For a moment after my eyes open, I have no idea where I am. Strangely, I’m not in my bed. Even more strange, I feel deeply rested. Strangest, loveliest yet, I’m wrapped around the slope of a familiar waist. A small, soft breast is my pillow. A steady heartbeat thuds beneath my ear.
My vision adjusts to the soft warm light coming from behind me, dimmed low. Now I see her, and everything makes sense.
Kate.
I stare at her as she comes into focus, lashes casting shadows on her cheeks, her mouth pursed in concentration. She wears her big headphones nestled in that bird’s nest I love, knitting needles clicking in her hands, balls of yarn strewn across the other side of the bed.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
As I watch her, my heart’s door creaks wide open on rusty, unused hinges, heavy, slow, determined nonetheless.
And when she peers down at me, greets me with such a deep, sweet smile and those eyes like the ocean, peaceful and calm after a storm, I know with certainty I will never close that door again—for her, it’s as good as gone, turned to ash, dissolved in the wind.
Because I love her.
“I love you,” I tell her hoarsely, before I know what’s come out of my mouth. My heart’s an elevator, plummeting to its doom.
Until her knitting needles freeze as she nudges off her headphones and says, “Hmm?”
I exhale roughly, saved. “Hi,” I tell her.
Her smile deepens. Back to knitting, needles clacking, she asks, “Comfortable?”
I nod and then feel water dripping down my temple. Bringing a hand to my head, I find cool plastic. A memory of frozen vegetables being piled on my head comes back to me. I remember Kate closing the curtains to her room, grumbling and pissed that I insisted on helping her make the bed. I remember the gentle way she shoved me back onto the mattress and tugged off my boots and jeans, then peeled off my sweater and kissed my forehead. I remember her sliding a clean, soft shirt over my head and how that felt impossibly more sensual, more intimate, than having my clothes taken off.
I remember her hands rubbing my shoulders and neck, soothing them as they tensed. I remember when the pain broke just enough to be bearable, tangling my legs with hers, dragging her close until our bodies clung to each other like vines, and sleep swallowed me up.
I should hate it. The mess I am. How fragile my body seems when it hurts like this, when it disobeys me, despite how hard I try to manage it. How naked I feel, even though I’m clothed.
But I don’t hate it at all. I don’t hate Kate for dragging me to bed in the middle of the day, for rubbing my neck and icing my head and holding me while I wrestled with pain until sleep and modern medicine mercifully won out.
Lying here, half-clothed, tangled with Kate, my mess just as known as hers, I feel stripped down and unburdened—a naked, wide-armed free fall into cool water on a hot summer day.
“How’s it going?” she says, nodding her chin toward my head. No Do you feel better? No Is it gone yet? No expectation or pressure for the pain to have conveniently disappeared, though, thank God, it’s faded drastically.
“Pain’s better,” I tell her. “Not gone, but much better. Thanks to the nap you forced on me and . . .” I lift the wet bag on my head to inspect it. “A bag of carrots and peas.”
Kate sighs dramatically. “There goes my stir-fry tonight.”
“Like you were going to cook a damn thing.”
She smiles, and Christ, it’s a sword and a sweet gift, cutting me deep and swift, reminding me how much, how uniquely, Kate makes me feel. “I had aspirations for dinner this evening,” she says primly. “But someone had to be dramatic and get a headache.”
My hands sink into her hips, then higher, beneath her shirt, because even when she’s teasing me, I have to touch her and feel her like this, warm and whispering beneath the sheets, her legs tangled with mine. “What can I say?” I tell her. “I like the spotlight.”
“Clearly.” Lifting the bag of not-so-frozen vegetables from my head, she chucks it behind her on the bed. “And clearly you like to get headaches, too,” she deadpans. “Otherwise, you’d do more to stop them, Christopher. Have you tried eating gluten-free? Dairy-free? Drinking more caffeine right when a headache comes on? Drinking less caffeine so you don’t trigger them? Eliminating stress? Quitting your job? Relaxing more? Exercising more? Avoiding MSG? Getting acupuncture? Taking cryogenic baths?”
“It would be funnier if I hadn’t heard every single one of those unsolicited pieces of advice before, countless times.”
“People really think someone who gets migraines wouldn’t have done everything they possibly could to avoid them,” she grumbles. “I want to knuckle sandwich every one of them for you, but I don’t think I’d do so well in jail, so I guess I’ll restrain myself.”
“I like you out of jail,” I mutter against her neck, then press a hot, slow kiss there.
“Hey now,” she says, tapping my shoulder with her knitting needles. “No funny business. We’re still convalescing.”
“The fuck we are.” I nuzzle her breast, then kiss it through her T-shirt. “Unless you need to. If you’re sore, we can do other things, instead.”
“I’m not too sore, but—ah!” She draws in a harsh breath as I suck at her nipple. “Christopher, don’t push yourself.”
“Please,” I whisper over her heart, kissing her there. “Trust me to make that choice. Let me love you. Besides,” I tell her, sliding my hand beneath the covers, feeling her leg shift restlessly across the bed, her hips move toward my touch. “After all that pain, I think I deserve a little pleasure, don’t you?”
Knitting needles and balls of yarn, a half-thawed bag of vegetables, soar off the bed. Kate burrows down in the sheets with me and whispers, “Yes, I do.”
? THIRTY-SEVEN ?
Kate
For once, I’m the one who can’t sleep. My mind is flying, my limbs restless, and so I slip out of bed the next morning just as dawn starts to fill the main living space of our apartment. Part of me wants to lie there, watching Christopher sleep as sunlight warms his skin, burnishes the curling ends of his hair and sparkles off the scruff that showed up last night—scruff that I thoroughly enjoyed abrading my breasts and stomach and thighs while he brought me one stunning orgasm after another.
I could lie there all morning, staring at him, replaying those beautiful moments, wondering what beautiful moments lie ahead. But I know if I stay, watching him sleep, my wiggles will wake him up, and after years of such poor sleep, Christopher needs his rest so badly.
Quietly shutting my bedroom door behind me, laptop and headphones under my arm, I tiptoe over to the kitchen and turn on the coffee maker, which Bea or Jamie must have set up, because I know Christopher and I didn’t.
While I wait for the coffee to brew, I wander into Bea’s tiny studio at the back of the apartment, with its faded gold velvet armchair next to the window, facing the sunrise.
Settling into it, I power on my laptop, tug on my headphones, and start some mellow music, prepared to work on editing the rest of the nonprofit’s photos. A reminder pops up on my calendar:
Jules’s flight home tonight.
I blink at the screen, stunned, my heart thudding. I’ve been so consumed with Christopher, so fixated on work, I completely blanked on the dwindling countdown to Jules coming home. She’ll be here tonight. Which means I need to figure out what I’m doing next. And I need to deep clean her room.
I shouldn’t be so panicked. I knew this was coming. But like my classic self, I haven’t done much—anything, really—to prepare for it. My suitcase still sits open, where I’ve kept my clothes. I haven’t thought about where I’ll go or what I’ll do after this.