Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  Then, with a quiet laugh, I turn and start walking toward my future.

  My parents arrive to collect Theo a bit after five o’clock, despite my insistence that I could bring her to them. I didn’t want to be an inconvenience in any way. My mom did her own insisting, though—she wanted me to have plenty of time to dress up for my date.

  I couldn’t resist that.

  Plus, Beckett already told me not to expect him to get here from work at what has become ‘the usual’ time. He wants to stop by his apartment and dress up for the occasion too.

  The rain has calmed for now, allowing me to walk Theo to my parents’ car. I hug her big and exchange I-love-yous with her and kiss, kiss, kiss her cute little face and smile at how she giggles.

  “Uncle Beck and I will FaceTime you later tonight, okay?” I promise her.

  “Okay! I’m gonna tell him all about my day!”

  I grin. “Good! That’s exactly what we want you to do!”

  “Mmhmm!”

  Once she’s secured in her car seat, I hug both of my parents big, too, at the same time.

  I start to speak while I do it, but Mom cuts in warmly.

  “Don’t even think about thanking us again. Just go be happy with Beckett.”

  “Yep, you heard her,” my dad agrees. “That’s all we want.”

  Just like that, my eyes are trying to well up like they did at work.

  A light breeze stirs and seems to caress my empty ring finger more than the others.

  What a feeling this is.

  I tell my parents, “Okay.”

  They pull back from me. She smooths at my hair and he gives me a smile that touches his own not-so-dry eyes.

  “Love you both so much,” I say.

  “We love you so much,” she returns. Then she smiles too. “Now go get ready! You’re always beautiful, but this rain has still been icky!”

  After sneaking one last smooch onto Theo’s hair, I let them all leave. Waves get exchanged until their car is out of sight.

  Excited butterflies fill my stomach as I go back into the house.

  I can’t wait to see Beckett.

  —

  By the time I’m dressed and waiting for his, ‘I’m on my way,’ text to turn into his arrival, the butterflies have woken up all the little fault lines in me.

  I almost feel like a teenager.

  But what I feel the most like is a woman who is happy in ways she used to think she couldn’t experience again. A woman who has allowed herself to let go of the pain and fear of moving on from a lost love—who already can’t get enough of the new love, the reverent touch, the honest laughter, and the solid companionship of the only man who could ever truly know her.

  What a beautiful thing it is to realize someone got to know you, deeply and joyfully, even while you spent time in the desolate nightmare of not knowing yourself.

  I get up from the couch so I can check my reflection for the umpteenth time.

  As happened every other time, the sight sends a flush over my skin.

  I feel beautiful.

  Maybe it’s dumb that I put a few curls in my hair even though the rain is due to pick back up, but it’s what I wanted to do; I kept the style long and loose over my shoulders, except for where a black rhinestone pin sweeps up one small section on the left side. It matches the strappy black heels I have on, and my dress is the flowy burnt-orange one I know Beckett likes.

  I’ll never forget the way he looked at me that night we went out to dinner with my family, when I last wore this dress. Not much time had passed since our first kiss, and we were trying—and failing—to tell ourselves we were still only friends.

  ‘I’m gonna think you’re beautiful,’ he had told me beforehand. ‘I’ll try to keep my eyes off of you, but I’m sorry in advance for if I fail at it.’

  No, never—I’ll never forget it.

  Never forget seeing more of the truth of him struggling the way I was, because guilt and anxiety weren’t the only things I felt in those times. I also felt a bizarre sense of comfort, like we were standing on the edge of doom and the world was ending around us and we didn’t want that to happen, but if we had to go down, God knew the only man whose arms I wanted to stand in were Beckett’s. If we were losing, we were losing together.

  I know now that the world wasn’t ending. It was just rattling us into our new places in life.

  Scary though it was at first, actual doom never came—only a more beautiful view of each other and everything else.

  I smooth at the front of my dress, then experience a skipped heartbeat over how bare my reflection’s ring fingers are.

  Once again, I feel….

  Ah, the rain is back. It’s getting louder and louder on the roof by the moment.

  I re-enter the living room just in time to hear a car door slam outside.

  My heart leaps now.

  He’s here. He made it safely, and we’re about to go to dinner for our date, and—

  I open the door just in time to see him running to the front step through the deluge, his head ducked, a bouquet of flowers in one hand.

  Tulips.

  Red and orange and yellow tulips.

  I’m a ball of happy light.

  He sees me and breaks out in a grin.

  “Hey!” he says over the rain, hurrying through the open door. His expression shifts into one of hitched-breath liking. “My God. Look at you.”

  I shut the door behind him and reply softly, “Hi. Look at you.”

  Damp brown hair, weightless eyes, dark red button-down, slim khakis, nice shoes, the tulips….

  I’m not sure which of us pulled the other closer, but he’s got an arm around me and my hands are on his face, his shoulder. We push into an eager kiss.

  And it’s all so overwhelming to me.

  What I did for myself today, and my deep and complete desire for Beckett, and this being our first date, and him looking so good and bringing me my favorite flowers, and the secure way we hold each other.

  Feels like getting ready to fall and falling and being caught all at once.

  Our kissing slips to an end, leaving us breathing thinly together.

  I find myself almost being something else too: tempted to not go anywhere at all tonight. Tempted to just stay here, put those tulips in water, and let kisses carry us away because I love the way we match each other.

  My insides are jolted as I remember all over again the shadowy morning that found us caught up in quiet passion in my bed.

  My body hasn’t forgotten his touch; I loved it more than I can say. I’ve wanted it back so many times, wanted to give mine back to him, wanted us to go even further, but no matter where mouths and hands and hips have wandered since then, they haven’t led back to that place or anywhere beyond. We’ve been content to stop for reasons ranging from Theo being around to…well, to Cliff still faintly lingering here and there.

  Today is different, though.

  I wonder if he, too, can feel the freedom we have today that we didn’t seem to have before.

  I wonder if he wants to fall into it with me.

  His arm flexes around me. He finally shifts back enough for his eyes to meet mine; they put chill bumps on me as they drift slowly and tenderly over my face.

  “Hi again,” he whispers. “I love you with every bit of who I am.”

  The fault lines judder hard.

  No, this isn’t the first time either of us has said it so simply, and our other mentions of it were golden in their own ways…but to me, this one is without parallel. The truth of it touches every single part of me. It fills every corner of my mind, every building block of who I am, every beat of my heart.

  Just like the unhindered love I feel for him.

  Briefly, I think it might move me to tears.

  They don’t come, though. All that comes up is my own truth.

  I swallow hard before telling him, “I’ve never been in love with anyone the way I’m in love with you.”

  He slowly
pulls in a breath—the biggest breath his lungs can hold.

  With his eyes hanging on mine, he barely whispers now, “Never with…anyone?”

  I shake my head and frame his face in both hands.

  He closes his eyes and turns one, two, three kisses into my right hand. Then he unwinds his arm from around me and puts his hand over mine, presses his lips to my palm for a harder moment.

  My pulse has begun skipping.

  How should I tell him I took off…?

  But I feel his breathing stumbling against my skin just as I feel his fingertips seeking out my ringless finger.

  He has noticed on his own.

  My pulse is uncontrollable now.

  In a swift second, he’s turned back to me and taking my mouth with fervor that shocks me into a soft gasp.

  Shocks my body, anyway. Not my heart.

  I almost can’t keep up with him, but damn it, I try.

  “I don’t—I don’t have words,” he soon falters out of the kisses. “I don’t have words, Ellie.”

  After another eye-stinging moment, I admit, “Neither do I, really.”

  That’s okay, though. We don’t have to figure out what to say about this change. Maybe words will come to us at some point, but maybe not—it’s all okay.

  I touch a gentle kiss to his lips. His jawline. The scar on his cheek.

  He keeps cradling my hand in his, using his other arm to draw me into another embrace.

  The crinkle of bouquet wrapping melts my heart all over again.

  “You brought tulips for me,” I whisper.

  I feel his smile in his cheek beneath my lips. “Of course I did.”

  Of course he did.

  We step back from each other so he can present the vibrant flowers to me. I touch one of the red ones and marvel at the shape, the feel, the color.

  So delicate in some ways. So strong in others.

  Just like us.

  I smile at the bouquet, then at him. He reflects my happiness right back to me.

  “Ready for our very first date?” he asks.

  What a question.

  Overdue. Right on time. Previously unimaginable. Impossible to not want now.

  I cradle my tulips in a way that allows me to touch one of the many raindrop spots on his shirt.

  “Yes,” I tell him. “I’m ready for everything with you.”

  He touches me, too, along the waist of my dress. “Good. That’s how I feel about you.”

  Our smiles grow.

  We start getting ready to go.

  —

  In most ways, going out to dinner unfolds the same as it has for a while: we sit side-by-side, try each other’s food, have fun and talk and share laughs that are almost too loud at times.

  The underlying contentment, though, runs deeper than ever.

  The way it feels to be owning our truth instead of fighting it, to let ourselves be complete because of each other…it’s so big.

  Even though it’s just between the two of us, it’s so big. I don’t know how it isn’t breaking out of the realm of emotion and into clear view. It seems like there should be an aura around us, a radiance, something everyone can see and feel the warmth of and know is special.

  It occurs to me after a while that maybe there already is something like that here.

  Maybe it’s in how openly our jokes make us laugh, and in how sunny our gazes are on such a stormy night, and in all the affectionate touches that have passed between us since we first walked through the door.

  Except, that is, for how both of my ring fingers keep ending up under Beckett’s fingertips.

  It seems to happen absently just as often as with intention, but no one who catches sight of those touches could understand what they mean to us. Only we know about the happiness and pain that lived there for so long; only we know about the happiness and hope that live there now.

  Once more, I’m overwhelmed by everything about him—about us.

  I’m not sure how much longer I can stand what he does to my fault lines every time he smiles and every time I see how relaxed he is with me and every time his skin grazes mine.

  What makes it worse is when he shows that I’m affecting him beneath the surface in return. He has regarded me with love and longing so many times now that I’m familiar with what those things do to his eyes and the way he breathes; I keep seeing them here, in public, where we can’t act on them.

  But I treasure that it’s just for me.

  I think it over and over: He’s just for me. The way he feels is just for me.

  After we’ve reminisced about our park picnic and shared the secrets of things we thought and felt that day, we end up sharing something else: how we each recently spoke to Cliff’s spirit about us, and how it was the final piece to our acceptance of our love. Neither of us knew the other had felt that same need to talk to him, and it’s so special to hear. It’s proof we didn’t need but still value that we aren’t just of the same mind—we’re of the same heart.

  We allow ourselves a kiss that doesn’t last long enough.

  Its swift end makes us sigh.

  His voice gentles from the volume it was at, dipping below the noise around us. “What do you wanna do for the rest of our date?”

  The skirt of my dress keeps his hand from truly touching my thigh, but it doesn’t stop my skin from heating up, nor does it stop me from feeling the slight tremble in him.

  This plus his question plus everything else has that heat flaring up through the rest of me. It makes me feel breathless, puts an unstoppable blush in my cheeks.

  Yet I can’t shy away from him.

  My eyes take their time following the path of his hand up to his lips, which are so close yet so far away.

  I get the best breath I can before meeting his eyes and matching his tone.

  “I’m so happy we dressed up and came out to dinner, but…it would also make me happy just to go back home with you. To—to be alone with you.”

  If looks were touches, I would have him all over me right now.

  I do have the backs of his free fingers against the blush in one of my cheeks.

  After a slanting second, his lips are there, causing my eyes to close.

  “That’s how I feel, too, Ellie. There’s nothing I’d rather do after this than have you all to myself.”

  His hand on my thigh stutters down just an inch, not quite to the edge of my skirt, but almost….

  It’s hard not to confess my desire to him outright. Hard not to ask if he feels it for himself so that if he doesn’t, I can work on calming down, and if he does, I can mind a little less how completely on fire my face is now.

  In fact, he murmurs, “Why are you blushing so hard?”

  But the question is too deliberate.

  There’s no way he doesn’t know the answer.

  I don’t manage a very steady breath, but at least my lungs are still working.

  I whisper, “Can’t you read me?”

  The kiss he presses to my cheek is closer to my ear than anywhere else.

  “Yeah, I can,” he whispers too. “You caught me.”

  In his pause, I brace myself for whatever he’s going to grow bold enough to tempt me with.

  But I feel him giving in to a smile, and it fills me with relief.

  He’s going to have mercy on me.

  As he clears his throat, his hand leaves my thigh. Once we have space between our faces again, he aims that soft smile right at me.

  Those eyes, though.

  “Guess what?” he says.

  I mentally shake off what I can read for myself in those eyes. “What?”

  “While I was at my apartment, I grabbed my video game stuff in case you wanna play something later.”

  That isn’t merely a comforting change of subject—that’s funny.

  I snort out a laugh, and his smile shifts toward a grin.

  “Sounds fun, right?” he asks. “You very adorably yet very sadly losing games to me no matter how hard you t
ry to win?”

  “No, I swear, I’m gonna win one of these days! We just don’t play games I’d be good at!”

  “What kinds of games are those? We’ll get one for you.”

  It’s a serious question, but when my only response is to blink unsurely at him, he bursts into laughter.

  I love the way he laughs, even when he’s laughing at me.

  But just like the last time I played video games with him, I mean it about my future victory. I will have a future victory. He’ll see.

  He starts naming off potential options, so we talk about that for a bit longer. Not too much more time passes before our food is gone and our check has been paid; we’re ready to leave.

  In the front vestibule, we pause and look out at the fresh downpour with a handful of other people. Beckett’s hand strokes low on my back, and I try not to shiver where everyone can see.

  “All right,” he says decisively. “I’m gonna go grab the car and come pick you up.”

  Just as I’m not surprised he would offer that, I figure he’s not surprised by me shaking my head.

  I assure him, “I don’t mind running out with you.”

  He chuckles, his easy gaze swinging all over me. “Wellll, as amazing as you look, I recall from leaving the house that you can’t run anywhere in those shoes.”

  I playfully nudge him while a couple other people laugh.

  “I’ll try, though,” I insist.

  “Nope, you will stay dry by staying here while—”

  In a flash, he’s out the door and dashing into the rain.

  I gasp, then laugh, then start to follow him.

  “Aw, girl, let him do it!” another woman says appreciatively. “If a man wanted to treat me that sweet, there’s no way I’d argue!”

  Having stopped, I turn rather bashful eyes on her. “He is the sweetest, but I don’t wanna inconvenience him.”

  An older gentleman chortles. “I wouldn’t say you’re doing that at all. He seems quite happy to take care of you.”

  That sets my heart aflutter.

  How right you are, sir.

  He catches my eye and winks amicably.

  Smiling, I decide to wait for Beckett after all.

  When his car pulls up to the curb, I hurry through the rain as quickly as I can—which, as he predicted, isn’t quickly at all. But I don’t mind that I get a little wet any more than I mind how wet he is in the driver’s seat. I still feel beautiful and he still looks it, even in the warped parking lot lighting coming in through the drenched windows and windshield.