6. Lena
six
Lena
The email has been open on my laptop, haunting me.
The truth is, I want it. I want to come through the staff entrance on Hamilton Street on Monday at half nine with my knife roll under my arm and have the prep cooks look up.
I want Yves to say something short and approving about my hands.
Two years of my life were organised around a nod from that man, and you can't pull that out of a person in six weeks on a mountain.
And the other thing. If I don't go back, what happened in April was that I broke. If I go back, it was a leave. A leave is what successful people take.
So I sit on the end of the bed with the radiator ticking and the window open two inches over the back lot, and I let myself want it properly, without arguing, for twenty minutes.
Then I open the other email.
It's five days old, and it's from Odile Tremblay, who owns The Larch House on the east end of Main. It’s a bistro with twenty-eight seats, a chalkboard that changes when the valley changes.
I ate there on my fourth night in town and asked the server where the chanterelles came from and got told the mushroom guy.
I emailed her that Sunday, the same night Yves sent the schedule, telling myself it was research.
She wrote back in nine minutes. Six years running her own pass, five months without a day off, nobody in the interior with fine-dining chops who wants to live here.
She named a number eleven thousand under Vancouver and offered a share of the room, and I've been holding that arithmetic against a life where I get to watch what October does to a north-east slope.
I haven't answered her either.
Someone knocks.
Daniel's there with his hat in his hand and rain still on his shoulders, and he doesn't come in until I step back.
“Hi.”
"Right." He turns the hat over. "I'm going to say this badly.” He lets out a breath, but the nerves don’t leave him.
“I went quiet on you because I was scared.
" He looks at the window, then makes himself look at me instead, and I watch what that costs him.
"Not cautious. Scared. Every year I've told myself October takes people off me, and the true thing is I take myself off them first, and I've done it enough times I stopped being able to see it.
" His jaw works. "I don't want to be the man who's already leaving.
I've been him twenty years and I'd like to try stopping in front of you, instead of somewhere you can't see it. "
"Come here," I say.
"That's not — I didn't come here for—"
"Daniel. Come here."
I put my hands on either side of his jaw, wet from the rain, and hold his face until he stops.
"I'm not going back," I say.
He sucks in a breath, his mouth opens and closes, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.
I turn the laptop around. "Sit down."
He sits on the end of the mattress, he looks huge on it. I type it in front of him and he reads it as it goes.
Yves, thank you for the six weeks. I'm not coming back on the twentieth, or after it. There's no counter I'd take. I'll clear my locker when I'm down for my things. It was a real education, and I mean that with no edge on it. — Lena
I read it twice. I send it.
The sound the laptop makes is very small and very final and my whole body goes hot and cold at once.
"There," I say.
Daniel hasn't said anything.
"Odile Tremblay offered me sous five days ago," I tell him. "The Larch House. I've been sitting on it because I wanted to be sure I was taking it for the right—"
Words don’t do justice. So I do the next best thing: get my hands in his collar and pull.
He laughs into the kiss and it changes everything about it. He's easier tonight. Both of us are. The thing that was sitting on our chests has been said out loud and taken out of the room, and what's left is a wet man in a lodge bedroom with his hat on the floor.
"This bed squeaks," I warn against his mouth.
I push him back onto the bed and get my leg over him and he lets me, hands going to my hips, and I sit up and pull my sweater and the shirt under it off in one go. He puts his hands flat on my ribs and looks at me, and the looking is worse than anything.
"What," I say.
"Nothing. You're—" He gives up on the sentence and sits up under me and puts his mouth on my sternum instead, which is a better answer anyway.
He gets my bra off one-handed, which I intend to interrogate later. Then he flips us — quick, an arm behind my back and the world rotating — and I make a sound that is frankly undignified.
"That was extremely rehearsed."
"Take your leggings off."
I take my leggings off. He gets rid of the rest of his clothes standing at the end of the bed, watching me watch him, and neither of us hurries.
Then he's over me and his mouth goes to my throat, my breast, the inside of my elbow, my hipbone, and lower.
He puts two fingers into me and works them slowly and puts his mouth right at my ear.
"You're soaked," he says. "You've been soaked since you opened the door."
"Oh, God."
"I'm going to make you come on my hand first, because you're loud and I want to hear it before the bed starts. Then I'm going to fuck you."
"That's fine. That's an acceptable plan."
"Then be quiet and let me."
I am not quiet. He takes his time, curls his fingers exactly where he learned to on Monday, and gets his thumb going in slow circles on my clit that do not speed up no matter what I do with my hips.
I get a hand around his cock because it's there and because I want him to have to concentrate, and his breath goes ragged against my jaw, and he doesn't stop.
"Daniel!"
"I know."
"I want—"
"I know what you want." He turns his hand and the angle changes and I lose the end of the sentence entirely. "You'll get it. Give me this one first."
When I come it goes through my legs and up my spine. "Come here," I tell him. "Come here, come here—" I want more. I need more.
He pushes in slow, all the way, and stops there and hangs over me on his forearms with his forehead against mine, both of us breathing like we've come up a slope.
The bed does start squeaking, and it's as bad as advertised, and neither of us cares. He gets a hand under my knee and opens me up and goes harder, and I get my heels into the backs of his thighs and take it.
"Touch yourself," he says. "That's it. I want it while I'm in you."
I come the second time with his name in my mouth and my hand between us and his whole weight on me, and he goes three strokes and follows, shuddering, saying something into my hair.
The heat and sensation of our post-sex bliss settles over me and I forget about everything else but him.