alone with these women makes me feel like I’m fully immersed in this world, independent of Jake. In this small way, they’re becoming my people as well.
“I think I’m in love with him.”
The words drop like a stone between us. Genny freezes, bent at the waist, mid-sit.
She extends her arms out in front of her, palms down, as if she’s just stuck the landing of a gymnastics routine.
Then she slowly lowers herself back down in the chair.
Indi keeps her back straight as she sits up from her lounging posture like she’s a vampire in a vintage horror film rising out of a crypt.
Cait rubs her hands together, grinning like a goblin.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she says.
I love their silliness. What a privilege, to be a part of this candid little sanctuary. Unfortunately, now I have no idea where to go with this conversation. “I know it’s impossible.”
Cait softly clucks her tongue. “Is it, though? I think most things people call impossible are just the hard things they don’t want to try for.”
“Ouch,” I laugh.
“Honestly, I’ve never understood that phrase, anyway.
Falling in love,” Genny says. “There’s no process, Evie.
One moment, you aren’t in love, and then suddenly you are.
There’s no checklist or invisible finish line you have to cross before you can say you’re in love.
If you feel like you’re in love, you’re in love. ”
* * *
I get a text from Maddie wishing me a belated happy birthday and a merry Christmas.
She sends me a grinning selfie, and when she asks for one from me in return, I don’t hesitate to ask Genny, Cait, and Indi to join in.
They crowd around, pressing their faces into the frame with me as the centerpiece.
Later, once the conversation shifts away from Jake and me, I excuse myself from the living room to rein in my thoughts.
I wander down a hall I haven’t been in yet, and even though I’m exploring alone in a home that isn’t mine, I don’t feel like an intruder.
Except for the nursery where Maeve naps with the babies, all the bedroom doors are open, giving me a glimpse inside.
The rooms look like teenage time capsules.
Soft pastel carpets, floral bedspreads, and fairy lights draped over vanity mirrors with snapshots of smiling, youthful faces tucked into the edges.
Crystal suncatchers in the windows, pennant garlands crisscrossing the ceilings.
Posters on the walls of horses and Doctor Who, reproductions of Monet and Degas, pop icons like Kylie Minogue and Dido and a bunch of others I don’t recognize.
In the hall, the walls are packed with framed photos ranging from candid snapshots to formal portraits.
Young Jake on a beach somewhere, his hair soaked and sandy, watching something intently just off-camera.
A primary school portrait of him in a tiny suit jacket, a crooked tie, and a valiant attempt at looking serious.
Another of all four siblings in festive pajamas on Christmas Day, surrounded by a sea of torn wrapping paper.
Jake and Miles as teenagers, standing on the middle rung of a horse paddock’s gate, squinting into the sun.