Page 29 of Soft Serve

"One more chance," he says. "Tell me to go."

I look at him in the dark, at the restraint still present in his jaw, and the stillness of his hands, and look at the man who has been careful with me in every way I needed without being asked, and I make my choice.

I reach for him.

My hands find his chest, the warmth of him immediate through the fabric, his heartbeat under my palms quick and honest and matching mine, and I feel the restraint go out of him like a tide releasing, not violently, not recklessly.

Completely.

His mouth finds mine, and this is nothing like the dock earlier, nothing like the careful first kiss that held itself back from everything it wanted to be. This is the version underneath that one, the one that was always waiting, and it moves through me like something I've been cold without knowing.

His hands are at my waist, drawing me in, and I go, closing the last of the distance between us, and I feel the sound he makes low in his chest when I do. That sound does something to me that I'm not going to be able to unfeel.

"Paloma," he says against my mouth.

"Don't stop," I tell him.

He doesn't stop.

His hands move, slowly, learning the shape of me with the same quality of attention he brings to everything, thorough, like he has all night and intends to use it. I pull at his shirt, and he lets me, and when my hands find skin, I feel him inhale sharply, a small, honest sound that lands in my chest and stays there.

We move together toward the far end of the dock where the shadows are deepest, the water dark on both sides, the world narrowed to this place and these hands and the warm weight of him and the night air on my skin.

He pulls back just enough to look at me, his hands stilling, checking, and I understand that he will stop if I ask him to, that this man who negotiates everything will not negotiate this, and that knowledge loosens something in me that has been braced since the moment he walked into my shop.

"I'm sure," I tell him before he asks.

Something moves through his expression, relief and want tangled together, and he kisses me again, deeper this time, his hands moving with new intention. I stop thinking about costs, consequences, and the shape of my mornings, and I just feel.

And Charles takes his time with me in the dark, like I am something worth being careful with, and I let him. I stop holding any part of myself back from it.

I let go completely. Afterward, the quiet is different. It’s not empty, not awkward, and not the quiet of two people calculating what they've done and preparing their respective retreats. It’s just still.

He's sitting with his back against the dock railing, and I'm beside him, close enough that our shoulders touch, the night air warm on my skin, everything slow.

His hand finds mine in the dark. It’s not a claim, nor a statement. It’s just his fingers lacing through mine, like it's a thing we've always done. I look at our hands, and I look out at the water.

"You okay?" he asks, low and quiet.

"Yes," I say.

And the thing is, I am.

I lean my head back against the railing and look up at the stars.

"This changed things," I say.

"Yes," he says.

"I'm not sorry," I say.

His hand tightens slightly around mine. "Neither am I."

We sit there while the night settles around us and the embers die completely on the bank and the lake holds its steady quiet patience, and I don't think about tomorrow or the document or the board or the town or any of the hundred things that are going to need thinking about.

I think about my grandmother's voice telling me that the things worth having are the ones that frighten you a little.

I think about a photograph above a kitchen door.