The Night We Met

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The day I got married, Jane Asher broke her engagement to singer Paul McCartney on live television.

  Nate and I had a small wedding at the home of his friend and boss, resort owner Walt Blackwel , and as I was changing into my short, simple white dress that evening, Walt's oldest daughter, Mary, told me about Asher and McCartney. I was pretty sure she was hoping I'd follow Jane's example, minus the television crew. Walt and his family didn't seem all that happy about me as Nate's bride.

  "Nate and your brother just arrived," Mary said, taking the sponge rollers out of my hair. The squishy little tubes were the only curlers my short strands could fit around, and I'd had them in all afternoon. I hadn't seen Nate since he'd picked me up from the airport and dropped me at the Blackwell home.

  A door opened off the hall outside the guest suite where I'd spent most of the day with the myriad people Nate had hired to help me get ready for my wedding.

  "Be happy for me, Walt." All my senses came alive at the sound of Nate's voice in the hal . Since the moment I'd met him, I'd craved his presence.

  "She's nineteen, son."

  "Soon to be twenty." The voices came closer as the men passed our door.

  Mary's hand stilled, holding a strand of my hair straight up.

  "A child," Walt said.

  "She's already finished college and certified to teach."

  "I just hate to see you go through what you did when Karen left." Walt's voice was kind, fatherly and growing fainter.

  "Trust me, Walt, Eliza isn't like Karen."

  "She's a kid with nothing looking to you for security."

  "She comes from a working-class family, but I wouldn't say they've got nothing. Besides, she had her life settled, had more security than most of us will ever have, before I came along."

  "And offered her a better way of life."

  "I love her." Nate's voice grew in intensity, making it easily heard, and I tried not to cry.

  "Are you sure you aren't just itching to get her in the sack and marriage is the only way to do that?"

  The voices faded before I could hear Nate's reply.

  "My father thinks we're downstairs already."

  My eyes met Mary's in the mirror. Hers were fil ed with pity. Mine with tears.

  Twenty minutes later, as I entered the beautiful y decorated living room on my brother's arm, I saw that Arnold had flown in for the wedding. My high school friend, his sister Patricia, was with him. I'd had no idea she was coming and seeing her there with the dozen or so other people sitting in rented chairs made me start to cry again. I remembered the silly high school game we'd played, writing notes back and forth as though we were the characters in Bronte's novel. We'd both loved that book and it gave us a private, and I think creative, way to express our feelings. I'd always been Jane—because I was the one who'd go against the crowd. She'd been different characters, the tragic Helen, who'd died of consumption. Or the lovely Blanche Ingram. Or even the first Mrs.

  Rochester.

  Looking at her now, I couldn't remember a time I'd been so emotional y on edge.

  And then I saw Nate standing beside the minister, flanked by gorgeous white lilies, and as our eyes met, the rest of the room—the rest of the world—faded away. If I was crazy for doing this, I prayed the craziness would last forever.

  After a champagne toast, a few photos and a bite of cake, Nate and I left our small celebration to drive up to a cabin Walt owned in the mountains not far from Boulder. We would be there until Monday.

  "The bathroom's down that hall," Nate said, my smal suitcase in one hand and his duffel in the other.

  I stood just inside the door of the dimly lit main room, still wearing my white dress, watching as he disappeared behind another door at the far end—and returned without either bag.

  I'd known we were going to be sleeping together, of course. We were husband and wife now. But in recent days I hadn't let myself think about what that actual y meant—or picture it really happening.

  For the first time I could remember in my life, I wasn't prepared.

  I thought briefly about claiming my monthly cycle as an excuse—but immediately dismissed the idea.

  I couldn't start my life with Nate on a lie.

  Nor could I really see myself talking to him about such an intimate topic.

  "Can I get you something?" He'd taken off his jacket and tie, but still wore the shiny black wing tip shoes.

  A ride back to the city? I stared at him.

  "Don't look at me like that."

  "Like what?"

  "Like I'm going to eat you alive."

  I fidgeted, but didn't run and hide the way I wanted to. "I'm just a little nervous..."

  I backed up a step as he approached. Nate slowed, but continued toward me, reaching for my hand.

  "We'll take things slowly," he said, his head slightly bent and tilted to the right, as though to get a better view into my skittish eyes. Walking me over to the couch, Nate sat and pulled me gently down beside him, arms around me as he held me against his chest.

  I liked it there. A lot. Or I would have if I'd thought I could stay just that way for the rest of my life.

  "I wish I could tel you it won't hurt the first time." I was glad for the low light then as my face suffused with heat. "But for women, it usual y does."

  I'd read about that. And couldn't imagine why any woman would welcome that kind of pain.

  "It's only for a second, though, and then the feeling's so incredible, Eliza, there's nothing that compares to it."

  I'd read that, too. Just wasn't sure I believed it. Most of the information I'd found had been written by men. Doctors.

  "I told you we'd take al the time you need," he murmured. I'd wondered if he'd remember that. "We don't have to do this tonight." He didn't sound the least put out with me.

  "No, that's okay." I wanted to "get it over with. "I'm just not..." I had to stop, take a deep breath. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do, exactly."

  "Your mother didn't have a talk with you when you were younger?"

  "I was going to be a nun."

  And since I'd made the decision to leave the convent, my mother hadn't spoken to me.

  He shifted, took my hand and placed it over the zipper of his slacks. I wanted to die. And to move my fingers, too. I was curious. I wanted to know what Nate felt like.

  I wanted the privilege of sharing something with Nate that no one else could share, of seeing parts of him no one else was allowed to see.

  "This is what happens to me when I think about making love to you," Nate said. "A woman's desire is not so obvious, but it can be just as intense. Our job, yours and mine, is to help you feel it. That's all."

  It couldn't be al . Even I knew you didn't make babies with only feeling.

  "Until your eagerness matches mine, we go no further."

  I glanced up at him, not nearly so embarrassed as he sat there letting me touch him in his most private place. I guess I should've been embarrassed. More so, even. But I wasn't.

  "How do we do that? How do we make sure I feel it, too?"

  He swelled more beneath my hand and my fingers wrapped around him. He was throbbing.

  "We could go in the bedroom and lie down," he said. "Fully clothed."

  When he added that last part, I started to relax a little. And to tense with a strange kind of anticipation at the same time.

  "Okay."

  He stood and I was disappointed as my hand slid away. Would he put it back when we got to the bedroom?

  I hoped so as, hand in his, I followed him.

  Nate lay down first, settled me against him, almost exactly like we'd been on the couch, except now our bodies were side by side. His hip pressed into my stomach right about where the scar was from when I had my appendix out. Our thighs were touching.

  "I'd like to kiss you."

  "Okay."

  "I mean really kiss you."

  I wasn't sure what that meant. We'd kissed every time we were together, ever
since that first time outside the convent. "Okay."

  Shifting enough for our faces to be level, Nate touched his lips to mine. I kissed him back, the sensation familiar, pleasant, reassuring. And then it changed. His lips opened, and his tongue was there, running lightly along my lips, tickling them.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but didn't get a chance as Nate continued his exploration. He licked against my teeth and then the tip of his tongue touched mine. I jerked back at first, shocked, but when he followed me, playing with me, I couldn't help but play a little bit, too. My whole body was tingling. I didn't want him to stop.

  One of Nate's legs slid over mine, his knee resting on the bed between my knees. I wasn't sure, but thought I could feel his engorged private part pressing against my thigh.

  I longed to touch him there.

  And while I was busy thinking about that, his lips left mine. I would have protested, but he was trailing kisses along my neck, sending the most appealing sensations all through my body. I lifted my chin, and actual y groaned out loud when his mouth found the curve between my neck and my shoulder. I had no idea it felt so good to be touched there. Glorying in the sensation, not wanting to miss any part of it, it took me several seconds to realize where Nate's tongue would be going next.

  When I figured it out, I panicked, pulling his head back up to kiss me again. He didn't seem to mind, his kisses as avid as they'd been moments before and I got lost in them, in the feelings they aroused.

  My nipples ached and I wasn't sure what to do about that. When I could stand it no longer, I arched, pressing my breasts against Nate's chest. He understood things I didn't and before I knew what was happening, his hand was over my breast, kneading it, al eviating some of the almost painful tension.

  I was shocked by my moans of pleasure, but couldn't hold them back. First one and then the other, he fondled my breasts, sending delicious shivers all over my body, saying nothing. I was thankful for that. I didn't have to think, to be accountable or embarrassed. I could just float on this wave of sensation.

  I'd been squirming around so much, my dress was twisted up around my bottom. I thought Nate was going to straighten it when he sat me up. Instead, I felt the zipper slide down, exposing my back to the cool night air.

  "Do you mind?" he asked, his voice husky, almost unrecognizable.

  I shook my head. I wasn't surprised when I felt the catch on my bra give way.

  Nor did I particularly care when the front of my dress fell forward at a gentle tug from his fingers. I al owed him to slide my bra down my arms and reveal breasts that, until then, had only been seen by my doctor and me.

  "They're so incredibly beautiful," he whispered, staring down at them.

  "Kiss me?" It might bother me later that I was being so bold, but it sure didn't then.

  He leaned forward and I closed my eyes, waiting for the touch of his lips against mine, and jerked when his tongue flicked across my nipple instead.

  "Oh!"

  Pushing me back against the pil ows, he closed his mouth over me, and my pelvis started to rock.

  "You like it?" he asked, his teeth lightly grazing me.

  "Mmm-hmm."

  Nate did things to me I'd never read about, aroused indescribable sensations that had me begging for more until I didn't recognize myself at all in the woman lying on that soft mattress, dress down around my hips.

  "I want to make love to you."

  Instead of instil ing the fear I would have expected, Nate's words spurred me on.

  "I want that, too."

  He stopped—everything. Raising himself above me, he peered right into my eyes. "You sure?"

  Grabbing his neck, I pulled him back down. "I am— as long as you keep doing what you're doing."

  With a groan and a chuckle, Nate lowered himself, sliding his arms beneath me to hug me tight. "The second you want me to stop, you tell me." His words, whispered against my ear, sent chills down my body.

  "Okay."

  "Promise?"

  "Mmm-hmm." Didn't he know I'd promise him anything right then?

  Kissing his way down my body, removing my clothes as he went, Nate kept my mind too occupied to think, to allow panic to take hold. I felt a second of doubt when he stood and stepped out of his clothes, when I saw the swollen part of him that had been beneath that zipper.

  But before I could give voice to the fears distracting me, Nate was back.

  His hands worked magic and his tongue seemed to be everywhere. I sucked in a breath when I felt his velvet-covered hardness between my legs.

  "It's going to hurt for a second." Nate's voice was strained as he suspended himself above me.

  "There's nothing I can do about that."

  I nodded, waiting, needing him more than I feared what was to come.

  I cried out when Nate surged forward. Nothing could have prepared me for that initial shock, but as he fil ed me and gently started to move, I ignored the burning and concentrated on the sensation he was generating.

  And somehow, miraculously, the buzzing returned, grew, until I was moving as fiercely as he was, taking him as much as he was taking me. It was as though my body had been possessed. I had to have him. Had to climb. Had to get someplace I'd never been before.

  And when I arrived, just seconds before Nate spil ed himself inside me, I knew that nothing I'd read about bliss could ever compare to this. I'd reached heaven long before I'd expected to.

  Chapter 6

  Almost one year to the day I'd married Nate, in the summer of 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the first man to ever do so. And I went into labor—feeling like the first woman to ever experience anything so exhilarating and excruciating at the same time. Nate was home, thank goodness, in between summer camp sessions, and was calm and reassuring as he collected the bag I'd packed a month before and carried us both out to the station wagon we'd bought the previous winter when we'd found out I was pregnant.

  I could barely sit up in the car and almost passed out when the next pain came. "I...can't." I heard my voice from far away.

  I'd never missed the convent—the church—as much as I did at that moment.

  "Yes, you can, Liza." It wasn't the firmness in Nate's voice that brought me back. It was the fear.

  "Breathe," he said, panting and huffing like we'd learned in the class Nate had insisted we attend.

  I tried. I really did. But the pain was so intense I couldn't concentrate.

  The turn signal was the first sound I heard as the pain subsided. I focused on that long enough to get through the rest of the contraction.

  "Obviously Dr. Lamaze has never been in labor," I muttered, eyes closed as I slumped against the seat. "He has no idea how much that hurts if he thinks a little breathing and relaxing is enough to distract you from it."

  "Women have been flocking to his classes for the last ten years," Nate said. As soon as he'd learned we were having a baby, he'd insisted we both read everything there was to find about childbirth. "I was hoping that meant he'd found a way to make this easier for you."

  "My mom had a shot, went to sleep and woke up skinny again." As ready as I was to have this baby, to finally hold my little son or daughter in my arms, I was scared to death about what the next few hours might bring.

  Even with modern medicine, women still died in childbirth. I couldn't bear the idea of leaving Nate.

  Or our child.

  Still, that didn't give me any excuse to lash out. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm being so cranky."

  "Be as cranky as you need to be, honey," Nate said.

  We were stopped at a light and I opened my eyes to see him smiling over at me. I smiled back, and soon we were accelerating again.

  Please, God, I'll suffer gladly if you 'll just get me and the baby through this okay.

  "It's a boy!"

  The doctor's voice brought me out of the pain- induced fog I'd fallen into even before reaching the hospital in Denver.

  "A boy?" I asked, leani
ng forward in an attempt to see. "Are you sure?"

  The tent of sheets around my lower body prevented me from getting little more than a glimpse—of Nate. Moving in as close to the doctor as he could get, he glanced down, then up at me, his face bearing a huge grin.

  "Yep, it's a boy."

  "Would you like to cut the cord?"

  The doctor's question fel on deaf ears as my strong and oh-so-capable husband slid to the floor—

  grabbed by the nurse who, thankfully, helped break his fall. He'd been so busy breathing with me, he'd hyperventilated.

  Because I was going to be breast-feeding I couldn't take much for my discomfort, but managed to sleep anyway once I was settled in my semiprivate but as yet unshared room. Keith Armstrong Grady

  —named after

  Nate's little brother and the astronaut who'd also manifested a miracle that day—was in the nursery until feeding time.

  I dreamed heavily, although I couldn't remember about what. I only knew I was feeling particularly emotional as I slowly regained consciousness. The antiseptic smell reminded me where I was before I was fully awake. And then my eyes flew open—looking for the portable bassinet that was supposed to appear beside my bed.

  Had I slept through feeding time?

  The room was empty. Or so I thought. Until I saw the woman sitting in a chair beside the bed, watching me.

  "Mama?"

  Tears welled in her eyes as she nodded. She'd gained some new wrinkles around her eyes over the many months since I'd seen her. "I'm sorry I let you down, baby. I should've been here, seeing you through all these firsts."

  "Is everything okay?" Was she there to tell me something awful? Why else would she end the year-and-a- half-long silence between us?

  "Yes," she said, approaching my bed, not much heavier than she'd been when I was young. She was wearing a light-colored shift that I didn't recognize, but as she smiled—a reassuring expression I'd seen many times growing up—my heart filled with peace. "I've seen Keith and he's just perfect, Eliza.

  Nate's with him now. And Wil iam and your sisters, too. We all came as soon as he called."