For now, though, it was enough to have her all to himself in their own little world.
***
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said softly as she entered the bathroom after removing her sodden clothes and slipping into the frothy teal robe. The steamy air in the room smelled of the rose bath oil he had added to the hot, bubbly water in the tub, and the flickering candles shone and reflected in the water and the mirrors around them. It was a bit cheesy, he knew, but sometimes you just couldn’t beat the classics.
Setting aside her robe as she sunk into the large tub, he soaped his hands and ran them up her long, wet arms and kneaded her gently sloping shoulders.
“Mmmm,” she groaned, basking in the warm water and the tender pressure of his fingers. “You know what? The moment I decided something was going to happen this weekend – it was when I was watching you stroke your violin. I wanted to know how it would feel to be touched that way, too.”
Feeling the feline satisfaction she was gaining from his hands, he lingered on her shoulders, and grazed the skin up and down the lovely column of her neck, and molding the glorious incline of her chest down to the mounds of her breasts, he closed his eyes and read her body with his hands, aided by the slickness of the water and oil, and treasuring every soft sigh that he inspired in her.
She sat forward and rested her head on her upraised knees and he stroked the length of her back, along each bump of her spine, down to the cleft at her tailbone.
“You have beautiful hands,” she sighed.
“And until tonight, I never even knew what they were really for.”
Like a water sylph, she turned to him without making a ripple, and pushed at the waistband of his boxers.
“Join me, please?” she asked, achingly beautiful and with such tenderness in her eyes it stopped his heartbeat, and his breath froze, lest he break the moment.
“Always,” he said at length, and slipped into the water under her, feeling her cover him as if her whole body was embracing him.
After washing his body with hands now familiar with his own hills and valleys, and without breaking the contact of their mouths, she raised herself over him, straddling his thighs and taking him into herself in one swift movement, and rode him. At first, her movements were languid and dream like, increasing in tempo and fervor as they crashed against the joy of each other, again and again.
“Oh Bronwyn,” he groaned deeply in his chest, feeling himself spill into her welcoming body. “I love you so much.”
Clutching her against him, hoping she could feel the true intensity of the small words he had to offer, he held her as she came on him again, crying out at the hot wringing he felt inside her.
“I love you,” he whispered again, not really expecting an answer but just wanting to say it at long last.
Her soft crown of reddish hair clung to him in moist tendrils and she rested her face against the pulse beating in his throat, and soon they retreated to the bedroom where he loved her again, and then slept the deepest, soundest sleep he had ever had.
***
“Plans today?” he croaked with a rusty voice, seeing her already dressing across the room as his eyes opened the next morning. Sunday. The day things would go back to normal. His smile was tentative but open, not knowing what exactly to expect but feeling that something had changed between them.
She kept her back to him as she buttoned her blouse.
“I’ve got to do some laundry,” she shrugged, bending a knee to don her socks. “And, you know – make my lunches for the week, and stuff like that.”
She turned to him, finally, and the smile she wore was not the one he had hoped to see. Instead of the eyes of his lover, he saw the polite dismissal of a warm but distant acquaintance.
“Don’t you have things you have to do, too?” she asked, leaning one knee on the bed.
“Yeah, I suppose…” he muttered, suddenly feeling embarrassed at being in her bed, like a call girl that had overstayed her welcome. “My folks come back today, so I should make sure the house is in order, and I’ve got to get some practice time in.”
“Good – you can’t let the violin slide. She’ll get jealous of me,” Bronwyn joked lightly, and strode to the door with an obvious message – there would be no repeat of last night’s emotion this morning, despite how he had hoped the morning’s departure would go.
“Coffee’s on downstairs,” she tossed over her shoulder as she retreated out of the bedroom to let him dress alone.
The thought of hanging around for a friendly coffee between strangers with the woman he knew more intimately than any other human on the planet seemed about as appealing as having a doctor’s exam in front of a lecture hall full of his classmates, so he dressed quickly and prepared an equally blithe excuse for his hasty departure as soon as he got downstairs and retrieved his instrument.
It was then that he realized his error – he had told her he loved her, and that didn’t fit in with her plans for a weekend of fun.
Now, feeling used and discarded, it was up to him to make his getaway, indicted for the crime of letting himself feel more than they had agreed upon when they entered into their weekend liaison.
And enjoy the burn of regret for having said too much, too fast.
***
Luckily, his mother never really pressed on how his weekend went, because he found himself without enough energy to lie effectively. She was too busy flouncing around with a disturbing swish to her step, humming, and he could only assume her Valentine’s Day had been more productive than his, though his father still maintained his seclusion behind the wall of newsprint, as always.
At least his sister’s Valentine’s Day dance had been a bust, filled with the usual junior high drama, but he was even too preoccupied with his own thoughts to glory in her over the top misery.
But one thing was now starting to go right for him, and, two weeks after the rise and collapse of his first love affair, he finally received a satisfied nod from his violin instructor over his rendering of the tango medley. But, frankly, if it took this much pain to understand the tango, accompanying the stinging memories of pleasure that suffused the notes with new meanings, then he’d rather flunk.
One afternoon, lugging his weary body home from class, undecided if his sluggishness was from emotional lull or a budding head cold, he spotted Warren’s car in the drive and nearly fell over at the sight.
“Oh, now – that’s exactly what I needed,” he muttered to himself, with an irrational bubble of laughter in his chest. How much more perfect could his rejection get?
When he did something, he sure did it right.
Shrugging off his mother’s concern over his haggard appearance that night, Daniel felt himself shrinking further into a shell, though unwillingly. He wanted to take it like a man and move on with nothing more than a sense of triumph for scoring some action, but he had come to accept that he wasn’t built like most men seemed to be. Or maybe all men felt this way, but nobody wanted to admit that love and agony sprang as fiercely in the male breast as in their female counterparts.
In any case, the bitter irony was that he seemed to feel ten times more love for Bronwyn than did Warren, yet it was the hunkish blockhead who was now enjoying her company, while he steeped in his own unmanly grief.
For the hundredth time, Daniel clutched his short hair in his hands and tried to focus on the paper flickering on the computer screen before him. But what did the baroque period matter to him any more?
Ping-click-clackety, something pelted against the glass of his window, sending a thrill of shock through him, and bringing him to an immediate stand, which resulted in a serious thunk of his head against the slopped ceiling of his attic room.
“Dammit,” he cursed, rubbing his goose egg, until another clatter at the window recalled him to the matter at hand.
He spotted her with a jolt – Bronwyn, standing below his window.
A debate raged within him, his desire to run to her warring with his
dignity, which demanded he close the blind and ignore her.
In the end, it was his curiosity that won, and he held up one finger to ask her to wait for him.
Thinking he should know better, he slipped into his shoes and steeled himself against whatever further humiliations awaited him below.
***
“Hi, Dan,” Bronwyn said as he appeared at the backdoor, caution etched in her every feature.
“Hi,” he responded simply, casting his eyes for signs of Warren. “Warren not around?”
She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. “No, he went home.”
“Feeding time?” Daniel quipped in a cold voice.
“Something like that, I guess,” she scoffed without humor. “I didn’t ask him here, by the way.”
Daniel shrugged, knowing there really wasn’t much more he had to say until he knew why she was there. Following her into her yard, he held his silence, and leaned against the step railing as if to brace himself.
“Warren’s not coming back.”
Daniel wanted to say something like an apology, but he couldn’t lie, so he nodded slowly, as if to ask her to get to her point.
“I don’t even really know what he wanted… He just wanted to make sure I was still on the hook, I guess,” she sniffed. “But, I’m not.”
“That’s good,” Daniel responded, meaning it earnestly, no matter what had gone on between the two of them.
In the dim porch light, he looked at her, noticing a fatigue in the lines of her body that hadn’t been there before, and, against his will, feeling a tug of want and affection for her, and the urge to curl her into himself for support.
“Everything’s okay?” he asked, not wanting to care, but unable to control it.
As if a small dam broke in her, she sucked in a ragged gasp and turned luminous eyes to him. “No, not really, Dan.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything, I don’t know…” she said in a tired voice and rubbed a hand over her face. “I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did, Dan. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” he replied, feeling a small layer of his dignity return with her admission. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s not your fault I felt things were more serious than you wanted. I guess, it’s no one’s fault that we wanted different things from being together.”
He reached out a tentative hand to her jaw, and she turned her lips to his palm.
“I guess I just read too much into it all,” he laughed, self-deprecatingly. “Rookie mistake.”
She smiled a sad sort of smile that gave no humor to her eyes.
“So, everything’s fine, then?” she asked.
“I guess so,” he shrugged. “I’ll live.”
They stood in silence a moment, each pursuing their own thoughts and not sure which way to turn next.
“Was this a mistake?” she asked in a small voice.
“No,” he answered without hesitation. “This morning, I would have said yes, but now I don’t think so.”
She nodded, saying, “I’m glad.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, concerned at the lack of sparkle in her. “You’re not like yourself tonight.”
“Dan…” she trailed off with a groan. “I’m just so messed up. Would you hate me… Would it be okay… I mean, can I change my mind?”
“What?” he asked, shaking his head in confusion, not sure what exactly what he was hearing.
“I shouldn’t have thrown you out,” she said, decisiveness making her voice more like the firm tones he associated with. “I can’t stop thinking about you, thinking that I might have tossed away something really good without giving it the shot it deserved.”
He couldn’t respond, so he let her continue.
“But the thing is, I don’t know if I have the right to ask for a second chance – if that’s fair to you, I mean,” she explained, scanning his face for signs of how he was taking her announcement.
“Why?” he asked, simply.
“Well,” she sighed deeply, considering the question. “See, women live longer than men, so I figure it makes sense for the man to start out younger in the first place…”
Recalling his answer that first brunch, which now seemed so long ago, he couldn’t help but laugh, though he knew he shouldn’t. A part of him urged him to walk away now, and try to protect himself from the pain he knew she had the power to inflict on him. But a new part of him, a part that had learned much in the few weeks since he had gotten to know her, had always left the door open for her return, and, in so doing, had left Daniel open to the lessons the messier parts of life had to offer him. It was the part of him that held new insight into the tango, and the part of him that had given him the strength to come down to face her tonight.
Still laughing in amazement at the strange turn of events that evening, all Daniel had to do was nod, and offered her his hand, which she took gratefully.
“You know, eventually we might have to tell your mother about this,” she reminded him after he had welcomed her back into his arms.
With a sigh, Daniel knew she was right.
“I have a feeling she might not take kindly to cradle robbers.”
“On the other hand, she doesn’t have to worry about me being too far away,” he said with a false brightness.
“Well,” she said, smiling up at him, “let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, huh?”
“I can agree to that, especially if it means later.”
“You have plans for tonight?”
“Nothing more important than what I have right here,” he assured her and rested his grateful cheek on the top of her head.
“I might point out that it’s kind of stupid to freeze our asses off out here, when I have a nice warm bed upstairs,” she hinted.
“Fine by me,” he nodded, raising one mischievous brow at her. “But try not to wear me out too badly, okay? I’ve got school in the morning.”
Though she took a swat at him for the ill-placed reminder of the differences between them, he basked in the brightness of her smile as she led him upstairs, hand in hand.
The End.
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V-Day Page 4