Separate
Chapter 8
Robert awakened early out of habit; on a normal Sunday, he usually went back to sleep. On work days, he'd just get up. But this Sunday morning, he opened his eyes to find Melora curled up against him, her back against him and her feet tucked between his own. He smiled at the knowledge that this was all quite real, and not just some dream that would disappear once he was fully awake. His hand rested on her waist, and he moved closer, running his hand up to her breast, touching her gingerly as she shifted beside him, waking.
She seemed to welcome his touch, leaning back against him as he kissed her cheek, then her ear, and at last, her mouth. She turned to face him them, kissing him and wrapping her arms about him. In the faint early morning light, he could see her smiling drowsily at him between kisses as he moved his hands up and down her body, touching her and moving his fingers deftly between her legs. He hungrily tasted her neck as she moaned softly, arching her head back and letting her own hands move across his chest before moving down to stroke him. Her touch made him want more, and he moved his own fingers against her, feeling how wet she was becoming as he moved his mouth down towards her breasts. He tasted the salty sweetness of her skin, and took pleasure in knowing that he was making her want him more and more, despite the early hour.
Unable to hold back any more, Melora wordlessly shifted around until she was on top of him. Straddling him, she tilted her hips down and forward against him, enveloping him in her warmth and making him groan as she tilted forwards and then back again as she rode him, slowly at first as they developed a rhythm. He filled her completely, moving up to meet her as she moved against him, joining them both together as the beat picked up between them.
Robert's hands gripped either side of Melora's waist, keeping her in perfect time as their breathing became more frantic, building together. He could feel her starting to tighten around him, screwing her muscles down around him as the pleasure built deep inside of her, making her whimper with pleasure as she began to lose control and simply pursued the feeling.
Nothing turned Robert on more than these sounds, this feeling, these movements, and he felt right on the edge of ecstasy with her, hanging on till he heard her cry out at last, feeling her twitch around him. Then he, too, let go, feeling the waves wash over him as he came, hands holding onto her as he drove into her one last time.
Both of them spent, Melora slid off of him and onto her back. He faced her then, kissing her a few more times before they both lay back to catch their breaths.
Finally, she sighed with a smile, "Take a note: if you must wake me up early on a Sunday, always do it like that."
"Noted," he replied as she curled up against him once more, resting her head on his chest. "I couldn't help myself. But not really sorry about it."
"Nor should you be," she told him. "I'll be sure to return the favor one day." She blinked up at him. "We're not actually getting up now, are we?"
He chuckled at this, stoking her hair and kissing the top of her head. "God, no. Go back to sleep, Mel."
Some hours later, she woke up to the wonderful smell of bacon wafting upstairs from the kitchen. Melora glanced around the room, not really wanting to go through all the re-dressing that would eventually be required. She cleaned up a bit in the bathroom, wishing she had brought her purse upstairs with her because her hair could use some taming and naturally there was nothing more than a rather minimalist comb in Robert's bathroom.
She pulled his robe – quite a nice silky one with flannel lining– from its hook on the bathroom door and wrapped it tightly around herself. Her ankle throbbed a bit as she walked, reminding her to at least use the crutch if she was going to ignore the wrapping before going downstairs. As she approached the kitchen, she heard a gentle "boof" from Gretel, who was overseeing her owner's cooking in the large chef's kitchen.
"Damn!" she smiled, approaching a casually dressed Robert at the stove as he scrambled some eggs. A plate loaded with cooked bacon and yet another plate with some toasted pastries were on the already-set table, along with orange juice. "Breakfast and everything?"
He paused in his cooking long enough to give her a kiss, replying, "And everything. Coffee's ready – help yourself." As she did, he told her, "That robe looks much better on you than it does on me, by the way. You're not cold?"
"No, it's nice and warm in here. Must be the stove." Melora was used to going barefoot at home, so the lack of shoes didn't bother her. "Can I help?"
"No, thank you. Your timing is impeccable – I'm just done." He served up the eggs and brought the dish to the table, where they both served themselves a hearty meal.
"This all looks delicious, Robert. Thanks," she smiled sincerely, munching on a strip of bacon and sipping at her milk-laden coffee. "You're never getting rid of me now."
"That's the idea," he replied.
"Well, this is by far the nicest vacation I've ever gone on," she half-joked. "You must have gotten up early."
"I did. Force of habit. Did some of my paperwork. Didn't want to wake you…again. Well, I did, but you're pretty cute when you're sleeping."
"I didn't snore?" she laughed, tucking in to her eggs.
"Maybe a little. But it was a cute snore. I finally decided that maybe if I cooked up some bacon, that would help revive you."
"You don't need bacon for that," she observed, glancing out the kitchen window towards the neat back deck and sprawling yard. "I'll have to get the full tour after breakfast."
"You got it," he agreed. "Also, if you want a shower or anything, you're welcome to it."
"Will you be joining me?" she inquired with a cheeky grin.
"More than happy to." He smiled, not wanting to lose this feeling of comfort and ease. There was just no awkwardness here with Mel, and he felt that this was something he could really get used to. "Are you off for the day?"
She nodded. "Aside from practice later. And we have a Sunday show at the Skeleton Key, which is already looming ahead in the distance. I love playing, but Sunday night shows are rarely worth the trouble." She looked over at him. "You want to give me a lift home later?"
"I do, later." He wanted to ask her if she wanted to come back again later, but wondered if that might be too much. "Hey, Ms. Weir?"
"Dr. Romano?"
"I would very much like to see you again. Can we establish that as an actual thing?"
"The seeing of one another? Often?" she confirmed. "Absolutely. Come to my show tonight, if you like. Take me home with you. Make passionate love to me as much as you like." She leaned across the table and kissed him after taking another sip of coffee. "I imagine your work must keep you busy during the week. Let's seize the day, as it were."
"It does. A lot. I mean, I did want to warn you…" Was it too soon to be having this conversation, he wondered, pausing.
"You're married?" Mel cued. She was joking, but in a way that told Robert she half-expected him to say yes. "Or a serial killer?"
"No!" he said quickly, then smiled as he added, "I just…I like you and don't want you to get the wrong idea when work cuts in and takes me away."
"What idea is that?" She felt a little trepidation at that; after all, when things seem too good to be true, they usually are.
"That I'm ignoring you or don't care about you. The fact is, my job is really demanding. I get paged away a lot, I have last-minute surgeries and meetings and consultations that can come up at the last second and totally ruin plans. And even a lot of my so-called down-time is busy with research and catching up on writing reports and proposals and grants. I just…I need you to understand that I don't want that to be the case, but it is and I have to honor those responsibilities. So while this weekend we've had and are still having is amazing, you may find the quiet that we're experiencing now to be an anomaly. I can't count the number of dinners I've had to cut short or the social engagements I've had to bail on because of some emergency or another. I just figured…fair warning."
Melora nodded at that, as if considering it, as she nibbled on a cinnamon roll. "Okay. Fair enough. Consider me warned. But just so you know – I'm not used to having anything easy in life. I can tough out the hard times pretty solidly. I'm not going to take your commitment to saving lives as a personal affront; I mean, I'd have to be a pretty shitty person to get bent out of shape about that."
"Which you definitely are not," Robert volunteered, glad that it sounded like she understood.
Nodding, she added, "As long as when we're together, you're there a hundred percent, I feel like that's all anyone can ask for. I may not get paged away to operate on people, but there may be times when I have to run out of town for a show in New York or Philly or some little town in Tennessee. It doesn't happen that often, but it may be annoying that I'm not always around when you want me to be. Still, there it is."
Robert exhaled. "It's good to hear you say that. And of course, I understand. We have lives. If we can make them intersect when we can, then we can consider it a success."
"Plus, keep in mind that I live maybe a mile from your hospital. If you find yourself facing a long night at work followed by an early morning, you can always call and crash at the flat. I have pretty understanding roommates," she added with a smile.
Robert raised an eyebrow; he hadn't thought of that. "I might take you up on that."
"Please do. You've already got Ana's stamp of approval, and that's more than most."
"You know, you've got things pretty together for a woman of, what, thirty?"
"Twenty-nine. But yeah, I kind of had to skip the whole wreckless youth thing. Growing up young results in early practicality. I just hope it doesn't also result in boring predictability."
"I doubt that could ever happen with you," he assured her. But her words prompted a curiosity he'd felt before about the difficult life Anastastia had referenced. "So no wreckless youth? That seems like a waste."
She shook her head, pulling her hair back in a loosely wrapped ponytail to keep it from interfering with her brunch. "No. Things sort of went haywire in Milwaukee."
He gave her a look that prompted her to go on. "As you've said before. What happened?"
Dipping a piece of her roll into her coffee, she said, "There was an accident. A car accident. My mom and my brother Ben were killed. My dad and I were injured, but okay. I was sitting behind him, and the guy that rammed us hit the passenger side, so…" She never really knew how to tell the story; the sympathy that usually followed just made her uncomfortable. But she hazarded a glance at him now, shrugging as if to emphasize that she knew it was not pleasant breakfast conversation.
"I'm so sorry," Robert said, feeling bad for having brought it up but also glad that she trusted him with it.
"Don't be. I mean, don't be sorry for asking. There's no nice way to tell the story. But it's all a part of me and who I am, so... Anyway, my mom's side of the family never liked my dad. And they were convinced that it was his fault. Some even thought he'd been drinking, which he hadn't. They even tried to take me away from him, which just made me not want to be around them at all." She was done eating by now, but refilled her coffee before continuing.
"Anyway, so we cut ties with them. But Dad never bounced back. He was already blaming himself, and with those assholes agreeing with him, he started to really drink heavily. He lost his job and the house, so we moved out here to Hyde Park with Dad's brother's family for a while. But even they reached their limit eventually, too. So Dad and I hit the bricks and ended up in Canaryville, on the South Side. Rode the welfare train for a few years until he died, when I was 17."
Robert listened to all of this quietly, not surprised by it because Mel's personality was a lot stronger and far more independent than the average woman of her years. He didn't like to think of her going through all of that, but he also felt she built on that loss with a rare strength of spirit. He'd been there himself, although without the financial burdens, and knew that it took a fighter's spirit to grow success from great losses. "Did your family step in then?"
She smiled wryly at that thought, replying, "What family? No - the state just emancipated me early and agreed to continue welfare payments until I hit 18. Which gave me a big ol' seven months to figure my shit out. I could never rely on relatives to help me. My Mom had been the only one who was there for me no matter what, and she's been dead a long time. My Dad wanted to be there, but he was just broken."
"Did you reach out to them when your father died?"
Melora had to think about that one. "No. Honestly, at that point, I didn't want their help, even though I could have used it. If I'd asked, they probably would have taken me in for my mom's sake. But not a single one of those fuckers ever picked up the phone to say they were sorry or showed for the Army's memorial for Dad. I mean, by then, I was used to having to figure things out on my own, and by then I'd moved past expecting anyone's help, so I really just worked hard on my music. It was the only thing I had that could take me away, let me escape for a while. Like we were saying last night: first an escape, then an obsession, then simply necessary. I was lucky enough to have teachers that saw something in me worth fostering and they really pushed me to aim for a scholarship at the Music Conservatory. I mean, really pushed, as in got me the forms and helped me fill them out. Without them and without my chosen family – my real friends – I don't even know where I'd be today. I kind of hate to think of what I'd be now, if things had gone differently. I'd probably be a secretary at a brewery or something."
"You don't think you'd have stuck with the cello?" That struck a chord with Robert.
Melora shrugged, remembering that kid she used to be, safe in the arms of her family out in the 'burbs. "I don't know. When I started playing, it was just something I did because my mother wanted me to learn music, but it's not like I was driven or in love with it…until I really needed it. When things went sideways, it was all I had left of the old times. At first, I used it as an escape, and then I used it to escape. This thing that started out as a lark ended up being the last bastion of beauty in my life until I made it to the Conservatory. If I never had to struggle, though… if I remained comfortable back there, I wonder if I'd have just become a normal teenager. You know, where my biggest problems would be stupid white kid things, like wearing the right brand of jeans or getting invited to the popular girls' parties. There's nothing like a sudden crash landing to jar you out of complacency and force you to grab onto what's important. Going from being a comfortable white girl in middle-class Milwaukee to living on food stamps and welfare in the South Side really redefined my priorities, you know?"
He didn't know, but he understood, so he nodded. She didn't seem to mind the question, either, so he didn't regret asking. "There's more to that story," he observed simply.
"Isn't there always?" Melora smiled, appreciating his interest. It felt like a lot of the time, nobody really wanted to know. They might ask, but then they'd go quiet and probably regret bringing it up. Or worse, they'd think she was looking for pity or a handout. "I made a lot of mistakes along the way, but I learned from those mistakes. And I chose really good people as friends and allies, luckily."
"I'm glad you had them in your corner." Robert reached across the table and took her hand. "Now you've got me there, too. I know a thing or two about fighting your way through life. I like to think I'm a good person to have at your back. Or your front. Wherever."
She stood then, still hanging onto his hand, and came over to him, sitting on his lap. She kissed him. "Wherever, indeed."