Page 66 of Given Our History

“Where’s The President?” Dad asks.

“She ran to her room as soon as we got here,” I say. “Or my room, maybe.” She’d mentioned something about wanting to go through my old clothes, which my parents never had the heart to donate. Apparently the low-rise jeans I swore I’d never wear again are back in style.

“The sewing room, you mean,” Mom corrects me—never mind that I’m supposed to be sleeping in it. We packed our bags to stay overnight rather than make the four-hour drive back to Irving after dinner. There was still an extra bed, last I checked.

Thanksgiving dinner consists of Maryland blue crab and corn on the cob, boiled with a generous helping of Old Bay Seasoning and served with melted butter. It’s just the five of us; my grandmother refuses to leave her house in Knoxville these days. Things are a little stiff, at first, but my parents ease up on Teddy once we all start eating, and by the end of the evening they’ve dropped their line of questioning entirely, just happy to have somebody here for the holiday. Mom serves her red velvet cupcakes for dessert.

My parents know better than to bother trying to insist that Teddy sleep on the couch, but it’s more awkward telling them good night, knowing that they know damn well we’re going to be sleeping in my old room together. A part of me wishes they would’ve just pretended to be old-fashioned about things and saved us all the weirdness. I shut the bedroom door and lock it behind us. There’s a plastic organizer full of sewing supplies and a brand-new Singer sitting on the dresser, still in the box, but otherwise, it’s like a room frozen in time. The walls are papered in album covers I printed off Photobucket and the bookcase in the corner overflows with used books, colorful sticky flags still peeking out of tattered pages.

“They seemed to warm up to me again,” Teddy says, “after a while.”

“Yeah.” I flop onto the bed. It’s full-sized, a generous bed for a teenager but not quite large enough to comfortably accommodate two adults, but we’ll have to make do.

“What did you tell them? About everything that happened, I mean.”

“Nothing really,” I say. “Just a … rough outline, I guess.” It’s an evasive answer, but I don’t feel like getting into what all my parents were privy to—Dad especially. I called him and broke down six years ago, when I realized that this wasn’t just another road bump in our friendship, when it seemed I’d lost Teddy for good.

Teddy sits on the edge of the bed and bends over to kiss me. His hand skates up my arm. I’m still wearing my sweater and jeans; I need to change into pajamas. “I have a lot to make up for,” he says against my lips.

“We have all the time in the world.”

He draws back a little, his gaze softening as it flits around my face—not searching for answers, but just looking, like he means to memorize me. As though either of us could ever forget what the other looks like. His eyes snag on my necklace and he takes it into his hand, polishing the nickel with a swipe of his thumb. “I can’t believe you still wear this thing.”

“I never stopped.”

His gaze rises to meet mine. In those three words, I’ve told him everything, bared my soul. We’re not talking about my necklace anymore. And in three more words, he confirms what I already know: “Neither did I.”

My breathing hitches. “We’re supposed to be taking things slow.”

“It’s been seventeen years.” His eyes drop back to my lips. “It doesn’t get much slower than us.”

With that, he kisses me, slow and oh so tender. He shifts over me, his body a pleasant weight. I pop the button on my jeans and shimmy them down my body until they’re around my ankles, kicking free. He reaches for me, his fingertips tracing the lace trim of my underwear before he inches up to the hem of my sweater and lifts it over my head, tousling my hair. I’m left in my bra and underwear. He kisses me again, his tongue flicking over mine, and I arch my body against him.

“This doesn’t seem very fair,” I point out, breathless. “You still have all your clothes on.”

He answers by kissing lower, skimming my jawline and trailing down between my breasts before he nudges my knees wider and positions his head between my legs. I lean back on my hands, watching as he tugs the fabric of my underwear to the side. When he puts his mouth on me, I have to bite my lip to keep from making noise. His fingers press into my thighs to keep me from squirming.

Pressure builds and ebbs inside of me, but I know I can’t come like this, so after a moment I drag him back up to my mouth, kissing him hard. He fumbles with his belt, and then with the button on his pants before freezing with a hand on the zipper. “Fuck,” he mutters, pressing his forehead against mine. “I forgot to bring a condom.”

I nudge his hand aside, reaching into his boxers and wrapping my fingers around him. “Birth control,” is all I say.

His eyes, normally so serious and pensive, are swallowed in a sort of haze, but he’s lucid enough to ask, “Are you sure?” even as his hips seem to move almost against his will, thrusting into my hand.

We’ve talked about this in passing; I know there’s no one else. I nod. We might have promised each other to take things slow, but right now, I’m pretty sure I’m sick of slow. I drag his hips toward me, our mouths tangled up in each other, and then he’s pushing inside me, both gasping at the new sensation.

After that, there’s no taking it slow. He rocks into me again, swallowing the sound that escapes me, and then again, his pace quickening. Clumsy fingers find my bra straps and tug them over my shoulders, pushing my bra down around my waist so that he can cup my bare breasts. His hands skate over my body, like he wants to touch me everywhere, all at once. They settle on my thighs, his fingers sinking into soft flesh, angling my hips toward his.

The sensation is too much; I can’t think. There’s nothing but him inside of me, and then he’s touching me. I left my vibrator at home, but my thoughts are so wrapped up in him that I forget to remember that I can’t come without it. I’m completely vulnerable with him right now, and he’s patient enough to bring me to the edge. My arms are around his back, hands scrabbling for purchase in his shirt. And before I know what’s happening, I come undone. I muffle the strangled cry that escapes me with his shoulder, and his thrusts grow more erratic, like he was waiting for me to come first, regardless of whether I’d insisted I couldn’t. He catches my mouth in a rough kiss and we collapse into each other, our energy spent.

Afterward, we lie naked in bed together. He plants a soft kiss on my shoulder. “I love you,” he says, barely more than a whisper.

“I love you, too.” The words hang between us for a moment, so much more real now that we’ve spoken them out loud. A part of me has always known, even in the intervening years when I tried to convince myself that he was a man I had loved, past tense. And when he showed up this semester, I tried to tell myself that we were strangers. That I couldn’t let myself fall back in love with him. But there was no falling, this time around—there was only remembering how to love him, a sort of muscle memory. “Where do we go from here?” I ask softly.

He pops up on an elbow, tracing the contours of my body with a hand. “I’ll stay through the holidays, head back to Pittsburgh to put in my resignation at Carnegie, tie up any loose ends. And then I suppose I’ll see about finding a position here in Maryland.” There’s a pause, and then he adds, “If you’re set on the tenure thing, that is.”

I adjust my head on the pillow, frowning at him. “You keep making those little comments.”

“I’ll support you, whatever the decision,” he says quickly. “I just can’t help wondering what a Tudor historian is doing in Maryland.”