We’re both breathless when you pull away, and for a moment I’m afraid you’ve changed your mind. Then your eyes find mine and I see the question there, silent, needful. The yearning to finish what we’ve begun, to consummate, at long last, all we’ve been pretending not to feel.
I press my hand into yours and allow you to lead me down the hall, past your suitcases and your typewriter, and into the bedroom. There’s a window looking out onto an alley and an imposing row of brick buildings. The afternoon light slanting in feels cold and stark, a glaring reminder of the world outside.
And then you pull the curtains closed and, without a word, set to work on the buttons of my gloves. It’s a startlingly intimate sensation, your fingers, warm and careful, peeling back the fabric. Suddenly I feel vulnerable and exposed, as if my skin is being removed.
I’m trembling and breathless, terrified of I know not what. And yet I never once think to stop you as you slowly undress me and press me back against the spread. We’ve been inching toward this brink for so long, always careful to pull back at the last second, to preserve some pretense of decency, but there will be no half measures today, no stopping at the water’s edge. Decency be damned.
There’s an urgency in your touch, a well of pent-up need given free rein at last. I respond instinctively, meeting your hunger with my own, unafraid suddenly, unashamed. The power of it—of us—is like nothing I’ve imagined. I’m both powerful and powerless, conqueror and conquered. Whole in your arms in a way I never thought possible and, at the same time, utterly shattered as we hurtle headlong over the precipice together. And in that moment, there can be no going back. I’m yours forever. Irrevocably. Indelibly.
I awaken to the sound of your breathing, deep and rhythmic beside me. The light has changed and shadows stretch up the wall and across the carpet. I run my eyes around the room but there’s no clock anywhere. I have no idea what time it is or how long we’ve been asleep.
Your arm is curled about my waist, heavy against my ribs. The weight of it, the fact of it, fills me with a savage rush of joy. This is what it would feel like to be your wife, to wake each morning in a tussle of warm sheets, your breath on the back of my neck, your chest fitted snugly against the curve of my spine. I envision breakfast in bed on the weekends. Eggs and toast on a tray with your paper. And coffee. I’d have to learn to make coffee. Or perhaps you prefer tea. I’ve never thought to ask.
The realization brings me to earth with a bump. There are so many things I don’t know about you, so many things you don’t know about me. The little intimacies that develop with time, the things that bind lovers inextricably together, are no part of what we have. In fact, we’re still strangers in many ways, two people who stumbled blindly into love, never once imagining a happily ever after.
The thought is still with me when I feel your breathing change. Your arm cinches about my waist and you pull me closer, nuzzling the curve of my shoulder. Suddenly I’m frightened, terrified that this fierce and fledgling joy will wither in the cold glare of reality.
I turn over, cupping your face in both hands, committing your features to memory, as if forgetting them would ever be possible. The subtle cleft at the base of your chin, the crease between your brows that never quite disappears, even when you laugh, the small crescent-shaped scar at the corner of your eye, the result of a childhood fall from a swing. All of it seared on my memory even now, the loss still so raw, it stings.
You cover my hand with yours and the crease between your brows deepens. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I say softly. “I’m just . . . memorizing your face. In case.”
“In case . . . what?”
I shrug and reach for the sheet, pulling it up over my shoulders. “I just can’t believe I’m here. That we’re here—together. It feels like a dream.”
“It is a dream,” you murmur, your voice still thick from sleep. “One I’ve had more times than I can count. Only this time, you didn’t disappear when I opened my eyes.”
You kiss me then, a kiss full of tenderness and wonder. But it turns into something else for me, something fierce and fearful. I cling to you, desperate to prove to myself that it’s real, that we’re real.
We make love again, more slowly this time, exploring tender topography missed in our first frenzied joining. We cherish each other, every touch and taste and murmur. We whisper promises as the afternoon ebbs into evening. Words like forever and tomorrow and always. And we mean them when we say them. Or at least I do. Because I haven’t begun to think any of it through. What it will mean. What it will cost. Where it all might lead.
In the days that follow, we spend every moment we can steal together. I invent outings with girlfriends I haven’t seen in months, purchase tickets for concerts I don’t attend, invent shopping excursions for clothes I neither need nor want, all to create plausible alibis for my increasingly frequent absences from home. When Cee-Cee assumes I’ve begun shopping for my trousseau, I don’t correct her. I nod and smile, all while trying to work out how to extricate myself from my engagement. Because I will extricate myself. Just as soon as Teddy and his father return from their latest trip to wherever the horses are running this week. For now, though, my time is my own, and it’s easy to put those plans off and just enjoy these sweet stolen moments with you.
I try to be at the apartment as often as I can when you come home from work. I use the key I keep secreted in my compact to let myself in, and pretend to ignore the looks I sometimes get from the woman who lives across the hall. The look that says, “I know what you’re up to, popping in and out in the middle of the day.” I suppose she does, but it’s nothing to me. She’s not likely to be part of my father’s circle.
I play at cooking now and then, to surprise you, but I’m not very good at it. That’s what comes of having people do for you your whole life. Still, you never complain. We eat together in your tiny kitchen and listen to the news on the radio, keeping careful track of events in Europe and Britain. We do the dishes when we’re through, side by side, like proper newlyweds. But we aren’t proper newlyweds. We aren’t proper anything. And when the dishes are finally put away and the news program ends, I must gather my hat and gloves and kiss you goodbye.
And rehearse a new alibi on the way home.