Page 60 of That Birthday in Barbados
He nods and looks at me as if he’s seeing me for the first time.
“Ah, sorry. Probably more than you wanted to know about this wine. I’m kind of a geek about knowing the story behind things I like.”
“Actually, I like that you’re a geek about the things you like.”
We stand there in the middle of his kitchen, and I’m overcome with a desire to know him better, to answer my own questions about the life he has made for himself here.
He turns away, sets his glass on the counter and retrieves a spoon to stir the pasta, his back to me. And somehow, I know that he has felt my questions. And all but said the words. Please don’t ask.
Chapter Twenty-six
“If you are in a beautiful place where you can enjoy sunriseand sunset, then you are living like a lord.”
? Nathan Phillips
Anders
ONCE YOU’VE ACCEPTED the inevitability of death, I mean the inevitability of your own death, living becomes a tricky thing.
When the doctors at Sanoviv finally declared my body cancer-free over two years ago, I had no idea how to navigate the road back to living without the fear that any day could be my last. Death had defined my life long enough that I didn’t know how to expect more.
Of course, it could be the last day for any of us, at any time. There’s nothing to say that my heart won’t stop beating in the middle of the night. That I won’t step off a curb in front of a moving bus. I do believe that when it’s my time, it’s my time. But apparently, it isn’t yet. And I wonder on a regular basis if some part of me is afraid to live like I have forever, if that might in some way tempt fate and make it change its mind on the u-turn it gave me after I went to Sanoviv.
I’ve just stepped back into the house to turn the speakers on outside. I stand now inside the French doors, watching Catherine sit at the edge of the pool, her feet dangling in the water. Her silhouette against the dim lighting around the pool is beautiful, her long blonde hair a curtain against her back. She dips a hand into the surface of the water, lifting it high and letting it trail through her fingers. She does this over and over again, the simple motion cathartic to watch. The moon is large and yellow-orange tonight, and it casts a perfect arc of light across her figure. Staring at her, I am lit with a flame of desire like nothing I have felt in a very long time. With my illness, all physical desire dissolved inside me, and I had no reason to believe it would ever return.
It did when I metCeleste, but it was always marked by reserve, fear, I guess. And so I held some piece of myself back, as if I were living as an imposter, the old me gone forever.
Catherine turns, sees me, holds out her hand. I am torn between a want so strong it is as if it has wrapped its roots around my heart and a terror equally capable of robbing me of all courage to give this thing between us a chance.
I step outside, close the door behind me, walk across the travertine and sit down next to her. The water in the pool glistens beneath the moonlight.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey.”
She studies me for several long seconds, and says, “I can go back to the hotel now if you’d like for me to.”
Something strong and innate tells me I would be wise to agree that it’s time for that. But what I know more than anything right now is that I don’t want her to. I want her to stay. “A stronger man would make that happen.”
“You are a strong man.”
“Not when it comes to you,” I admit in a barely audible admission.
She lets out a soft breath, as if she has been holding it, waiting for my answer. She puts her hand over mine, presses her palm against my skin. “There’s something you’re not telling me,” she says. “I can feel it.”
Now is the time to confess my history, the truth about my life here. I want to tell her. I need to tell her, but I don’t know how to do so in a way that won’t cause her to get up and run, as any logical person would do.
“Are you married?” The three word question pops out of her as if she has wantedto ask for some time, but wouldn’t allow herself to do so.
The irony does not escape me. My quiet laugh startles her. I shake my head. “No, Catherine. I’m not married.”
Relief dances across her expression, as if this is the greatest thing she fears, the worst thing she could think of as a reason not to be with me. And given her history, maybe it would be. But the real reason is far worse.
She runs her hand up my arm, leans in closer, her mouth scant inches from mine. “Oh. Okay. That is really good to hear.”
The words whisper across my lips, igniting a fresh heat inside me, the heat of desire, of need, of the kind of want I haven’t known for a very long time. Want based on a connection I’ve never imagined actually finding.
The beat of the music lifts my heartbeat soI feel it against the wall of my chest. I could ruin all of this with a few select words, blow it right out of the realm of possibility. Should I? Am I wrong not to?
