Page 57 of Summer Romance

Ethan pulls into my driveway right after they’ve left, and I’m a little frazzled getting into the car. I don’t know whether he’s going to act intense or casual. I put Ferris on the backseat with Brenda, and he hands me a paper cup of coffee. “Thank you,” I say, and that doesn’t really cover it. Bringing another person a cup of coffee saysI’m thinking about how your day is going to go. Or at a minimum,I want you to also have this thing that I’m going to enjoy. I am weirdly moved by this.

We start driving the half mile to his house in silence. “It’s cooled down a little,” I say. “I mean the weather.”

He smiles at me. “That’s true. What else can you tell me about the weather?”

I smack him on the shoulder and look out the window. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to be talking about.”

“Well my house is a mess and yours is not. So now that I know what you’re capable of, I own you.”

Ah, casual. I take a sip of my coffee—milk, no sugar—and relax. “We could finish the kitchen in one day, if we really focused.”

He gives me a side glance that is not at all casual. “Let’s see how that goes.”

We pull intothe driveway and take the dogs through the house and into the backyard. I start to open his cabinets.“Now, the idea here,” I say, “is to clean this kitchen out in such a way that it looks like we didn’t clean it out. You’ll walk in and think: Wow, this is such a huge kitchen, it has room for all of this stuff and then some. But really, we will have thrown out half the stuff.”

“Tricky,” he says. He’s right behind me and he’s said it into my ear. The feel of his breath there and the too-close sound of his voice send heat throughout my body. I think he knows this because he keeps talking, right into my ear. “Where do we start?”

His hands are on my hips and his mouth is on my neck. I turn around and his lips catch mine. He lifts me onto the counter. I run my fingers through his hair and wrap my legs around his back to bring him closer. I have the sense that the world has shrunk, and the space where his mouth is on mine is my only point of awareness. I hear a voice speak from far away.

“What?” he says, barely breaking the kiss.

I kiss him again. “What, what?”

“You said something about not the kitchen.”

“Out loud?” I am delirious. “Yes. Someplace else,” I say, and kiss him again.

He kisses me for so long that I almost forget we are making a location change. “Okay,” he says.

He pulls me off the counter and leads me by the hand to a downstairs guest room. Really, this is an unusually large house. The curtains are pulled and, happily, he makes no move to turn on the lights. The reality of this situation—naked in daylight—is threatening to ruin the perfection of this situation, and I try to quiet the thoughts that arebubbling up. Mainly,how did I not take five minutes to choose better underwear before jumping into Iris’s jersey hunt? How am I standing here in my Costco underwear—the dowdy blue ones!—on this particular day. Note to self: better underwear is self-care.

“You okay?” he asks, taking my other hand.

And I kiss him again, which is the answer. As long as I am surrounded by the taste and smell of him, the feel of him running his hands over my back, everything feels natural. There is nothing in this moment that can stop me from undressing him and pulling him on top of me on the bed.

“Costco?” he says into my neck.

“What?” I am so breathless that nothing is making sense.

“Ali, you literally just said something about Costco. Out loud.” He’s lying on top of me but has pulled away so that I can see him smile. “You are some kind of freaky woman.”

I want to explain, but the last thing I want here is an intermission. “Forget it. It’s my underwear. I’ll tell you later.”

I pull my T-shirt over my head and he stills. He looks at me like I’m art, like I’m made of something so beautiful that it’s going to take his breath away. I pull him back down on top of me, because I want to feel the weight of him, his skin on mine. He kisses me and whispers “Ali” into my mouth, “Ali” into my neck. The sound of his voice and the feel of his hands running down my sides, down my hips, have me desperate. Everything about us together feels so right that I’m glad we’ve waited to be back in my reality, in the light of day. I would not want to miss a second of this.

“Please don’t change your mind,” I hear myself say.

“It’s too late for that,” he says. “No turning back.”

Ever since I met him he has been calling me back to myself, reminding me that I matter. He’s that way now, but with his body, listening, responding, following up. I wind my arms and legs around him, and I have this feeling as we make love that I am being discovered. Maybe more than discovered—I am unearthed. I am no longer weighed down; I am no longer on this earth.

It’s three o’clockand we have not gotten out of bed except to get water and to open the curtains so we could see the dogs lazing by the pool. I am collapsed on his chest and he is stroking my hair. There is nothing between our bodies, as if we’ve burned through whatever membrane was devised to separate people. “I can’t believe I get to spend the whole day with you,” he says. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

“You did plenty,” I say, breathless.

And he laughs.

My head is on his chest and I’m running my hand along the ridges of his stomach.

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