"You sound a little funny, are you alright?" Delphine asked me during our nightly phone call. It wasn't that I hadn't been listening. I wanted to hear whatever she wanted to tell me about her day, even if it meant hearing a little about bureaucracy or how some co-workers I knew almost nothing about were being assholes. I was glad that she felt free to share the details of her everyday life, comfortable enough in our bond now to begin laying on the ephemera when she talked to me. It meant we were becoming familiar with each other, with the idea that we could have conversations that didn't have to be deep, to be heavy. It indicated we had established that depth of our relationship; we didn't need to go diving down into it every second to make sure it was still there.
Some people think that means taking each other for granted, but you live your life every day in the minutiae of the familiar, the routine, much more than the heart-rending, the transcendental. Why should it mean any less? I knew about the transcendental; I had been meditating and communing with nature and feeling the connectivity of the universe for years. Hey, sometimes I taught it. But to know that someone is talking to you almost as a part of them, as they would talk to themselves when they remembered meals or meetings or traffic or bills, that means something, too. That means you're becoming a steady part of their life. That even when you're apart, you can envision that person: the way she paces the living room in her stockinged feet, gesturing with the drink in her hand, as she talks on the phone. The way she gives the Mr. Coffee and the microwave a dirty look every time she passes the department staff room, and boils water in a small electric kettle for her french press in her office, instead. The way she smiles whenever she meets with her new TA, because this one shows such promise. The way she can hear that you're thinking about something, even when you're responding to her stories, in the small pauses and the timbre of your unremarkable answers. I loved that she knew I was working something out in my head, something that we should talk about. But I wasn't quite ready yet to bring it up with her. I was still working out my feelings and how to express them in my head… and I also had just a few more things to take care of.
"I'm fine," I said to her, a genuine smile in my voice, and I meant it. Sure, I was nervous and emotional and set a little off-balance from my realization that I wanted more with her, to be closer to her, sooner, now. But I believed I would figure it out, and we would talk about it, soon, and in talking about it, we would grow closer, both to each other and to the best possibilities of our relationship. I didn't know how many steps it would take, or how long, but I had a feeling we wouldn't stop moving toward each other. Our inertia of motion was set to bring us together and it would take an unimaginable force to stop it. Hadn't it been happening, been acting on us, even all those years we tried to resist it?
"I've got a few things I'm working out in my mind, and I'm a little tired from Adventure Time with Señor Teo, but I'm good," I told her. "Sorry if I sounded distant. I'm totally listening to you. When do you find out about the grant for the second study?"
"Ah, mon amour," she sighed, and I could tell she was sitting down, putting her feet up, that look of glad release on her face she got when she knew she had my understanding, my support. "Probably not until January, considering how things usually go around the holidays. But I'm sure it will be fine. I'm just looking forward to getting through the conference and getting time to be with you."
"That's right, the conference," I remembered. "Well, it'll be over soon enough. I'm looking forward to seeing you in person, again, too. Like, a lot." I couldn't help the grin that curled my lips, and I could hear hers in her tone when she responded.
"I can't wait to hold you… and take the curve of your ear in my teeth…" I got instant goosebumps. She knew how I liked that, her hot breath in my ear and the tiny hairs on the back of my neck raising as she played with the tender skin behind it, the path that led down the side of my neck.
"Doctor Cormier, is this going to turn into one of those conversations?" I asked her, with a grin and a flush to my skin.
"It could, if you're very good," she purred, and I got a small, excited shiver.
"Hold on," I said softly, and rose to the door of my room, checking outside it and then closing and locking it. I wiggled back into the bed, feeling a little like a teenager in my parents' house, one hand lightly stroking the pillow I knew I would use to muffle my sounds from any tiny ears that might not be fully asleep. "Tell me," I prompted, my voice dipping lower in my throat, "what are you doing right now?"
"I'm thinking about you, and how I can slow you down when your hands move too quickly on my blouse buttons… how I will hold your wrists and draw my tongue across your collarbone, instead… the way you shift your hips and tremble when I run my hands up your ribs under your shirt, when I trace my fingers just inside the bottom of your brassiere, and your thighs squeeze my hips in anticipation as you straddle me..."
"Mmm, yes," I exhaled, tracing the undersides of my breasts with my own fingers. I could imagine it very well. "I hope you already set your alarm for the morning, because I intend to talk with you through phone sex until you've come so much you won't even have the energy to get up and do that." I told her, and she responded with a groan into a low chuckle.
"I'm getting into bed, now, then," she teased, "because just talking to you and imagining you gives me a particular sort of energy that I think could lead to a very long, graphic, conversation." Her voice slipped a little into a more pronounced accent, as it did when she was concentrating on more important things.
"You better believe it will," I told her, running my hand down my abdomen and closing my eyes to listen closely to her breath. "Now, I think I'll move my hands back to those buttons…"