by Sophia Lynn
“I want to ask why not, but we know very well why not, don’t we?” asked Halil.
“We do.”
“All right. Come on. There’s still more to see.”
To her surprise, he took her hand and led her to the rest of the house. The rest of their tour wasn’t as awkward as Myriah feared, but there was something new in the air between them, something that she was reminded of when Halil squeezed her hand or tugged her over to see some undiscovered painting or plaque.
I’ve not done this for a while, she realized.
It had been an almost shockingly long time since she had done anything just for the sake of pleasure, just for herself and not for work. If she thought about it, she definitely still missed her girls, but there was a kind of sweetness to it, the knowledge that no matter how much she missed them, she would see them in the evening, and that would be wonderful.
No, the pleasure lay in the fact that she was, as Halil said, doing something for herself, and she was doing it with Halil. That odd sweetness stayed with her through dinner in a charming restaurant in the most exclusive part of the city, and all the way home as well.
***
“Myriah, wait,” Halil said when they were in the house.
“Yes?”
“Today has been amazing, and I need to you know . . .”
Before he could finish his sentence, however, the door burst open and in came Rose with three little girls.
“Hi everyone! Guess which troublemakers are all back?!”
Then it was a flurry of hugs and kisses and the babble of three very beloved voices raised to a nearly earsplitting level because they all wanted to be the one to tell Mama about what had happened, even if they didn’t have the words for all of it.
Out of the corner of her eye, as she was made to admire a little pipe cleaner figure that Leah had made, Myriah could see that Mina was demanding to be picked up so that she could hug on to Halil properly.
God, he fits into this life with me so well. I can’t believe it sometimes.
Rose retreated downstairs because it had been a long day for her as well, and then there were baths and stories and songs. By the end of it, Myriah felt a deep drowsiness drift over her, and she didn’t protest when Halil reached for her, rubbing gently at the muscles at the base of her neck.
“Are you all right?” he asked, and she nodded.
“It’s just been . . . quite a day, hasn’t it?”
Even though she knew that she shouldn’t, she tilted her head to one side so that she could kiss his hand. Then, before she could be tempted to do any more, she stepped back.
“Before the girls burst in . . . you were saying something. What was it?”
Halil looked at her for a long moment, and he shook his head.
“It’s not important,” he said. “All that matters to me right now is being here.”
“With the girls?”
“With all of you.”
The moment stretched between them, and it was Halil who broke it first.
“I should get back to my place,” he said. “I think we both need some rest.”
“We do,” Myriah agreed reluctantly. Something at the back of her mind was telling her that there was something more to learn here, that she should have insisted, but it was as if a tide of sleepiness had hit her all at once. She quashed the impulse to tug Halil into the bed with her, and only nodded as he left the townhouse for his own bed next door.
I’ll figure it out tomorrow, she thought to herself. Tomorrow, I’ll have a clear head and I’ll be able to figure out what happens next.
She was asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow, and her dreams were vivid and brighter than life.
***
Halil
In his own townhouse, Halil could feel an edge of exhaustion rising up. At some point, he would have to lie down or fall down, but he brushed it back for the moment.
He had been in the United States almost three weeks, and what he had to do next, he realized he probably should have done as soon as he had landed on the ground. The fact that he hadn’t done it yet made him derelict in his duty, and now he was facing a kind of hurt that he almost couldn’t imagine; a hurt that threatened to take his breath away if he allowed it to do so.
He poured himself a generous amount of scotch, downing almost half of it before he pulled out his phone.
Time to do what needs to be done, he thought, and that thought brought him no joy at all.
Chapter Fifteen
Myriah
Myriah’s dreams were as bright as a warm summer day, and somehow she wasn’t surprised when she dreamed of London, a time which even in her waking moments felt more like a dream than not.
She wouldn’t have given up her girls for anything in the world, but there was something about hot London summertime on her bare shoulders that was also precious to her, possibly because that time would never come again in her life . . .
Three Years Ago
Francis was the one on baking duty that morning, and unlike Paul, he was kind. On her way out of the cafe at two in the afternoon, he had pressed a white paper bag into her hand.
“Here,” he said with a wink. “These didn’t quite turn out, so I might as well give them to you.”
“Thank you, Francis,” Myriah said with a grin, ducking out the door.
Some of the other girls at the cafe said that Francis gave her slightly cracked buns and slightly imperfect rolls because he was sweet on her, but she knew better. It was only that he was kind. He had once bashfully confessed to her that he had no idea why so many people went on about relationships, that he would be just as happy working at the cafe and living in his small flat with two roommates all his days. He said it as though it was a great secret that he could never tell anyone else, and even if it was such a strange thing for such a good person to be worried about, Myriah supposed she understood.
After all, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have her own secrets.
She walked down the avenue with a spring in her step, shedding the scratchy uniform shirt that she wore at the cafe. Underneath, she wore a sky-blue camisole that bared her arms and shoulders to the rare London sun. Her blue camisole and the shorts she wore made her feel oddly free that day, as if she had spent the last few years wrapped in cotton, rather than just coming from work.
The small park that she had designated as their meeting place was in full bloom that day, frothy with white roses, bleeding red with gorgeous poppies. Myriah found the bench that she had mentioned in her text, checking her phone for the time.
She was perfectly on time, but he tended to run a little late. She watched the children at play for a short while, and then she looked up at the sky, counting the fluffy clouds that occasionally drifted by.
When Myriah’s stomach rumbled, she reached into the white bag, pulling out a large sugared bun curled in on itself like a ram’s horn. She bit into it with delight, relishing the light lemon creme inside, and of course that was when she felt a warm hand cup the back of her neck.
Myriah supposed that a graceful person would take her time, chewing slowly and then turning around with a smoky look in her eyes. Myriah was only herself, however, and she nearly choked on her pastry, making Halil come around to thump her solidly between the shoulder blades as she coughed and her eyes watered.
“Oh, Halil, don’t startle me like that!”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think I would get a response like that. Here, have some water. Drink it slowly . . .”
The ice-cold water from the bottle helped, and taking his advice, she did drink it slowly. It soothed her throat, but it did nothing for her embarrassment at being caught out as such an awkward thing.
Halil, however, never seemed to notice how awkward she was feeling or that her eyes were red and watery. Instead, he sat patiently with her as she sipped the water, clenching her free hand between his own warm ones. When she was finally breathing normally, he shook his head, a wry smile on his face.
“I’m glad that you’re all right. I was genuinely beginning to believe I might need to take you to the emergency care or something.”
“No, I’ve been getting along okay with my own darned clumsiness for more than two decades now. I’m fine.”
She shook her head woefully. “I was really hoping to meet you a little more romantically than this,” she said. “You know, it would have been perfect. There’s the lake over there, all the birds singing, the flowers so bright . . .”
Halil flashed her a smile that could melt steel, and he brought her hand up to his lips, giving it a gentle kiss.
“If you like, I can get up and come back. I could make sure that you saw me coming, and so you’ll be doubly prepared.”
“Would you think less of me if I actually sort of considered it? No, no, please don’t! You’ll make the local pigeons and crows think that I’m a loon. Here, sit next to me instead. I brought some treats from the bakery.”
She pulled out a few barely singed tea biscuits for Halil, which he ate sitting on the bench next to her.
“Did you have a good day at work?”
Even as she told him about her day, it struck her as a little odd that he knew so much about her while he kept his own past shrouded in mystery. It wasn’t as if he was even shy about the fact that he was evasive.
It was one of the first things he had told her when they had met at one of the chips shops down the way.
“I don’t talk about my past or where I am from,” he said with a shrug. “Some people don’t care for that, but it is not something that I will be swayed upon.”
At the time, she had thought it was just a strange affectation, and that he would warm up to her eventually. Now she could see that perhaps that was a foolish thing to think, but it was hard to imagine a man with such kindness and warmth in his heart having a dark past that he needed to hide.
“What are you thinking about?” Halil asked her suddenly, and she looked at him in surprise.
“Why, why do you want to know?”
He reached over and thoughtfully brushed a few crumbs off of her chin. She might have been distressed at being so sloppy again, but the subtle tingle of electricity that traced over her skin at his touch meant she hardly minded.
“I’m thinking about . . . how much I want to know you,” she said, and when he started to stiffen up and to explain that talking about himself was not something he would do, she laughed and snuggled a little closer to him.
“I said I want to know more about you. I don’t need it, not right now, not until you are ready to share, but I want to know more about you, because I have always believed that part of being with someone, caring about them, means knowing them.”
Halil was silent for so long that she began to wonder if he was offended after all. No matter how he took it, however, Myriah knew that she wouldn’t take it back. It was the truth, and it was up to him what he would do with it.
“What do you want to know?” he asked finally, and to Myriah, it was like a bit of stone breaking off of a wall and somehow revealing sunlight on the other side.
“Honestly? Everything. But I want to know that about most people. I just feel that if we are going to be doing . . . what we do, it would be good to know more about you.”
“I see.”
For a moment, she thought that that would be the end of it. Halil would get up and tell her it wasn’t what he wanted, and that he was done.
Then he put his arm over her shoulders, bringing her close enough that she could feel the heat between them.
“What would you like to know? I reserve the right to veto the questions, and you have to play as well. I get to ask you questions, and you have to answer them just the same.”
“Kind of like a weird version of truth or dare, maybe, just without any dare,” Myriah said with surprise. “All right, let’s see . . .”
That quiet summer afternoon in a London park taught Myriah that Halil was mostly educated in private school, that his childhood pet was his horse, and that his favorite painting in the world was Klimt’s “The Kiss.” She learned that he was lonely sometimes, and that she helped soothe that loneliness in him.
She hadn’t expected to reveal as much about herself as she did. In return for baring himself at least a little, he learned that she loved traveling but wanted more than anything to have a home to return to, that she sometimes worried about her baby sister Rose, who was so bright but so wild sometimes, and that despite all of the fun she had with the other girls at the cafe and with the artists and poets and visionaries she knew, sometimes she was lonely too.
He’d reached for her, caressing her cheek with the very lightest of touches. She had noticed that he did that sometimes when he wanted to think about what he was going to say, as if touching her put him in connection with something deeper inside himself.
“And . . . do I make you less lonely?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Always.”
Her answer hung in the air between them, so strange that she wondered if she had done something awkward again. Perhaps that was too much for a man who wouldn’t tell her where he came from or why he was in London. There was a part of her, the one that remembered being the most awkward girl in the school, who was best friends with the teacher, that wanted to take it back. It was too much, and then he would think that she was too much, and then it would be over.
There was another part of her, however, the one who was emerging, the one who was flying through the world and finding herself strong enough for all of it, that refused. It was the truth, and no matter what happens, the truth was always the truth, and she had no reason to deny it at all.
Halil’s eyes, Myriah had always thought, were as dark as the spaces between the stars. Other people might have found them cold, but she felt as if she could drown in his eyes and die happy.
Halil started to say something, stopped, tried again, and finally shook his head.
“You have no idea how remarkable you truly are, do you?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that at all, but then she was saved from having to do so as he pulled her in for a deep kiss, his hand cupped protectively over the back of her neck, his mouth sweet against hers.
They had kissed before. There were small kisses when they met, deeper ones stolen when they both ventured to an underground club in the warehouse district, hurried things that always left both of them wanting more. This was different. Myriah could feel something stirring inside her that had started to wake up when she first met Halil, and now it bloomed inside her, a wild flame that promised her so much pleasure that it took her breath away.
There was something slow and deliberate about the way Halil kissed her, exploring her mouth as if he had all the time in the world. She allowed him to do so for a moment, and then she couldn’t resist the urge to kiss him back. One hand reached up to tangle itself in his shirt, as if she wanted to prevent him from moving away, and she gave herself up to the kiss, letting it carry her away.
There was no telling how long she might have gone on kissing him if she hadn’t heard the shouts of children on the path nearby. She pulled away suddenly, just as the children came running down the path. Myriah knew that she was as red as a tomato, but Halil only smiled faintly, perhaps a tiny bit smug, but otherwise as innocent as the cat who got into the cream.
“That was maybe . . .”
“A little too much for the park?” Halil suggested, and Myriah laughed.
“Well. Too much for the park, but . . . maybe not for my place?”
He stilled, and she knew he had heard the invitation in her voice, the invitation that she hadn’t known that she was going to offer until the moment she did it. There was something hungry in him then, but when he spoke, he was careful.
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” she said instantly, and in that moment, she was sure. “Come home with me.”
Home at the moment was a narrow little flat that she was subletting from a girl off t
o find herself in Morocco for the next three months. It was a strange single room, more tall than it was wide, with one enormously tall window looking down over the busy street two stories below. The window had been tinted blue, giving everything in the apartment an underwater cast.
Halil looked around curiously for a moment, but after the door shut and locked behind them, he reached for Myriah as if she were the only water in the desert. It felt amazing to be in his arms, and all Myriah knew was she wanted to get closer to him, to press herself to him until there was no space at all between them.
“So beautiful,” Halil crooned, kissing her face gently, first her cheeks, then her forehead and then her eyelids. It felt as if he were marking her in the gentlest way possible, making her his, and the sensation that flowed through her then made her shiver with pleasure and with a neediness she had never known before.
She must have made some noise, because Halil pulled back to look at her. When she looked up, her breath nearly caught because she had never seen him with this type of hunger on him before, something that made him look beautifully savage, incredibly bright.
“Myriah, will you come sit with me for a moment?”
“Um . . . all right. Yes.”
Moving as if he was entirely at home, he brought her to sit with him on the worn couch. Instead of letting her sit next to him however, he drew her to sit on his lap, his arms around her waist loosely. It should have been awkward, but there was something about them that fit well together, that made it the simplest thing in the world to snuggle up next to his body and to fit her face against his neck.
“What is it?” she asked. She felt as if she could face anything as long as she was this close to him.
“I want to know if you’re sure,” he said slowly. “We’ve known each other for a little while now, and . . . well, Myriah, are you a virgin?”
“I am not!” she said indignantly, and Halil laughed.
“You must know that’s not the most convincing way to tell me you’ve had some experience?”
“How many times have you asked that question?” she asked, intending to be snarky, but Halil thought about it for a moment.