"What are you doing?" she asks.
"I'm thinking."
"You've been thinking for two days."
"Mom."
"He's a good man," she says. Nothe's the right manoryou'd be crazy to leave.She doesn’t say that because we’re boththinking it. "He's been a good man for ten years in this town and he'll be a good man for the next ten whether you're here or not. The question isn't about him."
"What's the question."
She looks at me. My mother is not a subtle woman and she is also, when she chooses to be, deeply precise.
"The question," she says, "is whether you've been living in Vancouver because you want to be there, or because it was easier than coming back and finding out what you left."
I don't answer.
She stands up, smoothes the bedspread, and goes out.
I sit there for another fifteen minutes.
Then I unpack my bag and I call the car service and cancel.
I pull on my jacket and walk out into the Saturday morning, the festival grounds a few blocks over already carrying the sounds of final-day prep, and I walk the six blocks to his cabin.
He answers the door in work clothes, coffee in hand, clearly about to leave for the grounds.
He looks at me. Then at my empty hands. Then back at my face.
"You didn't go," he says.
"I didn't go."
He steps back and lets me in and sets his coffee on the counter and I have about thirty seconds to register the fact that I made a decision before he crosses the kitchen and gets his hands in my hair and his mouth on mine and I stop processing anything else.
We end up in his room.
This time I want to see him. I sit up on the edge of the bed and pull him closer by his belt, and I take my time with his shirt buttons the way he took his time with mine on Thursday. He watches me work with his hands loose at his sides, which is clearly costing him something. I can hear it in his breathing.
When I get the shirt off I press my palms flat against his chest, down over the scar on his ribs, lower, until I've got his belt open and his jeans shoved down enough to get a hand around his cock. He's already hard, and this time I don't rush it — slow strokes, root to tip, thumb dragging over the head on the way back down, until his stomach tightens and he catches my wrist.
"Not yet," he says. "My turn."
He undresses me slow, both hands, watching my face — my shirt, my bra, my jeans, until I'm bare in front of him and he just looks, like he's got nowhere else to be. When we finally lie down together, the choice is in every second of it. Not reunion. Not ten years compressed into one desperate night. This is chosen. Awake. Deliberate.
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
"That I missed this." I press my hand flat over his heart. "Specifically this. Not just the sex. The way you pay attention."
Something shifts in his face. Gentler.
He moves over me and takes his time — mouth at my jaw, my throat, down to my breast, tongue circling my nipple until I arch into his mouth. He keeps going, unhurried, kissing down my stomach, and when he settles between my thighs he doesn't tease. His mouth is on my clit in one long, slow stroke, and I grip the sheets.
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Owen." My voice does a specific thing. "You know what."
