“You can’t quit. I need you to stay at Wolf so you can watch one of my babies.” She stopped to sob and ended up finishing in a voice shaken by tears. “HIs mom is transferring him to your fucking charter school and—and I’m losing him.”
“Whoa. Whoa, baby.” His southern accent got deeper and his arms went around her, and she snuggled into both.
“You know, it’s not my fault I can’t personally erase the effects of poverty and trauma and racism from every student’s life. I TRY, Mark. I try. I can’t fix everything. I can’t raise every test score. I can love those kids and help them as much as I can, and live a life my county friends can’t even understand. But I can’t even keep this one kid—this family—I love so much.” She ended on a wail and he drew her even tighter in to his arms as she screamed into his chest.
He tugged at her gently and led her from his kitchen to the living room. She gave in as he pulled her down to sit with him on his couch.
Mark thought he had a plan, but nothing had prepared him for holding his sobbing neighbor as she wept over systemic injustice. Foolish not to imagine it—he should’ve seen it coming. But, oh, he was so sad for her. And she was getting snot all over his shirt. I mean, it was fine, he loved her. But he’d planned their next time alone to be a little different. But now all he could do was pat her back and press gentle kisses along her hairline, giving the gray hairs just a few extra kisses. She’d fucking earned those gray hairs.
“Hey baby. It’s okay. Shhhhhhh…. I’ve got you.”
“I just want to be enough. Why am I not enough? I don’t know how much more loss I can take.” Her pitiful face, red and tear-streaked, raised to his. He raised his hands to wipe the tears away, looked dubiously at his shirt, then found a dry spot to wipe his hands on near the side.
Then he stroked her hair with his hands. “Baby, you are amazing, and I’m in awe of how you pour your life out in service to these children, but you aren’t Jesus. You’re not supposed to be enough. You do what you can. And I hate to tell you this, but Jesus is at the charter school just as much as he’s at your school. And they wouldn’t let me break my contract, so I’ll be able to watch your boy.” With each clause, he stroked from the top of her head down her back.
Her breath caught as she heard the last sentence. “What! You’ll still be there?”
“Yeah, they said that my perception of my teaching capabilities didn’t matter because I had a signed contract. So maybe I’m doing okay for the kids, but I think they just want to keep me because I’m a male. I’m staying through the end of the school year.”
“Mark! That’s fantastic!” Before he could express his confusion at her excitement, she wrapped her arms around him and was kissing him furiously. He opened his mouth and took it all in. He could taste the salt of her tears that he hadn’t managed to get, and the sweetness of her, and yes, this is what he wanted forever. Forever, more. The pleasure of having her in his arms, his mouth on hers, and his fingers on her skin sang through him.
Wait. Wait. Fingers on her skin. He opened his eyes. Yes. His fingers were on her skin, her shirt was rucked up, and damn if he didn’t know and like where his fingers were headed. And shit, he was going to stop.
There was grace, he knew, but there was also shaking off physical desire and honoring the convictions both of them had voiced.
“When we’re married, I’m gonna read you the complete Song of Solomon, and then we won’t get out of bed for a week.” He pulled her shirt down as he spoke, realizing that her hands had slipped up and under his shirt, too, and when he moved her to be beside him, her hands grazed his rigid dick, and he shuddered and moaned.
“See, that’s the exact sound you made when you ate the pho.”
“It was really good pho, and it was my first time to have it—shut up.”
He cautiously eased a few more inches away from her. When he came for the first time with her he wanted to be inside her. Damn, maybe that was too ambitious for a 29-year-old virgin. He would also take naked together. Not fully clothed on the couch. Right. Maybe better not to plan all the ways he could orgasm with this woman as his partner.
“So,” her voice was tentative, “What made you stop? Wait—did you say married?”
Well, there went his plan. Foiled by sexual frustration.
“Yeah—I did.” His face was hot and he was afraid the expression he was making was a grimace. “I had a plan to go slow and woo you, and you know, maybe tell you that I love you and stuff? Bring you flowers? Take you out for drinks? Help you in your garden? But then you were here and you needed me and you kissed me, and I almost got to second base before I realized what was happening.” His plans just didn’t work around her. She was like some sort of unknown mineral deposit, throwing off his compass—but leading him to a better place than he had planned. “Fuck it. I love you, I want to marry you, and live my life with you, and I want to have sex with you so bad I can’t even breathe.”
Her eyes dipped to his groin, and he groaned again. “Yes, right now. Stop looking at it.”
She reached her hand to snag his. “Is this okay? We can hold hands?”
“Yeah, we can hold hands.”
She stroked her fingers over his palm while she talked.
“You know I’m old, right? I’ve got gray hairs and strong opinions? And I’m already ‘advanced maternal age’ so if you want kids we probably shouldn’t wait? You could marry a younger girl and get all that breezy child-free time.”
He closed his hand around her. “I don’t want a girl: I want you. And you gave me your strong opinions the first time we met in the alley, and it didn’t scare me off—and you were right. And we’ll have kids from school in our life whether we have our own or not. Obviously, we’ve got chemistry. But Sarah, do you really want me?”
Sarah stared into the brown eyes of the man she loved. She got a little lost in them. She considered what she knew about him, his strength, his humility, his compassion—not everybody wanted to make a difference in the world, the way life seemed ten thousand times more sustainable in his arms…totally unexpected, but it was right.
“Sarah?” he asked again.
“Oh, yeah. Um, Mark, you were who I went to when I was upset. You know who you are, you listen to me, respect me, can’t stop kissing me—” His hand squeezed hers tight and she grinned at the rueful expression on his face. “—Even though I’m always the one who kisses you first. I would be a fool not to love you. You are a good man, even if you got sucked in by USAteach. Yes, I want you.”
Mark said, “High five!” and raised his hand. She looked at him, befuddled, and then realized—right, limit contact.
“High five.” And yeah, they were still holding hands, too, but damn if there wasn’t still a zing when their palms connected. Hurray for providence, hurray for neighbors. She smiled fondly at him, and the joy in his face was blinding.
“Do you want to know when I realized I loved you?”
“Is it embarrassing? It’s not the soup, is it?”
“No, it’s not the soup.”
“Fine, then carry on.”
“When you came over and asked for teaching help. That’s when I knew.”
“What?” The corner of his mouth quirked up, and she took a second to think about how she would kiss it, later.
“You brought me alcohol, and you asked me for help, and the sun shone on you, and you shone at me, and that’s when I knew. I wasn’t happy about it, but that’s when I knew.”
“I…guess it took me longer. I felt like such an awkward failure that night.”
“You’re my awkward failure now.” She patted his hand that she’d been holding.
“I must’ve always been yours. We just didn’t know it.” Dammit, he was shining again. But she loved him, and he loved her, and she could bask in his glow.
“High five?”
“High five.”
8
Mark knocked on Sarah’s back door. They’d started going for walks together after he
got back from school. It was a good way to spend time together—and they both knew that even though they loved each other, they had a lot to learn about each other.
She came out in athletic tights and a light jacket. He’d been so ready to see her he was still in his teaching clothes.
“Are you ready to go?” She looked like she was ready to walk miles.
“I should probably at least change my shoes. I just…I wanted to see you.” He leaned in and risked a kiss on her forehead. The knot in his chest didn’t untangle, but it did relax a little.
She pirouetted. “Well, here I am.”
Her and her very nice ass. He added another jot to his mental post-marriage list and dashed back to his house to get his athletic shoes.
They ended up heading to the park with the walking track today. Sometimes they walked all over the neighborhood, and she filled him in on all the history and gossip from her grandmother’s days, but he didn’t want to take anything in today. He knew he had to get something out, and that track, with the ginkgo in the middle just starting to go yellow, would be the perfect place to walk it out.
He picked a rose from the bush at the north end of the track and handed it to Sarah. She smelled it.
“You’re always giving me flowers.”
“Well, you keep giving me vegetables, so I think we’re even.”
His school was miles away, but Sarah’s school they could see from the track. All those messy feelings came up again, the ones he’d been trying to ignore. She planned to teach at that school until she retired. He didn’t know what he was going to do at the end of the school year.
He huffed out a breath. He was so sick of himself getting frustrated over this. These feelings were so hard to unravel. He wasn’t mad at anyone. His students’ test scores continued to improve, so he wasn’t actually failing as a teacher. But he thought he would be making a difference, and he wasn’t.
“Mark, what’s with the sigh? Are you sick of vegetables?” Sarah turned to look at him.
“No, I’m just trying to figure out what to do with my life. I mean, for sure, you are my plan, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do besides you.” He realized what he said, and started laughing. “Sorry.”
“My beloved, we’ll figure it out. We’ve got a semester and a little bit before you can even do anything, right? There’s time.” Sarah wrapped her arms around him sideways and gave him a hug.
“I feel like a failure, though. I wanted to do something good, so I could feel good about myself. I jumped at the first chances to do it, without thinking through the consequences, and I haven’t changed anybody’s life, or made a difference.” He kicked at the empty beer can on the path.
“I don’t want to sound too much like Pastor Louis here, but your value is not in what you do. You are a beloved child of God, whether you are the best teacher ever or a bricklayer. You know this.” Sarah reached up to stroke his face, her fingers catching just a little on his afternoon stubble. “And you have changed a life. You changed mine.”
He stopped walking, and pulled her to face him. “Changed your life? You had a great life before me. All I did was see you for what you are.”
“Well,” she wrinkled up her nose in a grimace, “I know you think I’m cute when I’m grouchy. But I’ve been too angry. I was too angry at you, and I was too angry at everything and everybody this semester. But because of you, because of the way you listen to me, I’ve been having to explain to people constantly about the man in my life.” She broke off to swipe her arm over her nose as she sniffled.
“I told myself I was content, but I let resentment build up, I stopped talking to people who I thought wouldn’t understand about the stresses of my life. I tried to share enough that people thought they knew me, but I put up walls that nobody tried to climb over until you. And you opened the door from the inside…” She was sobbing by now. “And it’s just now all making sense to me, what you did, but my friends know me again. All of me. I would probably be headed towards a rage-y burnout without you.”
Mark’s knot of worry untwisted and sailed away as he wrapped Sarah up in his arms. If he had done this for her, it was enough. Maybe he would look into being a bricklayer. She sniffed a final sniff and pushed her arms around him, and they stood together, swaying, as dusk hit the park.
9
“Shit!” The handle of her sign had snagged the lace on her wedding dress again. Sarah grimaced and waved her sign even more vigorously. CHOOSE THE KIDS IN NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS, it said, and she hoped the secretary of education saw it.
Of course it was too much to go straight from her wedding to a protest but—it was the secretary of education announcing even more ways he planned to privatize education. She couldn’t not go say something for her coworkers and her kids. Mark had just laughed when she pitched it to him—the visit had only been announced a week and a half before the wedding. Not that there were that many weeks between their wedding and Mark’s accidental proposal.
Their pastor had asked lots of probing questions during their rushed premarital counseling. Her mom had been aghast until she’d seen the way Mark looked at her. And her garden suffered as she tried to be a good teacher and plan a wedding as soon as possible. They had both lived enough life that it didn’t make any sense to wait to start one together, but they still wanted to celebrate it. When Mark’s mama had come to town to meet Sarah, she was flustered to find out the woman of his dreams was older than him, but oddly, it was Sarah’s garden that sealed the deal.
“You’re a grow-er, just like my Nana. Of course Mark would love you.” And she’d taken her hands from being clasped at her heart and reached out to enfold Sarah in a hug.
After that, all there was to do was pull up the dead squash and cucumber vines, pick all the green tomatoes—Mark’s mama fried them, and they were delicious—plan a wedding, and re-plan everything with time to show up at the protest.
So they’d gotten married, kissed wildly in the foyer, ran into the fellowship-hall reception and invited anyone who wanted to join them. Not too many people took them up on it—it was a little bit chilly—but they were followed by their wedding photographer, who had just laughed.
What was more Sarah than switching up her wedding day to advocate for her children? She waved her sign again wildly and then shivered. Lace sleeves only did so much against St. Louis’s late autumn chill.
“Okay, you two—show me your signs and smile!” Mark’s sign said, I’M WITH HER. The photographer took one final picture as Mark put his arm around Sarah. She felt cold. He wanted to get her home. The secretary had gone into the building, and Mark didn’t plan on staying here until he came back out.
“Let’s go home.”
“Okay.” The word came out short and smirky, and the smile that came over her face made him get hot and bothered as they walked to the car. They were grown-ups, in charge of their bodies, subject to a higher call…but the last few weeks had been so fucking long. But now, there was a triumphant song in his head. “One flesh! One flesh! One flesh!” They were married. YES.
And then they were home. As they walked through her garden, she broke off some of the herbs, still standing despite the chill in the air—lavender, basil, thyme. She had to unlock the door, but then they got inside and headed up the stairs to the bedroom. They stopped, hand in hand, right before the door.
She looked over at him. “You ready?”
“Let’s do it.”
When they crossed the threshold, he took her to the center of the room. She dropped the herbs. The curtains filtered the daylight coming in, but the room was bright. She was trembling a little. She made as if to move her face towards him, but he reached out and held her face with two hands. “Wait. I’m going to kiss you first this time.”
Even though he moved slowly and deliberately, this kiss, like all their other kisses, went to heat so fast.
“Why are you in a dress?” he asked, his breaths coming quicker. “I can’t touch you.”
“Le
t’s just take it off.” She turned so he could undo the zipper and then she shimmied the dress off her.
His low-breathed and reverent, “Fuck.” made her blush all over—he could see it.
“Okay, it’s your turn now, mister.”
“Okay, Mrs. Jones.” He got everything off, and they fell onto the bed. She’d put the sheets on herself the day before, sneaking away from the hotel out in the “good part of town” where the wedding party was staying to do it.
“Finally,” he said. “Naked and unashamed.”
She pulled his left hand to hers and looked at their rings together. “Finally,” she said, her voice soft.
He pulled her to him. She resisted a little bit. “What, baby?”
“I mean…what if it’s not good? What if I’m only good at kissing?”
“If it’s not good, we’ll just practice until it’s better. We’re going to learn this together, Sarah. Maybe it’ll take a while to make the big no turn into a yes, but we’ll do it together, right?” He could be patient. He would be patient. He loved her. “Let’s start with kissing and see what happens, okay?”
They kissed, skin to skin, and the frantic note that had been building in his blood eased. He was home now. She was home, her arms were his home, her mouth was his home, her …he didn’t have any sweeter words. Her pussy was his home. He started sliding his hands over her body. Yes, her arms, the soft skin of her tummy, the heft of her butt, that was right: his to touch now. He squeezed it a little extra, just because he could. And then he slid upwards towards her breasts. Yep, they were his too.
“At all times.” he muttered. At all times. Yes. He rubbed his fingers over the tips and she squirmed. “Too much?”
“No—do it again. And what do you mean, ‘at all times’?”
He brought his face to hers again, continuing his slow caress of her nipples.
“It’s a Bible verse Pastor Louis made me memorize. Proverbs 5:19—‘Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.’” He kissed the corner of her mouth and then put his mouth around one peaked nipple.
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