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The porch lights were on but the bottom floor was dark when Casey drove up to Sweet Amandine for the second time that day. She’d called Lee to tell her Ben had invited her to dinner, hoping for some wisdom. Or at least some words about caution. At the bare minimum, some advice on what to wear.
Lee, however, had squealed like a twelve-year-old girl and Casey heard Chester leap out of her lap and go tearing across the floor, terrified by this unexpected response. Even Casey had to hold the phone away from her ear.
“What you wear doesn’t matter, it’s going to be off you in seconds,” Lee had said when she finally stopped hyperventilating enough to form sentences.
“Lee!” she scolded. “That is not what’s going to happen. We haven’t seen each other in ages, and the last time we did, we were obviously through. This is a friendly dinner between adults.”
“Ooh, so he’s enough of an adult now,” Lee teased, and Casey felt herself go crimson. Maybe sharing her plans had been such a good idea after all.
“He owns a café, thank you very much.”
“Highly respectable.” Casey could hear the mocking in Lee’s voice.
“Shut up,” she pleaded. “Tell me what to do.”
“You already know what to do, what do you need me explaining it for?”
“Because what if I’m wrong?” Casey finally gave voice to the fear that had been nagging inside her ever since she pressed send on those two dangerous letters, O and K.
“Wrong about what? This isn’t a math problem, sweetheart, and I hate to break it to you but there’s no right or wrong in the end. If this seems like the right thing to do, then you have my blessing to do it.”
“But what if it turns out to be wrong? You know, down the road. Like we get started and he leaves, or things don’t work out, or it turns out to be a bad idea.”
“Then you’ll deal with it. But you can’t not start something because you’re afraid things might get messy at some point. You don’t know what will happen. Nobody does. That’s called life. All you can do is make the best decision you can with the information you have now. And that information tells you that Ben is single, settled, and hungry for more.”
“But what if he changes his mind?” Casey asked weakly.
“If things don’t work out later and you want to kick present-day you for starting something up, you calmly look her in the eye and tell her you did the best you could with what you knew at the time.”
“But what if he meets some cute twenty-something who falls for his Bundt cake and I’m history?”
Lee snickered into the phone. “She might go falling, but that doesn’t mean he’s there to pick her up. If you’re going to go worrying about impossible things, you might as well, I don’t know, worry about getting trampled by a herd of bears on the way to his place.”
“Now I have two things to worry about,” Casey complained.
“If you don’t go see him tonight, I’m going to come over myself and physically drag you to his apartment, so help me I will. I don’t care how many axes you can wield at one time, or the fact that I’m almost twice your age and half your height—I’ll do it. Don’t test me, because I will.”
Finally Lee had given up on talking sense into Casey over the phone and came over to the cabin. She shook her head at the mess Casey had made throwing what looked to be all of her clothes across the floor. At last she’d convinced her to go with the one pair of jeans she had that wasn’t frayed across the bottom, canvas black shoes, and a loose black-and-gray shirt with buttons up the cuffs. Her hair she simply shook her head at.
“That’s between you and your God, but may I suggest investing in some detangler?”
Casey tried to work through it with her fingers and wound up twisting the sides up and pinning them back with bobby pins, leaving the wisps around her face to bounce free and hoping Ben had been serious when he said he liked her hair curly rather than straight.
“Makeup?” she asked Lee, making a face in the mirror. She didn’t have much—it wasn’t so useful in the woods.
“You don’t need it. You’re radiant as is.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” Casey said, and it was true. She didn’t know how she ever would have made it out of the cabin if Lee hadn’t pushed her when it was time, telling her that even the worst thing that could happen with Ben would be better than what she’d do to Casey if she gave up on love.
That was exactly how Lee had said it. “I won’t forgive you if you give up on love.” The words still rang in her ear as she turned off the ignition and sat in the car, looking up at the big blue house in the moonlight.
Was that what she felt for Ben?
Did she still know him well enough to say?
* * * * *
THIS TIME, INSTEAD of entering the café, she walked around to the back and up the steps that led to the balcony on the second floor. She wasn’t yet to the door when it opened.
“I almost thought you were going to stay in that car all night,” Ben said from the top of the stairs.
“I thought about it,” she admitted. “But Lee would have killed me.”
“That’s your friend in Bonnet?”
“I’m sure you’ve seen her come in. Short, shoulder length gray hair, always covered in cat hair. She loves your sour cherry galettes.”
“Ah, I know the one,” Ben said. “I’m still learning everyone’s names, but I’m glad the galettes were a hit. She was going to kill you? She seemed like such a nice lady!”
“Keep your eye on her. But she said something about not giving up on you, so hey, here I am.”
Casey modified the exact thing Lee had said, catching herself just in time. She wasn’t even in his doorway—there was no need to go saying ridiculous things so soon.
She did a double take when she stepped into the apartment. Like the downstairs it was mostly all one big room, but much larger than her cabin. Straight ahead was a kitchen and to the left a hall that Casey imagined led to the bathroom. But mostly the space was open.
Open and empty. Ben had no furniture whatsoever. There wasn’t even a bed, just a mass of blankets and some pillows in a corner on the floor. There were some unpacked boxes and a few open ones, and probably down the hallway a closet or two for clothes, but no dresser anywhere. He’d piled books up to make a temporary bookshelf beside the makeshift bed. Other than that, it was bare, a creaky, knotted wood floor that must have been the original and white walls he’d thrown a coat of paint over before he moved in.
“I haven’t had much time to deal with anything up here,” he said. “Things have been so busy downstairs, I always crash at the end of the day. I’m sorry, I guess I should have thought of that before actually having someone over.”
“No,” Casey murmured, taking it in. “It’s perfect.”
And it was. Because there was one thing Ben had done at the end of his busy day, and that was what made Casey gasp. The whole entire place was covered with candles. There was a lamp in the corner but it was off, and no other lights in the room except for a wan yellow beam coming from the microwave light in the kitchen, where pots were already set up on the stove.
There were candles along the windowsills, flames reflected in the enormous windows that looked out at the road and to the backyard. Candles balanced on top of the ancient radiators and lined across the floor. Dozens, maybe even a hundred of them illuminating the dark walls with their flickering dance.
Some were small white tea candles that came in their own little tins. There were also larger candles in individual glasses and tall red table candles pressed with wax onto squares of aluminum foil so they wouldn’t tip.
If it would burn, he had lit it—all for her.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. Casey could only nod. His face in the candlelight and that smoldering look in his eyes—it took her breath away.
He had on dark jeans and a black button-down shirt. His hands were cleaned of flour, and even from a distance his hair smelled as if he had just showered. She thought of him preparing for her arrival, lighting all the candles, turning off the lamp. Standing by the window and waiting for her, watching down the dark empty street for the two beams of her headlights to burn back into his life.
“I wish I had time to put together more for dinner. It won’t be as good as an almond croissant, but I hope it’s still okay.”
“Somehow, I think it’ll be more than okay,” Casey said, and she was right. There must have been a few things he’d learned working at Agricola. His homemade gnocchi tasted like clouds, and he’d seared the tiny pillows with a silky sauce of porcini mushrooms topped with a dollop of ricotta he’d made that day with whole milk and cream. The delicate florets of broccoli rabe sautéed in garlic smelled so good she never wanted to stop hovering by the stove.
“This is better than anything I could have ever come up with,” Casey said as she leaned over to spear more gnocchi from the pan.
“Yeah, but you have chairs,” Ben said, swatting her hand away. “And plates. Major oversight not to think of plates. I’ve only unpacked one set of everything since it’s been just me, and it seemed like bad form to ask you to bring your own set of utensils.”
“I should have at least brought wine or something.”
“Never fear.” He pulled out a bottle of pinot noir. “Be glad it has a screw top.”
He piled paper plates with the steaming potato dumplings smothered with sauce and a heaping serving of broccoli rabe while Casey poured the wine into coffee mugs he had brought from downstairs. They sat cross-legged on the hard wood floor, surrounded by candles, the flames making the whole room look like it was filled with stars.
“It’s been a long time,” she said quietly, in between bites of gnocchi that melted on her tongue.
“Too long,” he said, catching her gaze.
“I know.”
The silence swelled with all the longings of the night. Ben ran his hand through his hair, brushing the strands from his eyes. “I know I can’t make up the year that I missed, but I—”
Casey knew what she wanted, and it was the future, not the past. She leaned forward and pressed her fingertip to his lips to shush him. “From here on out, we have all the time we need.”
Ben put down his fork. His eyes were two deep pools that held far more than he could ever say. So instead of speaking, he raised his hand to hers, closed his eyes and kissed the fingertip she’d held to his mouth.
The gentle pressure of his lips sent small flutters all the way up her arm and straight to her heart. When he opened his eyes again, something caught deep inside. A slow, sweet unfolding transformed her from the inside out until she felt herself bare to him, entirely exposed. There was so much riding on this moment, but she knew already how it would work out.
Because there could be no more running for them. No more uncertainty, no more doubt. The look in his eyes, the beating in her chest. This was it. It was now. She ran her fingers over his lips and cupped his jaw in her hand, feeling the smooth skin of his fresh shave and the sweet comma cut into his chin—his dimple when he smiled at her.
His eyes held hers as he kissed her palm, then the inside of her wrist, then rubbed his lips along the soft, delicate skin of her forearm. When he raised her arm to graze the ticklish crook of her elbow, she reached to run her fingers through his hair and held on tight, tilting his head. He was still sitting cross-legged on the floor and she edged over to kneel above him, looking down as his neck craned up.
When she at last pressed her mouth to his, it felt like coming home. He tasted of fire and smoke and earth, and fresh bread and soap and something so clean, so pure, it was like spring water on her lips.
In that one kiss, all the moments they had shared together came flooding back. The first night in the cabin, the rock ledge on the mountain, the rowboat, the lake, the woods themselves. It was all that and more.
Candlelight flickered over their shadows on the wall, the darkness taking them further and deeper than they ever knew they could go. Their half-eaten dinner lay forgotten on the paper plates. Casey stood and he stood with her, and together as one, they moved to the pallet he’d made.
They sank down into the heap of soft blankets as if they were falling into a cloud. Casey slid off his sweater and slowly unbuttoned his shirt. The smooth contours of his chest reminded her how strong and assured he had looked working in the bakery that morning. He pulled up her shirt and fluffed up the blankets, cocooning her in the soft, downy warmth.
They had explored each other before but somehow it still felt new. His warm back, the ridges of his clavicle, her fingers in his hair. The taste of wine on his lips. She kissed every inch of him, memorizing his body with her tongue, the salt and sweat and sweetness of him, the arch and breadth of each line on his well-trimmed, muscular form. Running her fingers down his lower back, she paused at the deep chiseled angles that had made her breath catch when they first met and said a tiny prayer of gratitude that he was hers again.
Then he was kissing her, moving down her body, his mouth on her breasts, trailing south as she squirmed in blissful anticipation. He tugged off her jeans, trailed her panties down. And then his tongue pushing, probing, spreading her open, finding the treasure buried within her folds. He pressed the button that unlocked her and she was taken away again.
She undressed him as if it were the first time, a revelation. When he slid on a condom and entered her at last, she knew she could never get enough. Could never plunge him deep enough, hard enough, fast enough to satisfy every pulse of her desire, a fire that burned deeper the more of them it consumed. She bit his shoulder, clung to his hair, dug her fingernails into the tight mounds of his ass that tightened with his every thrust, pulling him into her as she cried out his name.
“Oh Casey,” he practically sobbed in her ear. “I’m coming, I’m coming for you. Oh Casey,” he crooned again.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She raised her hips to meet his and spread her legs in a wide vee overhead, pulling him ever deeper inside. She held onto her thighs to keep her legs open, every inch of her devoted completely to him. That was where he belonged, deep inside where everything felt right and fulfilled.
He was using her harder and faster than she’d ever been before, bucking wildly into her. She was split open right down the middle and still she begged him with every fiber of her being to give her more.
It was her cries, her pleas to be filled, and harder, and yes, and more. It was the catch in his voice when he said her name in that way that only he could. All this and more sent them so far over the edge they were nothing but their bodies, together. His body, and hers. With one quick, deep thrust he buried himself up to the hilt and gave her every drop of his love, pulsing slow now to savor every liquid tremble that they shared.
But it was far from over. Ben rolled onto his back with Casey sitting tall on his cock still hard inside her. She groaned as the waves of pleasure kept washing over her. She raised and lowered her hips, riding him sensual, slow, then building up speed. She angled him right where she wanted him, pressing deep inside her, and ground her pelvis against his so the circles of her hips hit every tender, singing nerve outside and in.
She wanted it to last forever but knew she couldn’t hold on. Her fingers in his hair, his hands pinching her nipples so tightly she gasped, the roll of his hips as she met him over and over again. She couldn’t keep going, at the same time that she never wanted to stop. When she came, it was as if a storm had flooded the apartment, the tide so strong it knocked her down. She felt every tremble, every quiver between her legs and knew that Ben felt it, too. She collapsed forward and lay gasping on top of him, sweaty and spent, so full she thought she might explode.
They drank the rest of the wine lounging naked in the blankets, fingers intertwined, laughing, whispering, touching, kissing, talking long into the night. Later they lay down again, arms wrapped around each other. When the candles burnt down low, Casey got up to blow them out one by one.
She felt his eyes on her as she crossed the room, bending to extinguish each light. She put the plates in the sink and stuck the gnocchi in the fridge, then padded back to where Ben was curled up in the blankets, content as a well-fed cat.
“What’re you looking at?” She tried to take a blanket from him to cover herself but he grabbed it up and pulled it away.
“You know I want to look at you,” he said, a smile dancing across his happy face.
“Only because it’s dark.” She knew that he desired her, but still she reached for the cloth.
He snatched it away again. “Not a chance. If I had more than one lamp in here, all the lights would be blazing.”
“And you’d still be hogging the covers?” Casey folded her hands over her breasts indignantly.
Ben wiggled side to side, still clutching the blankets—his way of saying yes.
Casey walked over to the window and blew out the last candles on the sill. There were no curtains, but it was darkness as far as the eye could see. With the lights off inside the apartment too, no one could look in and see her naked by the window, even with the slice of moonlight streaming through.
“Mmm,” Ben rolled over on his side to watch her.
“You’re ridiculous,” she said.
“I like it.”
“You don’t even know what’s good for you. I’m old and you feed me too much. You should be with someone young and perfect and cute—they’re a dime a dozen in Brooklyn and I know they were throwing themselves all over you, don’t deny it. You’re going to grow up and come to your senses and get sick of me and then I’m going to be hideous and alone for the rest of my life.” She looked out the window and sighed. She was joking, but only a little.
The covers rustled as Ben relinquished his hold on the comforters and crawled out of the cocoon to stand behind her. He wrapped his arms around her, skin pressing against skin, his nakedness against her as they’d once stood in her cabin. She leaned into him as he rested his chin on her shoulder, still holding on.
“Nobody stays young forever,” he said, stroking her side. “What about when I’m old and have three chins and no hair like my father, and his father before him, because you don’t know it yet but according to family history, I’m doomed. You like me now but how do I know I’m not your little fantasy, and you’re the one who’s going to come to your senses and realize you should be with someone established and grown up? Someone who at least owns a table. And a bed.”
“Have you seen my table? It hardly counts. Besides, I already have one. I don’t need another.”
“I’m serious,” he said, rocking her gently as they looked out the window together at the expansive, rolling blackness that the morning light would resolve into peaks and valleys and endless trees brilliant green against the blue summer sky.
“I am too.” She stretched her arms behind her so she was hugging him back.
“I don’t want someone who only wants me when things are going well,” he said. “I want someone who wants to be with me through everything. Who’s going to still look at me through the long, decrepit years of my thirties, and then some.” His chin pressed into her shoulder as he smiled.
“Just wait, I’m going to keep getting worse,” she warned.
“Mmm, I hope so.” He kissed her neck and bit her earlobe. “Because I’m fully planning on it, myself.”
He ran his hands over her back and then reached around to cup her full breasts, playing with her nipples until they grew hard again under his touch. He rolled the sensitive buds between his fingers, stroking the soft tender flesh.
“Casey, if this is you getting old, then I hope you get worse and worse. In fact, I can’t wait.”
Casey let out a giggle that dropped into a moan. Because now he was touching her stomach, reaching between her thighs, discovering the delicate skin between her legs. Their last round hadn’t been that long ago, but they had a lot of catching up to do.
She spread her legs wider for him. Gently he leaned her forward. She was wet and throbbing already and he reached for another condom. Then he rubbed the tip of his cock over her slick entrance, making her whimper for him before he planted his hands on her hips and plunged inside. Her back arched and he grabbed onto a thick fistful of her hair as he pulsed in and out of her, both of them trembling with every inch of what they had to give.
Everywhere Casey saw only darkness and the thin light of the moon. She pressed her hand up against the window, the cool night of the windowpane a shock against the heat of his body behind her. She leaned her forehead against the glass. In the morning the prints would still be there, reminding them of all they had shared.
When she came her whole body shook, knees trembling as her sounds filled the night, crying out as her body burst into flame. Ben was an explosion inside her, shooting his warmth deep within. She bent forward, pulling him into her, making sure he gave her everything he had. He collapsed over her, his arms wrapped tenderly around her, his check pressed against her back. Neither of them wanted to let go.
When they staggered over to the comforters, she held him as close as she could, knowing that now she was truly gone. Now she could never let him go.
They fell asleep curled against each other in a sea of blankets until dawn flooded the windows, transforming the blackness that had captured them into all the shapes of their life.