Page 120 of Girl in the Water
“Don’t get me wrong, I want to.” He caressed her cheek. “More than anything.”
“Then why?”
“You’re drunk.”
“Not that drunk.” The beginnings of a smile knocked the hurt off her face. “As long as we do it lying down.”
She was killing him.
“If we are to take this step, I’d prefer both of us completely sober.”
“When?”
“In the morning.”
Her smile grew, leaving room for nothing else in his field of vision or in his heart.
He watched her, hopelessly sunk. “If you still feel the same in the morning.”
“I will.” She kept the goofy grin for another moment, then her gaze grew more serious, more curious. “Why now? What made you change your mind?”
“I don’t have the energy to keep denying that I’m hopelessly in love with you. Worrying about you all these years wore me down. I didn’t realize how much you took out of me.”
She poked him with her elbow, but she was grinning.
“I came to a realization tonight,” he said, turning serious.
“I’m the best, and you don’t want the rest?”
She was a cute drunk, he had to give her that. “I’ve known that for years.”
She looked indescribably pleased.
“I used to think,” he said, “that because I saved you, if you gave yourself to me, it’d be like a payment, which wouldn’t be right. You don’t owe me anything.”
She opened her mouth, but he put a finger over her soft lips.
“But tonight,” he told her, “I realized that it’s the other way around. You saved me. If you hadn’t come into my life, I’d be dead by now. I would have picked the wrong fight, or I would have dissolved my liver in whiskey. I’m here today because of you. No doubt about it.”
She looked thoughtful, in a tipsy, hazy kind of way, but when she moved his finger and spoke, the words came out sure and clear. “If I saved your life, and, as you say, you owe me…I’m taking it. I’m taking everything.”
“I’m yours to take. In the morning.”
She looked grumbly.
“Morning will come faster than you’ll be ready for, believe me. Hangovers are my area of expertise.”
“Hmpf.”
“Okay.” He turned the light off. Then he tucked her against him. “Now go to sleep.”
For about half a minute, she was still. Then she said, “I feel like an anaconda is squirming inside my stomach.”
“And that’s why you’re never going to get drunk like this again.”
“Merda,” she said with feeling.
“Monte de merda,” he agreed.
