Epilogue 2 Summer Rain #3
For the man who came back. And for the man who kept the light on while he found his way.
S.R.
I look at the cursor for a second. Then I save.
I close the laptop.
I go to bed.
***
In the morning, I wake up at six.
Colt is asleep next to me. His back is to me.
His breathing is the slow regular breathing of a man who's slept eight hours, which he's been doing again, which still surprises me, a small good miracle I keep not expecting.
I roll onto my back. Look at the ceiling.
The light is coming in the east window in butter color.
The sheet is warm. The pillow next to mine has the dent of him in it from the night.
I get up. Quietly. Take the rugby shirt off the chair, pull it over my head. I've decided over the years that any time I leave a bed I get to take a piece of him with me, and the rugby shirt has been the running tribute.
I go to the kitchen. Make coffee. Bring a mug to the writing desk.
I sit down.
I open the laptop.
The dedication is still there. I read it. For the man who came back. And for the man who kept the light on while he found his way.
I read it again.
I don't change it. I don't add to it. The dedication is the right length. I scroll up. To the top of the document. To the first page, which is the title page, which has the working title.
Wreckage and Rain.
Patricia, my publicist, called me yesterday and asked me whether the working title was final. I told her it was. She told me she loved it. She told me the cover designer was going to want it tomorrow. I told her it wasn't changing.
I look at it. Sitting on the screen in the early light in the apartment in Lincoln Park on the day after my last book launched, with the next book already six chapters deep, with the sun coming in the east window at the angle it comes in at on a June morning, with my husband asleep in the next room and my brother asleep in the guest room and a three-year-old's drawing on the wall above the toaster, with the throw blanket from the rooftop folded on the back of the couch.
Wreckage and Rain.
By Summer Rain.
I scroll down past the dedication. To chapter one. I read the first paragraph, which I wrote months ago, which I've been editing in my head ever since.
My name is Summer King-Bennet. This isn't the end. It's the after.
I read it twice. Three times.
I don't change it.
I leave the cursor blinking after the period.
I get up. I take my coffee with me. I go to the bedroom door. I lean against the frame. Colt has turned over in his sleep. He's on his back. One arm flung above his head. Mouth slightly open. The light from the east window has crossed the bed and is in his hair.
I watch him sleep. The sun comes through the window. The dust moves in it. The morning starts. I drink my coffee. I go climb back into the bed. Colt stirs when the mattress dips. His arm comes around my waist before his eyes are open and pulls me back against him. He's warm.
"You're cold," he says, into my hair.
"I was up at the desk."
His hand finds the hem of the rugby shirt and slides under it, flat against my stomach. He doesn't go anywhere with it. He just holds it there, half asleep.
"I didn't take it this morning," I say.
He goes completely still, listening with his whole body.
"The pill. I didn't take it. I haven't decided anything yet. I just didn't take it, and I wanted to say it out loud and hear how it sounds."
"How does it sound," he says.
"Like the door we keep standing in front of."
He turns me to face him. The morning light is on his face. He isn't smiling. This is too big for the crooked corner.
"Say the rest," he says.
"I want to stop. I want to find out what happens. No schedule. No chart. Just stop closing the door and see who comes through it."
"Yeah." Soft. Almost wrecked. "Yeah, Summer."
He kisses me. He takes the rugby shirt off over my head and drops it off the side of the bed. The sheet slides down. He settles over me, up on his forearms, careful, and I open my legs around him.
"Nothing between us," he says, and he means it every way there is.
"Good," I say, and I pull him down to me.
He pushes in slow. I feel all of it. We've done this a thousand times. This is the first time it's ever meant this. We both know it. Neither of us says so, because saying it out loud would be too much.
He moves slow. He keeps his eyes on me. I hold his face. The light comes across the bed and onto the pillow. When I come it's quiet, my forehead against his jaw, my hands flat on his back. He follows a few strokes later, deep, his face in my neck, my name once, low and broken.
We lie there after, the sheet tangled, his hand coming to rest flat on my stomach like it already knows something it has no way of knowing.
"Whatever happens," he says.
"You and me," I say.
He kisses my hair.
The sun is all the way up now. Down the hall the cursor's still blinking after the line about how this isn't the end, it's the after. Up here it's just the two of us, the warm sheet, the door we left open, and the after that's only getting started.
***