32
Sunday, 19 July
Day Twenty-eight
Kate woke with a shout, jolting Ben awake.
Ben by her side and the rainfall on the trailer roof confused her. In her dream, it had been sunny and warm, and she’d been outside in a field of tall grass, alone. In the dream, there’d been no trailer, no camp house, no tents. Everyone had left without her. No one had said a word.
She lay back down to catch her breath, then looked over at Ben. He was grimacing, eyes at the ceiling.
“What is it?” she asked, looking at the ceiling, too.
“It, eh…” When he tried to shift positions, his body jerked, and he blurted out Norwegian expletives.
‘Faen i helvete.’ Damn it to hell. Probably.
“I think it’s a spasm,” he said.
Oh, no.
He pressed his arms against the mattress as he angled his knees toward the ceiling.
“Okay.” Her groggy brain fumbled through panic. “Do you need to stretch? Take something? Muscle relaxers, pain killers?”
“Cupboard.”
She found three medications, ibuprofen and two she didn’t recognize, paroxetin and metokarbamol. She grabbed them all, then a granola bar that sat on the shelf below and a chilled bottle of water from the fridge.
“Here, eat.”
He took a bite of the granola bar, then took two ibuprofen and one pill of the other two medications.
“Would it help to walk around? Or…” She paused. “I could give you a massage if you think it might help.”
He looked at her, brow furrowed. “Yeah?”
“Well, yeah. I’m not a masseuse, but I’m, you know, here. And I know the muscles and the skeleton. And I’ve had plenty of massages.” He stared at her blankly. “It’s okay if you don’t think I should or don’t want me to.”
He held a contemplative expression. “It might help.”
Neither of them moved.
“Okay,” she said. “On your stomach, then.”
“Toilet first.”
Ben made to get up but seized in pain and collapsed onto the mattress. Kate ran to his side of the bed, but he motioned for her to wait. He tried again, face strained, pushing with his arms. Eventually, he made it to his hands and knees on the bed, then slid off one leg at a time into a crouched position. He was out of breath from the effort, and she wanted to help, but with the aid of the walking stick he made it to his feet without issue.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll go do the same.”
“You don’t need to use the outdoor toilet.”
“Oh. Yeah, I do.”
“Why?”
“Um…” Because there’s no way I’m taking a shit within audible range of you, she thought. “Reasons. Be right back.”
When Kate returned from the port-a-potty, Ben lay on his stomach, his pillow pushed to the side and forehead resting on his overlapped hands. She washed her hands before returning to the bed.
She was nervous. Not because she was about to give someone a massage—something she hadn’t done in years but also wasn’t trained in—but because Ben was in pain, and because touching the man’s body medically while also wanting to touch him intimately brought on feelings so conflicted she froze as she knelt beside him.
“I hate that I am like this,” he said. “That you are seeing me like this.”
Pulled out of her daze, Kate asked, “Like what? Human?” She vigorously rubbed her palms together before pressing them to the small of his back.
“Yes,” he said gruffly. “I was hoping to show you I was a demigod of Herculean grandeur.” He chuckled. “Now, my plot is foiled. I am but a weak man.”
Ben wanted to impress her?
“You just aggravated something,” she said. “You’ll be alright.”
She massaged the breadth of his lower back over his shirt, smoothing mirrored arcs along his hips, along the tight muscles of his lower back. He voiced little hums and grunts, so whatever she was doing couldn’t have been all that bad.
“The yoga, the stretches,” he said, “they were helping.”
“They probably are. Anyway, you’re not weak. You have chronic pain. There is a difference. You know that.”
“Yes, but the pain makes me weak. Makes me incapable of some things, and it is exhausting. I feel helpless most of the time. Old and broken. Inside and out. That man—that happy, put-together man who is not in pain, I tried to be him for you. But I have not been him for a long time.”
Kate paused her movements, then continued her massaging. “First of all,” she said, “you’re not old. Because if you’re old, then I’m old. And I’m not old.”
Ben chuckled.
“And, anyway, I just want you to be yourself around me.”
He gave her a sideways glance. “Are you yourself around me?”
“I think so, yeah.” It had never occurred to her not to be herself around him.
An amused grin grew across his face. “Yet you are toilet shy.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is the massage okay?”
“It is fine. You are fine.”
When Kate located the mass of gluteal muscles below the crest of the left ilium, she found a knot beneath the layer of pudge and pressed into it with her fingertips.
Ben flinched. “There.”
“Muscle knot?”
“Hm. Maybe.”
“It’s difficult over the shirt fabric. Do you mind if I…?”
His lower back muscles stiffened before relaxing again. “I don’t mind,” he said.
Slowly, Kate lifted just enough of his undershirt to reveal his lower back. The material of his bacon-and-eggs briefs was different, and massaging over that was easier. The boxer briefs covered the curve of his buttocks and thick upper thighs. Leaning into him with her elbow, she pressed into the muscle knot. Light pressure, but direct. Ben groaned, and Kate watched his body and hands clench, then release.
“Good?” she asked.
He let out a long Yesss.
She worked deeper with her elbow, then soothed the muscles she abused before repeating on the other hip, eliciting another sign of accuracy.
Once Ben fell quiet, no longer grunting from the good pain that massaging a sore body brought, Kate worked her way up his cushy and heavily muscled back; he moaned contently when she found and worked out a knot between his shoulder and neck. After a few more minutes of broad strokes, she stopped her massage, leaving one palm pressed to his lower back.
“You should probably walk around on and off today. Drink a ton of water. Apply heat, or heat then ice, if you can. I can give you another massage tonight if you want.”
From the camp house, someone angrily dinged the breakfast triangle.
Ben gave Kate a sleepy, sideways smile, then slowly stood, his pain obvious. “I should have asked Jorunn to delay by two hours,” he said.
“Didn’t sleep?”
“I slept. But not enough.”
“Me neither. I didn’t take my pill. Probably should have. I needed it, but I’m glad I didn’t take it because I wound up running around in the rain.”
“Does it make you that sleepy?”
“Sometimes. It makes me calm for hours, stops the gears in my brain from going, going, going.” She searched her duffel for clean jeans. “That’s what it’s like for me at night. Some people can just fall asleep, like it’s easy. Head on the pillow, five seconds later…” She found a clean bra and shirt. “Me, I need an hour. Sometimes two. Sometimes four. Then I stress about not getting enough sleep, so that adds to the anxiety. I can’t look at the time because that makes everything worse, knowing exactly how little time there is before I need to get up. And then eventually, having not fallen asleep, I have to pee.”
“You fell asleep quickly last night.”
“Maybe, but I kept waking up.” Kate turned to find Ben smiling softly at her. Sympathy? Pity? She plunked her fists onto her hips. “What?”
The motion made her breasts jiggle under her nightshirt, and the bra flopped against her leg. To Ben’s credit, his gaze never left hers until he turned away so she could change.
—
Esben heard the wisp of fabric and a bra being settled into.
“I worry this may sound wrong,” he said, “but it is nice knowing someone else who has racing thoughts.”
“Racing? Yeah, I suppose that’s what they are. You have racing thoughts?”
“I have had them, yes.”
Kate grasped his hand, pulling just enough to get him to turn to her. She was dressed—jeans and a plain sky-blue shirt.
“Is that what happened that night?” she asked. “During the movie? Bad, racing thoughts?”
He nodded.
“Because I touched your scar.” She clutched his hand. “I’m sorry. Will you tell me if you have them again? Instead of running?”
Her frown made him want to crawl into a hole and cry. Conflicting was the simultaneous urge to kiss her sadness away. But he only nodded again before pulling away to find clean clothes.
“I’ll let you change,” she said, then left the trailer.
He hadn’t taken the opportunity to dress while Kate did—it would have taken considerably longer. His body ached. The fascia at the base of the spine were twinging, tight, despite the massage. He didn’t want to say the word relapse, as if doing so would permanentize the situation. This was temporary. He would be fine by tonight. His fine, not actually fine. At least there was no numbness or tingling, issues his orthopedist would have been concerned about.
Kate had waited for him outside and kept astride him as they ambled toward the house. Were it not for the walking stick, he would have had to use her as a crutch.
—
Kate poured them both a coffee, then filled two plates with bacon and scrambled eggs and the nasty canned fruit cocktail that somehow existed everywhere in the world.
Ben sat with perfect posture. Any deviation seemed to retaliate with pain. “We need to check on the site,” he said.
“You will rest today, Esben,” Jorunn said. “A bumpy ride to the site is the last thing you need.”
He didn’t look pleased. “I will keep the radio with me, then, if you need me for anything.”
“How are we for groceries?” Kate asked. “Can we wait to go to town tomorrow?”
“I will check.” Jorunn took her empty plate and mug to the kitchen.
Kate turned to Ben. “Need me to bring you anything before we go to the site?”
“No, thanks.”
When he smiled a relieved half-smile, he did so while simultaneously sighing through his nose and slowly blinking, like something a contented cat might do if a cat could smile. She blamed her tiredness for wanting just then, very badly, to kiss him.
Kate made sure Ben was situated in his trailer with the other two-way radio before grabbing her gear and joining the rest of the staff at the house garage.
Four tents and many shoes were still drying. How long would it take for the tents to dry? Would she use her own tent again once it was free?
She’d wanted to say the words last night, but telling a friend Hey so I might be falling in love with you but not sure, and also I really really really wanna touch your belly and maybe other places wasn’t something one said right before going to sleep.
She’d fallen asleep with his burly arms around her, then they’d shifted overnight. She’d woken at one point with his head in the crook of her neck, then again with her arms around him, her breasts pressed against his back.
She should’ve kissed him.
The drive to the site went without issue. No tires stuck in mud. Alex parked between the cemetery and the field lab. The cemetery building looked normal from the outside. Erik and Jorunn headed for the mead hall.
Once inside the cemetery building, Kate’s eyes darted from one area to the next, comparing the open units to how they looked last night.
No rivers, no seepage, no erosion. Money well spent on this glorified shed.
“So,” Erik hollered, jogging up to the building, no umbrella, soaking wet. “We’ve got a problem.”
At the mead hall, the open excavation was a pond. Plant matter and a thick blanket of flower petals floated on its surface. All it needed was a couple of ducks.
The tarp and planks that were covering the units had done nothing to stop the rain from seeping in from higher ground overnight. At least the unit walls looked okay. As long as no one stepped too close to them, the profiles should remain intact.
Thankfully, because they’d expected rain, no artifacts that could be damaged or float away had been left in situ. Still, they were deep enough to have hit clay-heavy soil and would have to pump out the water onto screens. But they’d save that for a non-rainy day.
As they drove back to camp, Kate’s mind wandered to the rainy night she laid her parents to rest on the Bridge of Flowers above Shelburne Falls. The tourist attraction near her hometown in western Massachusetts was where her parents got engaged and where they visited as a family every summer to see the flowers and the glacial potholes. The scattering of ashes wasn’t allowed there, but no one said anything about burying them.
Her parents now shared life with delphiniums and coneflowers and roses. She’d muddled through the Kaddish despite neither her nor her parents being actively Jewish. But the prayer had felt right—it had made her feel less alone, less like jumping into the rushing falls and letting them carry her away.
She’d benefited from the few sessions of counseling she received afterward but had never quite gotten over being orphaned at thirty-five. Perhaps she’d never quite gotten over having an abortion, either—perhaps no one ever did. She never sought counseling for it.
Had Ben, Lina, and Frida ever received counseling after the death of Matteus? Did Frida see a therapist after experiencing all that she had?
Not everyone needed therapy. But perhaps, like Ben, Frida was struggling and all-too clever about hiding it.
Esben was asleep, sort of, when someone knocked on the trailer door. It opened with a click.
“Ben?” Kate called. “You decent?”
He grunted, then slowly maneuvered himself from his side to recline against his pillow. The pain was less intense. The twinging had stopped, at least.
Kate kicked off her boots, strode the few steps to the bed, crawled up beside him, sank into her pillow, and gazed at him with an unreadable expression.
“Alright,” he said, “you can tell me. How bad is it?”
“It’s not bad. Just some flooding at the mead hall.”
“Through the tarp?”
“The tarp got tired.” Her straight face broke into a smile.
Esben grumbled, but there was nothing he could do. Hopefully the artifacts and features yet unearthed would not be damaged or residues on ceramics washed away. That the mead hall had withstood a thousand years of rainstorms eased his worry.
“How’s your back?” Kate asked, gazing at him dreamily.
“A bit better. Are you needed at the house?”
“Mm-mm,” she hummed with a slow shake of her head. “It’s Sunday.”
She nuzzled against her pillow and closed her eyes, then blindly reached for him. He pulled her hand to his chest, held it there, and she smiled sleepily and made a sound halfway between hum and moan. She flattened her palm against his chest, clinging to his shirt, pulling chest hairs with it. He waited for her to move in closer, lay her head on his chest. She didn’t.
“Did Frida ever get counseling?” she asked.
The shift in topic jarred him. “Counseling. Therapy? No. Not that I am aware. Why?”
“When my parents died, it damn near ruined me. But I had a support system. I had life experience to put things in perspective. And despite all that, the depression hit me so bad that I had to take leave for a few weeks in addition to the leave given for funeral and estate stuff. The counseling helped. Medication helped. Friends helped a lot.”
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “I know it’s different. You’re still here. But Lina losing the baby, you and Lina fighting, and Lina being abusive toward you… That alone, plus the separation, is more than enough for a kid to need counseling. But add to that a parent, um…”
“I tried to kill myself. You can say it.”
She frowned, then slipped her hand from his to place it, briefly, upon his cheek.
“I don’t know anything about it,” she said. “Suicide. What it does to loved ones. But I know what it’s like to suddenly lose a parent. How old was Frida? Ten? That’s so young, Ben. If she’s acting strangely with you, maybe it’s related. It’s never too late for her to talk to someone about it.”
He was frowning. The sort of frown that led to frown lines, Solveig would have said. But he couldn’t shed it, his entire body grief-stricken.
“Perhaps she should get counseling,” he said. “I don’t know what I will do if…”
He gritted his teeth, praying that it was not too late. He could love Frida from afar—no one could deny him this. But he needed his daughter. Without her, he was disintegrating, becoming immaterial. Matterless.
“I knew not seeing Frida every day would be difficult, but her not wanting to spend time with me has been unbearable. I am empty without her. She is all I have, my one good thing.”
“What?” Kate sat up. “You know that’s not true, right?”
Tears streamed down his cheeks, and she wrapped her arms around him. He clung to her, curled his fingers into the back of her shirt. His ear pressed to her chest, and she kissed the top of his head, holding him there.
“You’re wonderful,” she whispered. “Truly wonderful. And you’re enough. You have to know that.”
Shaking. Breathless. He couldn’t stop himself from sobbing.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry,” she said before kissing the top of his head again. “I always seem to make you cry.”
The sound that came from him was something garbled. “It isn’t you,” he said when he calmed. “It is everything. And the muscle relaxers. They make me so tired. But they help.”
“There was another medication. And you don’t have to tell me, but—are you taking antidepressants?”
“Yes.” He sniffled. “I may need a higher dose. Or a different medication.”
“Not impossible.”
His back hurt from leaning into her. He pulled away to settle against his pillow, then stared at the window over the bench at the other end of the trailer. The curtain was pulled back to reveal a view of the overgrown field south of camp. It was still raining.
“You’re enough, Ben,” Kate said, drying his cheeks. “And you matter.” Her voice shook when she added, “Very much.”
Her tear-filled eyes conveyed a crushing sadness, the same he had seen in his mother’s eyes when he had admitted to her just how broken he was. He had to look away.
The antidepressants made life bearable, made work doable. But chemicals could never change the fact that were he to disappear, nothing would break. Inessential, the foundation of no life, a biological lifeform, replaceable. Some would be better off without him. Others would miss him, then move on. The Earth would continue spinning.
He never told his therapist that he had thought this way even before Lina’s miscarriage.
“The depression won’t magically go away, Kate. I have heard the words before. From family, my therapist, from cognitive exercises. And I can appreciate how you think of me, what you feel. I know that I matter to others. I have seen it, felt it. But…” He shook his head. “It changes nothing. I still feel what I feel, even if I know it is the depression making me feel it.”
“I know you won’t just get better,” she said. “I’m not trying to fix you. But I am worried about you. You went through a lot. You still are. You need to hear the truth, even if you’ve heard it before.”
She reached for his hand, brushed her thumb over his knuckles, and curled her fingers into his. When she squeezed his hand, he looked up, catching her sad smile.
“You have so much good in your life,” she said. “Have done so much good. You really do matter. To me, to your family, your friends. Hell, even to archaeology. And hey, if you ever need someone to talk to about all your shit who isn’t your therapist, maybe someone who’s a bit fucked up too, you’ve got me.” She flashed a smile. “Free of charge and judgment.”
His smile was reflexive. “Careful, or I will take you up on that offer.”
Kate curled up to his side, and his left arm clutched her waist. Her smiling face was centimeters from his, and she strained up to give him the quickest of kisses on his cheek before resting her head on his shoulder. He leaned down the tiniest distance to kiss her puff of hair.
“I feel like watching a movie,” she said, wiping her cheeks dry. “I always watch a funny movie when I’m sad. But I don’t have anything downloaded.”
Esben squeezed his eyes shut and mustered every gram of courage that he could to ask, “Can you bring me my laptop?”
She did.
He unlocked the screen with his thumbprint, opened the document, then handed the laptop to her. She gave him a confused look.
“Read it,” he said, then looked away.
—
Kate saw two lists, untitled.
The first list read:
“What is this?” she asked. Ben was actively looking away from her.
The list continued with:
The second list was…different.
Kate closed the laptop and set it on the small table. Ben was frowning at his hands.
And in her mind, she could hear Clara telling her: He’d definitely be looking at you if he just wanted to be friends.
Forelska—the term Ben had taught her on his twentieth birthday. The way he’d explained it, them sitting close by the campfire…it had given her chills. Carefully, quietly, she’d asked Jorunn about it. And Jorunn eagerly taught her the Norwegian phrase for something akin to I’m falling in love with you.
‘It is how Esben would say this,’ she’d explained. ‘His dialect.’
Kate hadn’t known there were different Norwegian dialects and kept that ignorance to herself.
The phrase Jorunn had taught her was lighter than the English I love you and much lighter than the Norwegian phrase Eg elske deg, which was reserved for soulmates…and sometimes ice cream. Kate had practiced what she wanted to say to Ben dozens of times, alone and with Jorunn. And she’d probably fuck it up anyway.
Standing at the foot of the bed, thumbnails scraping against her index fingers, she breathed deep, then said it.
“Eg e forelska i deg.”
—
The words came into Esben’s mind a muddled mess—harsh and with incorrect inflection—but he understood. Of course he understood.
Kate said it first. He couldn’t believe she said it first. He eyed her in disbelief as she approached.
Half-choked, he whispered, “Og eg e så forelska i deg.” I am so in love with you. “I have been. For a long time. You understand?”
“I think so.” She traced the curve of his cheek with her fingertips. “For how long?”
“Long.” He placed his hand over hers.
Her eyes glistened with welling tears, and her voice broke when she said, “I wish you had said something.”
“You did not say something.”
“Because you live in Norway. I wanted…” She frowned. “I felt things. For you. When we first met, and the conference.”
The vision of Kate at the symposium in her flowery dress, jostling in a fit of joyful laughter, came rushing back.
“I also felt things,” he admitted. “Helvetes Port. Austin.”
“And now.”
He nodded. “And now.”
“You still said nothing.”
“I did not think you would want me.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“Because, as you said, I live in Norway. And I thought you only wanted women now.” He looked down at his body. “And because I am big. And broken. I know what people want, and it is not me, not this disgusting thing.”
“Wh— You are not disgusting. Is that really how you see yourself?”
‘Pray Frida does not grow up to look like you!’ He closed his eyes against the memory.
Kate swept her fingers through his hair and kissed his brow. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”
He couldn’t look at her. “H-how do you see me?”
“The way I’ve always seen you,” she said, brushing her thumb across his cheek. “A handsome, nerdy Viking Cowboy.”
He choked out a laugh.
“I meant what I said when I took that photo, that you looked amazing. I meant it at the lake when I told you I like the way you look. Younger, and now. All of it. All of you.”
“That is how I see you. That is how I have always seen you.”
“You should have told me.”
He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her curled fingers one by one. “I wanted to.” He kissed her thumb. “Every day, I wanted to.”
Kate made a small sound, a whimpering sigh. She tilted his face to hers, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and leaned in to press her lips to his. Shock hit hard but faded fast, and he kissed her. Legitimately kissed her. Pressed fingers to the back of her neck, tasted her, breathed her in.
This wasn’t how Esben imagined their first kiss. It should have happened twenty-three years ago in front of a campfire with folk music playing or under the stars after he played guitar for her, his twenty-year-old body able to whisk her into the night. If not then, it should have happened as they lay in the shade of his secret copse, talking about everything and nothing on a day she was not stressed. Or yesterday in the lake after toying around each other, or covered in mud while the rain washed over them.
This wasn’t how it should have happened, with him crying and in pain. But as she kissed him—fiercely, with tongue and just the right amount of teeth—worries of imperfections and impossible futures vanished.
Kate crawled over him, straddling his thighs, and he held her hips as she clung to his shoulders. The pillow behind him mostly supported their weight. It helped that she wasn’t grinding against him but holding him, kissing him. Madly kissing him.
She broke away to breathe, to look at him. “You make me happy, too,” she said. “So happy. That list… I could say it all about you.”
“I am not brave. Or beautiful. You cannot say I am.”
“You are beautiful. Everything about you is beautiful. And you don’t need to be brave. There’re no dragons that need slaying. You’re shy and reserved, and I love that about you. Makes it more special when you come out of your shell. You shine when you do. Maybe the world needs more shy guys.”
“While you slay the dragons?”
She grinned. “I’d slay a dragon for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She kissed him, soft and brief. “I hate that I make you cry. I don’t want to make you sad, ever. And I don’t know what this is or what we’re going to do, but—fuck it, I love you, Ben. I feel so fucking at home with you. I tried not to. It’s so fucking futile, but I can’t—” She kissed him again. “I can’t stop how I feel. It’s been so hard holding back.”
Esben followed her thoughts as they barreled and pinged. “Don’t worry about the complications. You worry too much.”
“You’re one to talk,” she teased.
He laughed, and she laughed, and the wrinkles at the outer corners of her eyes and mouth deepened, and they kissed. Slow and testing, and just a little bit sloppy. She moved her hips against him, and he felt his body react to her touch. When she moaned against his mouth, he lowered his palms to her backside, where the denim stretched tightly.
“Is your back okay?” she whispered.
“Ja,” he lied.
—
Kate’s hand traveled lower, trailing the contours of Ben’s torso and lower still, grazing a firm bulge under his shorts.
She went for it—pulled on his undershirt as she lay back, begging him to follow. And he did. He was heavy and imposing, and she liked it. She opened herself up to him, hooking her legs around his waist.
His lips moved to her neck, suckling, and she trembled at the prickly, warm caress. He cupped a breast, kneading, thumb circling. The fabric of his shirt strained against his body. She caressed the shape of him over it but ached for his warmth, slipping her palms under, one against his back and the other against his belly.
From her breast, his hand moved downward, and he dragged a finger over the denim seam between her legs, making her shiver. He unbuttoned her jeans, then lowered the zipper.
“I, uh…” Kate propped herself up on her elbows. “I might be kinda fuzzy.”
Ben rumbled with deep laughter. “I am hardly one to comment on the fuzziness of others.”
She grinned and tickled his beard, then he helped her squirm out of her jeans. He kissed her as she lay back, and she clung to his shirt. She wanted it off, wanted his clothing off, wanted to ravage him, but he held her down. Not forcefully but effectively, with his weight, with his lips. His kisses traveled to her neck, tickling, nibbling.
He continued to tease until, finally…
“Fuck,” she whispered in his ear as the pressure of his thick fingers filled her. “F-fuck me.”
—
Esben watched Kate—closed eyes, trembling mouth, faint gasps between unintelligible whispers.
When she caressed him over his shorts and lowered the zipper, he was surprised to find himself profoundly erect. As he worked at her with fingers and thumb, she arched her neck and moaned, and he was encouraged by the realization that he did, in fact, know what he was doing. She thrust her body to meet his hand, whining Don’t stop, don’t stop, then bit the back of her own hand as she came loudly and at length. A tightness pulsed against his fingers, and he leaned into her, muting her cries with a kiss. When she stilled, so did he, above her, a breath’s distance away, watching her pink face as she panted. When she regained her breath, she grinned and pulled him down for another kiss.
He shifted, and a sharp pain in his hip flared. He winced and sat on his heels.
“You okay?” she asked, still fondling him over his underwear.
He grimaced and pressed a hand to his lower back. “Back hurts.”
“What position is best for you?”
He frowned down at her. “I don’t know.”
She pursed her lips. “Lie back.”
After helping him cushion his body against both pillows, she lifted her shirt above her head, removed her bra, then straddled him. Her breasts were full, beautiful. Kate was beautiful.
“I have condoms,” she whispered close to his ear, “but I’ve been tested. Have you?”
“Yes,” he said, barely able to think with her hand stroking him. “I’m fine.”
The twinge in his lower back returned, but he did his best to ignore it, concentrating on the scent of Kate’s arousal, her breasts cupped by his hands, the grip of her fingers, and how her thumb made slow, tantalizing circles.
“I want you,” she whispered in his ear.
When she shifted her weight, the pain in his left hip returned like a dagger being dragged across tendons, and his arousal diminished.
Kate paused her movements, looked down, then lifted herself off him to sit beside him. He shifted to ease the pain in his back and hip, and she leaned forward to take him in her mouth.
He sighed, then smoothed his palm over her messy hair—not even a bun anymore, just a flop of loops and tufts. He dug his fingers into that puff and gently pressed his palm against the back of her head. Pushed, pulled.
She was trying, and it was enjoyable. But it was futile.
Damn it.
He urged her to sit up. She looked puzzled, then ran her palm across his body. He caressed her breasts. They kissed. After a few minutes with no change, he pulled away from her to sit on the edge of the bed.
—
Kate had never before watched a man lose his arousal. Sex—good sex—was a practiced skill, and she hadn’t been sexual with a man in nearly a decade. Was it her? Her hands, her body, her brain. Was it Ben’s age? Her age?
“I thought it would work with you,” he said.
Her nerves calmed, and she pressed herself against him, smoothed her palms down his arms. She asked the cliché question: “Has this happened before?”
His expression conveyed anger. “The last few years.”
“Ah. At least it worked for a while. Is it the antidepressants?”
He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t think so.”
“We’re just tired,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. “The rain, your back, and… A lot has happened.”
Outside, the lunch triangle sounded, but Ben continued to sulk.
She kissed his freckled shoulder, sat by his side, and urged him to face her, needing to know he was listening. “I don’t mind, you know, if you can’t keep an erection. Not on my part, anyway. I’m just sorry I can’t give you what you gave me.”
His dour expression softened, and he pressed his forehead to hers. After a deep breath, he said softly, “Eg e glae i deg.”
She smiled in understanding. Literally, the phrase translated to I’m glad in you, but Jorunn mentioned what it would mean to say it to a friend, to a lover, to family. For Glae i deg, there wasn’t a true English equivalent. I’m glad you’re in my life because you make me happy just didn’t have the same ring to it. Five tiny Norwegian words meant all that, plus I like you very much, and I’m fond of you.
She wanted to say all those things. They were true. And maybe Ben also thought them. But instead of rambling through dozens of words, she kissed the tip of his nose and said, “I love you, too.”
His smile was all she needed.
He used his walking stick to make his way to the trailer’s minuscule bathroom, and she was dressed in her work clothes by the time he emerged damp and wearing nothing but a pleased half-smile.
In that moment, Ben wasn’t at all the shy guy she knew. This man was not even caring that he was nude in front of her, though decreasingly so. There went his butt, hidden by bacon and eggs. Those damn boxer briefs made her grin every time she saw them.
“You’re looking,” he said with a teasing lilt.
“You bet I am.” She reclined on the bed, enjoying what remained of the reverse striptease. As he pulled on his cargo shorts, she asked, “Do you think they know?”
“Know what?” He half-turned to her, his lovely, chubby, fuzzy chest and belly still bare.
Was she blushing? The tips of her ears were burning. “That we…” She was definitely blushing. “Ya know…”
She studied his eyes, his mouth, the little crease between his thick brows. His expression was unreadable.
“What if they did?” he asked.
And there went his chest from her view, hidden by a t-shirt that said I Dig Archaeology with a trowel set over a heart.
Kate grinned. “What if they did?”