I drink my coffee.
Sunday dinner was three days ago. The first one back. Ronan poured me wine and said things that needed saying and shook my hand at the door. It wasn't fixed. It was a start.
***
That evening, she falls asleep on the couch at eight thirty because she's growing a human being and her body has opinions about that. I let her sleep for an hour. Then I pick her up.
"Put me down," she says, not opening her eyes.
"No."
"I can walk."
"I know."
"This is unnecessary."
"Yes."
She opens one eye. "You like this."
"Yes."
"Carrying me around like I'm a sack of something."
"A very opinionated sack."
She makes a sound that is trying to be annoyed and isn't. She puts her face against my neck. I feel her smile against my skin. Her hand finds the collar of my shirt and holds on.
I set her on the bed. She looks up at me. Her face in the lamplight. The freckles. The eyes — brown with gold in them that I noticed the first week and have never mentioned because some things are mine.
"You're going to do the thing where you look at me for a really long time before you do anything, aren't you."
"Probably."
"Could you possibly do it faster? I was having a good dream."
"What was the dream about?"
"You, doing things instead of staring."
I sit on the edge of the bed. She reaches up and puts her hand on my jaw, her thumb against my cheekbone, and pulls me down and kisses me. Not slow. Not tentative. The kiss of a woman who knows what she wants and has learned that she can just take it.
"I'm awake now. Off."
I take my shirt off. She runs her hands across my chest and my stomach with the focused attention of someone conducting an assessment she's conducted a hundred times and that still interests her. Her fingers trace the lines of my ribs. She tugs at my belt.
"You too," I say.
"Help me. I'm pregnant and I can't reach the—" She gestures at her back. I reach around and unhook her bra and she makesa sound of relief that is entirely about the bra and nothing else. "God. Thank you. That thing is a war crime."
I laugh. Barely. Just the edge of it. She looks at me.
"Did you just laugh?"
"No."
I pull back and look at her. All of her. The lamplight on her skin. She's changed in the months since the first night and I have been watching every change the way I watch everything about her and tonight I want to do more than watch.
