I keep eating my soup. He’s easy with being seen. Too easy, maybe. It urges me to want the same. But I can already feel the warning flags.
I want him to see me, which is fine and good and healthy—and I want him to like what he sees, which is the first step into the danger zone. It’s the beginning of the siren song, the one that tempts me to work out what he wants to see and become her. Not because I’m weak. That would be the easy story, but it isn’t the true one. I’m not weak. I have big needs, and sometimes I’m willing to pay far too big a price to have them met. I figured that out the hard way, in therapy, and the easy way, with charcoals in my hand.
And that’s an awful lot of thinking to be doing over soup and sandwiches.
He smiles, like he knows I’ve gone deep down some crevice of introspection and he’s fine with that. “Tell me about your art. Why do you draw women?”
I grin at him. “Naked ones, you mean?”
His eyes twinkle. “As someone who appreciates naked women very much, that part isn’t hard to understand at all.”
Phew. The man is lethal, and I can’t even be mad at him for it. “It started with those drawings you were just looking at. I was my first model.” I swallow, because the rest of this answer sits a little differently in the context of my house and the conversation we’re having. “After my marriage ended, I was trying to sort out who I was. I wanted to be a good parent and a decent human being, and I knew I needed to see myself first. Now I help other people take that same walk.”
He smiles. “You do your name proud.”
I blink at him, lost.
“Daley is an old Irish family name. It means ‘bard.’ They bring out the hidden so that it can be seen. As do you.”
I take the gift he’s just given me and hold it gently. “I thought it was a Jewish name.”
He chuckles. “It may be that too. We Irish are terrible about borrowing from others and not giving them due credit.”
“It will change the way I hear my own name. Thank you.”
Something crackles between us, and it’s me who looks away first. I stare out at the view that usually soothes me, not at all sure what to do with him or me.
“It’s a wondrous place you have.”
A retreat to safer ground. I’m grateful, even though I’m pretty sure it’s a temporary reprieve. “I moved to Crawford Bay to finish raising my kids. I figured it would be a nice place for them to visit someday. I built this house once they were grown.”
He smiles. “You’ve a grandson nearby.”
He doesn’t lose track of things. “I do. My son lives down the road with his partner. They run a graphic-design business. My daughter is in Bulgaria at the moment. She’s the black sheep of the family.” I grin at him and pick up my sandwich. “She’s an engineer.”
His laugh is warm and interesting and generous. It suits the man very well. I let the smell of fresh bread and maple-glazed ham set my taste buds to drooling. “Do you have children?”
He shakes his head. There’s sadness there, and acceptance. “We were never able.”
There are rules, but the one about being a decent human being trumps all the rest. I set down my sandwich and reach for his hands. “I’m sorry.”
“As were we.” He squeezes my hands gently and shrugs, but he’s not doing it to hide away his regret. That stays in his eyes. “I borrow other people’s children when I can.”
I slip my hands away and pick up my sandwich, because it’s far too tempting to stay where I was. “I have a grandson who’s always happy to be borrowed. Mari the off-road skateboarder isn’t mine, but I’ve found that her parents are generally willing to part with her in exchange for baked goods.”
He makes appropriately amused noises around his bite of ham sandwich.
I realize how many assumptions I’ve just made. “I don’t know how long you’re staying.”
He swallows and chases it down with tea. “I don’t know either. I’ve rented a cottage on the lake. I thought I’d stay a while and get to know my friends’ new lives.”
That opens a lot of doors—and makes my insides wobble at how easily I opened mine. I’m good at jumps in the lake, sudden immersions with a sharp beginning and a quick end. Longer swims bring more of my issues into play. And more of my rules.
“Tell me what’s bothering you, Daley.” His words are gentle, but his eyes aren’t.
This isn’t a man who stays in nice, polite zones unless he wants to. Which means he can handle the honesty I’ve worked so very hard to make the core of who I am. “You’re a very intriguing man, and you’re tempting me to consider things I’ve kept at bay for a long time.”
He smiles. “That doesn’t sound so terrible.”
I sigh. “It doesn’t work for me. I wish it did, but it’s like one bite of chocolate cake. It doesn’t stop there, and then I end up with a bellyache, swearing I’ll never eat that much cake again.”
He cants his head, maybe because I’ve just compared him to a bellyache. “There’s an interesting story there.”
There is. And to my surprise, I’m willing to tell it.