Page 55 of The Ripple Effect

When I’ve redone Brent’s deliberately sloppy mat roll—it’s a start, at least—I find Lyle waiting by the pavilion entrance.

I hoped he’d still be here, yet I feel strangely bashful. “You have a lovely touch,” I tell him, fingers drifting to my right hip, where I still feel his ring.

A patient once said that to me when I was a medical student inexpertly examining her lymph nodes. I immediately changed my palpation, trying to be more clinical. Alovely touchfelt like something people would demand whether or not I wanted to give it, or—worst of all—something they’d deliberately misconstrue. Patients already took advantage of how little clout Ihad, without the power “Doctor” would lend to my name. Especially the male patients, who grabbed me and made jokes about sponge baths and “accidentally” pulled their hospital gowns up so their genitals sagged out the bottom.

It seemed there was always someone who wanted to take something I hadn’t offered. I probably made the only choice I had when I turned myself into someone a little too mechanical. Someone not quite human enough.

I can’t change the choices I had then. But maybe I have different ones now. Maybe I can be strong and easy at the same time, like the river.

Rosy apples bloom in his cheeks. “That’s a nice thing to say.”

“You’re a great instructor. I’m sorry I never came before—”

“Hey,” he says, the side of one index finger inviting my chin to lift, until the upward angle of my face matches the downward angle of his, eyes to eyes, everything lining up. If we were two halves of a broken bone, an orthopedic surgeon would call us “anatomic”—perfectly aligned. One day, they’ll have to look hard to know the bone was ever fractured.

“It’s a new day, Stellar J. You don’t have to apologize for anything that happened yesterday.”

“You were right, though. Last night. We need to be sure, and I’m not. Not yet. But I want you to know—every time I touched you this week, I meant it. It wasn’t meaningless. Not to me.”

All those moments of contact I couldn’t get from anyone else—it wasn’t because they were ways you touch when you’re in love. It was because they were ways I touchedhim.

“Hm,” he responds, more a breath than a word. His eyes flick to the floor, then right back to my face, as if I’m too bright to stare at for long.

I know what I want this moment to mean. This can’t be for the guests. It has to be for us.

“Your move,” I say. It’s his boundary; I can’t be the one who pushes it.

He steps back. At first I think he’s letting go, but when he perches on the windowsill, holding out a hand, I understand he’s keeping the moment together. Giving me a chance to heal it.

I step between his knees, tucking them on either side of my thighs. I hover my hand in front of his chest. “Can I?”

At his nod, I trace the decal on his brown T-shirt. It’s a bear’s footprint, toe beans etched with the rings of an ancient tree, a seedling rising from each. It feels contained yet limitless, exactly like the sensation I have as I lean forward, not quite letting my lips touch his.

“Lyle,” I whisper, watching like a doctor. Watching like a lover who knows the double flutter of his jugular, the flare of his pupils, the heat that would rise in the hollow of his palms if I wrapped my hands around his.

He leans forward the last indefinable, dizzying distance.

The way he tastes is a revelation, something inexpressibly Lyle underneath Earl Grey and honey. It feels right to go as slowly as he would go, ask as gently with my mouth as he would ask with his, let go of giving and taking so I can put everything intofeeling.Thisfeeling, like I’m coming alive, body and soul.

The heat of our first kiss meets the balance of this one: I give and am given, I take and am taken. He’s huge against my body, taking up space yet making a place for me, powerful enough to give his power away.

I breathe in the tang of glacial melt that’s softly touched a million roots, picking up their steady evergreen patience; there’s skin and zinc and biodegradable shampoo as well. He smells like adventure and home. My body surges with ripples of sensation, every inch of skin feeding a stream that swells to a river of wanting and needing and not quite having.

He makes a sound, barely above a whisper, but I feel its vibration through my sports bra, the rumble of impatience short and sharp as he fumbles with the hem of my tank top. He’s soft and rough at the same time, the smooth skin of his shoulders under my hands a tingling contrast to the callused fingers that blaze a path across my ribs, cup me over my sports bra, squeeze until I gasp into his mouth. Against my stomach, the evidence of his desire presses into me when I push closer.

Briefly, wildly, I consider whether we have enough yoga mats for me to be on the bottom without my back sporting telltale floor marks.

“Oh! Sorry, you two. It’s just me. I have a semi-urgent issue to discuss when you have a minute.”

The screen door slams behind Sloane before Lyle can pull his hand out from under my top, tugging the hem down as he goes. I’m not sure when my eyes closed, but they pop open inches from his laughing gaze. When I pull back, my favorite smile teases his lips.

Last time, I wanted to be discovered in the act. I should have been more careful what I wished for.

“I’ll…” I swallow, still tingling, not ready to let the moment go. I tug my shorts away from the ache between my legs at the exact same moment he adjusts the front of his shorts to make room for what I’ve done to him.

“I’ll speak with Sloane,” I say, backing up half a step to glance at my watch. “We can still ring the bell at ten if we move.”

His eyelids are heavy. He’s not being very yogic about his fast, uneven breaths. The situation in his shorts is not improving, and now he’s smiling like he caught me checking out said situation.

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