Chapter 7: And Now to Sleep | July, 2020
Holly
His breath catches slightly when my first tear works its way from my eye and traces a path steadily down my face. Over the most recent and most painful part of this story, I've slowly come to gather myself up, and now here I am, curled up on the far end of the loveseat, knees against my chest, arms shaking, pulling my legs closer. I don't want to listen to this anymore, don't want to process what he's telling me—honestly, I know from the incredible pain that weighs heavy upon his voice. I don't want to think about what happened in the woods, to think about how all that hard work I put into putting a distance between myself and my father, into keeping myself safe... How all of that work had so suddenly gone away.
But though my mind protests against this new development in my future / past, I cannot help but understand what has happened, and understand it to be the full truth. I suppose if there's anything to be gained from the lack of my memory, it is the lack of rigid, true sensation which I can recall surrounding the event Ben has just described. While I can piece together other still-existing memories of my father, and guess at what had happened in greater detail, I still cannot see it as a continuous piece in that woods on that February morning—and for that, at least, I am grateful.
It is both frightening and relieving to learn that Alexandra, in the present-day, knows about my past with my father, and that it was I who finally worked up the nerve to tell her. I cannot help recalling some of the vague details and descriptions, now: how my mother had abandoned me with my father before the age of five, leaving on a train that was destined to never return. How frighteningly easy it had been to hide my abuse when I was in school (long baggy sweaters to hide the scars, burns and bruises, getting into detention to avoid going home early), how horrifying it was to see how easily people ignore what they don't want to see—hypocrites. My father and I had many rough patches of homelessness. Those times are the clearest to me: How he used every cent he had to nurse his alcoholism, how we would go without food for days. How he would force me to drink with him and then I would wake from a blackout with new bruises around my wrists, scrapes against my hipbones and a throbbing between my legs. And then—at last—how I had run away one night, simply taken off to my aunt's apartment in New York City, with a train ticket I'd paid for with money stolen from the terrible woman whose floors I swept and mopped every Saturday. I had followed in the footsteps of my mother, but was the less cruel, for now there was nobody but my father to be left behind.
Benedict seems to sense that I am deep in the fold of my own mind, remembering, puzzling, wondering—and he sits still and silent, resolved to offer me space... perhaps a bit too much. But I am grateful for his intentions.
"How was my recovery?" I ask once I'm ready, my voice breaking out of my throat as from chains.
He seems to be knocked out of a stupor of his own, but quickly recovers, and turns toward me, never quite looking at my eyes, whether for my sake or his own, I can't be sure. "Alexandra, I have to say, was a remarkably supportive and good person throughout those next months. You were able to recover physically before the summer arrived, but it... it took much longer for mental and emotional stability to return, at least in part. There were many times when you wouldn't be able to answer my calls, or you would suddenly become silent on the other end of the line. I wanted to see you very badly, see, but our schedules could do nothing but intervene..."
He pauses, and I think for a moment that his emotions might be getting the better of his firm resolve, but when I glance over and see that he's swallowing and touching his throat, I understand how hoarse and tired his voice must feel after talking with such emotion all day long. It's getting on towards dusk outside, the sun has already set, and I know that he must be as physically and mentally exhausted as his voice is, so I reach out a hand and place it on the loveseat cushion just shy of his leg.
"You can stop there," I tell him, when he looks up at me in reaction to my sudden gesture. "We're both tired."
He looks a little guilty all of a sudden, and I think that it might be because of his own voice, but I soon realize that it's because of mine... My tone had been almost completely monotone, a voice robbed of emotion and power over inflection. I can only imagine how devastating it must be for him, recounting that terrible event, having to let me in on something so horrible, which I can't even remember, having to be the one to bring it back into my awareness. I can't blame him for having had doubts earlier about whether or not to lie by omission.
The sadness and exhaustion in his face is too much for me to bear, the way his attractive and open features (which I know are more familiar to me in a more exuberant or content facial expression) have suddenly become so gloomy and devastated—because of me...
I pick myself up joint by joint, limb by limb from the loveseat, knowing that more tears are about to free themselves from my eyes and deciding that I'm not about to be the cause of any more immediate pain on his part. "I'll be right back," I assure him, and give him what I hope is a pacifying look before I swiftly remove myself from the room, hurrying on silent feet into the kitchen before the floodgates break and I begin to silently sob, clutching the corner of the counter.
I allow myself to remain there for a minute, letting the waves of exhaustion and depression wash over and through me, until I have cried as much as possible, and I feel rather drained, but in a pleasant state of numb lethargy.
It's in this state that I lean backwards from the counter, supporting my own weight with my own two legs, and head over to the stove, upon which still sits the tea kettle Ben had used to make ginger tea for me earlier, along with our lunch. I see that the kettle is still full of water and turn the heat on again, thinking of his throat, and knowing by some hidden, forgotten instinct that he would appreciate a cup of tea.
I pass the rapidly passing time looking between my feet, or feeling around my abdomen or ribs through my shirt, but not feeling any pain, legitimate or phantom—but for that slight tingling when my fingertips brush the gunshot wound, the wound I'd received the day Ben and I first met.
When the water is ready, I search through the cupboards for the tea and grab a bag of Prince of Wales—again, on instinct. It's the first one my hand is inclined to, so I trust it, and hope that my instinct is correct. I pour him a cup and let it steep before composing myself, rubbing my tears away and hoping that their saline tracks are not too obvious across my cheeks. I carry the cup back down the hallway and set it in front of him, breaking the trance he'd been lost in while I was gone.
He gives me a surprised look and nods his thanks, taking the cup and taking a cautious sip. "Prince of Wales?" I say to him in a half-question of insecurity.
He manages a slightly gaunt smile, incapable of concealing his utter exhaustion from me, though I know he would like to. "You got it right," he tells me, affirming my instincts. "And you read my mind."
I, too, manage a half-smile, and then turn away, deciding against sitting down. I'm very aware of his eyes following me gently, curiously, as I bend down and sit on my knees to examine the collection of DVDs below the large black screen. Some of them are evidently from his childhood, others I can guess are classics and mutual favorites. There are a few recordings of old plays, and also, some new films which include him in the listed cast, but which I've never seen. These interest me greatly, but I don't want to get into any of them, now. I know that I need to focus on Benedict, the individual, before even beginning to probe the waters of Benedict, the actor.
He continues to watch me sensitively as I stand up and start to look at the bookshelves. His gentle eyes make me aware of my body in a way that isn't entirely unpleasant, but I ignore the sensation, for it makes me slightly nervous, too. The built-in bookshelves lining the walls are home to literally hundreds of books, some of them old, some of them new, some familiar, and some not.
"They're yours," Ben says from behind me, prompting me to look at him, wide-eyed at this face. "Well, mostly yours," he tells me, and my shoulders fall slightly in relief. "I contributed the Shakespeare."
I turn back to the wall full of books, wondering just how behind I am, after changing my major to English, and surely reading more in the past five years I can't remember than I have ever read before. "How many of them do you think I've read?" I ask him, incapable of keeping the stunned tone out of my voice.
He chuckles a bit, taking another sip, sensing my slightly humorous angst. "Almost all of them," he tells me. "Those here at the end—" he points to the far end of the bookshelf nearest the television, which holds perhaps thirty books, totally unrecognizable to me "—are still on your waiting list."
I can't help it—I feel my jaw going lax at this revelation, and I turn slowly to look at him with a sly look to shield how overwhelmed I am. "I have a lot of catching up to do."
He attempts a smile at me, and suddenly, for whatever reason, I feel the possibility of another bout of tears. But only one escapes, and I turn away from him just before it falls, swiping it away so he won't see... though I have a feeling that he can sense these sorts of things, and hiding it is pointless.
After a moment of silence I hear him easing up from the couch and setting his tea down on the table again, and I turn to watch him come to join me at the bookshelf. Again the height and strength of his body strikes me, even more so, now that I've begun to acquaint myself with the feeling of familiarity my body has with his, even if my mind doesn't follow along with it as easily. He comes up alongside me and out of some misguided instinct I step back a little, into the bookshelf, making him look down at me suddenly with a look of intense apology and worry in his eyes. But I quickly shake my head, and his brief expression resolves itself as he reaches up to the top shelf-which I never could have reached, even on my tip-toes—and brings down a medium-sized hardcover.
"My suggestion," he says with his eyebrow slightly raised, and a satisfaction in his deepening voice, "would be this one." And then he holds it down for me to take.
My hands reach out and take it before I've read the cover, but when I do, I almost instantly drop the book onto the floor In my shock. It doesn't matter that the title is unfamiliar, because the author's name is the most familiar name in the world—my own.
"Oh, my God..." I whisper to myself as I turn it over in my hands, flipping through the pages to make sure it's real, reading the inside biography, seeing the publication year of 2018.
"Look on the spine," he says with a glint of mischief in his eyes as he looks down at me, and I do so, turning the book on its side and seeing—with the greatest feeling of surprise and feverish delight—that, on the spine, is a little golden circle-stamp, asserting that the novel I hold in my hands—my novel—won the Pulitzer prize.
And I can't help but smile up at Ben, tilting my head back to look up into his face, genuinely, this time, a smile that feels almost too bright for my face and the big-picture circumstances. But I can't help beaming, and I'm overjoyed to see that part of my ridiculous satisfaction is echoed in Ben's own face, and a bit of happiness seems to reach his eyes.
"This is the only thing I've published, right?" I say, to make sure. "You're not hiding something else from me?"
He chuckles ambiguously and dons a real smile of his own when I look at him a bit feistily. "Well... sometime last year you told me something about making a new foray into playwrighting. But you've kept it very secret. So, unfortunately, you'll have to go digging for that, yourself."
With that, we're struck again by a bit of adrenaline, by the hilarity of this whole situation, the randomness, the underlying humor in our great uncertainty. And we both chuckle a little, our eyes practically sealing up from strain as our cheeks rise in amusement.
"This is terrifying," I confide after a beat, a horrified but slightly excited quaver in my voice.
Soon enough we settle back into our places on the loveseat. He brings in the screenplay he's been marking up from his bedside table, and we quietly settle into our opposite focuses beside each other, no longer plagued by the need to squeeze ourselves onto opposite ends, against the loveseat's arms.
I'm pleasantly surprised as I start to get into the book—my book. The basis of the plot is similar to that of a short story I remember toying with in high school, during my first phase of writing, before my father had burned all my notebooks. I am too afraid to read the reviews, not wanting to get a big head or to get overwhelmed by the fact of the book's existence, popularity and official recognition in the literary world. The whole thing is just too much to wrap my head around at this instant, so I avoid those pages, and instead allow myself to sink into the pages of the story. As I read, it feels as though I am connecting with a lost part of myself. I am connected again to who I have become, even if I cannot remember quite what It feels like to be in her mind. The voice of my narration reaches out to me across the stretches of time and memory, and seems to lay a peace-giving hand over my troubled head, telling me that everything is going to be okay.
Dusk gives way to night discreetly, and it's a bit startling when we're both brought out of our separate creative headspaces, to realize that, outside, it is fully dark. Ben is the first to surface from his mind, setting down his script and pencil, and he lights a candle for me, setting it on the little end table next to me. I grin up at him, incapable of helping it, touched and pleased, seeing that he knows how I love to read by candlelight. He smiles back at me, and bends down from his height to kiss the top of my head, before leaving the room. I look after him for a minute and wait until I hear the shower start in the bathroom—which elicits a little inexplicable smile upon my lips—to return to my reading.
I'm still immersed in the story, but the words are so easy to read, having come right out of my own head, that soon they start to slip and slide across the page, swimming in my tired eyes. And when Ben comes back out of the shower, hair dry and endearingly mussed up atop his head, dressed in striped pajama pants and a light sweatshirt (which fits a bit snugly around the muscles of his arms), I am nearly half-asleep, actually nodding off.
I notice, once I've put the book down, not daring to blow out the candle yet, for the slight anxiety which the thought of us both being in darkness causes me, that he's brought out sheets and pillows for the couch. "Oh, thank you," I say with a mild yawn, not having thought about the sleeping arrangement, but glad that he'd considered it. "Really, you didn't have to do that."
He shakes his head no at me. "I'm the one taking the couch," he says. "You have the bedroom."
Though it's my first instinct to protest, I open my mouth slightly to do so, and he looks at me so pointedly that I shut it again quickly. I know that I should have seen this coming, and know that he will win any argument about anything to do with chivalry. In addition, I don't want to be rude by declining his hospitality, so I agree with a light sigh, standing up from the loveseat, to sleep in the bed.
"Well..." I start, once he's set the loveseat in order for himself—an operation that increasingly worries me, as he's so tall I doubt he'll fit comfortably on it. "Good night."
I stand a bit awkwardly by the doorway, and I can see an internal struggle on his face, over whether or not to approach me, perhaps for a good night embrace. But in the end, the stiffness in my arms must send him the right message, and he smiles warmly from across the room, magically hugging me without a bit of physical contact. "Sleep well," he says, and then blows out the candle with a soft puff of breath.
I go back to the bed and slide in between the sheets and covers, on the side of the bed that I woke up in just this morning—though this morning feels like such a long time ago. I try turning on my side, then on my back, then on my other side, and press away the guilt I have at my conflicted feelings toward Ben. But falling asleep is a task that seems entirely impossible to both my body and my mind, despite my complete exhaustion. In fact, my senses seem to be hyper-aware, as though something is simply not right. At first I think it's likely my mind, stuck in my memories of five years ago, when it would be normal for me to be going to sleep in a different room, in a different city, on a different continent.
But soon, the terrible restlessness within me gives itself a name, and I start to wonder whether Ben is feeling the same way. After all, to be husband and wife (the thought alone sends a chill of unfamiliarity and implication over my skin), and then to suddenly be trying to fall asleep in separate places—with the other person just in the other room, to boot—must be confusing both to our bodies and to our habit-oriented minds. That much, I can guess in my current state of sleeplessness, going off of what I remember from a half-semester of college Psychology.
I go over the thought and the resulting possibilities in my head until I have to take off a layer of blankets. I argue with myself for what could be minutes or hours. But in the end, in the complete darkness of the night, I end up submitting to what my heart tells me is right, and I slowly swing my legs out of the bed, standing up on the cool hardwood floor, and venturing quietly out of the bedroom, toward the sitting room where Ben sleeps—or tries to.
Benedict
A terrible sensation not far from nausea has slowly crept over my body in the hour we've been apart. My body, physically, is tired enough to slip off to sleep in an instant under normal circumstances. But these, I'm truly realizing, are anything but.
I'm so accustomed to being in bed with her... and to suddenly be on the couch is an abrupt change on its own. But the real sensation of wrongness comes from not having her body next to mine, her mind, full of silent, drifting dreams, so magically close.
To keep myself from falling into complete disarray, I console my anxiety by telling myself that she is only one room away, and completely safe—hopefully sleeping soundly after a long day full of emotion. There have been plenty of times—admittedly painful and slightly strained—in our relationship, when we have been far from each other, and have missed out on sleeping together for days or even weeks at a time. So, in reality, this is not something I should be so upset about. I tell myself that surely I'm being selfish for wanting to be next to her. She's still accustoming herself to the fact that we're married, that she's carrying our child, that this is the apartment in which she lives—accustoming herself to everything about this new life. I'm sure she's overwhelmed enough without the presence of my body—which might make her feel obligated to be physical before she is prepared.
So, I tell my longing to seal its lips, and for a time, it works well enough. I've been slipping in and out of consciousness for perhaps another half hour when I sense movement in the doorway, and look over in its direction, seeing my way through the dim residue of light left in the room from a day full of sun and lamps.
"Doing alright?" I ask her, surprised to see her up but then realizing that she must have been sleepless, too. She makes her appearance more clear in the doorway, leaning against the jamb, and I can make out the fragile line of her slender shoulder, her hip, her hand hanging down against her upper thigh, the fingers moving slowly, unsure.
For a moment I actually start to think that she might be sleepwalking, and I'm about to stand up from the loveseat and escort her carefully back into the bed, when she moves slightly again, and I hear her very-much-awake voice coo quietly from across the space between us:
"Come be with me."
It's just above a whisper but I hear it perfectly, my ears perked for any sound, and I cannot suppress the fluttering in my chest that starts up at her words, at the still, observant darkness, at the shape of her, waiting, welcoming me. A strong feeling of affirmation floods outward through my body from my contented heart, and I feel completely warm and full of relief when I stand up slowly from the loveseat and the tangle of useless, lonely sheets, and cross the room to stand by her in the doorway, looking down as she looks up.
With tender courage, her hand brushes against my wrist and then wraps partway around it, and she leads me alongside her into the bedroom.
"Look at this," I say to her, remembering something and feeling slightly invigorated suddenly by the possibility of showing her something new.
Now it's my turn to lead her, and she comes with me willingly, if a bit sluggishly, as I move through the dark towards the curtained window at the far end of the room. With a slight touch of showmanship that makes her chest vibrate lightly with a chuckle, I pull aside the curtain, and a little unintentional gasp comes through her perfect lips.
I join her again, and we both look out over the river, the London night. I watch the lights of the London eye and Parliament reflected in her bright eyes, and smile as we both admire the beams of light reflected in the river. Between us exists a comfortable, silent agreement upon the sight's beauty, and we stand there for a few minutes absorbing the sight, absorbing each other.
Eventually, though I have to let the curtain fall closed again.
"Can't we leave it open?" she says, already partly lost in sleep.
I give her a look through the darkness and shake my head gently, not wanting to disturb her. "Photographers," I explain.
Her face widens into a tired O and then relaxes again. "Seriously?" she says, as though mourning our lack of privacy, trying to be sensitive to something she doesn't remember experiencing. But a light yawn has come into her voice, now, and one of her ankles rolls slightly, sending her body slumping delicately against my side.
She lingers there and we take a second look out the window before I have to close the curtains all the way, and then we escort each other in equal part to the bed, pulling the covers over our bodies, sinking into the mattress and then seeking each other out with gentle probing motions like beetles in the pitch darkness, only our eyes providing sparks of brightness.
For a while, we face each other, and the temptation to slip into sweet blissful unconsciousness is great, but now a new barrier lies between us and sleep: each other.
"Holly?" I hear myself say, very softly after a moment. It seems to me that each syllable, each sound and shape of my mouth must crawl slowly over my pillow and hers before climbing into her ear. her face lightens in acknowledgement of my voice after a moment of sleepy delay, and then soft, warm breath balloons in my chest, and I find myself smiling lightly. "I love you," I tell her. I watch her face become soft, and then, slightly harder. "You don't have to say it back," I assure her.
She shakes her head slightly into the pillow, burying one half of her face and gazing away into the sheets with her other eye. "Holly," I say gently, a hand shifting out of the covers to caress her jaw—carefully, because a part of me fears it may shatter under my fingertips. "I'm going to wait for you to remember. However long it takes."
Again, she shakes her head slightly, and the threat of sleep is cast off from us both for a few minutes, allowing for words to come more easily. "What if I don't ever remember?" she worries aloud, and I think I see a bead of moisture form at the corner of her eye, though it doesn't fall. "What if I just... stay... stuck, five years behind?"
The prospect sends a jolt of pain through my body—the prospect of her never being capable of remembering our beginnings on her own is more hurtful to me than any physical pain could ever be. But I manage to put a warming pressure on her jaw with my thumb, and to brush away a just-fallen tear. "Then," I tell her, "we'll learn each other all over again. And I will love and cherish you all the same."
This vow, which I knew I had within me, but am pleasantly surprised to hear expressed in words, and at such a time of night, elicits a few more tears from her eyes. I am drawn toward her, brushing them away with my fingers, with tentative lips, and then, without further warning or deliberate, conscious intention, our mouths have met.
The sharp and sweet sensation of home overcomes me; for a precious moment, I feel almost tearful, touching her mouth with mine, catching her shortened breath in the warm cavern of my mouth. We're still for a moment, music filling my heart, until her lips, very subtly, carefully, risk moving against my own, tentatively. For a moment, our mouths move quietly, testing, probing... and then something different begins to override the simplicity of this discovery; a pressure from within and without, a mounting warmth which is both thrilling and worrisome in its inherent risk. For her lips are still the same lips which I have become so well versed in—but there isn't the same experience she's built up behind them over years being with me. An almost miserable pulse of heat reigns in my lower body, and the feeling of her breath speeding up, brushing across my skin pries a groan from my throat, which ripples into her mouth.
I'm met with no resistance, but I note the slight tensing of her body as my arm instinctively ensnares her waist beneath the curtains, bringing her painfully close to me. The part of my mind which exists in a cooler place beyond the proximity of our bodies doesn't want to scare her, or let things intensify beyond the point of control. But my body is being invaded gradually by a biting urge to hover over her, to move on top of her and touch her more deeply, taste her, remind her of everything... of anything...
But then her jaw becomes taut, and her small hips, flush to mine, grow suddenly stiff, on edge. So, my body praying for me to continue, but my mind knowing that this will be my last chance out, I pry my lips from hers feverishly, and separate my body from hers again. I feel her breath on my face and desire all too deeply to take her lips again, but I know I must stop, lest I become drawn further into my desire.
She looks at me from centimeters away, which feel like leagues suddenly, and I can feel the movements of her body echo throughout the bed; a slight hint of relief in the relaxation of her form when she realizes it's over... but, accompanying it, a slumping manner which hints at a slight confused disappointment.
With further caution I pull myself from her completely, as though parts of me might peel away if I'm not slow enough. And then we look at each other with carefully measured caution and curiosity, drugged by the inevitability of oncoming sleep, the bed threatening to pull us under.
Tentatively, holding my gaze bravely, she curls her arms into her chest, and I mirror her, suppressing the ache of my longing as I feel the sheets shift, her legs pulling themselves up towards her chest. She tucks herself in closer to me, her head dipping down into the pillow. We give each other mildly apologetic looks, but then, slowly, our faces soften once more, and we're left with the exhausted, pleasant expressions of children after a long summer day of playing in golden sunlight. Carefully I lay my arm over her waist, and she accepts me, drawing herself closer to my chest and then becoming heavier with the weight of sleep.
Her eyes are the first to droop and slip closed, and mine follow shortly after.
In the morning there's an acute sense between us of having become closer in heart and mind after sleeping next to each other. Her subconscious, when she first opens her eyes, gives off the sense of being further acquainted with me, and her body relaxes against mine, a new mutual comfortability taking hold. In the first instant, it's as though we're waking up in a completely new morning, in which none of the chance and trauma of yesterday has taken place; in a morning where she remembers everything. But soon the illusion fades. Once we've blinked the initial sleep away, still frightened to move away from each other, there's a feeling of blind hope in my heart, and I look at her with meaning, hoping against all sense that, just maybe, something, anything has come back to her overnight. But her face falls slightly as she looks into my eyes and I know that the answer is a very definite—though reluctant—no.
After watching each other carefully for a few minutes, the light of early morning creeping around the edges of the curtains and from the other windows in the other rooms of the apartment down the hallway, we pull ourselves up from the bed and stand. I watch her stretch when she stands, a gentle swaying of her torso from side to side, hands clasped above her head, and she turns to me upon feeling my gaze, a light smile grazing her lips.
We go together to the kitchen, and I set about preparing a light breakfast for us while she sits down at the island and becomes absorbed again in the book she wrote. There's no conversation between us, but I quickly sense a change in her after a few minutes, and look over my shoulder to see her having set the book aside, looking mildly pale, staring at one spot on the countertop.
"Are you nauseous?" I ask, abandoning the meal for a minute, going to her and placing my hand over her own.
She looks up at me with a slight nervousness in her eyes, a vague self-consciousness taking her face over as she slowly realizes that the source of her ill feeling is morning sickness. "Has this been happening lately?" she asks me, looking up again for assurance, and I nod my head to the affirmative.
"It will probably pass, but you should be careful." There had been a morning three days ago when she'd thought it was a false alarm and had just barely made it to the bathroom on time, and I would hate for her to feel pressured into staying out of an imagined sense of obligation or awkwardness.
She looks at the countertop again, breathing slowly, but then her face drains even more of its color, and she nods her head to herself, sliding cautiously off her stool and holding her stomach unpleasantly. "Yeah..." she says, partly to me, but more to herself. "I'm gonna... sorry. Right back."
She heads down the hallway slowly and I look after her. "Do you need me?"
"I'll be okay," she says, lifting a hand to her side as she starts into the bedroom. "I'll be okay... Just in case. I'm fine, alone."
I hear the bathroom door close and run my hands through my sleep-mussed hair before forcing myself to return to the task at hand. I worry a little, though, still, keeping both ears pricked so that I'll be prepared to hurry to her if she actually gets sick.
But it's safely quiet from down the hall, and after a few minutes she comes back to the kitchen, confirming with an awkward little nod and a shrug that it had been, indeed a false alarm.
As an extra precaution, I've fixed her more of her ginger tea, and she sips on it gratefully while I join her, and we eat together quietly. At the end of ten minutes, she looks up at me and says, "Thank you," with a small shake of her head, as though she's delivered the wrong line, or the right line in the wrong place.
"Of course," I say, through the slightly odd silence.
Together we put away breakfast and the dishes, and I let her use the bathroom first, showing her where her clothes are in the bedroom. While she showers, I go into our sitting room and pick up the remains of my makeshift bed from the loveseat, folding the sheets and returning them to the linen cabinet. After, I find myself failing to find a solitary comfort or to make myself useful, pacing along the hallway until she's come out, dressed in the closest thing she owns to what I always saw her in five years ago: a pair of yoga pants and an airy, loose-fitting tee. She looks at me a little bashfully, her damp hair tied up in a loose, carefree bun on the top of her head, and I move past her quietly with a light smile on my own way to the bathroom.
I take a short shower and pay little mind to my hair, putting on a pair of comfortable trousers and a loose shirt that nearly matches her own—which I only realize when I'm confronted with her upon coming out of the bedroom and entering into the kitchen, where she's waiting for me, standing with her back pressed to the edge of the island counter.
I think I read something in her eyes, something that reflects last night's intimacy, but I cannot be completely or safely sure—for I have been thinking about it too much, myself, to be sure it's not only my own desire I see reflected in her eyes.
But sure enough, after we've looked at each other for a moment, considering one another's faces, the new experiences and old stories attached to them, she reaches out a hand, not quite horizontally, and I go to her carefully, feeling like water in her presence.
Tentatively, once I've come near enough to her, she draws me closer, and tilts her head up, laying her chin against my chest and then leaning back again to test her hands on the back of my neck. Still questioning, I lean down a bit to accommodate her, the subject of our tension in my eyes. She nods her head slightly, and gets up on her tip-toes to bring her mouth to mine again, so slowly, sweetly, in a raw and unpracticed way that sends me suddenly upside-down in my mind, stars spiraling as my eyes slip blissfully closed.
That low place in my abdomen becomes slightly riled as it had last night, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I want her... My mind shows me all the things I could do: how easy it would be to lift her onto the counter, to carry her to the bed, or to stay right here, In this embrace, until the end of days. I can feel it in her mouth and in the way her hips curve towards mine of their own volition that she wants me, too—or at least her body does. I know how to take her to the moon with my body, it would be so simple to bring her out, to let her blossom under my hands and lips...
But no.
Despite our growing languidness, there's still a stiffness to her body that isn't prepared, and we both know it would be daft to throw our bodies into one another now, while our hearts are still working to reestablish the foundations of our relationship.
This time, in a cruel but fair act of existence, she is the first to draw away, her lower lip tucked into her mouth slightly, perhaps between her teeth, a red flush across her face. I press my body forward, testing, and she looks up with an admirable steadiness at my face, though she's pressed against the counter, stuck holding my hands. I know how much effort this could be taking for her, and I suddenly draw myself away, giving her ample space through which to escape in case I've imposed upon her sense of safety. I cannot help the smile of contentment that climbs onto my lips when she chooses to remain, holding my hands tighter.
"I think," she says, once breath has returned to us, "I should give Alex a call."
I nod my head in the affirmative, efficiently distracted from what's just passed, as I reason that I should, in the same respect, call my parents, to inform them about what's happened. I retrieve my phone from the desk in the room we've set up for online meetings over the past months, and am about to dial my parents' number when Holly appears at the door, holding her own phone, a sheepish expression on her face.
"I, uhm..." she says, holding it up with a look of helplessness on her face that makes me smirk a bit. "I can't remember my password."
"Watch this-" I start, crossing the room in a few strides and standing beside her, holding her phone up so the lens is trained upon her face and showing her the face identification function which she's been using since she got the update. As the phone opens without any effort at all, her face pops in surprise and she looks at me with a shocked chuckle, stuttering a little before shaking her head and putting her palm to her forehead.
"Thanks," she says, at a loss for any other words, and she sneaks back around the corner. From the other room I hear her starting to talk with Alex, and only then do I start my own call.
It's difficult telling them what's happened; a fear of theirs has always been dementia and other forms of memory loss—for one of them to tragically, slowly, forget the other in old age. But now it seems to pain them even more greatly than imaginable, to see myself, their son, suffering from just that, with my own partner, and at such a young age, under such unlikely circumstances. I assure them the best I can that we're working things out, however slowly, and that Holly has shown herself to be comfortable with me, and not too afraid. After a few lingering questions from them both, and specific, warm encouragements, I hang up, and go into the other room, where Holly has just finished a call with Alex, and looks vaguely concerned but also alleviated of much stress, as though simply hearing another voice from the past—one which she truly remembers—has strengthened her faith in me.
We sit down again on the loveseat, making a ritual of it, we joke, and it's more comfortable, today; our bodies growing subconsciously closer and closer.
"That summer," I say, watching as she listens attentively, "you wanted to get out of New York for safety's sake, as they still hadn't found your father. Alex was staying in your dorm through the summer. One of your literature professors had tipped off a publishing house here in London about a certain star pupil—" at this she reddens slightly but can't help smiling a little at me "—and you were offered a paid internship. You called me, elated as soon as you found out, and I offered to let you stay in my apartment's guest room— I lived in a different one at the time, the top floor of a building in Bayswater."
She nods her head up and down at me, though we both know she's only being courteous; reacquainting herself with the geography of London is going to be a trying task, when the time comes. We both smile a little, an excited, roiling nervousness filling our chests—but with it, a true, pure happiness, for we know that, whatever comes, we will surmount every obstacle side by side.
I grin at her again and she scoots closer to me, almost hip to hip when she puts her hand in mine and squeezes it. I squeeze it back, looking into her face, all the memories flooding back to me in a wave of joy.
"You came in early May..."
Author's Note:
I am in love with this story, you guys. I was grinning like a fool just writing this chapter!
Your views and encouragement keep me champing at the bit to get to the keyboard every single day without fail... Thank you beyond words for your awesomeness, and I am so, so glad to be hearing from some of you about your feelings! Keep it up! I'm loving it!
Thanks a million,
Une-papillon-de-nuit
24 July, 2020