“Sure. I gotcha. I’m going to step outside and smoke. I think that would make me feel better,” he said, like he was asking for her permission. And something about him doing that made him seem so small in the moment, even though he wasn’t.
Coping mechanism: aha! Cigarettes, as suspected.
He stood and touched his pocket, went in and found the treasure of an almost-empty soft pack.
“Okay. Whatever you need. I didn’t know you smoked. I thought, maybe, but you didn’t smell like it, and you haven’t smoked since we met. Have you? Maybe you smoked while I was sleeping?” she asked. She looked up at him, awash with the absurdity of having her feelings hurt because she didn’t know this one specific thing about him. She knew absolutely nothing about him outside of the little he’d told her. And those could’ve been lies. But the purloined letters—which he hadn’t noticed were missing yet, or at least hadn’t mentioned—those weren’t lies.
Before she fell asleep the night before, she’d tried Google again. Searched for his name alongside Clementine, Kentucky, but found nothing about him. She’d tried Emmett and Christine and Brenna. Tried them all together, paired up—it didn’t matter. With no last names to search for, there were no hits, no news, no websites, no social media.
Emmett shook a cigarette out of the pack. “No. I didn’t smoke while you were sleeping,” he said, teary and sniffing, the cigarette bobbing in his mouth.
“Do you mind if I smoke with you?”
“Do you smoke?”
She shook her head; she hadn’t had a cigarette since college.
He motioned for her to follow him, and the waiter returned with their shots. Emmett stepped to the table again, slipped the cigarette behind his ear, and downed the gold as if it were water. Tallie downed hers, too, feeling enormously guilty and irresponsible but also loving the burn.
*
Outside, Emmett lit the cigarette and took a drag before he held it out for her. He French-inhaled as he leaned against the restaurant brick. The French inhale was a luxury, although nothing about the afternoon was fancy.
The sky: hoary and mizzling.
The air: apple, tinged with grilled beef and onions.
The cider aroma was from the coffee shop next to the restaurant and smelled like that from the middle of September until the day after Thanksgiving, when it was swapped for pepperminty Christmas coffee.
Tallie could’ve told Emmett she was a licensed therapist, that TLC Counseling Services had been her forever dream, how proud she was of it, how it would soon grow to house two more therapists. But knowing that would change how he interacted with her. She made a living keeping other people’s secrets, and it was exhausting. Isolating. She had secrets like everyone else, and Joel had kept his. Emmett was keeping his, too, so why shouldn’t she? It was finally her turn.
The danger: a frothing aphrodisiac.
A secret shock of lust ran through her. Inside the restaurant, Emmett had shaken the cigarette out of the pack and put it between his lips with this kind of handsome, loose motion that reminded her of Steve McQueen, and she loved Steve McQueen, found him irresistible. Those hypermasculine old-Hollywood types smoked constantly in the classic movies she loved so much—huffed and puffed like dragons. She wished she could see Emmett shake his cigarette out again. Or that she’d recorded a short video on her phone so she could watch it on a loop before she went to sleep.
She took an extra breath and let herself imagine being in bed with him. A tonic of flickers, this fantasy. What did he smell like underneath his flannel forest of clothes? Like the flooding autumn river filled with leaves, cut with camphor? White soap, sweat, and one drop of gasoline? Cigarettes braided with wood smoke? She imagined his hot, rhythmic weight on top of her. His face between her legs, hers between his. Him behind her, hairy and grunting as he came and pulsed. The two of them, feverish. Wilding.
*
It’d been over a year since the last time she and Joel had been together, and a month since she’d been with anyone—she’d had I’m recently divorced and have no clue what I want right now sex with Nicodemus Tate. Nico. They’d dated off and on in college for years. Back then, they’d floated away from each other instead of snapping apart, and in the past, she’d always had excellent, efficient sex with Nico. As excellent and efficient as a Target run—everything she needed in the right place, and occasionally there was an extra treat on clearance, making the whole trip more than worth it. But the post-divorce sex with Nico? Absolute rockets. The kind of orgasms that made her go deaf and dizzy for two full minutes afterward.