Page 63 of Long Way Home

Her shoulders went up to her ears, but she didn’t turn around. “What? Oh, you know what I just remembered?” Not pausing for breath, she grabbed a knife from the butcher block and answered her own question. “Lennon was telling me about this trail ride that sounds amazing. I was thinking⁠—”

“Lila,” I said again. “Look at me.”

She kept hacking away at the broccoli. For a moment I thought she was going to ignore me. But then she muttered something under her breath that I couldn’t hear but probably included a curse word or two, and slowly turned to face me.

I pushed away from the sofa. “Maybe put the knife down,” I suggested. “Just for a second.”

She set the knife aside on the cutting board, her hazel eyes wary as I moved into the kitchen. Her hair was mussed, poofier than usual. I had made it that way, tangling my hands in it the way we both liked. The purple shadows under her eyes were also from me, but I was less proud about that.

Her jaw clenched as I came closer. She held her ground, shoulders squared, and tipped her chin almost defiantly to look at me. Ready for whatever stupid shit I was going to say now to make it all worse. Ready to fight.

I didn’t want to fight.

I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted. No—scratch that⁠—

I knew exactly what I wanted.

I wanted Lila. I wanted to spend every night beside her, with her dry humping me in her sleep. I wanted to hold her boob after bad dreams. I wanted to make her disgusting snack of Red Delicious apples and cheese while she explained the mating habits of mallard ducks in horrifying detail. I wanted to spend my free time reading nutrition labels to ensure gluten never crossed our threshold. I wanted my wife.

I just didn’t know how to keep her.

But she was here now. I was here now.

So I kissed her.

Years ago, a lifetime ago, we had kissed like this hundreds of times. In the mornings as we parted for work. Or when we were cooking dinner and had a few spare moments between stirring this or sautéing that, she’d loop her arms around my neck and smile up at me and we’d kiss. It was a meandering kind of kiss. No ulterior motive. No promise of sex.

We’d kissed hundreds of times like this, and somehow this kiss still felt brand new.

I didn’t kiss her in a punch of adrenaline, our bodies strung tight from holding back. I didn’t kiss her because fear made me desperate, like if I could hold her close enough, I could keep her safe.

I kissed her because I loved her. I wasn’t even asking her to love me back, but I really, really wanted her to kiss me like she remembered a time she did.

For a moment, she didn’t move. And then…she kissed me back. It was tentative and careful at first, like she was waiting for something to happen, and when all that happened was I kept kissing her, her arms looped around my neck the way they had a hundred times before, and she melted against me.

We swayed in a circle, kissing. There was no teeth to this kiss, and only the barest touch of our tongues. I turned my head, and now we were cheek to cheek, still swaying in a circle like we could hear music. I watched the cupboards go by and then the living room.

“Don’t sleep on the couch tonight,” I said.