The Grand at the Bedford Village Inn
Bedford, NH
8.40pm
Danny was savouring the feel of freshly laundered sheets against his bare skin when he realized that he could no longer hear the whir of the breast pump from the bathroom. CJ had been quiet since their abrupt departure from the restaurant, and he'd chosen not to intrude on her thoughts. Undertaking instead the task of removing the stain from her dress and hanging it up to dry in the shower.
He looked up when she appeared in the doorway, and watched in silence as she disrobed and sat on the bed. She handed him her cell phone and then grabbed a pillow and lay on her side, facing away from him. Danny read the text and placed a hand on her back, running his thumb up and down her left flank.
"Do you think he was joking?" she asked after a while.
Danny considered a whitewash, but his response as he handed the phone back was a very gentle "yes."
CJ turned onto her back, looked up at the ceiling and dragged her lower lip against her teeth. A moment later she placed the phone on the bedside table and rolled onto Danny's extended arm. When she saw no judgement in his eyes she dropped her cheek onto his chest and sighed, prompting him to place his hand on the back of her head.
"Do you want to talk to me about it?"
"Yes," she said quietly. "But not right now. Right now I need you to ground me."
"Okay."
One of the very first things they'd discovered after committing to a life together, was that they were equally tactile; something which CJ seemed to have forgotten about herself and which took her by surprise. When they had learned to rely emotionally on each other, that intense physical connection had become the cornerstone of their relationship. They had to work hard not to abuse it when things got prickly between them, but as she draped an arm around his waist and hooked a leg around his thigh, Danny recognized the signs that CJ was getting ready to lean into vulnerability.
They had their pattern down to an art now.
Closeness mingled with a little banter to offset the agita invariably morphed into deeply emotional loving, followed by a momentary respite from big feelings in the safety of an embrace; and in that moment, whoever was holding space for the other found a way to help their partner see things a little more objectively.
He knew to bide his time.
The heat radiating from his body leached into hers and, slowly, physical proximity began to exert its pull. Drunk on the smell of Danny's cologne, CJ felt her scrambled thoughts start to settle; the combined sensation of lips pressing against her scalp and fingertips ghosting the skin on her arm enough to draw her mind away from what was troubling her. Her fingers moved of their own volition. First where they lay, splayed against his right side, and then onto his abdomen - eliciting a slight moan which sluiced through her and forced her eyes shut. Danny brought her fingers to his mouth and placed a kiss on each fingertip, before laying her hand on his chest.
CJ looked up at him with a little bit of mischief in her eyes as she circled a nipple deliberately and then tweaked it.
"Hey!" he yelped.
"What?" she asked innocently.
"It's not nice to do that to a man when he can't repay the compliment without getting squirted."
Low laughter rumbled against his chest, reassuring Danny that he was spot on about the way the rest of the evening would go.
"At least I have full bladder control back."
"There is that," he replied as he tilted her face up to his and kissed the tip of her nose.
She settled back against him with a smile, and they lay in silence until the lazy figures of eight he was running on her back went from comforting to sensitizing. The way she shifted her body just fractionally against his with a light hmmm was his first cue, and he was ready for her when she tangled a finger in his chest hair with more than a hint of intent.
"Danny?" she whispered.
"Yeah?" he whispered back.
"I want to try again."
For all of their flirty talk before dinner, the first two attempts at rekindling their lovemaking after Imogen's arrival had been unsuccessful because CJ hadn't healed enough from a perineal tear. They'd worked around that as best they could, but the reality of tending to an infant around the clock while juggling two work schedules had imposed its own constraints in the bedroom.
Her hand strayed to his outer thigh and made its way up to his hip. When his breath hitched slightly as the underside of her arm brushed him, she glanced up at him - giving him a look which bordered on a smoulder when his slightly dilated pupils told her all she needed to know. She pressed her thumb against his hip bone for leverage, undulating against his side as she grazed his pectorals and neck with a upward trail of open mouthed kisses; the polyphony of breathy fricatives reducing them both to a quivering mess by the time she reached his mouth.
Danny drifted their combined hands downwards, and the sound that escaped him upon contact set something off inside her. She bit down gently on his collar bone and wrapped her leg tighter around him as sensation ricocheted off her cervix like a trill.
"Hold that thought," he said as he reached under his pillow.
"Do we have to?"
She sounded almost petulant, and Danny paused halfway through ripping the package open with his teeth.
"Unless you want to run the risk of jumping from pregnancy to pregnancy without breaking out the tampons .."
She conceded, albeit reluctantly, and took the packet from him.
When she'd rolled the latex over him, he hovered over her and moved some hair out of her eyes in an act of tenderness.
"If this hurts in any way .."
She was going to tell him that she would push past it because she wanted this part of their lives back, but because there were no guarantees she simply nodded and locked eyes with him. And when the atmosphere was charged with emotion and the air vibrated with need, she drew him in; letting the primal impulse that obliterated everything else take centre stage.
He'd been almost sure that CJ would have a cathartic release in place of an afterglow tonight and, when his instinct proved correct, he held her and simply ran his fingers through her hair until she started talking.
"Did I overreact?"
"At dinner?"
"Yes."
He felt her tense slightly as she waited for his reply, so he dropped a kiss to the top of her head and opted to ask, "do you feel you overreacted?" as diplomatically as he could.
Silence on the longer side was followed by a small huffed "yes" as she settled against him again.
Airing unwelcome truths had been a hallmark of their communication style as far back as he could remember, but there were many reasons he needed to tread carefully. She might misconstrue anything he said. Or categorize it as unsupportive. Neither of which would be ideal.
On the other hand he owed her honesty.
He pondered the best way to say what was on his mind and settled on, "what do you think of when you think of Josh?"
When she looked at him quizzically, he rephrased the question.
"What's your favourite memory of you and Josh? Mine's probably the day he found out about the Fulbright Scholarship."
"I always forget that the two of you go way back."
"Yeah," Danny said with a fond smile. "So .."
"Oh I don't know, there are so many .."
"If you had to boil it down to one .."
"CJ, an N.S.C. staffer gave me a card with instructions on it for what I'm supposed to do in the event of a nuclear attack. They want me up in the plane or down on a bunker. They don't want you .. or Sam, or Toby, for that matter. I didn't want to be friends with you and have you not know."
"Josh, have you been upset about this?"
"Yes."
"You're very sweet sometimes. You really are."
"CJ .."
"Of course, they don't want me, Josh. I'm a press secretary. I don't think they're gonna be issuing a whole lot of releases. Sam and Toby are communications and my guess is that speech writing won't be a priority either. Come, have some fun."
"This is a beautiful piece of music. Do you know this?
CJ paused at the door and said, "I'm Catholic."
"Hang on," he said as he turned up the volume. "Listen. Listen."
She watched his face as a high voice in the choir soared above the rest.
"There, right there. It's .. miraculous. Schubert was crazy, you know .."
"Yes."
"Do you think you have to be crazy to create something powerful?"
"Josh, the cold war is over. There's not gonna be a nuclear - "
"God, CJ. It's not gonna be like that. It's not gonna be the red phone and nuclear bombs."
"What's it gonna be?"
"It's gonna be this," he said as he picked up the tome he'd been reading. "It's gonna be something like this. Smallpox has been gone for fifty years. No one has an acquired immunity. Flies through the air. You get it, you carry a ten foot cloud around with you. One in three people die. If a hundred people in New York City got it, you'd have to encircle them with a one hundred million vaccinated people to contain it. Do you know how many doses of smallpox vaccines exist in the country? Seven. If one hundred people in New York City get it, there's gonna be a global medical emergency that's gonna make HIV look like cold and flu season. That's how it's gonna be, a little test tube with a-a rubber cap that's deteriorating. A guy steps out of Times Square Station. Pshht... smashes it on the sidewalk .. there is a world war right there."
"We'll make more vaccine."
"That, right there, is the essence of Josh, isn't it?" Danny said when she lapsed into silence.
"I haven't thought about that night in a very long time," she admitted, a smile playing on her lips.
"Do you remember how you felt about him that day?"
"Yes."
"Then hold onto that feeling as you work through whatever this is."
"So much has happened since then, Danny."
"No doubt. And I'm sure that you can't tell me about most of it. Just .. don't allow negative feelings to crowd out the positive ones?"
"What is this, Psychology 101?"
Her tone let him know she wasn't resentful of his comments, so he pushed the envelope just a little.
"Do you remember when we argued about the night in the oval office when you called me out for not taking the editor's job?"
"Yes .."
"Remember what I asked you?"
"To stand in your shoes for five minutes .."
"And we realized we'd been upset about different things that day. Maybe that's what's going on with you and Josh."
"You're telling me to practice empathy .."
"More like try to look at this from Josh's point of view. I'm not trying to diminish your feelings, CJ .."
"I know .."
"I feel that somewhere, somehow, trust between the two of got eroded. Identify what needs healing, who needs to be forgiven and for what, and clear the air." He trailed off and waited for her to speak. When she didn't say anything he added, "do you value your relationship with Josh?
"Of course I do." She bristled for a moment and then brought it down a notch. "I just .. where do I even start?"
"By making an honest assessment about what you brought to table? Hopefully Josh will be able to do the same."
"In all the free time he has? "
"There's no way this isn't important to him, too, CJ. And he's clearly trying to do something about it," he added as he inclined his head towards the bedside table. "You can move things along."
"What do you mean?" she asked as she reached for her phone.
"Stress fractures in relationships don't get resolved with apologies over text," Danny said, placing his hand over hers as she started to type something in. "Here's a thought. Donna is coming out to the house for a few days to work on the book. She's hoping to convince Josh to come, too. How about inviting him yourself?"