by Sarah Hogle
I frown, but he doesn’t move until I accept it. “Is this a commentary on my breath?” I brushed my teeth twice before this. And flossed. And swished mouthwash until my eyes watered.
“You’ll see.” He swallows, smile widening as I side-eye him irritably, popping the gum in my mouth. Then he takes my hand and leads me toward the front door. Just as I reach for the knob, however, he loops an arm around my waist to haul me close to him and turns in a different direction.
“What are you—”
He shakes his head, striding down the hall with me in bewildered tow.
This half of the house is dark. I try again: “What are we—”
“Ah-ah-ah,” he admonishes me, clucking his tongue. Then he abruptly spins so that he’s walking backward in front of me, face-to-face. He takes my hands in his, turning again down a different corridor. In my peripheral vision, I see his brilliant smile transform his whole body, but I can’t look directly at him because I’ve been swept away into another world.
There are clouds in the corridor.
A whole night sky: great big puffs of cotton threaded with twinkly lights hanging down like raindrops. I think he made them himself, affixing the cotton to paper lanterns and suspending them from the ceiling. We walk under and around cloud after cloud, the only illumination in this long, dark hallway.
“You’re probably experiencing a change in atmospheric pressure,” he tells me, raising our hands together and flattening our palms before his left laces tightly with my right and his other hand finds the small of my back. He brings me close to him, then reverses our positions in one fluid motion. Then again.
I realize we’re dancing.
He waltzes me down the hallway, eyes sparkling, wholly riveted on my face. Neither of us is getting the steps right, but I’m not even the tiniest bit self-conscious about it and he—oh, he’s a dream, just marvelous, mesmerizing, painfully luminous in the glow of a sky he made all for me. “That’s because we’re up in the clouds now, going higher and higher,” he says.
“I see that,” I reply, hardly able to get the words out because I’m beaming so hugely.
“You see that bird that just went by?” he teases. “Caw, caw!”
I fall sideways just a bit, giggling. He catches me, holding me closer. Our graceless stumbling makes me throw my head back and laugh harder.
“Whooooosh,” he says at my ear, a smile in his voice, “there goes an airplane.”
I shake my head, but my heart leaps out of my body with a parachute. I feel wildly out of control, like I’m standing in the surf and the water’s pulling at me, trying to knock me off my feet. I’ve gotten close to this feeling before, manufactured in the superficial relationships of my fantasies, but that feeling falls flat on its face in comparison to this.
I am bubbles and butterflies. I am fizz floating into the night sky. I don’t know what’s happening or what will happen because for once, I am not orchestrating any of this. The lines are all unscripted, every second a thrilling surprise. I’m spinning out, carried away in a current. I want to fight it and I want to surrender.
My knees go wobbly as the identity of this feeling rips its mask off and declares itself to me, but Wesley thinks my heels are the culprit.
“All that effort, and you’re still all the way down there,” he tells me with a crooked grin. I blow a bubble with my gum, letting it pop in his face.
We’ve reached the end of the hall. Wesley reaches behind him, fumbling for a doorknob without turning. I think he wants to continue monitoring my reaction.
I arch a brow. “The conservatory?”
His expression is sly. “Is it?”
My forehead scrunches, but then the door is open, and the huge bags of soil I’ve seen him drag in here are nowhere to be found. “A bell chimes,” he says lowly, “when we open the door.”
“I didn’t hear a . . .”
My brain blinks out. I’m stationary as I wait for backup generators to kick on, letting pieces fall together slowly.
The sunroom, which I handed over to Wesley in exchange for the cabin in our negotiations, is not the conservatory he’s been talking about. There are plants, big floppy ferns in pots, but my attention flits past them to the red vinyl booth sidled up against the glass wall. The opposite wall is painted pale purple, lower half adorned with aqua tiles that spread over the floor. It smells like plaster and new construction, drilled wood and fresh paint. There are succulents in hanging baskets and a travel poster on the wall that says, in vintage style, welcome to falling stars. On closer inspection, it isn’t a poster at all. He’s painted the design directly onto the wall, then hung a frame around it.
“Over here is the display case,” he tells me, motioning at a bank of empty space, “filled with donuts. Up here is the old-fashioned register.” He raps the register-less countertop, which I realize was taken from the bar in the lounge upstairs. A coffeepot that’s probably as old as I am, carafe stained amber, awaits.
Part of me has gone away from Falling Stars, from Top of the World. I’m in Lexington, Kentucky, fourteen years old. In the car with Mom, world black, snow pushing against the windshield. We’re bundled in coats, hats, mittens, still-warm leftover pie from the diner between us in a Styrofoam container. We’re listening to syndicated radio host Delilah on the radio, and while we didn’t scratch millions from the lottery ticket, for the present moment we’re a peaceful family unit. The happy spark of memory infuses me with warmth.
My throat closes up. “It’s perfect.”
The rotary phone is blue rather than beige, nonfunctional, cord cut off. It automatically becomes canon. There’s only one red vinyl booth; the rest of the seating is thrifty substitutes, red-painted card tables with mismatched patio chairs. The bar stools don’t spin, and they’re yellow, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. He’s lit a candle called Blueberry Pie, the scent too weak to overpower the rest of the room. I picture Wesley picking out candles at Casey’s General, hunting for ones that smell like baked goods.
The cloud lights are in here, too—on the floor around us, hanging from the ceiling, reflecting off the glass wall to imitate a café in the night sky. Rain begins to fall outside, pelting the panes.
It’s a miracle I can stand upright when I am, in fact, melting.
“Do you hear the jukebox?” He’s behind me, hands at my waist, lips at my ear. He points at an old red Zenith radio sitting atop a pile of extra tiles.
“It’s playing my favorite song,” I reply, voice quivering in spite of my best efforts. I glance sideways at the glass wall to see his reflection. We stand in a room that is half shadow, half heaven, with softly glowing clouds, their number doubled in the glass wall. He is the most radiant thing in here, smile dazzling.
“You haven’t seen the best part yet.” Wesley moves my hands up from my mouth to my eyes. “Don’t look.”
I shut my eyes tight. “I can’t believe you did this. How long have you been working on it? How did you— I can’t even— You are . . .” I can’t drum up any coherent speech, babbling. “You are . . .”
“Yes,” he replies from several feet away, a touch smug. “I am, aren’t I?”
My cheeks hurt from smiling. “You truly are.”
Click.
“What was that?” I ask. “Please let it not be my morning alarm. Am I asleep? I hope this doesn’t all disappear when I open my eyes.”
“Don’t worry, it’s here to stay.” Wesley’s voice is closer than I anticipated. “And . . . open.”
I do.
Ohhh!
It’s my sign! Maybell’s Coffee Shop. The words are painted on an oval piece of wood. Below them, he’s shaped a donut out of two hot-pink neon wires that plug into the wall, feeding through the back of the wood.
My vision glitters and the image appears in my mind’s eye like a premonition: I see myself adding books to th
is room, stacking them wherever they’ll fit. Whole rows of romance and science fiction. A cappuccino machine. Menus that double as bookmarks . . . pairing the perfect book with the pastry of your choice. The thought lands with a fateful boom that rattles the floor and ceiling.
“I hope you don’t mind Subway sandwiches for dinner,” he’s saying, scratching the back of his head self-consciously. “I wanted to cook something nice for you, but the clouds took longer than expected and—”
I leap at him, throwing my arms around his neck. I kiss his cheek, his chin, his forehead. “Wesley! How dare you be this amazing! Who gave you the right?” I don’t stop to let him respond. “What about your conservatory? This was supposed to be yours. We made a deal. You can have the cabin, then. It’s yours.” My name is on a sign. My name is on a sign on the wall. With a neon donut. I cannot believe this. “Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome so much.” Wesley is trying to be modest, but I can tell he’s exceedingly pleased with himself. Good. He should be. “I wanted to bring your happy place to life.”
“And all along, you were just out here.” I am off the rails now. “Being you. And I was over there, not even knowing.”
“Now you’re here,” he replies cheerfully, leaning back so he can view me better.
“Now I’m here,” I echo. I am so giddy that I’m making myself ill. If this feeling is what I think it is, I’m going to die. This cannot be sustainable. How do couples spend whole years feeling like this about each other? How do they not combust?
“Ready for five-star cuisine?” To my surprise, he sidesteps the red booth and takes us to the counter, pulling out a stool for me like a gentleman.
Subway is one of the only takeout places in Top of the World, the other being Benigno’s, a little pizzeria. They sit side by side in a building that used to be a sawmill and sabotage each other’s advertising signs. Thunder cracks over the house as he pushes me in, foul weather interfering with the static that seems to be the only sound Wesley could coax out of the old radio.
“So this is what you’ve been doing all day.” I can’t get over it.
“Just the clouds. The rest I’ve been doing whenever you’re out of the house, or asleep.” He pulls two hot chocolates from behind the counter, setting them before us. You wouldn’t think that hot chocolate and veggie sandwiches would pair well, but he’s noticed my favorite drink is hot chocolate, and that means everything. “What have you been doing all day?”
Other than crying over my hair, my day’s actually been rather productive. “I had a chat with Ruth’s daughter Sasha over the phone.”
“Really? Why?”
“The last time I talked to Ruth, she mentioned her daughter had quit culinary school to get away from an ex-boyfriend. I’m going to have my hands full around here—preparing three meals a day would take up too much of my time. Plus, I’m good at baking but I don’t have the range for lunches and dinners day in and day out. I wanted to know if she’d consider being my chef.”
“What’d she say?”
My adrenaline is surging so high that I can’t taste any of my food, which I eat anyway, feeling that rise of excitement and stress flood me all over again. Excitement and stress is the line I’ve been straddling for a while now. “She’s going to come over and discuss the possibility in a couple of weeks. She wants to see the kitchen first—I’m gonna have to get a second fridge, and maybe other appliances, if she needs them. She wants freedom to plan her own menus.” I add in a rush, “All vegetarian meals, of course.”
Wesley puts his sandwich down. Stares at me. “You don’t have to do that.”
I wave him off, inexplicably blushing. Maybe it’s because I’m showing my hand here, betraying that what is important to him is important to me. “No big deal.”
He’s turning pink, too. “I would never pressure you to only serve vegetarian food. It’s a personal decision. I don’t expect—”
“I know.” I cut him off with a pat on the hand. “Do you honestly think, though, that after hearing about your childhood pet cow, I’m ever going to bring meat into your house? Nope.” I take a sip of my drink in a Case closed gesture. “Not happening.”
We stare down at our plates. We are both flustered, both unable to take a compliment, both wanting to give compliments rather than receive them and both being bad at verbalizing our feelings. I’d laugh out loud at how disastrously awkward we are if I weren’t channeling every drop of energy into staying put on this stool when all I really want to do is maul him.
He reaches for a Subway napkin. Takes a pen from inside his jacket and unclicks it, hand poised in midair for three seconds.
That is very wonderful of you, he writes, and slides the napkin over to me.
My face heats even more. I take much too long settling on a reply. You make it easy.
He rereads that line over and over. “You make it easier,” he says finally. “So we’re really doing this, then.” He pushes his plate away. “A hotel and an animal sanctuary. An interesting combination.” He clinks his mug of hot chocolate against mine. “To Violet.”
“To Violet.” I finish my drink, then add, “Thank you, by the way, for taking care of her. I’m sad that I never met her as an adult, and built a relationship with her as two adults rather than caregiver and child. I think we each thought we’d failed the other.”
He listens. Nods slowly, writing on the napkin some more. “She would have liked adult Maybell, I can tell you that. She would have liked who you’ve grown up to become.”
I lean into him, more for the excuse to be close than any other reason, and smile to see that he’s sketching me.
“Your pendant,” I muse, tapping the miniature version in ink.
“Your pendant,” he says, briefly touching the one that rests against my chest. My skin responds with goose bumps. “Looks better on you.”
I prop my elbow on the counter, chin in hand, posing for him. His eyes flicker from me to the drawing, me to the drawing, the edge of an amused smile flirting at his lips. “You can move a bit, you know.”
“Hm?”
“You’re being so still.”
“I don’t want to mess you up.”
He tips his head back, searching the ceiling. The sound that escapes his chest is a cross between sigh and laugh. “Maybell, I can draw you from memory. With my eyes closed.”
“Is that so?”
“Hands behind my back.”
“Now you’re just bragging.” I steal the napkin from him, helpless not to admire it. “That’s it. We need an art gallery down here for the guests to look at. I’m your number one fan, of course, but there’s room for more in the fan club.”
He sits forward over the counter, fingers in his hair, tousling it and trying to cover his face. The strands are too short to do the job, so he suffers in the open. “The drawing is pretty because the subject is pretty. I like drawing you.”
I’m not finished inflating his head. The man needs more ego. “The flowers you’ve put in the background are the best combination ever designed.”
“I was inspired by the flowers I see you gravitate toward whenever you’re in the garden.”
The storm outside rages and Wesley brings the lightning, radiating all around his magnificent frame like a halo. His eyes lock on my mouth, darkening.
I think he’s going to kiss me, but then he eases off his seat. As I turn, he takes my hand and pulls me along with him. We move to the center of the room, pressed close.
“Um.” My heart is the ocean slamming against a rocky shore. “Hi. Hello.”
For once—once—that anticipation, that tingling on the nape of my neck, that intoxicating awareness injected straight into my veins, isn’t vicarious. It doesn’t belong to an imaginary Maybell in a fantasy, a guess at what she might feel. It’s mine. And I think: At what point did my happy place stop being a dream and
start being the person in front of me?
“Hello,” he returns, palms cradling either side of my face. “I’m trying something.”
“Try anything you want,” I reply, and he gifts me a half smile, then a kiss on my temple.
My pulse pounds, vision tunneling. The lights in the clouds begin to slide, converging together.
“A lot of times there’s a disconnect between what I want to do and what I can get up the nerve to do,” he confesses. “But with you, I’m anxious in a good way. Let’s see if I’m any good at this.”
“At what?”
I think I know what, but I can’t hold still. Suspense is eating me alive.
He retreats. I watch his reflection in the glass panes shift closer until he’s behind me, hands roving up either side to grasp my upper arms. The room tips onto its side, everything in it rolling except for us and each golden filament of light. The air is weighted, dropping lower, lower.
In the glass, his mouth hovers at my throat, just below my ear. Every molecule in my body sings. “I would like to touch you,” he says faintly. “If that’s okay.”
The air is so heavy now that it’s a drum pound.
“That would be perfect.” My voice sounds foreign to my ear, husky and strange.
He drops a kiss to my neck, eliciting a shiver. Then he blows softly along the hollow, migrating over to my shoulder. “This,” he says, toying fondly with my hair. “This is what I’ve wanted.”
Tension thickens as his hands gain confidence, no longer hesitating. He circles me, eyes going dark. Swipes a thumb beneath my chin and raises it so that I’m meeting his inscrutable stare.
“I’ve wanted it, too.” I want to swallow the rest, but the truth escapes. “Badly.”
I think he likes the truth. It makes him hold me closer.
I explore the planes of his chest, stomach. Then he can’t hold himself back any longer and wraps his arms around me, face descending with palpable intent. There’s a bright moment in time as we look at each other, and we know, like we’ve shared the thought with telepathy, what tonight means. Then there’s a brush of lips to initiate. And another. There’s warm breath, me tilting his jaw in my caged hand to see how malleable he is. He bends to my will easily.
