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He still calls it magic.
Heat builds up behind my eyes. My throat is so raw not even swallowing helps. I’m exhausted and tired, and I want to shuffle back against the fence and sleep, comforted by those words.
By all the words Lyle has exchanged with me.
Scott takes the light end of the fir and, ducking my face towards my chest, I steer us and the fir through the neighbour’s yard and back home.
Chapter Sixteen
It starts as a walk, as self-contemplation, but suddenly I’m back in Lyle’s garden, gazing at all the shades of night-time blue. I turn towards the house. The living room is lit candle-yellow, and Lyle is there, on the phone, pacing.
He says something, and after a moment, the curves of his cheeks lift.
I jog up to the back door and knock. I want to be closer. See that smile better.
Lyle’s steps creak. He barely has the door open when I squeeze in. He takes me in with a blinking gaze, and I feel our moment from yesterday punching into me all over again:
“Has something happened? Is it Jordy?”
“It’s you.”
“Because I left you this morning?”
He meets my eye. “I have to let you go.”
We both suffered one-sided attraction with Robin. It’s painful and self-pitying, and Lyle doesn’t want to go through it again.
He broke up our friendship because he was starting to.
The one he’d been observing for clues they felt the same way was me. He began avoiding our Friday nights because they felt too much like dates. That’s why he drowned his feelings in alcohol.
I was making him hopeful. And miserable.
I have to let you go.
His voice had cracked.
My heart had too.
He swallows, and lowers the phone from his ear.
I press him against the wall and kiss him, and it feels nothing like I thought it would. But at the same time, I think I knew it would be like this. That I would feel it everywhere, and it would loosen all my muscles and make my heart thump and my blood fizz; that I’d feel desperate, and hungry, and peaceful and safe. That it would feel like . . . relief.
He stares at me. “Jordy,” he says into the phone, “something’s come up.” When I make to give him his space, his free hand clutches the back of my head and keeps me there. “See you for Christmas lunch. We’ll go to Robin’s together.”
He drops the phone. It clatters against the floor, possibly broken, but Lyle doesn’t even notice.
He draws me close. His hair is damp from a recent shower, and it tickles where it touches my forehead. His lips brush mine, tentative, exploring. Giving me time to change my mind.
I press my mouth more firmly against his. A summer breeze blows the night scents of the garden through the open door. His breath hitches, and his heart bangs hard under my splayed fingers. It’s like the moment the morning sun first touches a tulip flower and it relaxes. There’s a nurturing rhythm between us, something so profoundly comfortable, that makes us want to open up.
All our conversations, our ups and downs.
All setting roots down for . . . this.
Lyle breaks the kiss a half inch. Our foreheads press together, our noses tap; he murmurs, “Explain.”
I sneak another kiss. “Scott’s with Robin. He’s convincing him of my plan to adopt Dusky on his behalf.”
“And?”
“When I left, he was coming around.”
He rolls his eyes and motions between us. “Explain this.”
I take his smooth hand and link it with mine.
I squeeze tightly. “I don’t know if I can.” His hazel eyes flash. I try again. “I mean I don’t know how it happened. I guess it’s been . . . growing? Since I met you, really. So gradually I didn’t realise, and then suddenly it’s right in front of me, eight feet tall.”
A whisper, “What is?”
“Magic. Our magic.”
He looks like he’s struggling not to yank me into another kiss, but when I dip my head he laughs and holds me at arm’s length. “Keep talking.”
“The magic of seeing all sides of someone, the contentment in that. It hit, it hurt, when you . . . The thought of not seeing you again . . .”
It twists my stomach. Makes me ill.
“I want to see you, talk to you. I want to kiss you—”
He kisses me.
My gasp is soft, and he whispers, “I kept telling myself I was into Robin, but . . . butterflies.”
I laugh. “You were so good at it all, so damn perfect. And those suits . . .”
He sighs. “You looked glorious. I wanted to help you out of them.”
“I should’ve reflected more. My sub-conscious even discarded the pillow barricade.”
“I thought I’d done that! I was mortified.”
“Not you. I saw them on my side first and kicked them over to yours.”
Lyle laughs. “I really wanted to dance with you at the wedding.”
