Finding You

by Jo Watson

  “I’m here now. And in case you hadn’t noticed, I’m chasing you.” He pulled my hands toward him and I felt him place a kiss on one of them. “And these days, who tells you that you’re not beautiful?” he asked.

  “Huh?” His question made me turn and look at him. “What do you mean?”

  Dimitri didn’t answer me. Instead he raised his brow in a questioning fashion.

  “I guess…” An uneasy feeling started creeping over me. “I guess I do,” I said softly.

  Dimitri nodded as if he had been expecting this answer. “And I bet it’s that same person who tells you all those other things you believe about yourself, too?”

  “What things?”

  “That you’re undeserving. A disappointment. You walk around believing that you don’t deserve all the good things that life has to offer, don’t you? Maybe you’ve even been blocking them.”

  “I… I…” His statement and the loaded implications in it sent a shock wave through me and I had no idea what to say to that. Had I really been engaged in self-fulfilling prophecies? Refusing to believe I deserved happiness or anything good, so blocking these things at every turn? And then for once in my entire life, my mother’s timing was actually perfect: My phone beeped and it gave me a great excuse to break the moment. I read her message and sighed.

  “Who’s it from?” Dimitri asked.

  “Just my mother.” I rolled my eyes and showed him the text:

  I looked at the weather channel. It’s postapocalyptically hot there. Remember to put sunscreen on. You know what your skin is like and you don’t want to go all blotchy like scary Aunt Meg, which leads to skin cancer by the way. XX

  I slipped my phone back into my bag and turned back to Dimitri.

  “That sounds like something one of my sisters or my mother would say.”

  “I doubt that. I doubt your sisters and mother interfere as much as mine does and offers you as much ‘constructive criticism.’ She’s always telling me what I should be doing, what I should not be doing, what I should be wearing, what my apartment should look like, who I should be dating, and how and—”

  “And how disappointed she is in you?” Dimitri said that with a very strange tone in his voice.

  “What?”

  “Has she ever told you she feels that way?” he asked.

  “No, but she’s always trying to change something about me, or fix something that’s broken or not up to her standards.”

  “Have you ever thought that maybe she just really loves you and doesn’t know how else to show you?”

  My eyes lifted and met his. I let him look at me in a way that felt like he was trying to look inside me, like an X-ray machine. I was stunned and couldn’t help but wonder if what he’d said about my mother was true. What about all the other beliefs I held about myself; were those also untrue? Were they really my own creations, born out of my own insecurities and faulty self-worth? Had I projected my own feelings of inadequacy onto every single aspect of my life, as a result seeing my world only through those filters?

  “What are you thinking about?” Dimitri asked, interrupting my thoughts.

  A small tear formed in my eye. “That when you’re given up for adoption, you believe there’s something wrong with you. That you must be bad and therefore unlovable. That’s surely the only reason you were given away, right? Because mothers aren’t supposed to give their babies away.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you, Jane. You’re perfect. Just the way you are.”

  I squeezed Dimitri’s hands in mine. The dinner had taken a very serious turn, one I hadn’t really been prepared for, but I liked it.

  “How did you get so perceptive? You don’t miss a thing, even the things that aren’t said,” I asked and then quickly answered, “Oh, that’s right, you have six sisters.”

  “No, I wasn’t going to say that at all.”

  “Really?”

  He shook his head. “When my dad died of cancer, I was the one that mainly cared for him in those last few months. Toward the end he was in so much pain he couldn’t speak or move or communicate in any normal way. I had to pay extra attention to everything he did, or in his case didn’t do. I learned to read every tiny movement of his, every small expression, from the crinkle of his eyes when he was frightened and wanted me to hold his hand, to the way the corners of his mouth twitched when he was thirsty, or the way he just raised his finger off the bed because he wanted his pillows adjusted.”

  “Oh God, that’s awful.” I reached out and took Dimitri’s hands this time.

  “He lived a great life!” Dimitri forced a smile. “He lived every moment to the fullest. He wasn’t a rich man, but his life was so full of riches. He was a great father and husband, and he would have really liked you.” Dimitri’s smile grew.

  “I’m sure I would have liked him, too… if he was anything like you are.”

  “Are you saying you like me, Jane?”

  “Yes. A lot,” I said. I’d never felt closer to another human being. I don’t think I’d ever felt so understood, either. He had seen all the way through me and into me, in the best way possible. And he thought I was perfect. Just the way I was. He didn’t want me prettier, or blonder, or shorter, or with matching eyes or smaller feet or more personality, funnier, more popular, cooler… he thought I was perfect, just the way I was.

  When dinner was over we walked through the streets of the small town. This place was far less touristy and seemed like an authentic Greek village; there were no souvenir shops and no tourists spilling out onto the streets. I was still enjoying the fact that I couldn’t hear the noisy drone of tourists when we suddenly heard loud music coming from behind us. We both turned and were faced with an image I couldn’t have predicted. I almost started laughing as a troupe of singing, fiddle-playing men came dancing toward us. And more than that, it looked like the entire village had joined in, too.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a wedding procession,” Dimitri said, and he pulled me off the street as we watched it go past. People were dancing and singing and clapping with happy abandon. I glanced at the bride and groom: They were laughing together and looked so young and in love, you couldn’t help but get swept up in the exuberance of the moment. I found myself clapping and swaying to the music until I was completely lost in it all. I danced like no one was watching and even sang along, although I had no idea what was being said. In the midst of the procession, a woman ran over to me and put a sweet in my hand.

  “What’s this for?” I asked, but she had already run back and was quickly swallowed up by the happy crowd.

  Dimitri smiled at me. That strange twinkle in his eyes was back. “They hand them out at weddings. They say if you sleep with it under your pillow, you’ll dream about your future husband.”

  Despite my best effort to control my eyes, they jumped straight up and met his. I wanted to say something, but not even the tiniest little words could find their way into my mouth. All this talk of marriage… first with the inside-out dress, now with the sweet. Is the universe conspiring to tell me something? Not that I believed in things like that. But Stormy did, and according to her I was getting married next year. Despite myself, I slipped the sweet into my bag… just in case.

  We finally reached the boat, and he silently helped me up. I realized just how tired I was after the action-packed day we’d had together.

  “That was a nice first date.” Dimitri took up a position directly in front of me.

  “Yes.” I smiled at him. It wasn’t the kind of smile that you consciously put on your face. It was one of those that just naturally arrived on your face before you even realized it was there.

  “So what kind of first-date kiss would you like, Jane?” His eyes locked onto my lips, which tingled in response.

  “I didn’t say you were going to get a first-date kiss.”

  “You didn’t have to say it out loud.” He leaned in, and I closed my eyes. He ran his thumb over my bottom lip while kissi
ng it softly and slowly. Then he ran his fingers through my hair as he tilted my head back and planted a soft kiss on my jawline. His mouth trailed up over my chin, and his lips grazed mine. He teased them gently, rubbing his lips over mine but never kissing them.

  “Open your eyes,” he whispered.

  I opened them and he was so close that all his features were blurry. His lips still lingered on mine and I could feel and taste his breath. He didn’t need to move his lips. It felt like we were kissing with our eyes. My whole body shivered when the tip of his tongue came out and traced my lips. I stared into his eyes feeling frozen, my lips unable to reciprocate and my body feeling unable to move. I was under his spell and I felt a bubble form around us to preserve this magical moment.

  Finally, slowly, he pulled away and looked at me. He seemed as mesmerized by this spell as I was.

  “So, good night, Jane.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  A small smile flickered across his lips. “I’ll take the sofa tonight.”

  I glanced down at the sofa. It wasn’t really a sofa so much as it was a long cushion-covered chair. It didn’t look comfortable, and I wondered how he was planning to squeeze onto it.

  “But we’ve already—”

  He cut me off. “I meant it when I said I wanted to do things properly with you. Turn the clock back and start from the beginning. Where we should have started.”

  “Well, good night then.” I smiled at Dimitri and my stomach filled with butterflies. There was something so sexy and exciting about the idea of just dating him. I gave him a small wave and started walking toward the bedroom.

  “That doesn’t mean that all the other stuff isn’t going to happen again. But maybe that’s more of a second-date thing,” he called after me.

  I turned and looked back at him.

  “So you want to go on another date tomorrow night?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I gave him one last smile and scuttled down the staircase. I collapsed onto the bed and let out a massive breath that I think I’d been holding the entire duration of the kiss. I climbed into bed, and he was all that I could think of. And then…

  No… that would be so totally stupid.

  Jane, get a grip, that is ridiculous and childish and…

  But… oh well, what the hell.

  I reached into my handbag, pulled out the sweet, slipped it under my pillow, and curled up to go to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  I felt something pushing and pulling at me. The sheet started to slip down and I tried to pull it back up in my sleepy state. The bed made a loud noise and I felt it move next to me.

  “Shit!” I flicked my eyes open in fright, then realized someone was kneeling on the bed next to me. I shot up and switched the light on.

  “It’s just me. Dimitri.”

  My eyes adjusted to the bright light and sure enough, there was Dimitri kneeling next to me on my side of the bed. Suddenly a massive smile broke out across his face. “Nice top.”

  “What…” And then I remembered. I was wearing an oversized T-shirt that I’d gotten at a conference that read DENTISTS GET FILLINGS TOO. I tried to cover it with my hands.

  “Well, you’re not supposed to be in my bed seeing it.”

  He pulled my hands away. “I think it’s sexy.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, folding my arms in front of the stupid picture of a happy tooth running through a meadow holding a toothbrush.

  “That thing I said earlier about wanting to turn the clock back—well, I didn’t really mean it.”

  “Oh?”

  “I meant it at the time, but then I got to thinking about how it feels when you fall asleep on my chest and how good it feels waking up with you in the morning. And so I was wondering if I could just come and sleep here with you?”

  “Well, in that case.” I pulled the sheet open for Dimitri and moved to the other side of the bed to let him in. He climbed in and immediately pulled me into the crook of his arm. I put my head down on his chest and breathed him in.

  “Oh my God,” Dimitri suddenly said. “What’s that?” Suddenly he was holding the wedding sweet between his fingers. I felt myself melt from the fiery heat of embarrassment. He dangled it above my head, displaying it like a trophy.

  “Uh… it was just, I was… um…”

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  I sat up and tried to grab the sweet from him but he pulled it away playfully.

  “You were hoping to dream about your future husband. Admit it.” He was laughing now and teasing me with the sweet.

  “I was just going with it. I’m in Greece, I’m trying to embrace the culture here and learn about it and participate and all that. Didn’t you say I should? You keep telling me I need to let my inner Greek out.”

  He continued to laugh and I continued to try to wrangle the sweet away from him. But in one of my overzealous attempts, I shot up too fast and accidentally fell on him. I was just about to get up when he wrapped his arms around me and held me in place. I was officially lying on top of him, our faces almost touching.

  “So did you?” he asked.

  “Did I what?”

  “Dream about me?” He laughed and then pulled me into a sitting position. Holy fucking crap, I was now officially straddling a half-naked Dimitri. He lay back, put his arms behind his head casually, and gazed up at me with a kind of smug, totally self-satisfied look plastered across his face—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to slap it or kiss it, or both. It was the kind of look that told me he had me exactly where he wanted me.

  “No,” I said firmly. “I did not dream about you, and even if I had, we would not be getting married now based on some old superstition thing. I don’t believe in stuff like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Huh?” His words slammed into me and I froze. “Why not get married? Because it’s crazy. Insane. I don’t know you, we’ve just met. You’re basically a stranger, other than the sex part. There is no way I could ever consider marrying you. You’re like this hot model or something, and I’m just Jane. And it’s the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever heard. Ever. It would be too weird and too illogical and spontaneous and it would never work with someone like you. Never. It’s crazy. Not you. Ever.”

  Dimitri’s casual, playful look faded. “I actually meant, why not believe in a bit of magic from time to time?”

  “Oh,” I said flatly, feeling slightly embarrassed about the rant I had just gone off on.

  Dimitri sat up, bringing his face all the way to mine. “But now that you’ve mentioned all that, I can’t help feeling offended. Am I not the kind of guy a girl could marry?”

  “What? No, no… I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean there was anything wrong with you, per se. I meant that it would be crazy if we got married. It’s nothing against you, it’s more of a we thing, that’s what I meant, you know… et cetera, and so forth.”

  “A we thing. You make it sound like there’s something wrong with us. That we’re not compatible.”

  “Well, we don’t know if we’re compatible really.”

  Dimitri’s lips traveled to my ear and he whispered, his voice oozing lust and sex and danger, “But we are compatible, Jane.” And then he slipped his hands down my back, cupped my ass, and ground me into him.

  “Oh God,” I gasped slash breathless-whimpered at the feeling that had just shot through my body. He locked eyes with me and did it again. And then he pulled my legs and wrapped them around him. I guess that whole “turn the clock back” thing hadn’t lasted long at all. Not that I cared.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to have sex with you.”

  “You’re not?” I sounded disappointed, and I was.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. A massive part of me was widely disappointed—that is until he slipped his hand between us and tucked his finger through the top of my panties. I gasped loudly again as his hand
slipped farther down into them and he touched me. The sensation of moving over him while he touched me was the kind of sensation that might cause a person to black out from sheer pleasure. His movements got faster as my breathing got shorter, sharper, and more erratic.

  I threw my head back and closed my eyes. “Dimitri,” I barely managed to whisper as my whole body stiffened on top of him.

  I stayed there for ages trying to catch my breath and waiting for my heart rate to return to normal. My eyes were still closed and there were actual white sparks flashing under my eyelids. Oh yes, this, I could write home about—in fact, I could write anywhere the hell I damn liked about this. This deserved to be written about. Although I doubt any human words could do it justice—a time for Klingon, perchance?

  My breathing and heart rate finally returned to normal, and I opened my eyes. I was suddenly very aware that I was still straddling him. I mean I knew I was, but somewhere in the moment I had gotten so lost that I had forgotten he was even there.

  I tilted my head forward and looked down at him. I couldn’t help the stupid and, I suspect, dopey-looking grin plastered across my face. He was lying on his back looking up at me with that self-satisfied smile again, but this time I wanted to kiss it. So I did. And then without saying a word, he pulled me under the sheets and planted my head on his chest. I lay there in my postorgasmic daze and listened to the steady thump of his heartbeat.

  “Jane, Jane, Jane,” Dimitri suddenly said, lifting my face to his lips.

  “What?”

  “Where the hell have you been all my life?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I woke up the next morning still tangled in Dimitri’s arms and quickly became aware of the sound of flipping pages. I turned around and he was wide awake and reading.

  “Hey?” I sat up and wiped my sleepy eyes.

  “Morning.” He lowered the book and looked at me with a smile. “I was wondering if you were ever going to wake up.”