I look at him for a long moment. I see what he’s really asking in his eyes, poised as if on a cliff’s edge, peering over the side. I finish my cigarette and move closer to him. I get on my knees in front of him. I hold his gaze, those soft green eyes that look almost like sun-kissed leaves in the lantern light. I let the firm beats of my heart speak to him now, unguarded. “I’d cherish you. Every single day. Love you. Every single minute. I’d give you every single piece of my heart, every part of me, that you wanted. I’d keep you warm, I’d keep you safe, I’d do anything to make you happy.” I take his hand kiss his palm, his wrist. “I’d be yours and you’d be mine. In every way.”
I almost add that he can still have his time to think, that it won’t change how I feel, but he leans over and kisses me.
That thread could hold up a bridge, I think, as we make our way toward my bed.Ourbed.
That thread could hold up a bridge, but it let’s him in, and let’s me feel loved at last.
I reach over and finger a curl just above his ear. “Do you like the bed over here?”
He’s lying beside me, long and lean, propped up on his side. “Sure. It’s fine.”
“I want you to be comfortable here.”
“I am.”
I look over at my uninspired arrangement of the cabin, and the trail of our clothes, haphazardly thrown all over the floor. “We can get more chairs. Two more for the table.”
He lays his hand flat over my chest. That gesture is becoming something now. He did it while I was inside him and he didn’t take his hand away, even when he came. I kiss the tip of his nose.
“I like it how it is,” he says. “You don’t really need to change anything.” He pauses, bites his lip. “I think my aunt is getting me a typewriter for Christmas, though. She hasn’t said, but I think she might. Could I bring that?”
“Of course, pal. You can bring anything you want.”
He makes wide circles around each of my nipples with his finger. There’s a mix of us still on my skin, but most of it is gone. He did something after, that he’s never done before, with his tongue. It sends a shiver through me. I kiss his cheek.
He says, “I need to stay through Christmas.” He pauses. “I mean, I guess I don’t need to, but…”
“I understand. She’s your family.”
His eyes are soft and sleepy. “What about yours?”
“It’s not so far for us to visit.”
“I know. But won’t they be short-handed?”
“Glen wants to hire a neighbor boy. And his fiancée has a nephew.” I yawn. “They can manage.”
He snuggles close to me and we start making plans. It’s easy, the whole discussion, envisioning the future. But he wants to spend part of Christmas with his aunt, and I can’t be that selfish.
After a long silence, I think he’s fallen asleep, but he says, “What are you going to tell people? If they ask why I live here?”
I lay my head against his. “I’ll say that I’m deeply in love with you, and so I asked you to live with me, so I’d never have to let you go.”
He grins and it’s the most beautiful thing, but he playfully pushes at my shoulder. “You won’t really say that.”
“Maybe not exactly that. Maybe that we’re best pals. That should be enough.”
He snuggles up against me, his body all naked and warm, and this is truly bliss. It really truly is.
And the best part? As we fall asleep in our home together, with a crackling fire, in my bed and under my covers, the best part, the one I wouldn’t have been able to live without, the part that has made me love him now and forever, that part is his voice soft and breathing into my ear.
I won’t let you go.
I was going to go see my mother and Glen on Christmas Eve, but Paul’s aunt invites me over for Christmas dinner.
It makes me nervous. I don’t know if I should dress up, and the only suit I have is the one I wore to my dad’s funeral. I wear slacks and a dress shirt, thinking it’s how Paul would dress and I haven’t been invited to Christmas dinner anywhere before, but when I get there he’s wearing denim and his shirt untucked.
“You look really swell,” he says, smiling that sweet smile of his.
