“Where are you going?”
“For a run.”
“Now? It’s dark.”
“I’ll be fine.”
His footsteps receded down the stairs and a few moments later the front door opened and closed. Quiet rushed back in.
She stood in the center of the room gazing at their belongings and seeing nothing. The hunger she’d felt on the drive home was gone, replaced by an emptiness in her center. Normally when she was late, and it was often if she were to be honest with herself, Eric was good-natured and forgiving. But tonight was different. She’d felt it the moment she stepped in the house.
Clare turned slowly, taking in the coziness of their room—the tidiness of the bed, the uneven stack of books on her side, a solitary water glass on Eric’s. The windows facing west were the same dark panes of reflection as those in the office and she studied herself for a drawn moment, the thought that it wasn’t really her looking back nearly overwhelming.
She glanced away, her eyes snagging on Eric’s bedside table. Its drawer was open a fraction of an inch. Some internal compass guided her forward, and despite silent half-formed questions about what she was doing, Clare pulled the drawer all the way open.
Pushed to one side of the drawer, partially hidden beneath a magazine was a small, hinged ebony box.
Her heart did a strange half beat, then thundered at triple speed as she reached out and picked it up.
The box was too narrow to house a necklace. Too exquisitely made to contain anything trivial. All at once it felt very heavy.
Clare took several steps backward, unable to count them or form any real cohesive thought, and dropped onto their bed. The hand holding the ring box trembled and she cupped it with her other palm, one of her thumbs going instinctively to the box’s lid.
She started to lift it.
And stopped, letting it snap closed again.
Now everything made sense. Her favorite meal downstairs, the candles, his dressing up.
“Oh God,” she whispered. She didn’t know whether to leap for joy or throw up.
Barely trusting herself to stand, she rose from the bed and wobbled to his table. How had the box been sitting beneath the magazine? With the top or bottom exposed? Shit, shit, shit. The top had been facing her, it had to have been. Clare placed a hand against the table and took several deep breaths. Four of them, to be exact. She put the box back, rearranging it until she was satisfied everything looked natural.
Fresh air. She needed to breathe.
In the attached bath she yanked the single window up and perched on the corner tub’s rim, sucking in lungfuls of cool ocean breeze. Gradually her heart rate slowed, though she still felt like a low electric current was passing through her body. Her foot tapped an irregular rhythm on the tile.
What was she going to do? She loved Eric; he was an incredible man. They’d been together for five years, lived with one another for three. She knew his body, his mind, his heart. But somehow she hadn’t seen this coming. How? How had she not predicted he’d want to take their relationship to the next level? It was beyond stupid on her part. But was it stupidity? Or was it her internal built-in safety catch, the one keeping everything that looked like permanence at bay? The shields she wrapped around herself, layers of guilt and grief, couldn’t protect her from love. Even as anxiety tried boiling through her it was overwhelmed by a wave of sheer happiness.
She knew what she would say when he asked.
The front door opened and shut downstairs. Clare jerked back to herself. How long had she been sitting there? Frozen. Her skin was chilled and she fought back a shiver as she pushed the window closed and locked it. The sound of Eric rattling around in the fridge drifted up the stairs as she went to her side of the bed and undressed. She slipped between the covers and lay facing the wall. A short while later Eric padded up the stairs and clicked the room’s light off. He went into the bathroom, closed the door, and the shower started.
Clare stared into the darkness, listening to the quiet swish of water and afterward the sounds of Eric readying for bed. He settled in beside her a few minutes later, his movements gentle as to not wake her. She was still for a time, then rolled toward him. Eric lay on his back, hands behind his head in his usual position before dropping off to sleep. The wan light of the moon through the window wasn’t enough for her to tell if his eyes were open or not. She gazed at him, his outline that of a stranger and her soul mate.
Her hand slipped between the covers and rested on his thigh. The touch brought his face toward her. Clare eased closer to him, pressing her body against his, letting everything she couldn’t say flow through her touch. She tucked her forehead into the hollow of his neck and shoulder and let her hand on his thigh glide upward.
He responded quickly, and in the pale ambient light they faced one another, hands and mouths exploring as if for the first time. She pulled him nearer, lying on her back as he moved above her.
Delicious heat gradually blossomed like a flower in her center, and when she came, splinters of pleasure slid outward to every inch of her body, driving a cry from her as Eric buried his face in her hair and shuddered, releasing her name as a moan.
They stayed that way for seconds, an eternity, hearts thudding and sweat slowly cooling on skin. When they parted she felt a strange sense of loss she’d never experienced before following lovemaking. Like he’d left on a cross-country trip instead of shifting only inches away.
Through the darkness they looked at one another.
“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” she finally said.
“It’s okay.”
“You always say that.”
“And it is. Really. I was just . . .”
She waited, breath locked in her chest. Would he lean over to his bedside table now? Her calming heart rate sped up again.
“. . . looking forward to it, that’s all,” he finished.
It was long minutes before she spoke. “You want me to stop, don’t you?”
“Stop what?”
“The lectures. Mostly the consulting.”
He settled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t know.” She waited, giving him time to process and answer honestly. “I wonder sometimes about progress. I look at numbers all day, try to find meaning from them, figure out where they’re going. There’s always a story behind movement and if you understand it, then you can predict what happens next. I worry about your story. I worry even though you can’t remember all of it, it’s not guiding you forward, it’s pulling you back.” He sighed quietly. “You know you can’t save everyone, but I love that you keep trying.”
She swallowed, a lump swelling in her throat. “I’m trying to make sense of it. Trying to come to terms.”
“I know. And I feel helpless most times because I don’t know what to do. This—” he gestured at their room, the house. “Our life, sometimes it feels temporary. Like it’s a pause before something else. I . . .” His voice trailed off. “I don’t want temporary.”
“I’m here with you right now,” she said, stroking his cheek. “I was here a few minutes ago.”
“But you’re not always. You suffer, and it kills me to see you hurting. Kills me not knowing what to do.”
“You help me so much. Maybe I don’t tell you enough, but you do. You tether me to what’s real. What’s good. I love our life. I love you.”