Not a word from Margo since Thursday night. I’d kept the phone on me during Friday’s meeting with the ministry team, and Saturday morning’s rehearsal with the youth choir. Made no difference, because she didn’t call.
Parsley nosed sympathetically at me when I changed my dog-related song lyrics to Margo-related ones, but when I tried to leave her behind on the way to church, she gave me the look of the utterly betrayed, so I relented. Even though it would mean asking the Graces, again, to not slip her too many snacks after services.
My dog’s company was a good distraction as we walked, and I found myself in full-voice singing, “She rules my house, with goofball grace / And makes the people praise / The glories of her silkiness / And wonders of her nose / And wonders of her nose / And wonders, wonders of her nose.”
“Her nose?”
The amused voice was behind me, and I turned fast without paying attention to Parsley’s leash. Fortunately there was enough slack so I didn’t fall at Margo’s feet.
“Parsley has a very nice nose.”
She approached, crouching to let my dog sniff at her and accept some petting. “Well. It’s not that I disagree.”
“You don’t think it’s worth singing about?”
Margo stood then, and we were so close together. “It wouldn’t have been my first pick, but the bigger problem is how I’m going to ring Joy to the World now without laughing.” Margo pressed her lips together, then reached to brush her fingers through my hair. It was a tender gesture, full of her usual surety, almost enough for me to forget all the lonely moments of the past few days.
“Hi.” I pulled her in for a kiss. It was a cross between the light, laughing ones we’d sometimes shared, and the galvanizing ones where I didn’t want to let her go.
“Hi,” she replied, then looked around. “Is it time to go in?”
I checked my phone, remembering to put it on silent now I had Margo with me at last. “For me, yes. You’re welcome to join me.”
“I’d love to.”
We held hands as we walked to the parish house, Margo’s fingers warm in mine. Her nails were purple now, and I wondered what other little changes I’d find if I got to explore her like I wanted. At the doors, I kissed her again, a little more tentatively as I thought to gauge whether she was ready for everyone to know we were … whatever the name was for what we were doing, sleeping together and kissing in the open.
I was about to ask, but Margo, of course, was ahead of me. “I never texted, but I’m hoping we can take a walk after services? And maybe your place after? I brought an overnight bag in case the day goes real well.”
“I’d love that. Parsley would, too.”
She turned to the dog. “Would you, now? Do I have to sing about your nose to earn your company?”
“Not only her nose. There’s songs about how she wags her whole butt, and ones for when she’s trying to convince me she’s starving, and it’s been a while, but I think I remember the one for not chewing on every bit of trash she finds on the beach.”
I prayed I came across as charming instead of ridiculous, or desperate. The countdown to the new year and the end of our connection was loud in my mind, and there was so much I wanted with this woman. I’d taken it slow, in my other post-divorce relationships, but slow wasn’t going to put Margo in my bed for as much of December as possible.
Yeah, I knew diving in head-first—okay, maybe it was dick-first—might to lead to some shattering of my emotions down the line, but I didn’t have time to erect a protective wall around my heart. My desire for Margo had knocked me for a loop, sometime between the first green tea at the beach and the last beer in town.
Maybe rehashing all that Father James stuff had stripped away something for me. Something that was too tied up in what a mess I’d once been in, both personally and professionally. A scab over my soul that needed to break away so I could fully heal. And it left me open to pursing something new.
Or maybe Margo was a sexy shock to my system and I couldn’t hold back.
To my slight surprise and complete pleasure, Margo waved to the Graces as they wandered in, then wrapped her arms around my neck. I leaned down for a brief, but meaningful, kiss, reveling in the chance to stroke my hands down her back to her waist.
Resisting, cause I’m good like that, the allure of her heart-shaped ass.
I squeezed her to me a second too long, dropping my forehead to hers. “Grab me from the courtyard when you’re ready to leave after.”
She pressed hers hips into me, a subtle but sexy promise, and smiled.
It settled into me like the peace of the season, and I went into our services carrying a new kind of faith. That of trusting that, somehow, the convictions I’d held onto throughout the sadness of my divorce and the loneliness of making a life for myself since then, was all part of something bigger. Instead of building a wall around my heart, I’d constructed a foundation. One that meant I was ready to create a home alongside someone else.
Was I making the kinds of leaps and bounds that meant I was likely to fall and shatter it all? I knew Margo was leaving. No matter how solid and sure of her place she seemed, standing there amongst my choristers, in a month she’d be gone.
But couldn’t it be a good idea to whole-heartedly pursue our desire? To accept the something molto allegro between us that lay outside my normal experience? The relationships I’d had in the past few years were comfortable. Sometimes largo and sometimes andante. A repeating pattern of drinks, dinner, sleep together, da capo al coda. I knew all the beats.
Leaving my comfort zone, even if it meant pain later on, could only teach me more about myself. More about how to share my heart. And those lessons could endure long past the limits Margo had imposed. They could expand my soul, make me ready for the something more I craved.
So being with her, for however short a time, was worthwhile.
It didn’t have to mean that when she left, I’d crash into the rubble of my ruined foundations.