Exposure

by McKenna, Cara

  “I love you,” I tell her, barely a whisper.

  “I love you.” She turns in my arms, smiling broadly, sleepily. She kisses my nose, my forehead, my chin. “I can’t wait to see what life will be like when we get back to the city. Us living together.”

  The idea tenses my arms around her. “I can wait.”

  Another press of her lips to my chin.

  “I’m excited as well. But I hadn’t imagined I’d be as relaxed here as I have been. In fact, I’m shocked.”

  “I wondered how you’d…” The thought catches on a yawn. “How you’d fare. Maybe you were born in the wrong province, all along. Maybe you should have been a winemaker’s son. Maybe I was supposed to meet you during some vineyard tour on a trip to the Mediterranean.”

  “You wish I were born a cheese monger,” I tease her. “Admit it.”

  “You’re too good to be true already. Don’t overstimulate me by adding cheese to the equation.” Another mighty yawn.

  I stroke her hair and kiss her temples in turn, and nudge her to roll back over. She softens in my arms, but my worries are never so quick to let me go.

  “What are you thinking of?” she whispers.

  “Are my thoughts that noisy?”

  “Your breathing’s all tight.”

  I kiss her ear. “Sorry. I’m melancholy.”

  “After all that?” she teases, stroking my hand where it lays against her belly.

  “About all the time I wasted, inside. Three years.”

  She doesn’t reply right away, but after a minute or more, she says, “I wasted over a decade, not really dating or even letting myself like anyone too much. Being a stubborn, fussy coward. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t waste it. Because I couldn’t have met you if I’d done it differently. And I can’t imagine anyone I could possibly want to be with more than you. So it wasn’t wasted, it was just the way it had to happen for me to get right here. Right now.” She lays her arm along mine, hugging us both.

  “That’s true.” I wouldn’t have met her if I’d stayed as functional as I was in my twenties. She wouldn’t have met me. Might we have passed on some street, me going through the lonely motions of a man pretending to be at ease in his city? To hear her tell it, she’d have cast me the briefest glance then feigned utter disinterest, her old way with handsome men. Two anxious strangers passing on the sidewalk in some alternate Paris. That, compared to having her in my arms now…

  “You’re right,” I say, and kiss her again. “This is just the way it had to happen. And I’d sacrifice another three years for one more night like this.”

  “How lucky that you don’t need to.”

  Lucky. Never before a word I’ve had paired with my disorder. Perhaps I’m being too rough on myself. Those years I spent in self-exile may have been pathetic, but they taught me great empathy for the women who came to my bed. I learned languages, read many books, bonded with lovers as I hadn’t known a person could—briefly, yet completely. I immersed myself body and soul in recipes and wines and songs and sex, relishing their nuances as I never would have, had my life been more complex. More external.

  For all its faults, it was a rich time. It made me patient, introspective, humble. It made me worthy of lying beside Caroly now. Not a waste at all. And yes, perhaps even lucky.

  “You’re a very smart woman.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be you teaching me deep stuff about myself?”

  “We’re not the same people we were in March. I’m not a prostitute or a shut-in.”

  “And I’m definitely not a virgin.”

  I laugh then drag my lips down her neck until she shivers. “And thank goodness for that.”

  Three more days we have here, days of blissful nothingness, the only stresses being drives to town for food and wine, and the thought of those journeys rouses just the faintest wriggling of worry in my belly. I want to feel everything new this place can offer. A real bath for the first time in years. Enough nights in a strange bed for it to become familiar. Days away from my routines, my cabinet and my hobbies, my kitchen, my security. Time enough that perhaps even my sanctuary of the past half decade will look new upon our return, novelty to be discovered in all the spaces and items I take for granted. That I’ve taken for the entirety of my universe, for so long.

  I wonder what my mother would say, if she were alive to hear me announce my travel plans.

  “Why in heaven’s name would you want to go to Provence?” she might demand. She had agoraphobia as well—not as severe as mine, but it kept her happily confined to the only city she knew. “If it can’t be found in Paris, it’s not worth looking for.”

  I might tell her, “The sky is bigger, and the air smells cleaner. It’s quiet and there are more stars than you can count.”

  She wouldn’t be moved. But perhaps if I told her, “I fell in love. That’s why I’m going.” That, she might respect.

  She’d have done anything to keep my father, of that I have no doubt. Unfortunately for her, his wife was equally attached. The mother of his three legitimate children. But to turn one’s life inside out for love… Yes, I think my mother would approve. Surely choosing to have me turned hers upside-down, shook it like a boule d’eau until the miniature snowflakes became a blizzard, her careful landscape never to look the same once the waves settled. Settled as a woman settles for a son, when it was his father she’d truly wanted, wanted until the day she died.

  I sigh noiselessly, holding Caroly tighter.

  Should some child come into being as a result of our affair… Well, it will be different. Different than how I arrived. No souvenir of a love lost, no living proof of a doomed romance or a tainted marriage. Merely a new person, some odd little companion to guide through the world. A big world, at once scary and breathtakingly wondrous, to discover alongside a father who would fundamentally be seeing it for the first time himself.

  If, of course.

  A very big and serious if, and one whose answer I’ve been told before.

  “Caroly.” I whisper it, softly enough that it won’t rouse her if she’s fallen asleep.

  After a pause, “Yes?”

  Do you know for sure that you don’t want children? But all I manage is another, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  I want to ask, as badly as I fear to.

  Again, my breathing gives me away. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You said once…you don’t want children.”

  A long, heavy pause answers me. “I told you I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. And I’m scared it might end up with my mom’s issues. Or mine, or—”

  Or yours, she was about to say. She revises. “You told me you couldn’t offer anyone that.”

  “Because I hadn’t left my flat in over three years. You may as well have asked me if I’d like to dance on the moon.”

  “Have you changed your mind?”

  “My mind isn’t sure of anything. But my world is quite different, these six months later.”

  I hear her swallow. “I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m still learning how to even be somebody’s girlfriend.”

  “Of course.”

  She raises my hand and presses my knuckles to her lips. So often when she doesn’t know what to say, she kisses me. As though the words her mouth seeks are written on my skin.

  “Next fall I’ll have lived with you a year,” she finally says. “I might have a new job title. You might propose to me, or break up with me. Or I could do either of those things to you.”

  “You’re saying, ask you again, further down the road.”

  “I think I’m saying, never say never. Before this spring, I could only imagine lying here with a man like you…” She pauses for a breath. “I’m trying to say, right now is so exciting. I don’t want to miss any of it, worried about predicting the future.”

  Yes, the present. I’ve never been good at basking in the moment. Anxiety’s alwa
ys had me squinting into the distance, scanning for threatening shadows. The only times I exult in the present are during sex, and while mired in the hypnosis of mending a clock. Even now, in this bed, wrapped around the woman I love, my mind is fixated on questions that only time can answer, lamenting wasted years that no measure of regret could ever reclaim.

  At length I ask, “What are you thinking about?”

  “How strong your arms feel.”

  I sigh. “You’re so much better at that than I am. Just enjoying the moment.”

  “I was thinking about how strong your arms feel,” she says again, “and how you’d look, holding a child.”

  My heart thumps hard, mouth going dry. “Oh.”

  She squeezes my hand. “So no, I’m not immune to those thoughts. I’ve tried to imagine it now and then. For the record, I think you’d be amazing at that—being a father.”

  I try to reply, but no words come.

  “I’m not in any hurry though.” She hugs my arms tighter around her middle. “I’d like to be selfish for a few years and have you all to myself.”

  “But if the idea should slide out of my brain and through my lips, from time to time…?”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Good. You’re right though. For now, we should just enjoy being greedy with one another.”

  “Speaking of which—it’s my turn.” She nudges my shoulder and I obediently roll over so she can drape her arm along my ribs, bracelet tinkling.

  Nearly every night we spend together, this is how she falls asleep. Since giving up my clients, I’m an owl struggling to adjust to a robin’s hours, often lying awake a long time before sleep comes. But I enjoy the time and this clinging sensation, the way her arm goes limp when she nods off, how the breaths warming my neck deepen. It makes me feel wanted. That hunger that was so rarely fed as a child, the one that made me parlay my looks into modeling, then prostitution. I need to feel desired, and I’ve always known it.

  Caroly’s arm has grown heavy around my waist, and she tenses for a breath, dreaming. I wonder if she knows how like a dream my waking life feels, lying here with her, so far from my everyday world.

  I shift, rousing her. “My turn.”

  “No it’s not,” she mumbles, barely awake, but rolls over all the same.

  I hold her tightly, nesting her bent legs with mine. Her hair smells of the lavender already come and gone from the countryside. Closing my eyes, I breathe her in and imagine the purple fields at the height of summer.

  With Caroly close, I can imagine so many places. So many possibilities. So many of the things I’ve excluded myself from, for so long. I forfeited years, letting them pass me by in a haze of pleasant company, pleasant atmosphere, pleasant sex, pleasant distraction. A blur of squandered days and nights. Perhaps I won’t ever feel at ease, strolling down a busy city street, but at least I’ll experience every second of it.

  “Beaux rêves,” I whisper against her skin. “And thank you.” For this moment and this place, and a chance to even be this way with someone.

  She stirs, not waking.

  “À demain. I’ll see you when I wake.” Tomorrow, and every morning after, for as long as I’m fortunate enough to call this woman mine. For as long it’s her hand, her voice, her smile, drawing me out of the shadows and back into my life. Come what may.

  About Cara McKenna

  Cara McKenna writes smart erotica: a little dark, a little funny, definitely sexy and always emotional. She lives north of Boston with her extremely good-natured and permissive husband. When she’s not trapped inside her own head, Cara can usually be found in the kitchen, the coffee shop or the nearest duck-filled pond.

  Cara welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.

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  Also by Cara McKenna

  Backwoods

  Brazen

  Convenient Strangers

  Curio Vignettes: Curio

  Curio Vignettes 1: Coercion

  Curio Vignettes 2: Craving

  Curio Vignettes 3: Reversal

  Curio Vignettes 4: Confession

  Dirty Thirty

  Don’t Call Her Angel

  Getaway

  Ruin Me

  Shivaree

  Skin Game

  Willing Victim

  Print books by Cara McKenna

  Lessons in Letting Go

  Off Limits

  Skin Game

  Stray Hearts

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing

  www.ellorascave.com

  Exposure

  ISBN 9781419944253

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Exposure Copyright © 2012 Cara McKenna

  Edited by Kelli Collins

  Cover design by Caitlyn Fry

  Photo: Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock.com

  Electronic book publication December 2012

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