Wishes and Stitches

by Rachael Herron

  It was, of course, an uncomfortable dinner. How could it have been anything else? Frank cornered Naomi over by the roses, going on about how grateful he was for the nitroglycerin, and how he’d come see her soon, as soon as he had some time free. Then he’d begun to talk about Shirley, the waitress at Tillie’s, which just served to confuse her, and she extricated herself and went back to the group again.

  At the table, Rig also mentioned something about Shirley, about how they couldn’t hope to serve dinner the same way she did at the diner, and Frank’s eyebrows flew upward, but nothing more was said. It seemed as if everyone was talking about one thing, but meaning another. Maybelle talked about how difficult her first pregnancy was, and what a joy it had been to carry Anna, ten years later. Jake and Anna shot superheated looks at each other, as if only the company being present was keeping their hands off one another.

  The second Buzz, the last one eating after three helpings of steak and potato salad, put his fork down, Naomi stood. No matter what Rig had to show her, she needed to go.

  “Well, thanks a lot. Let’s do it again sometime. Now, I’d better get going. Still recovering, you know . . . Mom, Buzz, I’ll leave the back door unlocked, and you can just settle yourselves in—”

  Rig stood. “Can I show you something before you go home?”

  Feeling a sudden pang of worry, Naomi said, “What did you do at the clinic?”

  He moved toward the front door. “Can’t tell. Just gotta show you.”

  Anna said, “Go on, it’s cool. You’ll like it.”

  It was a way out of here, out of this sticky, uncomfortable dinner full of unexpected land mines, and soon she could go home and drag the shawl into her room and knit herself to sleep. Exhaustion was wearing on her, and her shoulders slumped as she left the house. She made a halfhearted attempt at pushing her shoulders back and standing up straight as she turned to look at Rig.

  He was closer behind her than she’d known he was. He sure moved quietly for such a big guy.

  “I have the bike,” he said, facing her. He lifted his hands and gently rubbed the tops of her shoulders, right where her muscles were most tense. “Or are you too tired? We can do this another night.”

  She let her head go limp and rolled it from side to side. She pretended his were just any fingers, that he wasn’t making her shake inside. “Can’t we walk? It’s not that far. I’ll be fine.”

  He leaned forward, and his voice was a low rumble that made Naomi nervous. “You’re still just getting over being sick. Ride with me.”

  The last three words were said in such a deep register she felt, more than heard, them. Had he meant to make them sound so sexual? Looking up into his face, she decided, yes. He had. For a second, oddly, she felt like she was about to sneeze, a delicious foreshadowing of something she didn’t want to name.

  “Yeah,” she said, feeling suddenly daring. “Okay. Yes.”

  The ride was fast and short. Naomi, feeling like an old hand, wrapped her arms around Rig’s waist, and felt his muscled back against her chest through their T-shirts. He’d given her his leather jacket to wear—it hung long and open on her, while he rode with his arms bared to the wind. He took one lap down Main, around the gazebo, and back up past the dunes. He rode up for a moment onto the sidewalk that led to the pier, and he paused, as if considering whether or not it was worth it. A whoop-whoop from the cop car in the parking lot convinced him to back the bike up. Naomi laughed, bringing her arms tighter around him.

  “Let’s go,” she called up to him, even though she felt as if she could ride all night. Unfortunately, her insides weren’t agreeing with her, and she knew she’d probably have to walk home. But the discomfort had been worth the delicious butterflies the ride had given her. Or that he’d given her. How could she tell the difference?

  He nodded, and a minute later, they pulled up in front of the health clinic.

  “It looks the same,” she said, dismounting and shaking her hair out from the helmet. She tried not to notice how his eyes glowed as she did so. Running her fingers through her hopeless curls, she examined the building more closely. The same small stenciled sign in the window, but . . .

  “Curtains! You hung curtains!”

  “It’s hard to tell in the dark, but they’re green and sheer, so it lets in the light and kind of makes it looks softer inside. That was Bruno’s idea.”

  Naomi looked at him in surprise. “Bruno’s been in on this?”

  “Everyone was. We only had a few days while you were sick to pull it off.”

  She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Then she lost her breath.

  The room had been transformed. The dance studio’s old mirrors were still up, but now they were covered with a gauzelike orange fabric that moved and shifted subtly as air from the door changed the current in the room. The tables she’d had lined up along all the walls were gone, except for one at the back, which was covered with all the literature she’d compiled.

  Rig said, “You can still do whatever you want. This is just a suggestion. Keep on looking around.”

  Instead of the wooden chairs she’d bought from an office-furniture sale, two long brown leather couches were placed at opposing angles, with a large, sturdy coffee table between them. Two separate gathering areas were delineated by groupings of small, deep armchairs with tables set next to them.

  It looked so inviting. So warm. How the hell had he done this? Naomi looked up and saw that the fluorescent tubes that had hung down, ugly in their brightness, had been replaced by simple track lighting. It was still light enough, but it felt softer. Everything felt gentler.

  It was as if she’d laid out a plastic card table with some cubed cheese on it. Then he’d come along and made it a long wooden dining table, with a tablecloth, candles, and imported Camembert when she wasn’t looking.

  Naomi took a few steps and touched the back of one of the armchairs.

  “I can’t afford this,” she said.

  “You don’t have to. This is my donation to your center. My tax preparer assures me I’ll be able to write it off somehow. She’s magic.”

  “But . . .” Naomi’s words trailed off and she looked to the left and saw something that looked like . . . “Is that—that looks like a knitting circle.”

  Rig slapped his thigh and laughed, a huge, rolling boom that filled the space. “I told her you’d like that.”

  “Told who?”

  “Anna. She helped set it up.”

  “Anna?” But her sister had been furious with her when she’d been sick. She’d still done this? Naomi felt something hard and cold inside her start to melt.

  “Come look.” He held out his hand, and too befuddled to do anything else, she took it.

  “See,” he pointed. “Five armchairs, but I made sure they’re lightweight, so you can drag them around and move them if you want to get more knitters in here. Special lights so it looks like you’re knitting during the daytime even at night, like now. Racks,” he pointed to the wall, just under the window. “For knitting magazines. I bought as many as I could from Lucy at the Book Spire, but I got subscriptions to them, too. Empty baskets, here, so people can set their projects down and come back to them. And yarn to sample over there, with spare needles. I picked it all out at Abigail’s shop. Anna gave me that idea, too.”

  “But—” Naomi shook her head. “But there are already places in town for people to knit. Abigail’s store. And they have knitting lessons sometimes at Lucy’s bookstore, I’ve seen the fliers. How are we supposed to bring people in when—”

  Rig cut her off. “You’re bringing in a totally different market. You’re targeting the woman in this town who’s sick, who needs someplace to go where she can talk about being sick with other people who won’t tell her to look on the bright side. As far as I can tell, this whole town is addicted to knitting. I saw some old men playing chess on the pier, and one of them was knitting while he did it. I’ve never seen such a knit-crazy place, and you should be able to h
arness that for healing.” He took Naomi’s hands and looked right into her eyes. “I really think you could have something here. We just need to get the people who need it to come see what it is. And we’ll be one step closer when we host the dance on the weekend. We can push the couches out of the way, and look, that can be where we put the band.”

  She looked at him, feeling a huge space in her chest, not sure what to do with it. “But . . . how do we know . . . ?”

  He held up a pair of needles. “Do you always know what you’re making when you cast on?”

  She nodded firmly. “Of course.”

  He pulled out an arm’s length of a green variegated wool. “What if you don’t?” Using what looked like a modified long-tail cast on, he started moving the yarn over one of the needles, building stitches.

  “You’ll end up with something ugly. Something not useful,” Naomi said, fascinated by watching him. The move looked simple—the stitches loading onto his left needle as if he really did know what he was doing.

  “How do you know that’s what you’ll get?” Rig asked.

  “I just do.” Naomi perched on the edge of an armchair. “Without a plan, you end up floundering.”

  “Not always,” said Rig. He started knitting across the stitches, fast, large loops of the yarn. He held the yarn in his left hand, and threw, so different from her own careful, tight stitches.

  “Well, you’re not like most people,” said Naomi.

  “I never said I was.” He sat in the chair directly across from her. “Some people like different.”

  He was, perhaps, the fastest knitter she’d ever seen. She stared, and within less than five minutes, five peaceful, quiet minutes, she watched him create no less than three inches of something flat and wide.

  Finally breaking the silence, she said, “So you’ll organize these knit-ins?”

  “Sure,” said Rig. “But I don’t think we’ll have to worry. They’ll set themselves up, I think. When I was at Abigail’s, I told her about the idea, and two women in the store thought it was great, and could already think of people who were in recovery from different things who would want to come.”

  “But Abigail doesn’t . . . we’re not friends.”

  Rig gave her a confused look. “Why would you say that? Did someone tell you that? Did she?”

  Naomi had the grace to blush. “We had a . . . an odd conversation one day. She thought she remembered me from down south. But . . . ” I didn’t tell her she was right.

  “Do you routinely say hello to people in town? Smile at them in Tillie’s?”

  “I try. I really do. But sometimes . . .”

  Rig didn’t pull any punches. “Not saying hello looks stuck up.”

  “I’m not. You know I’m not stuck up. I’ve just been so . . . worried.”

  “I know that. But maybe they don’t. We’ll change that.”

  The use of we? Did he mean it? Should she let him?

  Rig went on, “I’ve set up two yoga classes a week, a beginners level and a level one. The rugs over there,” he pointed to the cheerful, colorful rugs that hadn’t been in the room the last time she’d looked, just like all the other changes, “will roll up and move to the side. I figure we can fit about fifteen people in per session.”

  “And you’ll be teaching these classes?”

  “Toots Harrison. She’s already agreed.”

  Naomi was torn between being furious that he’d set this up without consulting her and thrilled that someone would be using the space. “I told you, I’m not into alterna-medicine.” But her voice held no heat, she knew, and she dropped her eyes to the floor.

  “Yoga is good for the body. Most people don’t consider it quackery anymore. You should try it sometime. You could use it.”

  Naomi’s voice was light. “Yeah, whatever.” She watched him knit for another minute. It must be almost five inches already.

  For once, her hands felt fine being still. She didn’t feel the need to have the needles in her hands, if she could see his. “Anything else you want to admit? While we’re at it.”

  Rig glanced at her and then back down at the knitting.

  “What is it?” Naomi knew there was more.

  “Acupuncture. Tuesday afternoons, drop in, drop out.”

  Naomi took a deep breath. “You have an acupuncturist lined up for this? Let me guess, Toots?”

  “She’s only an amateur. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t fit under our liability insurance, although she did offer. No, it’s her teacher, Herb Dansk, who’s actually licensed. He’s donating his time.”

  “Wow.” Shouldn’t Naomi be annoyed? This was what she’d said she didn’t want, after all. She searched herself and found nothing but curiosity and a sudden, desperate warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.

  The knitting was longer yet. He was as fast with the needles as he was on his bike. “Is it a scarf?” Her fingers twitched to feel the fabric he was making.

  “No idea.”

  “It has to be something.”

  Rig looked at her. “It already is. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.”

  Naomi’s head swam in a sudden wave of dizziness that felt different from the dizzy sickness she’d had all week. He was serious. He really meant it.

  She moved before she thought, before she lost her nerve. She went to him, putting one knee to the outside of his, the other on his other side until she was straddling him. This time, she wasn’t sure of herself. Last time she had been, and she hadn’t gotten her way. She’d received something else, something she’d barely even processed yet.

  This time, she had no idea how it would go, and for once in her goddamn life, she didn’t need to know. She just knew that she’d never seen anything she needed more in her whole life than this huge man, sitting here in front of her, in a room he’d helped her create, knitting.

  And Rig kept knitting in the small space between them. His big hands made the needles look small, and they had to be a size nine, at least. Their mouths were a breath apart now as she sat on his lap. She felt him rise underneath her, hard, heated. But he just smiled.

  “Hi, you.” His voice was a low rumble that fit between her ribs.

  “Hi,” she whispered.

  “Whatcha doing?” Click, click, click.

  “Hoping to God you’ll kiss me.”

  Chapter Forty-five

  Knit through everything.

  —E.C.

  His reaction was instant, primal. He dropped the needles and yarn between them and lifted his hands to the back of her neck. Pulling her in hard with complete assuredness, he took her mouth, and she gave it to him. She was supposed to be here, she knew it. She could feel it.

  He bit her lower lip, softly, then traced it with his tongue. His hands moved from behind her head, traveling down her back.

  As his hands tugged out the bottom edge of her shirt and slid upward, as one hand cupped her entire breast, as his fingertips dipped past the lace edge and brushed her nipple, Naomi realized she had no idea about anything anymore. Everything about the man was a surprise, including the way he pulled her shirt over her head.

  Half a second later, Naomi panicked. The window faced Main Street. There was no way in hell . . . Oh. She’d forgotten about the new green curtains he’d put up.

  Rig laughed underneath her. “They’re sheer, but they’ll protect you.”

  “From what?” Naomi’s knees drove farther into the space between his thighs and the arms of his chair, and she pushed against him.

  “From the eyes of the street. Not from mine, though.” Rig’s gaze roamed her upper body, lingering on the cherry-colored lace of her bra, running down to her navel then back up to her eyes. His hands rested lightly at her waist, spanning it. Underneath her, she felt power. Coiled. Ready to spring.

  If she chose him, she could have him. Naomi knew that. But she wouldn’t be able to control him. Or even her own responses.

  She should really get up, move away, put he
r shirt back on. Break this contact . . .

  Rig slid his hands down her waist to the top of her hips. He pulled her body down at the same moment that he pushed up against her.

  Holy shit. He was shockingly hard under the bulge of his jeans, and Naomi lost her breath again. Conscious thought wasn’t far behind it as their mouths met again in a kiss that tasted of rain and fog and a strength that Naomi had never tasted before.

  Rig’s hand raked between them, and something metallic clattered to the floor. The knitting.

  “Did you . . .” What was she trying to say over the panting, around the heat? “Will you lose your stitches?”

  “Fuck the stitches.” Rig drew her down again and kissed his way up her neck, trailing his teeth against her sensitive skin, up to her ear, lightly biting it before drawing the lobe into his mouth.

  Naomi pressed into him again. She should stop. This wasn’t the best idea. Sitting up, she pushed against his chest. “Um . . . ”

  His eyes were dark heat, flames blazing through his lashes. He reached one hand behind himself, and pulled the T-shirt over his head in one motion, tossing it in the same direction he’d thrown the knitting.

  Holy Christ. Ridges of muscle and lines of definition skated across his abdominal obliques and then disappeared into the top of his jeans.

  Her thoughts went up in smoke. Instinctively, she leaned forward, running her hands over him, touching each muscle. She dropped her head and kissed the side of his neck, then moved her mouth along his clavicle. Her fingers danced down the central line of his stomach, then dipped into his navel. Rig gasped, and she smiled. He was sensitive there? Wait till she got lower . . .

  She undid the fly of his jeans and, leaning forward, putting her head on his shoulder, slid her hand into his shorts And then her eyes widened. He was hard, wide, and hot as hell.

  Naomi wanted it. She wanted him. Normally at this point, she’d know what to do. What moves to make. But instead, tiny tremors rocked her, taking away her ability to decide what would be her best move, what would be to her best advantage. She couldn’t do the sexual math, couldn’t hold the formula in her head.