Peaches walked up to the woman and rubbed against her ankle. She leaned down to pet him.
After a few minutes, she walked away.
That night, after her parents went to bed, Anna sat on the couch with James. He kissed her urgently. With fewer smiles.
“Anna …” he said. “Can I come to bed with you tonight?”
Her heart leapt in her chest.
She thought of James’s green trousers and the woman wandering around the park. “We shouldn’t.”
“Don’t tell me we shouldn’t,” he said. “Tell me you don’t want to or that you’re not ready. But don’t tell me we shouldn’t.”
He was holding her close. His face was flushed, and his breath was hot. Anna wondered if her own desire was anywhere near that well expressed.
“Idowant to,” she said. “I want you.”
James groaned and buried his head in her neck.
She climbed off the couch and led him upstairs to her room. They knocked the stuffed animals off her bed. (They’d all be back again the next day.)
For a moment, Anna worried that James wouldn’t be able to undress. But his clothes fell easily onto her floor and stayed there. He must be made for this, too.
She climbed under the covers, still wearing her sundress.
James took it off and cast it aside.
He kissed her. He was smiling again, but his eyes were a little wild and worried; he was capable of nearly infinite mixed emotions.
Anna had never done this before. She’d barely imagined it. She didn’t worry about getting pregnant—she couldn’t even use the bathroom.
James hunched over her. He lay between her legs. He kissed her face while he was inside of her. “Anna,” he said. “Anna.”
Neither of them were tired. After. The window was open. There was a breeze. James lay with his head on her chest, below her throat.
“I love you,” he said.
She stroked his hair.
“I don’t want to love anyone but you, Anna.”
She didn’t say anything at first. She didn’t reassure him. What could she say? She couldn’t revise him. And she couldn’t hide him. She couldn’t control anything that mattered.
“I love you, James,” she said eventually. Because shedidlove him. And it might not change anything, but it was still true.
James had grown mulish. Stubborn. Maybe he’d always been that way. He frowned more. At the fields. At the stars.
“This is a life,” he told Anna, with his eyebrows furrowed. “Whatever comes next, this is real.”
She didn’t argue.
She held his face in her hands and let him kiss her as urgently as he wanted.
She wondered if James still felt it pulling at him. His story. He must—he seemed so restless sometimes.
Anna imagined taking the scissors out of the kitchen drawer—there were scissors in the kitchen drawer—and cutting the ties that bound him to his book.
But that might be worse. If she decided not to use him in a story, he might fade away. Anna couldn’t bear to watch James fade away.
