He nods once and I lift my head to see his eyes are hooded and glazed with the tears he just cried. He looks just as beautiful like this – vulnerable, soft, exhausted – as he does when he’s fucking me hard, licking honey off my fingers, or chasing me down the water’s edge of an old Cretan fishing town.
“I think it means loving someone so much you can forgive them almost anything, over and over again. From what I’ve read and studied, I'm not convinced there's such a thing as unconditional love, nor that there should be. But I strongly suspect the love a mother feels for their child is the closest you can get tounconditional love. What I mean to say by this is, you and your mother are going to be okay. Truly.”
He tilts his head to the side. “I believe you. I never questioned her love for me in all of this. I guess I'm sad because now I'm questioning mine. I get so angry with her, and so quickly.”
“I understand. But you know being angry, that's part of grief, right?”
“Yeah,” he sighs, “I know.”
“Maybe you just need a better place to direct your anger?”
He nods again and then slides his body further down the bed.
His hand finds my thigh and I feel it glide up towards my centre, probing. I look over at him and see his eyes are fully closed now, his breath slow and even. I find his hand and hold it still, more on my inner thigh now than my pussy.
“You need to sleep,” I say to him and then I reach back and flick the light switch on the wall, plunging us into darkness.
“Hmm,” he mumbles. “Can you say it again?”
“What?” I say as I lay down on my side, facing him. There is a magic in this moment, the first time we are in bed together, going to sleep together, without making love. It’s just as intimate and satisfying than if we had made each other see stars with orgasms.
“Tell me that Mum and I will be okay. Tell me that it will all be okay.”
“You and your mum will be okay. Everything’s going to be okay,” I say slowly, I take his hand off my thigh and bring it to my mouth to kiss his fingers. I love how heavy his arm is; he's completely surrendered to his fatigue. I can feel the same pull come for me as I knit our fingers together and burrow my head into the pillow, closing my eyes. I take lots of long deep breaths, trying to keep at bay the ache that reminds me how little time he and I have left together.
“What about us?” he says in the darkness. “Are we going to be okay?”
“We're going to be okay too,” I say, and I believe this even though I don't know what it really means, let alone what it will look like.
Then my head finds his chest, my legs open for one of his, my arm circles his waist, and I drift into a sleep that is so deep, I wake in exactly the same position.
The Next Day
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Marty
Iwake before Jenna and do everything I can not to move, wanting her to stay asleep after I woke her in the night. Her face is tucked into the side of my chest, so I can’t even watch her sleep, but instead my mind is busy remembering the kitchen last night. The way I got straight to work, commandeering the speakers’ aux plug with my phone, and quickly re-allocating duties and buddies. I’d trouble-shooted the urgent issues and then I’d got to work on the long list of mains. I’d checked in with everyone as often as I could and invited people to dance or sing whenever they felt the stress bubble up inside them, and I was as surprised and delighted as anyone when some of them actually did this.
Then after service, I turned the music up a little louder, poured a round of shots for those who wanted one, and we got to work scrubbing the kitchen spotless. In the last six months I've started to think cleaning has gone from being the bit I disliked most to one of my favourite parts of the job. Maybe it's because I no longer rush through it, desperate to top up the post-shift beers with something harder at a local bar or club, or maybe it’s because now I’m sober, I can appreciate the satisfying sheen on stainless steel, the quiet sense of achievement, and the calm in the room as I switch the lights off and leave.
Calm is also what I feel as I lift my head up and look down to catch a glimpse of Jenna’s eyelids twitching in her sleep. I can't stop my hand from brushing Jenna's hair off her face. I can't stop my other fingers from finding the leg that isdraped over mine. I can't stop the way they massage into her smooth flesh that feels so solid and yet so soft. I love that about her body.
When I feel her eyelashes tickle the skin on my chest, I stop moving. But when she lifts her head up and gives me a gentle kiss, I start again, this time sliding my hand further up to her hip. When she pushes up with her hands, I can snake my fingers around and grip her right butt cheek. It is never-ending under my palm. No matter where I grab, what I take, there is always more for me to enjoy.
As Jenna lifts up, I see her eyes are barely open, but there is the smallest smile on her lips. I take my hands off her and give her space to move and am neither surprised or disappointed when she moves further under the covers and comes to rest her pussy perfectly on my hardening cock. She straightens up, pushing the covers off us, and while her eyes are still heavy, her mouth is stretched into a wide smile.
Naked like I am, Jenna shimmies around until my hard cock is flattened against my lower belly, and she sits down on it, starting to move, back and forth, so very slowly as she wakes up. When her pace picks up, I go to grab her wrist, to tell her I need to get a condom, but before I speak, she nods at the bedside table. I open the drawer and find a new unopened pack lying next to a bottle of lube and two sex toys I would like to have a closer look at, but I am distracted when Jenna's mouth moves down and sucks on one of my nipples.
I grunt and thrust up against her as I take the condom packet and make such a mess of opening it that she takes it from me, opens it and retrieves a condom with far too much grace for a woman who’s just woken up. The only way I can show her my thanks is by gliding my hands up her thighs, her hips, over the arc of her waist and taking her breasts in my palms, I squeeze them hard enough that she rolls her head back while the now-empty condom foil is still between her teeth.
Still without a word passing between us, Jenna lifts onto her knees, creating cold empty space between us, making me ache for her warmth again as she grips the base of me with one hand and positions the condom at my tip, rolling it down a little too slowly for my liking, and to let her know this, I pinch her nipples.
She hums in response, her teeth biting her bottom lip. Then she leans forward, and her breasts are close enough I can flick my tongue over her nipples.She sighs as she moves my dick, positioning me where she wants me, and then she finally opens her eyes wide for the first time and locks her gaze on me at the exact moment I feel the warmth of her entrance kiss the head of my cock.
As Jenna sinks down, I move my hands back to her hips, my fingertips grazing the peak of her buttocks. I sigh when I feel her sit firmly down, and I suck air straight back in as her muscles squeeze me. Her left eyebrow raises upon hearing that, and she does it again. I shake my head at her as I smile and then I have had enough of her taking this slow, I move quickly wrapping an arm around her waist and putting my other hand down to steady myself on the bed so I can lift her up and swing her around so she's lying on her back, looking up at me, and I'm still blissfully deep inside her.
We have talked a lot during sex. Like yesterday, when we said our names to each other, over and over. I loved that. And I love how she tells me what she likes, what she needs. So I'm not sure why we're not talking now, but I’m not mad. I want this. This silent love-making that is only punctuated by our sighs and moans, my grunts and her gasps.
