Chapter 36 Rain
Summer
I wake up early, the morning of tomorrow. The crack of light at the bottom of the door means Colt is awake across the hall. He's been awake a while. I can hear him moving around. The shower. The coffee maker downstairs. He's gone down for coffee and come back up.
I go downstairs in pajama pants and rugby shirt. Lorna is at the desk with her crossword. She looks up at me over her readers.
"Coffee on the sideboard, sweetheart."
"Thank you, Miss Lorna."
"Pound cake too."
"It isn't even seven."
"Pound cake is a twenty-four hour food in this house."
I take the coffee and the pound cake to the parlor and I sit in the wingback chair.
Colt comes downstairs at seven. He's shaved his beard down to something between rugged and trimmed.
His blond hair is wet, leaving the top in waves that hang across his forehead.
He looks like the man who used to walk into King's Diner after rugby practice at sixteen and look at me like I had invented something.
He sees me in the wingback and pauses in the doorway of the parlor.
"Morning."
"Morning."
"Pound cake before seven?"
"Lorna says it's a twenty-four hour food."
"Lorna is correct."
He stands in the doorway with both hands in his pockets. Looking at me.
"You sleep?"
"No. You?"
"Not a minute. I lay there all night knowing you were awake on the other side of that wall, thinking about me, and I couldn't for the life of me be sorry about the lost sleep."
"You don't know I was thinking about you."
"I heard you get up at two. Heard you run the water. I like to think you were awake thinking about me."
"That is either the sweetest thing you have ever said or proof you need help."
"Sweet and unwell about you, the whole time. I've never been anything else."
"What do you want to do today?" he says.
What I want is to forget the rule and not wait for tonight. But the rule is mine, and it's a good one, and tonight is going to be worth every hour of holding the line.
"I want to go to the beach," I say.
"Then take me to the beach."
"Sullivan's. I want to walk on it. I want to put my feet in the water. I want to sit on a piece of driftwood and eat a sandwich."
"Okay."
"And then I want to come back here for dinner. Lorna said she would make us shrimp and grits if we asked."
"You asked."
"I asked."
"Beach. Lorna's shrimp and grits. And then."
"And then."
"Tonight."
"Yeah."
"Okay."
He doesn't come closer. He nods once. Goes to the sideboard. Pours coffee. Comes to the other wingback. Sits down across the small table from me. Eats a slice of pound cake.
We sit in the parlor of Lorna's B&B for a long while, drinking coffee, eating pound cake, not saying much. The grandfather clock ticks. Outside, Charleston wakes up. Inside me, a calm is settling that I haven't felt in longer than I can remember.
***
We go to Sullivan's Island. He drives. I have my bare feet on the dashboard.
The radio is on the country station because that's where we settled it at nineteen and the precedent has been honored ever since.
The beach is mostly empty in October. Two women with a Lab fifty yards down.
A couple in folding chairs near the dune line.
Pelicans. We walk for a long time. We don't talk for a long time.
I have my shoes in my hand. He has his shoes in his hand.
The sand is cool and packed and the tide is pulling out, leaving a fan of small shells we step around.
He puts his hand in mine somewhere around mile one and doesn't let go.
"Tell me about the new book," he says.
"Already?"
"Already."
"Patricia thinks it's going to hit the list. The real list. She said she's been in publishing thirty-two years and she knows what a breakout feels like."
"She's right."
"You haven't read it yet."
"I don't need to read it. You wrote it in the worst year of your life and you wrote it angry and you wrote it true. The book is going to hit."
"You sound certain."
"I'm certain about exactly one thing in this world and it's you."
I laugh. "Don't get smooth on me."
"That wasn't smooth. That was the only sentence I'm qualified to say with confidence anymore."
"Okay. Keep it. The rest, we will work on."
We walk back to the car as the light turns gold.
We pick up sandwiches at a place in Mount Pleasant that has been there since we were children.
We eat them on the hood of the car in the parking lot.
I steal half of his, and he doesn't complain.
He's stopped complaining about that since the first time I stole from his plate.
The drive back is quieter. The sun is dropping. My hand is on his thigh. I've missed it. His thigh solid under my palm. The denim of his jeans. The small flex when he downshifts.
"Summer."
"Yeah."
"I'm happy."
I look at him. The line of his jaw against the gold light coming through the window. His hair needing a cut. The man I married, who almost stopped being the man I married, who has come back the long way around.
"Me too."
***
Back at the B&B, Lorna has set us a small round table in the dining room she usually keeps for breakfast service: two candles in old brass holders, a linen runner, the shrimp and grits we asked for, biscuits with honey butter, and a small chocolate pot de crème she didn't warn us about.
She leaves us alone in the dining room with a bottle of red on the sideboard and the lights low.
"Lorna," I say from the hallway.
"Yes, sweetheart."
"You didn't need to do all this."
"Hush." She's at the desk with her crossword again. "You two are the most interesting people who have stayed in this house in three years. I'm rooting for you. Eat your shrimp and grits."
We eat. The shrimp are perfect. The grits are perfect.
The biscuit is the kind of biscuit that makes Mama nod with approval when she eats one in someone else's restaurant.
Colt eats more than I've seen him eat in a long time.
He's got color in his face again. The dark circles are lifting. He's filling back out.
He pours me wine. Pours himself wine. We eat by candlelight in the dining room of a yellow Federal house on Queen Street and we tell each other small stories.
The dog Jake had in tenth grade that ate three of his shoes.
The summer we drove to Asheville with no plan and slept in the car when the cabin we booked turned out not to exist. The night in college when Autumn and I convinced an entire bar I was a Russian exchange student named Natasha.
He's laughing. Really laughing. The laugh that starts in his chest.
I'm laughing too.
We finish the pot de crème. Lorna pretends to be doing her crossword and is actually listening from the front desk and I love her for it.
"Walk me upstairs," I say.
He stands. Comes around. Pulls out my chair. We walk up the stairs side by side. At the top we stop under the haint-blue ceiling light. He looks at me, I look at him, and the question is in the room without either of us saying it.
"Your room or mine," I say.
"Whichever one is yours."
"That's the right answer."
He smiles. I take his hand. Lead him to my door. Unlock it. Pull him inside and close it behind us.
The yellow lamp is on. The bed is made. The window is open to the garden and the scent of camellias flows in with the night breeze.
The room is warm. Loud with the small sounds of Charleston at night, the carriage clopping somewhere down the block, a screen door closing, the low far hum of King Street traffic.
I cross the room. Put my hands on his chest. Feel his heart through the soft cotton of his shirt. It's going fast. I press both palms against him.
"Tell me what you want."
"You."
"More specific."
"I want to undress you slowly. Wanting you has been keeping me awake."
"Okay."
"I want you to tell me at every step if anything I'm doing isn't what you want."
"Okay."
"I want to put my mouth on every part of your body that I've missed."
"Be specific."
"The hollow of your throat. The inside of your wrist. The spot on the back of your knee that makes you laugh.
The crease where your hip meets your thigh.
The two little freckles next to your belly button.
The space between your shoulder blades where you used to make me press my palm before you fell asleep.
The dip at the base of your spine. The inside of your thigh, just above the knee.
The other places too. All of them. But those first."
"Okay."
"I want to make you come because you want to come, not because you're proving anything to me. And I want it to take a long time."
"Okay."
"And then I want you within reach of me, in this bed, while you tell me what you want next."
I tilt up. Kiss him.
He kisses me back like a man who has been instructed and is obeying carefully. His hands stay at his sides for the first kiss. He waits. I take his hands and put them on my hips. He says into my mouth, "Thank you," and the words go straight through me.
He starts at the bottom. The hem of my dress.
He lifts it slowly, watching my face. The fabric drags up over my thighs, my hips, my stomach, my ribs.
I lift my arms for him, and he pulls it off over my head and lets it fall on the chair.
I'm in nothing but a scrap of underwear.
He looks at me. The way he used to look at me. The way I forgot he could.
"Hi," he says. Quiet.
"Hi."
"Can I put my hand here."
He puts his hand flat against the center of my chest, between my breasts, over my heart.
"Yes."
"Can I put my mouth here."
He bends and puts his mouth at the hollow of my throat. The first place on the list. His lips are warm. He stays there long enough that I make a small involuntary sound.
"Yes," I say, with my voice gone soft. "Yes, there. Keep doing what you're doing."
He works the list.