The Moon Tells Secrets

by Savanna Welles

  They settled down at the kitchen table like they had when they were first getting to know each other, but there was uneasy distance between them now, and again he had second thoughts about having invited her. What did he have to say that hadn’t been said already? Yet as he watched her sipping her Coke, so thoughtfully, oddly seductive, he was glad he had. After a few moments, he came out with what was really on his mind.

  “I’m worried about you, Raine. I’m scared that I’m going to lose you; that you’re going to disappear from my life the way you came into it, without a trace, and I don’t think I could take that.”

  The look she gave him, so tender and deep, told him he had said the right thing, and as he had done before he took her hand, thinking how small and soft it was, how vulnerable. He saw tears come into her eyes. “What’s going on, Raine? Every time I look at you, you’re crying. Can’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

  He decided to leave it there, not force anything else, and after a while, she laughed—a light, charming, devil-may-care chuckle that he knew was meant to put him at ease and suddenly he was.

  “Want something to eat?”

  “What do you have?”

  He realized then what a stupid thing it was to ask, since he didn’t have a damn thing, so he shrugged. He should have bought something, he realized, dips, chips. Dennie would scold him; he could almost hear her voice. You don’t invite a lady on a date at your home and have nothing to serve her! What kind of suitor are you? Suitor! A word only Dennie would use, and that thought made him smile.

  “How about some popcorn?” He suddenly remembered the bag he’d bought for his class at the end of the year that he forgot to take to school.

  “Sounds good. Do you have butter and salt?”

  “That I do have.” He went to the cupboard, pulled out the ancient bag of popcorn, and gave it to Raine. “Okay?”

  “I think we need a pot with a cover, popcorn popper, microwave?”

  “Oh—oh yeah, of course.” Embarrassed that she’d had to ask, he quickly pulled out the cast-iron pot Dennie had used to pop corn and handed it to her.

  “Cade, would you like me to pop it?” she asked with a patient, good-natured grin.

  “Oh, no, no, of course not! Sorry,” he muttered. Dennie always popped the corn when they made it. When he popped it now, it was always the microwave popcorn; he had no idea how to do it from scratch. He took back the pot, poured in some oil, the popcorn, placed it on a front burner, and began to shake. When smoke and the stench of scorched popcorn filled the small kitchen, he realized too late he’d put in too much corn and not enough oil.

  “Damn it!” he mumbled, snatching the pan off the burner and throwing the whole mess—pot, burned popcorn, smoking oil—into the sink. “Can’t even do that right.”

  Raine, standing behind him, watched as he dumped the contents into the garbage disposal. “Hey, you do just about everything else right,” she said. Without warning, she kissed him on the back of his neck. It was an awkward, tender kiss, sweetly given, which he felt straight down to his groin.

  “Should burn popcorn more often if that’s what it gets me.” He realized after the words left his mouth how phony they sounded, like something out of a silly romantic comedy. But she kissed him again, turning his head around to touch his lips with her full, soft ones and his body, the pleasure of her against him warming him everywhere he felt her. He pulled away, self-conscious about his reaction, not sure if he wanted her to know what his body was telling him to do.

  That was the problem with being a man, he thought, you couldn’t hide what your intentions were; your dick always gave you away. As a kid, slow-dancing with a neighborhood girl for the first time, he had gotten so hard so quick, he’d been embarrassed to pull away, knowing it would be standing out like a flagpole, straight and proud, in front of him. Luckily, the room had been dark, lights turned out, moonlight seeping in from the half-pulled blinds the only illumination. He’d been proud of it, though, how hard it got, but ashamed of it, too, because it telegraphed to Linda, Marsha, whatever her name had been, that he was her slave. You want to do it, don’t you? she’d whispered, hot and wet into his ear, as she licked his earlobe with the lusty inexperience of a fourteen-year-old. You know where to put it? she’d asked, mocking him, and he’d nodded. So they’d gone into a dark corner of the basement and done “it” on the floor. He’d fucked, had sex, made love with so many women since then, he had a hard time attaching names to faces, and only the special ones stood out, the ones who took his heart and twisted it to the point where he didn’t know it belonged to him.

  With Dennie, he’d been nervous as hell that first time. Just watching her walk across the room—her round behind rhythmically bouncing to music only he could hear—was enough to send his dick throbbing in his trousers. She would study him, half-amused, like she did the research she always seemed to be reading—interested, curious, analytical—which used to drive him crazy. She had no idea how sexy she was.

  Neither did Raine. The way she shrugged when puzzled or threw her head back and laughed whenever she did get it, all sparkling good humor. He loved to watch her talk to Davey, her tenderness and worry touched him in a place that his own mother had touched once, brought her gentle presence back to him. Yet at the same time he felt protective of her, so different from Dennie, who never seemed to need his protection. His passion for Raine wasn’t the red-hot, throw-all-caution-to-the-wind lust he’d felt for his wife. He’d been there once and couldn’t let himself go back there again, but this was a different heat, one that snuck up on him, then moved quickly to take over everything else: like good sense. Like vigilance.

  Not wanting to risk looking at her, he scrubbed out the pot, read the directions on the back of the plastic popcorn bag, and carefully measured the oil and popcorn into the pot. When it was popped, he avoided the oversized red china bowl that Dennie used and poured popcorn with hot butter into a metal mixing bowl.

  “Here you go. Better than the movies,” he said, sitting down across from her, delighted when she picked up a handful of popcorn and tossed it into her mouth like a kid would.

  As they sat munching popcorn, avoiding each other’s eyes, Cade wondered if she felt the same way he did, as wary of her feelings toward him as he was to her. The bright fluorescent lights of the kitchen bathed the room in garish light, and he wished they’d started out in the living room with its dim ceiling lights, soft cushiony couch, and big-screen TV. But when Raine gazed at him, the sorrow in her eyes was startling as it pulled at his heart, and he realized that this was the best place for them to be. Before they could relax, they needed to talk about the things that were bothering him, with no comfort to distract them.

  “Why were you crying in the car today, Raine? What’s going on, what’s bothering you?” She sighed, so deeply and with such melancholy, he instantly wished he hadn’t asked, but it was too late to take it back.

  “We need to move again, Cade,” she said without looking at him, and when she did, her eyes were so distant, he wondered if she was lying. “Something … well … we’re leaving in a couple of days. It’s been nagging—”

  “What do you mean you’re leaving? Just like that? You’re going where?” He hadn’t meant to raise his voice but he had, and her glance made him ashamed that he had done it. But he couldn’t hide it; he didn’t want to.

  She stared at him as if she couldn’t quite find the words to tell him more.

  “You can’t just leave like that, you can’t just take Davey, make him pull up roots and—”

  Her gaze grew tight and hard on his face. “We don’t have any roots, Cade. We never did. We weren’t meant to stay here, and now we need to leave.” Her voice was reasoned and calm, cold. He looked down at the kitchen table, at the nearly empty bowl of popcorn; everywhere but into her eyes.

  “Why?” He realized too late that he sounded like a whiny kid.

  “We just have to.”

 
“That’s not good enough.”

  “I know,” she said in a small, anguished voice.

  “Davey’s going, too?” The minute after he asked it, he realized what a foolish question it was.

  She answered with a slight smile, not really a smile at all, filled with as much sorrow as was in her eyes. “I just spent the last two hours arguing with him. But he knows what’s up.”

  “And what exactly is that, Raine. What exactly is up?” His tone was harsh, angry, and he meant it to be, because suddenly he was mad and disappointed and wanted her to know it, to feel as hurt and empty as her words had made him feel. A dull sorrow followed by a pang of desperation filled him and a fear of loneliness settled just beneath his heart. Did he even have a right to feel it? He suddenly didn’t give a damn one way or the other. “I guess I owe you an apology, don’t I.” Sarcasm rode each word. She glanced at him, wary and puzzled. “It’s just like all this time, I thought maybe I meant something to you, that maybe you were feeling what I was, that maybe—well, it’s all bullshit now, I guess, isn’t it?” He grabbed the bowl of popcorn and threw what was left into the sink, and suddenly he didn’t want to be around her. Anywhere but in this room.

  “Cade, I—”

  “There’s nothing you can say, Raine. To come in here like this, after the fun we had today, after the things we’ve done … Well, I guess truth be told, we didn’t do all that much, did we? Like, I said, I was so desperate for someone in my life, I guess I just imagined you were her, that you’d stick around.”

  “Please don’t—”

  “Well, you know it’s like they say: People always tell you who they are if you listen, and you sure told me, didn’t you? You were headed out of town the first time I met you, and you told me that.” He felt like throwing things, like cursing her out, then himself for his feeling, but he just stood in front of the sink, avoiding her eyes, staring at the top of the garbage disposal, feeling like a fool. “Maybe you should just go,” he said finally. “So I can get back to my life.” And even as he said it, the dreariness of what his life had become came back to him: Jim Beam sitting in the cabinet; imaginary talks with his dead wife; the funk he’d been in since she died.

  “Everything you felt was real, Cade. It was for me, too. I haven’t been as happy since Elan died. I thought I’d never be that happy again.” Raine’s voice was so tiny, so thin, he could barely hear her. He looked at her now and away from the sink.

  “Then why?”

  “Remember what I told you about living in the present?” she said after a minute. “About how sometimes that’s all I have, and you said you understood. Can’t we just do that for tonight, Cade? Have that between us. Please. Please Cade, please.”

  His heart flinched at the pleading of her voice, the anguish in her eyes, and he went to her, and pulled her body into his. Almost like a sigh, he felt her give herself to him, as if handing him her life, and he knew that this was all she was able to give him—now—maybe forever. So he kissed her forehead, then her lips, and led her upstairs.

  12

  raine

  It was easy to make love to him. I had slept with only one man before I met Elan and no one since he’d died. It was years since a man had touched me, thought of me like Cade did this night. Yet when I kissed him in the kitchen, it was for comfort rather than passion. I was grateful to him for being there, for rescuing me from Davey’s raging anger. My inexperience half blinded me to what a kiss could do, how quickly it aroused. I’d been running as much from my son as toward Cade, and my kiss, as tender and gentle as it was, had been simply that. I didn’t know where it would lead except suddenly I wanted him, and everything I’d forgotten about sex—the madness that blocked reason and second thoughts—came over me. The decision was made the moment I’d entered his house, the first time he’d kissed me good night, and the fleeting touch of his lips brought back the thrill I’d felt on the Ferris wheel earlier that evening.

  I hadn’t thought we would make love that night, hadn’t planned on it—for as many times as I’d fantasized about him, imagined him stroking the intimate places in my body, imagined how his lips would feel on those parts of me that I’d never revealed before. I was breathless when he led me upstairs, and I thought about Davey and him always telling me to take a breath, but it wasn’t that kind of breathlessness, and Cade was as breathless as I was.

  We paused at the door of his bedroom. I was shy about entering a room he’d once shared with his wife, and he must have felt that way, too, but it was just for an instant. It was a pretty room, decorated with the same hand that had chosen the colors in the kitchen—but darker here, more sensual—deep rose instead of pink, white lace coverlet on the bed, sheer curtains that drifted to the floor in a graceful heap. A woman’s room, but shared with a man she loved, that was clear to me the moment we entered. There were traces of her everywhere. The books—on every counter, surface—in neat piles on the large pink and gray Oriental rug that took up most of the floor, lying where’d she’d left them, untouched.

  It was hard to imagine the kind of woman Dennie had been. He had described her in so many ways—whimsical one moment, practical the next. Smart yet gullible—and above all, honest—heart always perched on her sleeve. Cade, sensing my hesitation, took my hand, leading me into what I knew was his private, sacred place. It was clear he hadn’t planned that we might make love. He was as wary as I was.

  “Cade,” I asked after a minute, “are you sure you want me to be here?”

  “Of course,” he said, his glance puzzled.

  “Have you made love to anyone since she died?”

  He sighed and dropped his eyes, embarrassed. “That obvious? I—well, I had a couple of chances but— Can we change the subject?”

  “No. I need to know if this is what you really want to do. You’re still so in love with Dennie, I wonder—”

  “My wife is dead, Raine.” He looked at me straight now, no shyness or hesitation. “I loved her so much, I thought I wanted to die, too, but that’s changed since I met you.”

  “Are you sure you want to—?”

  He pulled me to him and kissed me more passionately than he ever had before, answering the question in the only way it could be answered. “Okay?” he said, and I nodded that it was.

  Despite the neatness of the room, his things were tossed about in messy abandon—socks on the floor, pants hung over chairs, shoes and mismatched sneakers by the side of the bed.

  “Sorry for the mess,” he said as he picked up socks, surveyed the room, then dropped them back where they’d been. “The sheets are clean,” he added, a sheepish half grin on his face that made me laugh, and he joined me, both of us amused at ourselves, and what we were about to do. I sat down beside him on the bed, neatly made, surprisingly, and took his hand in mine, hoping to reassure him that nothing mattered but what I was feeling, what we both were. We kissed again, the charge that pulsed between us telling both of us where we were going and that it would be good.

  “I loved Dennie, but she’s gone, Raine. I want you in my life now. You and Davey. Do you understand that?”

  I said nothing because there was no answer to his question.

  He undressed quickly, first slipping a chain with a gold ring from around his neck and placing it in the bureau next to the bed. Seeing him naked before me—his arms and chest so taut and firm, his thighs thick with muscles, strong yet not distorted—told me how safe I would be with him, and everything I’d felt from the first moment I saw him came back to me in an instant, increasing my desire. He took my clothes off slowly, slipping off each bit of clothing, touching that part of my body it had covered, caressing, kissing me until I was completely undressed. And then, turning to me, slowly taking me into his arms, he pulled me into bed beside him.

  There had always been a fervor, hidden though it was, in our kisses, touches, and now that we permitted ourselves the freedom to caress and explore each of those parts we’d only imagined, we exploded in a frenzy of desire. />
  I had not made love to a man since Elan. I was not sure how I would feel and respond to his touch, if I even had it in me after all these years to feel anything but reluctance, to give myself to another man so completely—but I did tonight to Cade. He entered my body slowly, as if seeking permission, which I quickly and eagerly gave, lunging into him with everything that was part of me, letting him know that I wanted to feel him inside me—to touch every part of me—as much as he wanted to be there.

  There was a timelessness to our lovemaking, as if neither of us had been here before, but at the same time there was familiarity, as well, with him, his body, his touch. I was as at ease in his lovely, messy bed that smelled of the aftershave lotion he wore, and which I knew would send me into a spasm of desire next time I smelled it. We found comfort together in bed, delight, as much as I had sitting in the kitchen or that first time over his poorly made coffee, in the café, on our walks.

  Freedom marked our lovemaking the second time. I had never been shy in bed with Elan, allowed him liberties I couldn’t imagine giving another man, but things came so easily with Cade, there was no reluctance. It was as if everything had been saved from all those furtive touches, cautious kisses, unspoken desires and come forth in an intense rush of pleasure.

  When we were finished, settled into each other’s arms, I closed my eyes, pretending that we were just two normal people having made love for the first time, and discovering each other in ways that I’d never imagined. He kissed me once, twice on the forehead, and then on the lips, and I settled into his body, feeling him against me as I’d imagined I would all those times alone in my bed, but I knew this would be the one and only time this would happen between us. My eyes filled with tears as I looked away, not wanting him to see them. He turned my face toward him, softly kissing the tears that had fallen down my cheeks and onto my breasts.

  “So you cry when you make love?” he asked, only half-joking.