C H A P T E R • 39
“Stop talking?”
I was thinking he meant we would just look at the fire. But maybe I knew what he meant.
His mouth was so sweet. But I had to pull away from him.
“Does it hurt to kiss me?” he asked. “I’m sorry.”
“It doesn’t hurt. But I can’t breathe through my nose.”
“Me neither, he said. “Help me. Why do you have on all those clothes?”
I stood up and unzipped the jumpsuit which I must have put on to make it hard to do this thing. I stepped out slowly and he watched me.
I was careful, remembering his shoulder, but compelled to move onto his lap as though we were magnetized. And once there, there was no way I should have been able to feel the heat from his hand brushing my body so gently like that.
“Talk to me,” I said. “I’m leaving again; you have someone. What do you want from me?”
“Do you want to hear that I love you? Do you want to hear that I have thought of little else except this since I saw you again?”
I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted to hear. But my body was responding.
He shifted a little. “You always fit right there. It’s where you belong.”
I needed to look at his face in the firelight with its angles. The little break in his hairline marked a wound, years old. The small scar in his eyebrow was new.
I kissed him again.
“You’re going to have to help me with this,” he said.
“I kind of like having you a little helpless.”
“I’ll show you helpless.”
I got to undress him and we ended up on the rug with soft wool and chenille throws, in the arc of warmth from the sighing, popping fire.
“I’m really going to need your help now,” he said and opened his good hand with a condom in its wrapper in his palm.
I was hungry for his textures and tastes and smells and sounds. I was careful of his shoulder, but his hand and his mouth made me careless about everything else.
Then, I felt him playing with me, touching me, then backing away. He had me too close to pay attention then and without thinking about his shoulder or any of the other things I needed to worry about, I was on top of the sweetest . . . and slowly down and back up again. And I watched him, loving that he was mine at that moment.
And, finally, I remembered this man, the memories becoming waves rushing into places so deep they had not been touched since the last time. Then, when I was happy, yes, laughing, with the remembered joy of him, I heard myself gasp as the waves touched new places, and what was water became fire, then became clear, pure light.
And when I noticed again, he was pulling the throw over us.
He said, “If you want to say something, you might say, welcome home daddy.”
“No. I can’t. That hurts. I don’t get to say that ever again. My Daddy is dead.”
Then I broke down. Finally. I was not heaving and gasping and trying to close the space where my father was supposed to be like I did when the grief first hit me. But he was slipping away. I could feel the place that was as wide as the ocean emptying of anger and everything else. And I was surrounded only by love. It’s where a boy lived who was not my Daddy, and then he was, and he did the best he could do, and he loved me and he learned to mother me. And I was feeling all of the sweet, sweet sadness of it.
And Obie was holding me and I was holding on.
“I’ve got you,” he said and his voice broke.
∗ ∗ ∗
I woke up in bed to feel his arm pulling me closer to him, and when I looked, I discovered he was still asleep. I loved that he wanted me closer in his sleep and I snuggled against him, wrapping one leg over his, and dozed off again.
The next time I woke up he was sitting up.
“Good morning. How is it now?” he asked.
“Me? I’m spent. Empty. Cried out I think.”
“It was beautiful to feel you feel your father. The deep sadness in your eyes makes them smoky.”
He ran a fingertip just beside my lips.
“Thank you. I thought I couldn’t let it happen, couldn’t feel it without being swept away. You kept me safe. How do you feel? Are you in pain?”
“I took a pill. It’s okay. I can take it,” he said. “Come here.”
I looked away.
“You can’t regret this?”
“Not yet.”
“I think our lovemaking may be foreplay,” he said, “to reestablishing the intimacy of our long friendship.”
I laughed. “I think I love you because of how your mind works, maybe even more than because of how your body works,” I said.
“Speaking of how my body works,” he said and kissed me. But then he moved away. “What time is church?”
I looked at the clock. “I’m going to hear what Reverend Garrison has to say at the 10 o’clock service.”
“What do you expect? Some homily about the money lenders?”
“I don’t know. But I have some questions that will be part of the bank story.”
I stood up and wrapped my mess of hair into a twist, which I secured with a barrette.
“I like it wild,” he said.
“I noticed.”
“No. I mean your hair.” He stood up. “Let me go first.”
I kissed him when he came out of the bathroom, and I went in and locked the door behind me. I scared myself in the mirror. It was going to take some doing to make myself presentable. Not for Obsidian. My lover knows me. But the church folks expect Sunday-go-to-meeting.
When I opened the door, he was almost dressed.
“You’re in a hurry? Do you have time for coffee? Or, are you going to church with me?”
“You locked the door,” he said.
“I have used up almost all the flexibility in my schedule this morning,” I said. “I need to take some notes before I interview Gary while he’s captive in his church and can’t run away from me.”
“Had I been allowed in the shower with you, you would not have been out of there perhaps before noon. Do you remember our shower scenes?”
“Yes. And I remember baths in your mother’s decadent tub.”
“Mmmm. Yes, there was that. But I was imagining you standing up and feeling the skin on your back, wet and slippery and fragrant against me.”
He turned away and I smiled. I had the advantage of keeping secret the effect his words were having on me.
“You aren’t using enough makeup to cover your eyes?” he asked.
“I have shades for church. But I think this look is perfect for our meditation at the precinct.”
“You might be right. But it’s going to take more than a black eye to fit in with my men.”
“I’m not trying to fit in because I’m wounded. I’m fitting in because we’re all in this together. I believe we’re interconnected.”
“Please don’t preach to my guys.”
“Trust me.”
We walked together downstairs and embraced at the door.
“You’ve got 30 minutes starting at 3:30. I’ve told them you were coming. You’ll get a chance to make a pitch to grab a few more. But right now, you’ve got 4.”
“Four is a good start. Thank you. This is important. Thank you.”
I watched him walk away.