32
I open my eyes Saturday morning to a text: I’ll pick you and Ferris up at 10:05. I want my kitchen looking like yours
I don’t reply because I’m hearing his voice say those words. I want him to type something else so I can hear it again, but it’s my turn. Me: See you then
I head downstairs to make coffee with the sound of his voice still in my head. I pour myself a cup, take Ferris out back, and count the number of things I need to do before I get to see him. Feed and pack the kids; Phyllis. But also pluck my eyebrows and blow-dry my hair. I think it’s too late to be a person who wears perfume. I’m in the shower, shaving with my glasses on, when Iris comes in and tells me she can’t find her soccer jersey, which opens the door to the Lost Item Rabbit Hole™. We spend the next two and a half hours pawing through the basement laundry, emptying every gym bag, and calling each of her teammates because she thinks she may have taken it off on the field last weekend. We drive to the rec center and go through their lost and found and then drive home and find that it’s in the backseat of my car. This is not an entirely unusual occurrence, but today that lost time feels like a catastrophe. I make the eggs and bring Phyllis a to-go serving with minutes to spare before Pete shows up.
Ethan pulls into my driveway right after they’ve left, and I’m a little frazzled getting into the car. I don’t know whether he’s going to act intense or casual. I put Ferris on the backseat with Brenda, and he hands me a paper cup of coffee. “Thank you,” I say, and that doesn’t really cover it. Bringing another person a cup of coffee says I’m thinking about how your day is going to go. Or at a minimum, I want you to also have this thing that I’m going to enjoy. I am weirdly moved by this.
We start driving the half mile to his house in silence. “It’s cooled down a little,” I say. “I mean the weather.”
He smiles at me. “That’s true. What else can you tell me about the weather?”
I smack him on the shoulder and look out the window. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to be talking about.”
“Well my house is a mess and yours is not. So now that I know what you’re capable of, I own you.”
Ah, casual. I take a sip of my coffee—milk, no sugar—and relax. “We could finish the kitchen in one day, if we really focused.”
He gives me a side glance that is not at all casual. “Let’s see how that goes.”
We pull into the driveway and take the dogs through the house and into the backyard. I start to open his cabinets. “Now, the idea here,” I say, “is to clean this kitchen out in such a way that it looks like we didn’t clean it out. You’ll walk in and think: Wow, this is such a huge kitchen, it has room for all of this stuff and then some. But really, we will have thrown out half the stuff.”
“Tricky,” he says. He’s right behind me and he’s said it into my ear. The feel of his breath there and the too-close sound of his voice send heat throughout my body. I think he knows this because he keeps talking, right into my ear. “Where do we start?”
His hands are on my hips and his mouth is on my neck. I turn around and his lips catch mine. He lifts me onto the counter. I run my fingers through his hair and wrap my legs around his back to bring him closer. I have the sense that the world has shrunk, and the space where his mouth is on mine is my only point of awareness. I hear a voice speak from far away.
“What?” he says, barely breaking the kiss.
I kiss him again. “What, what?”
“You said something about not the kitchen.”
“Out loud?” I am delirious. “Yes. Someplace else,” I say, and kiss him again.
He kisses me for so long that I almost forget we are making a location change. “Okay,” he says.
He pulls me off the counter and leads me by the hand to a downstairs guest room. Really, this is an unusually large house. The curtains are pulled and, happily, he makes no move to turn on the lights. The reality of this situation—naked in daylight—is threatening to ruin the perfection of this situation, and I try to quiet the thoughts that are bubbling up. Mainly, how did I not take five minutes to choose better underwear before jumping into Iris’s jersey hunt? How am I standing here in my Costco underwear—the dowdy blue ones!—on this particular day. Note to self: better underwear is self-care.
“You okay?” he asks, taking my other hand.
And I kiss him again, which is the answer. As long as I am surrounded by the taste and smell of him, the feel of him running his hands over my back, everything feels natural. There is nothing in this moment that can stop me from undressing him and pulling him on top of me on the bed.
“Costco?” he says into my neck.
“What?” I am so breathless that nothing is making sense.
“Ali, you literally just said something about Costco. Out loud.” He’s lying on top of me but has pulled away so that I can see him smile. “You are some kind of freaky woman.”
I want to explain, but the last thing I want here is an intermission. “Forget it. It’s my underwear. I’ll tell you later.”
I pull my T-shirt over my head and he stills. He looks at me like I’m art, like I’m made of something so beautiful that it’s going to take his breath away. I pull him back down on top of me, because I want to feel the weight of him, his skin on mine. He kisses me and whispers “Ali” into my mouth, “Ali” into my neck. The sound of his voice and the feel of his hands running down my sides, down my hips, have me desperate. Everything about us together feels so right that I’m glad we’ve waited to be back in my reality, in the light of day. I would not want to miss a second of this.
“Please don’t change your mind,” I hear myself say.
“It’s too late for that,” he says. “No turning back.”
Ever since I met him he has been calling me back to myself, reminding me that I matter. He’s that way now, but with his body, listening, responding, following up. I wind my arms and legs around him, and I have this feeling as we make love that I am being discovered. Maybe more than discovered—I am unearthed. I am no longer weighed down; I am no longer on this earth.
It’s three o’clock and we have not gotten out of bed except to get water and to open the curtains so we could see the dogs lazing by the pool. I am collapsed on his chest and he is stroking my hair. There is nothing between our bodies, as if we’ve burned through whatever membrane was devised to separate people. “I can’t believe I get to spend the whole day with you,” he says. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”
“You did plenty,” I say, breathless.
And he laughs.
My head is on his chest and I’m running my hand along the ridges of his stomach.
I have never felt like this before. Not even close. Not with Pete, not with Jimmy Craddock. Never. I don’t think I could have stayed married to Pete for one week if I’d known this existed, a person who was clearly designed specifically for me.
We lie in this perfect space for a while, until I am fighting sleep. I don’t want to stop feeling the way his arm circles my back and holds me to him. Like I’m a precious thing worth keeping. I stroke my hand across his chest, memorizing its contours, and he examines the charms on my bracelet.
“Let me guess, you were into fairies?”
“School play. Third grade.”
“Ah. I remember the soccer. What’s the ship? A cruise?”
“No. When I was ten my mom surprised me by pulling me out of school and taking me to see Titanic. It was a good movie, kind of long I remember, but we had a really fun day. So she designed this charm as a Christmas gift.”
“She designed all of these?”
“She did. She was a little over-the-top about everything in my life. It all mattered. Like she was so focused on all the little moments. Maybe because she was older, or maybe because it was just me.”
He’s holding the wedding dress charm. “Can we take this one off?”
“Nope. It’s part of the story.” I roll onto his chest so I can look at him. He doesn’t seem to mind what I said. “I’m glad she lived long enough to see my life play out.”
“Well, it’s not over,” he says. “There’s room for more.” I look at the empty links between the baby boy charm and the clasp. Wide open space.
I rest my chin on my hands and we are nose to nose. “We didn’t get any work done today,” I say.
“You’re fired,” he says, and tucks my hair behind my ear. “I’ll give you another chance if you spend the night.”
I kiss him again, because I cannot stop.
“We need food,” Ethan says at five.
“And maybe a little daylight,” I say.
“How’s this? I’ll get up and go forage for food in town if you promise you’ll spend the night.”
“Of course I’m spending the night,” I say.
He pulls me close and kisses my neck. “Thank God.”
When he’s gone out for food, I acclimate myself in the giant kitchen. I run my hands over the cabinetry and the smooth marble countertops. I open and close both dishwashers and check the wine refrigerator to see what’s in there. There’s a separate refrigerated drawer that just keeps sodas cold. It’s a lot of house. I let myself imagine living here with Ethan. I like the guest room more than that overwhelming master bedroom. We’d live down here and my kids would be upstairs. At night we’d swim and cook outside, and my kids could walk to school. I’d like to plant blue hydrangeas in the garden beyond the pool. While I’m engaging in this daydream, I’ve taken all of the glasses out of the cupboard and rearranged them the way I like. Juice glasses to the left and then water and then wine. The way the clock goes.
I don’t hear Ethan come in, and he’s standing there with a grocery bag, watching me. “Are we working?”
“A little,” I say. He comes and puts his arms around me and it feels like he’s been gone forever.
“What do you want to do first? Eat or swim?” he asks.
“Eat,” I say.
We eat outside, plates on the coffee table by our two armchairs. Same spot, and everything’s different.