Page 119 of Only After We Met
I couldn’t imagine doing that with anyone else. I couldn’t imagine gawking like that at any other girl while someone engraved in her skin the desire we both felt to have our feet on the ground, look up high, and try to touch the moon.
I thought of how much she’d changed since I met her that night in Paris. Maybe she had stumbled once or twice, maybe she hadn’t yet found her place, but she was braver, stronger, more beautiful. Everything I wasn’t. I could almost imagine her in the future, slowly watering her roots, feeding them, watching them grow. That was it: I was watching her grow. I could see how she was feeling better, more stable, with well-defined limits, even if shestill had decisions to make. Unlike me. That was the problem. I didn’t see myself. I didn’t have roots. I was…vague. I was smoke. I wasn’t anything.
65
Ginger
Until then, I didn’t realize you could get to know a person through his skin. Or that nakedness was much more than just taking off your clothes. That sex, pleasure, hours between the sheets…could be fun, exciting, tender, and endless. Like this morning, after hours of caresses with our mouths, our hands, our eyes…
“What time is it?” I asked, distracted.
“Two a.m.” Rhys kissed me and ran the palm of his hand over my naked breasts, provoking a shiver. We were sweating, satiated, a little tipsy after a bottle of wine shared over dinner on the patio. “We should probably shower before going to sleep. Actually, let’s take a bath.”
“Sure.” I smiled as he stood up.
The water was warm. I leaned my back into his chest as I submerged myself, and he hugged me from behind. I stretched out my feet over the tub’s lip. There was no sound. Just the soft dripping of the tap and Rhys breathing into my ear. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to change anything about this moment, and I didn’t want to tell him aloud that I was scaredwhat we were living was just an interlude with a before and an after. How could I ever forget this? How could I meet another man and not compare it with what I was experiencing with Rhys? How could I keep going without looking back…?
“What are you thinking about?”
I felt a tickle on the back of my neck. “Nothing. This. Us. Now.”
“Mmmm…” He hugged me tighter.
“What about you? You’re a little quiet today.”
“Yeah. I was thinking about what you want…”
“What?”
“You know. Your list of wishes.”
I turned, confused, trying to catch his eye, splashing water around us. My legs moved atop his, our bellies touched…
“You mean number five?”
“Yeah. Do you want that?”
I wanted to laugh. No, I wasn’t interested in a three-way. We’d been getting to know each other for weeks, discovering each other…and all I wanted was for it never to end.
“If you need it, if you’re curious… I don’t know. I could try.”
“Try? You think you might not be able to?”
He took a deep breath and looked away. “I don’t know. When you said it the first time, I swear, I thought it was the hottest thing in the world. Like a dream come true.” His hands were rubbing my legs, climbing up to my knees. “But now… I don’t think I could take it.”
“I have zero interest,” I whispered.
“Good. Because you’re making me greedy.”
I rubbed my fingers across his chest, touching the little beehe had tattooed lower down.Life. That’s what it meant to him. I smiled, thinking about all the little parts of him I had left to decipher. Then I thought of the future, how to keep us above water, how to save what we had, and I became depressed.
“What’s going to happen when I leave?”
“I don’t understand.” He was still caressing me.
“You know. When I go, we’ll just stick to the script, right? Each of us with our own lives, meeting other people…” Something got stuck in my throat. “I don’t know if everything can be like it was. I don’t know if I want to know. I don’t know if we can just talk about whatever, about those things…”
“Ginger…” His voice was hoarse, cracking.