The bed dipped when I put my knee on it. She watched me come, eyes on my face, hand in my hair, before I got close enough for her to do it.
I caught my weight on one elbow over her. The other hand went to her hip. The tank had ridden up over her ribs. My hand found bare skin between the hem and the waistband of her jeans. Her breath broke at the contact. I held still.
I leaned down and put my mouth at the hinge of her jaw. Her hand tightened in my hair. I worked down the side of her neck like I'd been thinking about doing for ten weeks. She made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost not. I felt it under my mouth before I heard it.
Her tank came up next. I had it bunched at her ribs, and then it was off, dropped over the side of the bed. She had a thin bralette under it, the color of unsweet tea. I put my mouth at the curve of her shoulder. She put her hand at the back of my neck and held it there.
My belt came after that. Hers after mine. The jeans took longer than I expected. There was a hook at the back of hers I had to wait out, her laughing into my shoulder while I worked it. By the time we were down to skin, the sheet was a wreck.
"My hands are shaking," she said.
"Mine, too."
I put my forehead down to hers. We were chest to chest. She was warmer than the room had any business being. Her hand onmy back was flat. Her hand on the back of my neck was holding on.
"I'm right here," she said. "I'm not going anywhere."
I nodded.
"Don't go slow," she added.
I laughed against her mouth. She caught the laugh in hers, and it became a kiss. The kiss became the thing I'd been waiting for. I let myself have her.
I woke up sometime past three with her hand on my chest and the room very dark.
She had her hair on my shoulder. Her thumb was moving along my collarbone the way it had been moving on the back of my neck at the table. She wasn't asleep.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
"Did you sleep?"
"A little."
"Astrid."
"Yes."
"Are you okay?"
"Yes."
A beat.
"Easton."
"Yeah."
"I'm okay."
I put my hand over hers on my chest.
The knot I'd been carrying through every shift had gone quiet. I hadn't noticed it go. I'd been busy in the kitchen, cutting onions, reading my grandmother's handwriting, and figuringout what it meant to be the man taking the cast iron down off the shelf.
This night mattered. Not the way the Tuesday nights of the last eighteen months had mattered, which was not at all. This one mattered because she was in it.
Astrid breathed out against the side of my throat. She was no longer holding what she'd been holding. She was asleep within the next breath.
