That remark made me want to kiss him, drag him off to bed, tell him all the reasons I needed him, too. But instead I started laughing like an idiot. As though he understood, Sisuei’s ears began to move.
“Don’t laugh, dammit!” Trey said. “I’ve never even thought anything like that and you’re making me feel like an idiot!”
A romantic song started playing on the stereo, and I leaned in to him, not sure what I was doing, just wanting contact: eye to eye, mouth to mouth, skin to skin. My desires mingling with his. We were like two treasure hunters exploring each other’s bodies with no map or compass, just following our instincts.
We didn’t let each other go until the sun rose. Our fingers danced over each other’s nakedness while the music played. I heard “Love Somebody Like You” by Emma White, and the notes seemed to float around us.
“I got you something,” he said.
“A present?”
He nodded, slipped away from me softly, and stood. Walking to the closet, he pulled out a drawer, reached in, and grabbed a black paper bag. He sat down beside me and handed it to me.
Nervously, I glanced at him before peeling off the gold sticker holding it closed. My grin grew into a smile as I brought out a book, a novel, calledThe Readers of Broken Wheel Recommendby Katarina Bivald.
“It’s about a young woman who starts up a bookstore in a small town and how reading changes her and her new neighbors’ lives,” he said.
I ran my fingers over the cover in gratitude. “Thanks, I didn’t expect this. I’m so excited!”
He kissed me on the forehead.
There was something else in the bag, so I reached back in, pulling out an assortment of different-sized notebooks tied together with a ribbon.
“Those are for you to write down all the ideas that occur to you.” Then he pulled out something else, a rectangular black box I hadn’t noticed. “And you can use this to write them with.”
My lips quivered and I had a knot in my throat, and when I opened the box, tears welled in my eyes. It was a Montblanc Le Petit Prince pen with my name engraved on it.
“Trey, this is too much.”
“I know it’s silly, but since it had the same name as…”
“The island,” I said.
“Yeah. I saw that and I just had to get it.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything. These are just the kinds of things any writer deserving of the name should have.”
I wanted to tell him all I felt in that moment, all that those gifts meant to me. All that he meant to me. But words escaped me. There just weren’t any that said enough. What phrase could capture the feeling that without understanding why, you just wake up one morning and there’s someone next to you who makes you want to live? This is how the best things in life come to you, out of nowhere, without warning. And you realize that loneliness only exists because you’ve refused to open the door and let that person in. The person who’s always there, through rain, through shine.
There weren’t any words to tell him that I wished that every clock in the world would stop and make this moment eternal. That if I could choose, I would wish for us to be reborn as two cats so we could have nine more lives together. For everything to remain as it was. Our eyes met, and I touched his cheek and ran my fingers down hisneck, then pulled him close and stopped a few millimeters from his mouth, inhaling his breath. I kissed him until my heart was pounding and my entire body was tense. And the smile he offered back to me was a promise of bright sunny days and long nights of conversation, laughter, and sex.
24
You Can Get Everything You Want in Life If You Can Handle a Little Fear
I barely saw Trey the next two days. He was busy with clients and had to dash down to Syracuse to give a talk on bioclimatic architecture. I spent the whole week buried in books I had to shelve and manuscripts I had to correct.
Late one Saturday afternoon, Mr. Norris, my grandmother’s lawyer, came to see me at the bookstore to sign some documents. He was a nice man with elegant manners who reminded me of a movie star in the fifties. And that made me think of Adele, whom I’d almost forgotten since I’d come back.
On Sunday, I got a message from Hayley. They had just landed in Florence, where they’d be spending a couple of days. Then they’d continue on to Paris, and would fly back home from there on Thursday. I was dying to see her. I had a million things to tell her, and I wanted to share all the new things I was feeling. Until then, I’d have to content myself with a four-legged furry friend who liked to climb on the sofa and stare at me.
I don’t know what I was thinking when I told Trey I’d take care of Sisuei while he was away. I didn’t know the first thing about dogs, and I could hardly take care of myself. Trey must have realized this, because his expression was skeptical when he said yes.
I looked over at Sisuei, and his ears stiffened. He was a pleasant creature, and after just a few hours together and one walk around the block, I felt like we were the best of friends. When he saw I wasn’t taking him anywhere, he groaned softly, and I chuckled. I got it. I was starting to get bored, too.
“You know what, Sisuei? Today we’re going to have lunch outside. That way you’ll get your ass off the couch for a while.”
