“What are you saying right now?”
“I’m saying stay.”
One word.The kitchen light hummed.The compressor clicked off, right on schedule, and the silence it left behind was louder than anything she’d said all night.
He took the half-step she’d left him, and put his hand at the back of her neck, under her hair, where her pulse moved against his palm — quick, steady, faster than her face was letting on — and he kissed her.
Not the way he’d been thinking about it for three weeks.Not the way the parking lot had asked him to.Slower than that.The way a man kisses a woman he intends to keep — unhurried, unhalving, his thumb at the line of her jaw, his other hand finding her waist and settling there because settling there was the answer to a question he’d been asking himself for twenty-one days.
She kissed him back.Both her hands on the front of his shirt, fisted in the cotton, holding him in place as if she expected him to recalibrate and pull away.
He didn’t.
When they broke, neither of them stepped back.His forehead against hers.Her breath warm against his collarbone.The kitchen light buzzing overhead, the dish towel forgotten on the counter, the rest of the house quiet around them.
“You said stay,” he said.
“I said stay.”
“I’m staying.”
* * *
They moved to the couch.
Not the way he’d expected to.Not the way every cell in his body was suggesting.He sat on one end and she curled into the other and they faced each other across the middle cushion, knees almost touching, the wine bottle and two glasses on the coffee table between them and the ordinary clutter of her life around them — a paperback face down on the arm of the couch, a folded throw blanket, a coaster ring on the wood that said she put down a glass without thinking about it.
“I’m not staying tonight,” he said.
“I know.”
“You said stay.I said I’d stay.That was about the kitchen.”
“I know.”Her fingers traced the rim of her wineglass.“I’m not asking you to stay tonight.I knew that when I said it.”
“Monday.”
“Monday.”
“And I want a clear head Monday morning.The kind of clear head that comes from a bad night’s sleep alone, not the kind that comes from a good night’s sleep with you.”
“Flattering.”
“It’s the truth.Tell me you don’t want the same thing.”
She didn’t answer right away.She looked at him for a long moment over the rim of her glass.Then she set the glass down on the coffee table and leaned across the middle cushion and kissed him again — briefer than the kitchen, less question, more punctuation.
“Go home,” she said when she pulled back.“Set your alarm.Sleep badly.Be useful Monday morning.”
“You’re telling me to leave.”
“I’m telling you the same thing you were going to tell yourself.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
She walked him to the door.She didn’t hand him his keys; he’d already picked them up off the counter where he’d set them when he came in.He turned in the doorway.She was leaning against the jamb with one hand on the frame above her head, the porch light catching the side of her face, her hair a little disordered from his hand at her neck a few minutes ago and her mouth still soft from the kiss before that.
