A Slow Boil

by Karen Winters

  She was sitting in her chair across from me the library now, working on her laptop, biting her lip and frowning. I wanted to reach over and pull her lip out from under her teeth, smooth the crease between her eyebrows, but I didn’t want to interrupt her. She worked so hard. Too hard. Her senior thesis was due in a few weeks and the project was consuming all her free time and energy. I was going to offer to make dinner again tonight, I thought. She had too much else to worry about right now without having to plan and make yet another delicious meal.

  Sylvia’s cooking had just gotten better and better, if that was possible. She still put as much effort into her meals as she had when I’d first hired her, but that wasn’t why I loved her so much. She could start making frozen pizza every night and I wouldn’t care. Okay, maybe a little, but not much.

  I put my book down and closed my eyes, resting my head back again the chair, thinking about how much my life had changed in the last year. When I’d hired Sylvia, I’d truly had no idea that we’d end up here. I’d thought she was so pretty but she was also so young, so young that the thoughts I quickly started having about her almost embarrassed me. I remembered the first time I saw her in her uniform, the color and fit setting off her features perfectly, the instant flare of attraction I’d felt, something I’d never expected to feel again. I hadn’t even been aware of how closed down I’d become, so locked away in my loneliness that I’d even forgotten what it felt like to want someone. It wasn’t just a physical attraction, though, which is probably why I struggled so much with my desire for her. The first few weeks she worked for me I couldn’t get over how sweet she was, how funny, how smart. She deserved someone special, and I’d been so used to snapping out orders, I must have come across as an absolute tyrant. I was so lucky she didn’t quit after her first day.

  But she hadn’t quit, she’d stayed and quickly became the one bright light in my bleak life. When our relationship finally turned physical, I thought I had it all. Finally. But I’d been wrong again, wrong to underestimate this amazing woman. Sylvia hadn’t been in a long-term relationship before and was eager to try new things, exploring her sexuality for the first time. I thanked god almost daily that I was the man who’d somehow gotten lucky enough to share this part of her journey into adulthood. She brought home some lingerie one afternoon, making me sit in on the bed while she modeled for me, knowing she was torturing me and laughing at my distress. Once at dinner she hadn’t had time to make dessert and offered herself to me instead, moving my plate aside and perching on the edge of the table, slowly drawing up her skirt. She let me take control when I needed reassurance she was mine. I loved how close I could get her to the brink with only my fingers and lips, not letting her touch me until she was shaking with desire. But just as satisfying were the times she initiated, her desire for me so necessary to me now I couldn’t imagine living without it.

  But even our physical relationship wasn’t the reason I loved her so much. If anything, it was merely an expression of the trust and honesty we shared with each other. The meals and the sex I could live without if I had to – Sylvia herself, however, had become a fundamental part of me. She’d been right that day in the kitchen when I’d been so worried that starting a relationship with her was somehow overstepping the boundaries. She made me happy. She made me so very, very happy. And I think, I hoped, that I made her happy, too.

  “What are you smiling about over there, handsome?”

  I opened my eyes and looked at my beautiful girl. “How thankful I am that you’re here.”

  She put her computer on the floor and came to sit on my lap. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her beautiful long neck, her skin like silk under my lips.

  “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, Adam.”

  “Good.” I hugged her tighter. It had taken a long time, but I finally believed her. I’d been so convinced that I had nothing to offer her in return that it had been months before I fully accepted that she loved me as much as I did her. I closed my eyes again and felt her lay her head on my shoulder, her fingers moving gently in my hair.

  “How’s your paper coming along?”

  “Good, I guess. I don’t think I’ll have to change my thesis at the last minute this time, at least.”

  I chuckled. “Of course you won’t, my beautiful smart girl.” I ran my hand over the curve of her hip. “And how goes your application?” Sylvia had decided to apply to the graduate department at Noble for her master’s degree in anthropology, something else I was very, very happy about as it kept us here for another three years. I was glad to put off having to pack up all my books and arranging to have my piano shipped back to the States for as long as possible. Maybe I could talk her into getting her PhD at Noble as well.

  “Mmm,” she sighed. “I don’t know. It’s on the back burner right now. I may or may not get it done in time.”

  “It’s not nice to tease me like that. In fact, it’s quite naughty of you.” I gave the side of her rear a light slap.

  She giggled and rubbed her nose on my neck. “Well, really, Adam, you ask me every day.”

  “I’m becoming an old nag.”

  “Nag, yes. Old, no. Don’t worry, I’ll get it done.”

  “I know. I just want to get it settled.” I’d bumped into the dean of the anthropology department on campus a few weeks ago and she’d assured me that Sylvia was a highly prized student, her application a mere formality, so we weren’t as worried this time about her getting accepted. I opened my eyes and looked down into her deep brown ones. She’d told me once how difficult it was for her to keep her thoughts to herself when I looked at her, and I often had the same problem. “I just want to know for sure. It was difficult for me last year when I thought you might only be here for the summer. I didn’t think if I let you into my heart that I’d survive having to let you go.”

  She smiled up at me. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

  I didn’t worry about her leaving, but I still needed to know that she’d be with me forever. I had a ring already in a drawer in my desk and had been thinking that graduation would be the perfect time to propose, when her dad would be here. I was sure she’d say yes as she whenever she talked about her future I was in it, and the impulse to ask her to marry me was growing stronger every day. Mr. Lane had given me permission to ask her when we’d visited him over the holidays and as graduation grew closer, I spent more and more time daydreaming about our future together. If we were lucky enough to have a family, I hoped our children would have her beautiful eyes and her gentle personality. She would make a wonderful mother, of that I had no doubt.

  “What are you thinking about? You look so serious.”

  I smiled and turned my eyes toward the windows, running my fingers through her hair. I couldn’t look at her right now or I’d be asking her to marry me in my next breath. “I wish my mother could have met you. She’d have loved you.”

  “I wish I could have met her too. You dad, too, for that matter, although maybe he wouldn’t have approved of me.”

  “He would have, not that it would matter.” I turned to her again, having gotten myself back under control. I smiled down at my beautiful girl and bent down to kiss her perfect lips. “You’re perfect.”