“Right,” I agree, and am rewarded with another slow caress across my jaw.
“Can we agree to only date each other?”
“Yes.”Forever,I add silently, making a vow to myself.
“And no matter what else happens, we won’t let anything jeopardize our friendship? If the relationship isn’t working, we talk about it and move forward together?”
“Yes,” I repeat, feeling like maybe I could add more to this discussion but suddenly finding it hard to remember other words that exist in the English language. Shiloh exhales hard enough for me to feel it on my lips.
“I need to finish dinner,” he tells me, still bent over my chair and touching my face in a way that makes the words not compute. I stare at him, still hoping our faces will soon be even closer. He adds, “You need to eat.”
The pad of his finger scratches against my stubble as he does his best to show me just how many nerve endings there are in my face. When he straightens out of his lean and walks back to the grill, I very nearly put my palm to my cheek, wanting to press the feeling into my skin and keep it there. Blowingout my cheeks in a deep exhale, I slump back in my chair and try to recover from the medical emergency Shiloh just put me through. I had no idea my shy lobsterman had so much game.
I watch him fiddle around with dinner, moving through the open doorway into the kitchen and coming back out with something new in his hands. He brings me a blanket, the green plaid-patterned fleece soft against my fingers when I take it from him. I can’t even say thank you, throat feeling too tight to squeeze words through. I’m not even that cold. Certainly not now that my entire body is flushed and my brain is buzzing and my lungs have forgotten how to provide oxygen to the rest of my body. He brought me a fucking blanket.
There’s nothing else to do but throw it over my lap, and because I’m soft as hell for Shiloh, I rub my palms along my thighs once I get it settled. I feel like I might cry, which is ridiculous. But he was touching my face, and he’s making me dinner, and now he’s given me a blanket; what else am I supposed to do with that but cry?
“Thank you,” I finally manage once Shiloh brings over a pair of plates, steam rising gently into the slowly darkening evening sky. He smiles, leaning down to hand one off to me. I inhale, groaning a bit at the smell of the salmon.
“Warm enough?” he asks, holding his plate up as he sits down so nothing slides off the end. Part of me wants to answer with a joke about being tough and not feeling such human things like cold. The bigger part of me would like to be wrapped up in a blanket with Shiloh.
“For now,” I agree, wishing Adirondack chairs were builtin a way that would allow easy sharing of a blanket. I barely manage to swallow back another groan as I put a piece of salmon in my mouth. “Holy shit, this is amazing.”
“Well,” Shiloh replies, twitching one shoulder in a partial, self-conscious shrug. And then, as though he can’t help himself, he adds, “Oliver’s is better.”
“Oliver went to culinary school, so he doesn’t count.”
He laughs, spearing a piece of asparagus and crunching down on the end of it. Legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed, he bobs his foot back and forth in contentment. I wonder if this is how he usually spends his evenings—sitting quietly on the porch, listening to the hum of the ocean, and watching the stars pop into view on the horizon. I wonder if he ever felt as lonely as I did, all the way across the country, sitting perched on a stool in my workshop and forgetting to eat.
“Where are Gale and Joe at?” I ask him, still thinking about his dad and the RV travels Shiloh had mentioned in his emails.
“Colorado,” he answers, shifting a little in his chair so we can see each other without giving ourselves a neck injury. “They spent some time in the Springs, Estes, Rocky Mountain…all the top hits. Last I heard, they were wanting to check out the sand dunes.”
“I bet they’re having fun.”
“I bet they’re ready to kill each other, stuck in an RV together all day and night,” Shiloh counters wryly. I laugh, toasting him with my beer.
Ridiculously, the darker the sky gets, the more drowsy I become, like I’m a toddler who’s unable to keep their eyes openpast 8:00 p.m. I’m just so damn comfortable with my belly full and that perfect coziness that comes from being out in the cooler temperatures under a warm blanket. When I tip my head back and tuck my hands into my lap, every blink brings me a step closer to sleep. Shiloh’s and my plates are sitting stacked on the little table between us, empty and practically licked clean of all crumbs. We’ve long since gone quiet, but it’s not the uncomfortable sort of silence of running out of things to talk about on a first date. It’s the silence of two people who can find comfort just in the proximity of the other, no words needed; two people who haven’t said it all, but have said enough to ensure ease and familiarity.
I nestle into my chair a little deeper and tug the blanket right up to my chin. It’s small enough that my feet and ankles pop into view, the fleece tickling my chin as I settle in. We’re both facing out at the yard, the ocean no longer visible in the distance as the sky darkens to navy and the light fades. Shiloh turned the lights off inside the last time he stepped into the kitchen, and we’re far enough away from town for the light pollution to be minimal. When I tip my head back, I can see stars I’d never be able to view from my balcony in LA.
“You can see the aurora from here, right?” I ask Shiloh, voice low. A cricket chirps somewhere in the dark. I have a moment’s thought for the sort of bugs that might be making their way into Shiloh’s house through that still-open door, but it’s a distant sort of worry. If he doesn’t care, I don’t care.
“Yeah. Two years ago, they were strong a couple times in February. I’ll show you some pictures I took.”
I yawn, muffling the sound with the blanket. It smells like Shiloh, so I keep it there and inhale a couple of times.
“I can’t wait to see them again. It’s been a long time,” I tell him once I’ve sniffed my fill and lifted my face from the blanket far enough to speak. Shiloh is silent next to me, and I’m too sleepy and content to think on it too hard.
We sit out for a long time. Long enough that even with the blanket, I start getting cold again. Shiloh, too, has to be feeling it, no matter how used to the weather up here he is. When he quietly stands and gathers our dishes together to bring inside, I’m sad to realize the evening is coming to an end. It’s been a perfect day, honestly, and I wish I had the power to coerce the moon into staying a little longer and time to move a little slower. When I hear the soft pad of Shiloh’s feet on the deck, I tip my head against the back of the chair and look up at the dark shape of him above me. He’s nothing but a Shiloh-shaped silhouette, silver outlining a few of his curves with moonlight. I’d like to try and paint it.
“Tired?” he asks, and only the slight displacement of the hair on the top of my head alerts me to the fact that his fingers are there.
“Little bit.”
A yawn betrays me, earning a soft chuckle from Shiloh. It also reminds me that, unlike some people—me, namely—he starts the day before even the sun clocks in. I’m keeping him awake when he likely needs some sleep. Unearthing my arms from my cozy blanket nest, I gather it up and stand, smiling at Shiloh, even though he probably can’t see much of me in thedark.
He leads the way inside, and a very small, overly hopeful part of me wonders if he’ll invite me to stay the night. When he offers to drive me home instead, I smile and agree and remind myself who I’m with right now. Shiloh, who spent years sending me sweet emails and wanted to cook me dinner and touches me like I’m the precious work of art, is a romancer.Let’s go upstairs and bangis probably not something he’s going to suggest after stargazing.
