At her slightly coy expression, I allow myself to reach forward and graze my fingers across the back of her hand, wholeheartedly believing my words. Also I want a reason to touch her soft, silky skin again. A little freckle at the knuckle at the base of her thumb catches my attention. For some reason that's allusive, every little thing about her enthralls me. As if in a trance, I stare at her fingers, that beautiful thumb of hers giving away that she's double-jointed.
Her bones feel so fragile beneath my touch, and the urge to protect her wraps even tighter around my heart.
Sarah huffs a breath, averting her eyes in obvious shyness as the heat of our hands seep into one another, becoming the perfect temperature. It's something so simple, yet causes me such pleasure. We pull our hands back at the same time, and she raises her eyes in amusement, momentarily losing her shyness.
“Thanks, I try. Don’t always succeed…but, boy, am I the world’s hardesttrier,” she teases. I smile when the corner of her mouth tips up adoringly before she parts her lips to eat another bite of her wrap.
Does she know what she's doing to me? What her little whispers, soft moans, and sounds she makes do to me? It’s as if she's divulging riveting, juicy secrets for me to savor.
And savor I will.
Bringing up a hand, I rub my jaw thoughtfully. “Well, at least you have the wherewithal to do that. A lot of people don’t try; they’re just content on skating through life,” I respond, my words coming out a bit more rapid and harder than I'd intended them to.
Like my ex.
My son.
I grimace at the thought. I could give a shit about Hannah, butTyler…that hits personally.
At the unwanted thought, I drape my arm over the back of the chair next to me and shift in my seat. I don't even want to be having these thoughts. But when I'm around Sarah, I don't feel like my mind is my own, and I can’t help but compare the two women and how different they are.
Not just physically, butmentally.
Sarah nods. “I get that,” she says. That vacant look enters her eyes when she's thinking about her ex and her trauma. “I paid our mortgage and all of our bills, started my practice, and took on its financial upkeep without his help. I drive a piece of shit Hyundai, and he paid for next to nothing and spent all his money on a Lexus. I mean…. the shit Iput upwith because he was my first love. I should be committed because I was so stupid. Putting up with so much nonsense was just dumb. Blind as a freaking bat,” she states quietly.
She looks down at the table, swaying slightly in her seat.
Understanding that she needs a moment, I sit with her in silence, instinctually knowing that there's nothing I could say to her in this moment that'll matter. She didn't share this with me for advice, or attention, or reassurance. No, I'm noticing she shares bits and pieces of herself with me with no expectation other than for me to listen, though I want to give her more.
As I assess her, the sounds of the airport become louder as more people filter in for their flights. Her eyes finally lift from the table, and shift to the side. Quietly, she watches people walk by with their rolling suitcases, a few of them dragging along crying kids. Everyone's in a hurry. Everyone's anxious and stressed. I feel it. So does she.
Her eyes tighten when a woman walks by us with a baby stroller while arguing with a man, and she suddenly turns her head in the opposite direction, looking back into the café we're at. Her eyes well with tears, and just as I'm about to reach forward and take her hand again, she suddenly speaks up,rubbing lightly across her brow and keeping her face averted from me. “I think I’d like a cookie. Want one, Alex?”
She stands abruptly and walks away without waiting for my reply.
Watching her disappear down a snack aisle and out of my view, I look back and people watch, knowing she needs a minute to herself and not wanting to push too hard. Especially when she's trusting me to bring her on this trip, and I don't want to betray this bud of possibility or her trust in me before it's even started.
She hasn’t yet talked about her feelings about the baby she’d lost…Bumpy. And I wonder if she ever will. Or if she's the type to never bring up something like that again, burying it deep inside to never deal with again.
The only glimpse I’d had at any sort of emotions on the matter was when she was crying in my arms on the floor of my office while she was losing Bumpy, and when she’d cried in her sleep that first night at my house.
I collect our trash while she stands at the register to pay for our cookies and throw it away in a nearby receptacle. When I get back to the table, I see her phone light up with an email fromDavid. A hot, sickening wave of jealousy washes over me at seeing his name before the notification disappears. I can't even take a slight comfort in the fact that she'd listed him as “psychiatry referral buddy” in her phone.
I clench my jaw with irritation.
Speak of the devil and he shall come, apparently.
Glancing quickly at my watch, I see it's almost four in the morning and scoff, curling my lip with displeasure. It doesn’t matter that I’ve emailed her many times, sometimes around the same time. That's me.
What makes me so special compared to him though?the rational part of my brain muses, right as Sarah comes into viewand plops down rather hard onto her seat, scattering five cookies on the table.
“Okay,”Sarah says breathlessly, looking rather pink in the face. “We’ve got marshmallow, which looks delicious, chocolate chip—myfavorite—oatmeal raisin,ewww, and sugar cookie." She nibbles her bottom lip, shifting on her seat and lifting a shoulder. "I don’t know what you like, so take your pick.”
My eyes roam her face greedily, curious at her change in attitude so soon after being as visibly upset as she was. She shifts in her seat again nervously, her right eyebrow arches, and she brings up a lithe hand and strokes slowly down her ponytail where it lays spilled across her breasts to her navel. I lower my eyes. Breasts are a trigger for me, and if I'm not careful, she'll catch me staring.
She'd only grabbed two of the chocolate chip cookies, so I snag up the marshmallow and oatmeal raisin, leaving her the sugar cookie and chocolate chip ones.
Sarah scoffs, pushing the sugar cookie at me, leaving me with three and her with two. “You know how I feel about sugar,” she mutters.
