“Thank you. I’m done with this.” She rinses her hands down before turning it the faucet off again and twisting to look at me, resting against the quartz counter behind her as she dries her hands on the cloth. “Did you say goodnight to Bryn?”
“Yeah.” I tilt my shoulder through the wall. “Nina and Angelique are out on the deck. They asked if you want to watch a film.”
But we both know who asked. We both know that I want to know, too.
All day it’s felt kind of like it used to, so closed to how things are supposed to be that I can’t properly breathe. A tightness in my chest that has kept me on edge all day, because I’m so close to perfect happiness.
My family over. Raquel laughing with Nina and taking Bryn over to see the view of the mountains. All of us sitting at the table outside and eating.
I am at a state in my goddamn life where just asking Raquel to pass over the ranch is enough to give me tingles. After everything, this is where I’ve landed: that just being near her is basically a religious experience.
Hope. It’s painful. It’s beautiful. It’s so much and God knows, it’s never enough. Because you always want more. Want to know what’s going to happen. And yet are terrified of actually asking what’s going on, because if you’re wrong then… that’s it. You’ve gotten your answer. And the answer is no.
I think all this shit in the time it takes Raquel to blink, just once.
“I’d like that,” she says. “I’ll make popcorn. Why don’t you take through some beers for Nina and Angelique?”
We set up the way we used to: the four of us on the huge U-shaped sectional. Angelique and Nina take one chaise, curling up under a throw blanket. In the past Raquel and I would have tangled together at the other end of the couch.
Now Raquel takes the corner and I sit in the middle, between her popcorn bowl and my sister’s, bracketed by movie snacks.
It feels good. It might not be perfect, but it’s enough just to watch Raquel laughing along to the movie. To hear Angelique and her chat to each other over me, exchanging theories and humorous takes.
It would be enough just as it is. And then, partway through the film, Raquel moves the popcorn away.
I cast a sidelong look to her. She isn’t facing me. Her eyes are on the screen, and still she sits: a little far from me, awkwardly, like we don’t know each other.
And then, bit by bit, without looking to me, she slides herself in closer to where the popcorn used to be.
It’s not an obvious movement. She doesn’t do it in one go. Just her body slowly relaxes, a sinking unwinding. She shifts to pull down a throw blanket from the back of the sofa. She bends her knees to the side and tucks her toes under her thighs. She drapes the blanket over her legs and shuffles around. She moves the popcorn to the other side.
And then slowly, undeniably, she leans into me.
I can’t swallow. I can’t even breathe. I raise my arm up, as bad at being casual as a teenage boy pretending to yawn on a date at the movies. My arm threatens to shake as I slide it over the back of the couch.
Raquel doesn’t comment. She just settles beneath it, curling into the space left under my wingspan, and then finally, with a faint exhale, rests her head where it belongs at my chest.
After the crash, I’ve learned to appreciate things I didn’t before. Taking a shower. Walking down the stairs. Going on a hike. Ordinary things. The kind that you don’t realize are special until they’re gone.
But none of them come close to how it feels to have Raquel’s face pressed against my side. To feel the trusting weight of her lean. God made a lot of pleasures, but how many of them come close to the woman you love curling up against you?
And she is the woman I love. I know that in a way that burns. The knowledge clings to me and wraps itself about my heart.
Big love.
The movie doesn’t matter. All I can focus on is letting my hand carefully, delicately slide down the couch’s back. Testing, tentative. And when Raquel doesn’t stop me, my fingers come to rest gently over her bicep.
When I move my thumb, she begins to shift—and my heart skips a beat until she presses in closer, her cheek nuzzling gently against my side.
Chanel No. 5. She’s worn it every day I’ve ever known her. I take a slow, careful breath of it. Beneath I can smell her shampoo, and the soft sweet smell of her skin.
I could worry. It would be easier to think: is this the last time? Like I’ve thought every day since she came back.
But I’m not going to. Instead I’m going to stay here, now, with the woman I love in my arms. I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to pretend that it will never, ever end.
Just once I catch Nina’s eye. We look at each other as our respective partners look across at the TV, and we share something in the silence. Nina’s eyebrow rises almost imperceptibly. I twist my lips into what would be a shrug if I could move.
I don’t understand, either.
But Nina smiles, and I do too, and I slide my fingers treasuring, gentle over Raquel’s arms. The slightest of movements—millimeters at the most—enjoying the feel of her slim bicep beneath the fabric of her blouse.
This is enough.
This is happiness.
I am so grateful for this one, precious moment.
JJ
We don’t talk about what happened last night.
If Raquel’s thinking about it, she doesn’t show it on her face. She keeps her calm smile in place through the hectic rush of the morning as we get everyone to the airport. Before security she hugs Nina and Angelique before taking Bryn into her arms.
There’s a way she looks down at his little face as she holds him…
Something inside of my chest twists in on itself and tugs.
I wouldn’t be able to look away except for Nina pulling me into a tight hug. I let my eyes close for a moment, squeezing her tight.
When she draws back she keeps her eyes fixed to mine, her hand holding at my bicep as if she knows she needs to ensure the fix of my attention.
“Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”
“Uh huh.” I try not to let my gaze shift over her shoulder to where Raquel’s handing Bryn back to Angelique, stroking her hand over the soft curls of his hair.
Nina isn’t fooled. She looks over her shoulder briefly before turning back to me, her lips twisting over some thought.
“James…”
I force a smile. “Nina.”
Her voice is lower when she finds it. “She’s a special woman. You know that, don’t you?”
I could laugh at that, but I hold the bitter sound back. “Trust me. I’ve always known that.”
“You two are good for each other.” She keeps her voice quiet, but it’s not like the others would hear us over Bryn’s burbling laughter, anyway. “Just think about what you want.” She shakes her head against the protest I’m already forming. “Not just for this winter. For the next fifty years.”
I look over her shoulder to where Raquel leans over Bryn, laughing as she gently taps his nose and he explodes into giggles of delight. There’s a glow over her face as if she’s illuminated by a light I can’t see. The lines are gone from her forehead, and her smile is a pure happiness that I haven’t seen in so long.
I imagine her looking at another baby like that. Our baby.
We were so close.
We…
Nina hugs me again. “I love you. Call me more often.” And then, as she steps back: “And think about what I said, okay?”
Once they’re through the gate, Raquel and I stand in silence for a moment. While my family were here, it was weirdly easy to fall into old roles. To act the way we always have with them. Now…
I sneak a sideways glance at her. She’s still looking dreamily after them, though now faint lines have traversed across her forehead.
The words come out before I think about them.
“Hey. Do you want to get dinner out tonight?”
I only mean—because it
will be lonely in the house, now they’re gone. I’m going to tell her that. But when Raquel looks up at me, her dark eyes wide, I find that the words have disappeared. Left behind is something else. The truth, more complex and vulnerable.
Vertigo tugs at me like I’m standing above a bottomless drop.
It feels like it takes a year for her to nod.
“I’d like that.”
We’ve become so good at not talking about what’s happening that we continue not talking about it all day. Which doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it every second—as I meet with the physio, as I do some chores in town. Now I can drive myself and move pretty easily, I take every chance I can to get out into Jackson. The beginning of June is warm and I drive in my T-shirt with the windows of my truck down, taking deep breaths of the summer air.
There’s a taste on the breeze. Something intoxicating and fresh. Something like potential. It lodges in my chest and buzzes there, an electricity under my skin.
By the time we meet in the foyer a bit after seven, I’ve been thinking so much about what this is that my mouth is dry and my palms are sweaty. I try to hide the way I brush them over my jeans.
I might not know what’s going on. But I know what I want this to be.
This is the first time in a year and a half that Raquel and I have gone out for a meal together, and I want this to be a date.
God, I want it so bad.
I look different in the mirror. I’m gaining weight, finally. I look more like my old self. But I can’t get my hair to sit right, and did I miss a spot when I shaved? And fuck—
Then Raquel comes down the stairs, and I forget everything.
She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
She looks amazing in sweat pants and a T-shirt. Hell, she’s so stunning that she could rock a paper bag. But tonight…
I look up from her cowboy boots, along her slim bare legs to her pretty pink dress. She has a denim jacket over one shoulder, and a silvery clutch in one hand. She’s wearing her hair loose and wavy. There’s gloss on her lips, and she’s done something different with her eyes, and…
I don’t have words. I look at her and work a swallow through my dry throat, and all I can hear is the thud-thud-thud of my heart in my ears.
It looks a lot like she’s dressed for a date, a fact which has apparently made my brain stop working.
Raquel’s smile is unsure, slow to quirk and then lopsided when it does. Because she’s herself, it still looks fucking stunning. “Am I dressed right?”
Jesus, could I possibly be less smooth? I force a smile. “Of course. You look amazing.”
Maybe I’m not meant to say that. We look at each other, and I could swear that Raquel’s cheeks are turning pink.
She opens her mouth as if to say something, and I feel an undeniable gravity pulling me toward her—
The ring on my phone is impossibly loud.
We both start, the surprise turning into a laugh that we share. It sounds a bit like relief. We can find this funny even if we can’t acknowledge “this” in proper words—the tension between us.
“The taxi?” Raquel doesn’t wait for me to confirm it, holding the door open for me as we head out into the warm evening air.
On the drive we make small talk, avoiding the obvious: that she’s in a pretty dress and I’m in a button-down shirt, and we’re heading out to eat together. I can hardly focus on what we’re saying anyway. I feel like a teenager on his first date. So close, I can smell her perfume again. The scent that turns my head in a crowd and catches my heart.
I hop out first to open her door. The smile Raquel flashes me as she steps out melts my heart.
It always felt good to be seen with Raquel. What straight guy doesn’t want to be out with a gorgeous woman on his arm? But tonight it’s something else. After all of our time apart, her beauty is a tangible presence.
Everyone looks at her. The doorman, the bartender, the guy at the next table. I can’t blame them. She’s a perfect ten, the most beautiful woman in any room she’s ever been in.
When she had my ring on her finger, I felt secure when other guys looked at her. Now we’re on a maybe-date despite being kind-of broken up, and the fact of their eyes on her kills me. I’ve never been a jealous guy before. But now this is so fragile and so new, every extra-wide grin a man sends her way makes my stomach twist itself into a knot.
She’s an adult woman. She can do what she wants. But please, God, let her want to do me rather than that doorman.
I force my smile to hold all the way to our old favorite table at our old favorite bar—one of the fancy wine places in Jackson Raquel has always loved, even though she doesn’t drink.
When the waiter swoops in, Raquel turns her slow smile up to him, and I can see the guy’s instantly smitten.
Him and me both.
“What can I get y’all tonight?”
Raquel taps one perfectly manicured fingertip to the menu. “Can I get a ginger beer? Thank you.” When did she have time to get her nails done?
The guy nods with a grin. “Sure thing.” He turns to me. “And for yourself?”
I smile at him as much as I can. “One of the IPAs you’ve got on tap.”
“No problem. I’ll give you some time to look at the menus.”
We don’t need to. We’ve been here so often that I can already tell what Raquel will order—the butternut squash risotto—and I already know I’m getting a burger.
Raquel looks at the menu anyway. I know because I do the same, only flicking my gaze up to her in brief sips.
The silence spreads, waiting for someone to fill it.
I clear my throat, and Raquel says “yes?” at exactly the same moment.
We laugh again, and somehow it clears something between us. Raquel’s eyes are bright where they meet mine. She’s still a little flushed. But her smile is wide and sure, and even if we aren’t yet naming this thing, we can share it as we look at each other.
How ridiculous it is that we’re acting like two kids whose parents have dropped them off at Panera so they can sit in an awkward silence.
“This isn’t going to work if we’re this weird,” Raquel says.
“Tell me about it,” I agree, managing to make the words sound kind of casual and funny even though on the inside my mind is going a mile a minute.
Does this mean a date? Or dinner, in any capacity? Or… God, when was the last time I felt this insecure?
We’re saved by the return of the waiter, giving us our drinks and taking his order. Once we’ve ordered exactly what I knew we would, Raquel leans back in her booth seat to look at me, twirling her straw lightly between her fingers.
“It was good to see them again.”
She doesn’t need to name them: Nina, Angelique, Bryn.
I can almost feel the weight of her curled up under my arm again. It’s all I can do to speak. “Yeah. It was. You’ve been…” Well, fuck it. Might as well go all-in on this. “You’ve been good to my family. My mom.”
Raquel looks down to her drink for a long moment. I can see her trying to find words. When she looks up, her eyes are full.
“I care about them.”
There’s a beat. And then I swear I can see it, the moment that she steps off some ledge in her mind. The moment she jumps.
“I care about you.”
Care. It’s such a tiny word. But maybe it means… It could mean…
I look at Raquel, and I swear there’s just as much love in her eyes as there ever was.
Every inch between us is crackling with potential. That static charge which you only have at the very beginning, when every breath, every whisper, matters.
When things could go one way or the other. When this is it.
Is it going to happen—or not?
We look at each other, and I’m in free fall into the night sky of her eyes, all that blackness speckled with stars.
I’ve jumped out of helicopters over mountain ridges. I’ve thrown myself
into superpipes twenty-two-feet deep. I’ve jumped from snowy rocks, and icy rails.
Nothing has scared me so much as this moment.
“I still feel the same way I always did,” I say to her, screwing up every bit of courage I have. “I never stopped loving you, Kel.”
She looks at me, and I can see that she’s falling too. Her fingers twitch over her glass, one flicker before she commits. Her hand comes to rest over mine, the warmth of her skin aching in my bones.
“I know,” she whispers.
We don’t talk about it for the rest of the meal. It’s too much. Instead we relax into each other’s company—properly relax, for the first time since forever.
We talk about old times, and old people. The way our life used to be. We just catch up, in a way I imagined that we never might again, and it’s so fucking precious to me. I’ve missed Raquel so much that just hearing about her lie means the world.
I try to tell myself that I’m fine with this being all it is. I said what I needed to. She knows how I feel. If we just have this one perfect meal, it’s enough.
But still the air between us burns.
We can laugh like the old times. Raquel can go back to her habit of stealing fries from my plate, and I can down my second beer and feel the tipsiness rush through me, a fluid bubbly happiness that makes my mouth hurt from smiling so much.
But it’s different, because every atom of my body aches for her.
Every time our eyes catch, we lean a little closer to each other, and every time Raquel draws herself back she manages to get a little further away.
I never want this meal to finish. Because I’m having the best night I’ve had in a long time. Because it’s so good to have Raquel laughing at my stories again, and to “passionately debate” with her about ballet really is terrible. (She says it’s not; I say you can tell how much I wanted to sleep with her by the fact I sat through three of them when we were dating.)
More than that, though, I don’t want to leave because that means we’ll have to work out what this is. What’s happening. And I don’t want to risk that.
I don’t think Raquel does, either. It’s only reluctantly that she finally stands. When I hold her jacket up for her, she looks at it for a moment before slipping into it, and as she turns her back to me and I slip it over her shoulders I can smell that perfume again, intoxicating.
Crash (The Wild Sequence Book 2) Page 17