“Julian.”
“I want to know which one.”
“I mean okay, Julian. I mean okay.”
I let a moment pass. “Did what she said get to you?”
“She’s got a thing for you. That’s obvious.” She shrugged. “I took most of it with a grain of salt.”
“Mostof it? So some of it you believe.”
She looked at the blank TV screen. “Not the words she said. The structure of what she said. I know I’m not a charity case to you. I don’t feel that. I’m not fishing for you to tell me I’m not. But there’s usually a grain of something true at the bottom of an exaggeration. And the true thing under hersisn’t about her. It’s about you.”
She finally looked at me. “I know you’re a good man, Julian. I know your whole life has been about being of service. It’s the first thing your hands do. And sometimes I wonder how much of this…” she gestured between us, “…is just that. Your nature, pointed at me. A widow and her kid who you think need somebody. And you’re a man who can’t walk past a need.”
“Alyssa.”
“I’m not finished, and I want to say this right.” She took a deep breath. “The other part of it… it’s that I can’t tell what I give you. You show up. You fix. You carry. I have been on the receiving end of a lot of you, and I am grateful. But… I don’t want to be one more person you take care of. I don’t want this to be a one-sided relationship. I want to be able to give you something back. And honestly, I can’t always see what that could even be for a man like you.”
“You’re right that my nature is to be of service,” I said. “That’s a real thing about me, I’m not going to argue it. But that’s not whatthisis, and I can tell you exactly how I know.”
“I’ve never gone on my runs with anyone else, let alone a woman. But suddenly I’m running several times a week… with you. There’s a bag of hazelnut in my cabinet I will never drink, that I bought because you do, and I like seeing it in there. Anyone in my orbit who is not a family member has only had access to my condo. You have access to myhome,the one I actually live in. And speaking of my condo. I've stayed at it more in the months since I met you than in all the years I've owned it combined. Because staying there means I can be closer to you and Micah. I sit on the floor playing video games with a boy who isn’t mine and I watch legal dramas with you until one in the morning, and feel more like I’m where I belong than I’ve felt anywhere. I’m in my thirties and I’m having a lot of firsts, Alyssa.Becauseof you.Withyou. That is not ‘my nature’ pointed at you. This is the one place my nature has never taken me before.”
She’d gone very still.
“Now the other thing. Because you’ve got it backwards, and I’m probably only ever going to say this once, so hear it.”
I had to stop and find words I’d never let myself line up out loud. “I have been the one holding many things up since I was a young man. I can’t remember a timewhen I didn’t have lists of responsibilities. My siblings. WadeHouse. My companies. This town, even some weeks. I don’t get to set it down. I haven’t set it down in almost two decades. And I’ve been okay with that. I don’t mind carrying it.”
I reached over and took her hand. “You. Spending time with you. Our friendship. You’rethe place I get to set it down. You’ve become that for me, Alyssa. It’s been the most restful thing that’s happened to me in years.”
“Am I going to want to make your life easier? Carry things for you? Yes, that’ll never change. But not because you’re a damsel in distress who needs rescuing. It’s because I care about you. People look out for those they care about.”
I couldn’t stop now that I’d got going.
“That’s what you give me. You make mereallylaugh, which I’d half forgotten how to do. You give me some of the only hours of my week where I’m not holding the world up. You think our friendship runs one direction? You sit there unsure whether you give me anything, when you’re the thing I’ve been rebuilding my entire week around.”
She didn’t move. Her place was so quiet I could only hear the humming of her fridge. She looked at me for a long moment, and her eyes had gone bright and shiny at the edges. I had been more vulnerable than I'd been in my entire life, and I could see the same thing in her. So I decided to let go of the leash entirely.
“Last night. I felt that. If you went home wondering whether you’d imagined it, whether it was one-sided, you didn’t, and it wasn’t. I came over tonight because you texted. But I’d have found a reason if you hadn’t, because I couldn’t figure out how to spend a whole day after holding you like that.”
Her head came to rest against my arm. I let my arm come up behind her, not touching, and she settled against me, head against my shoulder.
I sat there and let myself enjoy it. After a few minutes of comfortable silence, I looked down at her. Her eyes were closed. My hand moved up and down her arm, and I bent my head and pressed a light kiss to her forehead.
She made a small sound then her eyes opened. They came up to meet mine, and for a second neither of us moved. She wasn’t startled. She’d surfaced into it slow, and what was on her face wasn’twhat are you doing, it was the thing that had been crackling between us for months, finally with nowhere left to hide.
“Julian,” she whispered.
I was so far past holding the line I couldn’t find where it had been. She lifted her hand from my chest to the side of my face, and her thumb moved once across my cheekbone, and that was all I needed. I leaned in and kissed her. A soft press, to her mouth, carefully testing. One breath, then another, and she kissed me back, just as soft.
A second kiss. Then a third. Each one a little longer, and a little deeper, until her mouth opened to me, and my tongue found hers and warmth flooded my veins. I pulled back for a breath, eyes searching hers, and what I saw there was the same hunger eating me alive.
We dove back in, hungrier, deeper, wetter, tongues meeting, our breaths colliding. My hands cupped her face, then slid around her, pulling her closer. She made a soft moan in the back of her throat that nearly snapped my control.
I had never kissed a woman like that before. Never sat with a woman and pressed my mouth to hers and let it be the only thing happening. I didn’t know that time could stand still inside a kiss. That kissing alone could be a thing that could undo me.
My parents kissed every single day of my childhood. It was one of my favorite things about them. One of my most consistent and grounding memories. The kind of kisses that did not care that there were children in the room. Kisses that saidthis is who I belong to, and who belongs to me, and we are going to take a moment on that before we go about our day.
