Chapter 23
Dear July,
I don’t understand why you won’t answer. Please, can you write just once to explain it to me? Did I imagine the way you looked at me and the way you held me? Because that really felt like love to me. I don’t have a lot of experience with it, but that’s how I always thought it must feel.
Joe
It’s a silent walk for the first two blocks. Just the slap of our sandals on the still-warm sidewalk and the occasional whine of a mosquito in my ear. But I hear Angus’s low rumble from before: Just ask her.
And it comes out of my mouth. “Did I do something that upset you?” I focus on my empty hands as I ask. I’d offered to carry her bags, but July wasn’t having that.
She matches my stride for a few paces in silence. Then, softly, “No, you’re fine, Joe.”
Which is obvious bullshit. If it were possible to get mad at July, I’d think that’s a spark of anger I’m feeling now. “Then why have you been avoiding me?”
“I—” She breaks off and shakes her head. Her hair, left down to dry, shines under the streetlamps. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t want…” She lifts her free hand in a vague gesture.
“Didn’t want what?” Didn’t want me to kiss her. I know that’s it, and I know it will hurt like hell to hear her say it. Let’s just rip off the Band-Aid. Get it over with.
She raises her gray eyes, that nighttime gleam I’ve always found fascinating in them. “I thought you were feeling sorry for me. I didn’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
I stop and stare. “Why the hell would I feel sorry for you?”
She gestures me into the alley that runs behind the restaurant. Guess she wants to go in the back way. I follow, still waiting for her answer.
“I don’t know.” But there’s something in her voice…something she’s not saying. “I thought maybe because I was crying over the kids.”
That doesn’t make any sense. “You thought I was feeling sorry for you because you were upset…about the kids…and that made you avoid me?” My voice is rising. I rein it in. “Why in the world would that make you avoid me?”
She reaches her car and sets her bag on the hood, rooting in the pocket of her cover-up for something. Just as she pulls out her keys, the bag slides off the car, and we both step forward to catch it, ending up a breath apart, my hand covering hers.
Back here there’s no sound but our breathing and the moths fluttering around the light bulb over the door.
Nothing to look at but her face, her eyes shining up into mine with…memory? Wariness? Want?
Her hand is warm, the skin velvety smooth and soft under mine, her knuckles little ridges that feel way more fragile than I know July to be. I trace them with my thumb. My words rumble out in an unfamiliar Angus-like register. “Why would you avoid me, July?”
Her eyes close for an instant. Her tiny sigh is lemon ice–scented.
“You make it sound stupid, Joe.” Her voice is quiet. Defeated. “It doesn’t feel stupid.”
What? There’s nothing remotely stupid about this woman. I would never want to make her feel that way. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not stupid. Tell me. Please.” I dip my head to look into her eyes again. Rest my forehead against hers.
Her laugh is a short sound with no humor in it. “On the trail, when you did this forehead thing? I thought you were about to give me a pity kiss. I don’t want pity kisses from you, Joe.”
I don’t know when my hands moved but they’re cradling her face now. I sweep her cheekbones with my thumbs, try to clear a pathway from my eyes to my heart so she can see inside me, see how unnecessary that worry is.
And she looks. And looks. I don’t know what she’s seeing or what I can say to ease her fears, or even why she would think I pity her. Lust for her? Yes. Admire and respect her? Yes.
Love her?
Yes.
But pity? And kisses based in pity? Never.
I open my mouth and what comes out is a whisper. “How about other kinds of kisses?”
She doesn’t speak. Her gaze moves from my eyes down to my lips. Her free hand rises to my waist and rests there.
I tilt closer, inch by fraction of inch, watching her for any sign of…anything…but she’s still and silent as a statue. I pause, a paper-width slice of air between us. I can’t take something I’m not sure she wants to give. And I can’t read her like I used to.
“Joe…” she breathes into my mouth, and our lips brush, catch, brush.
It feels like our first kiss again. Nothing is the same except my partner—it’s night instead of day, an alley instead of lake’s edge, a history behind us instead of a whole future ahead—but the feeling is the same. Heart-swelling, momentous, forget-to-breathe, this-is-The-One same.
I tunnel my hands into the silk of her hair and angle my head to kiss her better. Her lips feel just as soft, taste just as sweet as they did when she was sixteen. I pull back long enough to locate her sprinkle of freckles in the flickering light of the moth bulb, and then I kiss every one of them, one by one, hoping she’s listening hard enough with her heart to realize that each kiss is a promise, a reassurance, a statement of love and faith. A “thank you for showing me love exists.” No pity anywhere in there.
Her lips find my chin. The bag clatters to the ground as she brings her other hand up to the back of my neck. My breathing is harsh in my own ears as I wrap both arms around her and crush her to me. Mine. Finally, she’s mine again.
A tear squeezes from between my closed lids as I hold her tight, marveling at this miracle, and then I find her mouth with mine and open to her, devouring her. I lay her back on the hood of her car and she tugs me down on top of her. She’s so soft and strong and warm under me…so alive she makes me more alive. She murmurs my name between kisses, rakes one hand through my hair the way she used to, and I’m dizzy. Dizzy with longing, dizzy with memories, dizzy with lust. Dizzy with getting to share this with my girl again. My woman.
I open my mouth on her jaw, breathing in her scents—sunscreen and chlorine and July—nipping her there before finding her pulse with my lips. Her neck, her beautiful throat…I kiss every part of it, drinking in her soft sigh and gasp, and she arches into me, one of her knees coming up to lock around me, pressing even closer.
This is all I want. A life of being with her, holding her like this, knowing we will have years together to talk and laugh and make love and take care of each other. A life like this, starting tonight. And this time nobody can separate us.
I’m touching every part of her I can reach, caressing, stroking, squeezing, claiming her. Her swimsuit cover-up is in my way. I tug down the front zipper, spreading it open to see the shape of her. The rise of her breasts, the long, tantalizing slope of her torso down to those flirty little shorts…all before me like a feast.
With shaking fingers I push aside the straps of her tank, peeling it down to see the full pale curves of her breasts. I remember how she used to like to be touched: firm pressure, my fingers catching and squeezing her nipples between them. It still makes her groan and arch with pleasure, and that still makes me smile and throb and ache to be inside her. I lower my head and tease her nipple with my tongue, and when she whimpers, I suck it into my mouth.
I will gladly pleasure this woman any way she wants, as long as she wants, for the rest of our lives.
***
July
When he stared at me in disbelief at the idea that he might feel sorry for me, I realized I’d been wrong—he wasn’t trying to give me a pity kiss at the lake.
When he takes my face in his hands and leans in to a hair’s breadth away, I know this isn’t going to be a pity kiss either.
And god help me, I want it. Don’t know what kind of kiss it will be, but it’s from Joe and I crave it. So I take it. I cover that last sliver of space between us and touch my mouth to his…
And I’m back at the lake for our very first kiss again. Back in that suspended moment of hope and joy and disbelief that this amazing person might actually want me the way I want him. We’d spent two weeks circling each other back then, talking and laughing and learning each other’s stories and thoughts and dreams. Two weeks of growing close and closer without touching except for the occasional brush of a hand or arm when we were in the water or perched on our big rock together. Two weeks of shared, private I-like-you-I’m-looking-forward-to-time-with-you-later smiles at work, of me watching him notice the people nobody else saw. The new boy with the terrible complexion who got lucky enough to have Joe be the one to train him on the grill. The shy girl who worked the salad bar and whose name nobody else remembered. Joe could make them both talk and laugh. Make them open like flowers in the spring.
And after two weeks of precious time alone with him at the lake, he was inside my soul, filling my thoughts and my heart, making me want to open like a flower in spring too, making me burn and ache to touch him. He’d stand, laughing, to do a shallow dive off our rock, mesmerizing me with the taut shape and flex of him. We’d race out to a shallow-water warning buoy, and I’d fall back a little so I could watch the lean, hard arrow of his body slicing through the water. He’d turn and call out with his crooked, joyful grin, and my eyes would trickle over him like the water sluicing off his sun-browned skin. Sometimes, if I turned my head quickly when we were sitting together, I’d catch him gazing at me with a burning look in his eyes, but then he’d smile and tease me or distract me with a question, and by the end of our second week together, I was afraid he was never going to touch me. Never going to kiss me. I was afraid we were just buddies in his mind, just good swimming buddies.
And so when, on our fifteenth day together, he fell quiet, gazing out over the water to the dark line of trees on the far shore, I thought our time was coming to an end. Thought he was just trying to figure out how to say it. I gathered my courage, asked what he was thinking. Gave him the opening I thought he was looking for.
And instead of diving through it, he turned to me, his eyes moving over my face…my eyes, my cheeks, my lips. “I’m wondering how you taste,” he said, and you could have pushed me off that rock with a single gentle fingertip.
And I recognized that look from all the times I’d turned it on him when I thought he wasn’t watching. And my smart mouth took over from my stunned-blank mind, even though the words came out a hoarse whisper. “If only there were some way you could find out.”
His eyes flared. One corner of his mouth twitched in an almost-grin.
And joy began to fill me as he angled himself to face me and looked at me some more, and then reached out one shaking hand to touch my hair. He laid his palm so gently against my cheek. He raised his eyebrows in an okay? and when I nodded, he leaned in just like he does tonight, slowly, slowly, stopping just a hair away until I meet his lips with mine.
Just like then, the contact seems to galvanize him, to set loose something inside him, and he takes my face in his hands and presses kisses all over it. Wraps his arms around me and hauls me tightly to his hard body.
And tonight something inside me loosens too, with a sigh and a yes and a finally . I pull him close, where he’s supposed to be, and run my fingers up into his hair. It’s as soft as I remember, and his kisses just as sweet. Just as hungry. And I’m hungry too—no, starving. My mouth, my hands, my eyes, my heart, all starving.
I relearn his body with mine, fitting him to me, all the lines and angles and hard slopes of muscle; his scent of sunshine and chlorine and coconut; his taste of pure, sweet, sharp Joe. And though we’ve both changed some, the fit is still perfect, the relief of coming together still overwhelming.
He lays me back against the hood of the car, baring me, kissing and touching and making my world spin in circles and loops. I’m dizzy and giddy and drunk with him.
This is what’s been missing from my life. What’s been missing with every other man I’ve tried to be with. This amazing coming together of all the parts of me with all the parts of another person. A person I think is wonderful, with a brain and a giant heart and a sense of humor he only ever uses for good. And a way of holding me close that is, truly, holding me. Close.
My hands are on him, sweeping down the worn-soft fabric of his T-shirt, heading for the loose waistband of his board shorts when it hits me. This is what Joe was talking about—what he knew was missing from the sexorcism night and the morning we woke up entwined on my couch. He knew I wasn’t all in then because he knew what it felt like for us both to be all in together.
He knew because we’d had it before. He knew, and he wanted us to have that again.
And god help us both, he thinks we’ve found it. Somehow, he thinks he’s found it again with me.
And his hands are in my swim shorts, cupping my bottom, squeezing, and he’s murmuring words—I don’t catch them all, but I think one might have been love —in my ear. Part of my heart cracks open and spills out tears and love, and part of me freezes in horror as I put my hands on his chest and push him up off of me.
“Joe, no, stop!”
And because he’s Joe, he does, right away. He lets go and steps back, his eyes wide with concern. “I’m sorry! Did I…? Was I…?”
He thinks he did something wrong. He thinks he’s the problem. With all that’s wrong in the world, all that’s gone wrong in his life, all that’s good and gentle and perfect inside him, somehow he thinks he’s the problem.
A huge knot of tears rises to block my throat. I am so sick of tears. I force the words out around them. “I’m not strong enough for this, Joe. I’m not strong enough for you . I’m so sorry.”
And he watches me, eyes tragic, arms at his side, as I scoop up the bag and my keys, and fumble to open the back door locks. He’s still standing there as I tug the heavy metal door closed behind me.
The tears burst out of me then, in giant, harsh sobs as I make my way upstairs into my apartment, cursing myself for being a careless, hurtful, selfish monster of a woman hurting Joe again because I can’t stop my own wanting.
It doesn’t seem to have registered with him when I told him how I broke when he left. How I’m not the same brave, ready-for-love girl he knew back then. I don’t think I can ever be her again. I didn’t tell him the whole story, so he doesn’t know.
But I know that every time I focus on too many things at once or on something just for me, everything goes wrong. All the little cracks in me begin to vibrate and split apart, and I fly to pieces and can’t hold up my end of anything for anyone. I can’t take care of myself or think or work…can’t do anything but try to ride out all the wild, clashing feelings. It’s like living in a blender.
I can’t handle a love like ours.
And I have to make him understand before I hurt him any more. Have to make him back off to a safe distance. Have to make him understand just how serious the breaks in me are.
I go into my bedroom, into my closet, and dig out a box of things I kept from high school. Photos. Yearbooks. My varsity softball letter from senior year. A citizenship award they gave me at graduation.
The only journal I’ve ever kept. The year after Joe left. It’s at the bottom of the box because it scares me to read it. My ramblings are terrifying.
Joe bared his soul to me when he gave me those letters to help me see that he hadn’t forgotten me, hadn’t give up without a fight. Maybe this journal will help him understand my fight too. And why I can’t go through that again.
I tuck in the worst photo, scribble a note on the page after the last entry, stuff it in a plastic bag, grab my keys, and am outside his building pounding on his door before I know it.
When he appears in the hallway across the front room, shirtless, T-shirt in hand and a hopeful, wrecked look on his face, I steel myself. Hold up the bag for him to see. Hang it on his doorknob and take off back to my place like the coward I am.