Dolly All the Time(64)

When he’s back, we are nothing but skin and sheets and breath. His fingers tease the insides of my legs, and I nearly black out. My body wants this more than it’s ever wanted anything, like I feel a burning where I want him to touch me. We are both in a fever. A mumbling, extrasensory fever. I can’t remember the last time I had sex, and when he’s finally inside me, his hands steadying my hips, I melt the rest of the way into the fantasy that is Stewart Whitfield.

“That was a hell of a kiss,” he says after. I’m resting on his chest and look up to find him smiling at me. “I would sound like a creep if I told you how often I’ve thought about doing that.”

“Then I’m a creep too,” I say, and run my hand down his chest. I do not want to wake from this dream, but because I anticipate the big bucket of ice-cold water coming my way, I ask. “Did you get it out of your system?”

He tilts my head up to him, and his expression is serious. “Not even close.”



* * *





I wake up naked in bed alone. For a second I think I’ve imagined the whole thing. The fire, the Post, Stewart, all of it. But then Stewart’s in the doorway in his underwear with two mugs of tea, and the dam breaks on my feelings. His expression is all business as he navigates our clothes on the floor to deliver the tea to my bedside table. I sit up and arrange the sheet like a strapless dress.

“There was no milk, but I found honey,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say.

He puts his mug down on his bedside table, and I wonder for the first time why I have two. There has never been a person on the other side of this bed. He climbs under the covers and lies on his side, watching me.

“How is it?” he asks.

“Good,” I say. “But you didn’t have to do that.”

“That night on the boat, I thought you looked so beautiful drinking your tea. The way your eyes dipped and you blew on it as you sipped.”

I smile into my tea. I can’t count how many times he told me I was beautiful last night. My lips, my neck, my feet. The way he’s looking at me right now makes me almost believe it.

“I’m not saying I was planning this, like a predator,” he says.

I laugh. “What a relief.” I put my tea down and lie on my side, facing him. He immediately pulls me into his arms, and I’m back in the dream.

“I just mean I was thinking that someone who saw you drink tea every morning would be lucky.” He brushes my hair off my cheek and tucks it behind my ear. “I’m lucky today.”

I reach up and touch his face. There’s a light stubble there now and it’s just for me. By the time he belongs to the world again, he’ll be clean shaven and he won’t be biting his bottom lip the way he is now.

“What happens now?” I ask.

“Whatever you want.”

What a thing to say. What a thing to believe. My heart aches for my younger self, who thought the princess got to keep the gentle man and the horse.

“Whatever you want,” he says again. His eyes are smiling at my face like it’s his favorite thing. “Except never doing this again, that’s not something I’m willing to agree to.”

My smile blooms, relief mostly.

“Tell me,” he says. His hand grazes my side and rests on my hip.

“I want this,” I say. The words come out jagged. I don’t know why that was so hard to say. I feel cracked open by having said it and he’s kissing me now, entering into that open space. I pull away. “But this feels very close,” I say.

“What does that mean? I want to be close.” He pulls my leg over his.

“Yes, but not just sex.” I look around my room and at the white curtains I sewed for the off-center window. “I’ve actually never had sex here, first of all. But that’s not it. This feels closer than sex, the way we were last night.” I stop myself from explaining how I want to climb inside him and wrap myself around him all at once. That making love to him last night changed me in some fundamental way. I don’t think I can go back to giving someone a little bit of myself.

He takes my hand in his and raises it to his lips. “This definitely feels closer than sex. And if you told me you never wanted to do this again, I’d still want to see you every day. That’s the strongest instinct I have, actually. To be close to you.”

I find that impossible to believe, though it’s exactly how I feel. I am terrified to trust myself here. I don’t know why ecstatic and terrified so often occupy the same space.

“Let’s stay close,” he says. He takes my face in his hands and kisses me, just a tiny kiss, the kind that says something different from I want to keep your clothes off all day. He places a thumb on my bottom lip and smiles. “I’d be honored if you’d raise your expectations for me.”





Chapter 26





“When you said breakfast, I figured you meant before your swim.” The voice comes from the kitchen as Stewart steps in from the garage. I’m behind him in my Audrey Hepburn dress because I brought all the clothes I like to Whitfield, and there was nothing I wanted to change into.

“I’m sorry, Helena,” Stewart says. “This is my girlfriend, Dolly.” The way he says it now makes it sound true. Or maybe he’s always said it this way, and now it just feels true.