She hugged her knees to her chest, feeling naïve. No longer hungry.
John moved his bowl off his lap and grabbed up her hand. “To hell with first love,” he said. Shock held her still as if she’d been captured in the sizzling pop of a flashbulb, immortalized as a picture of incredulity. “They teach you something - that’s the point. You live it, you take a risk. It hurts like hell, and you move on.” He let go of her hand and picked up his food again, perhaps to temper the sudden glare of intensity. “Second loves are the ones worth celebrating.” He was more stoic now. The tip of his spoon scraped against the bottom of his bowl. “They’re the ones who teach you...it isn’t just your body that moves forward. Love goes on, too. Even when you’re convinced it never could again.”
Meg didn’t know how much time passed before she felt capable of breathing again.
“Are you speaking from experience?” she asked.
He turned his face to look at her full-on. “It’s more theory than fact at this point. But my instincts are telling me it’s true.”
In the space of a second, two dissonant heartbeats found a common rhythm, and both were stronger for it. Call it hope. Call it faith or respite or optimism. In that moment, all were true.
Meg’s smile was mirthful. “That was very poetic, Mr. Stovall.”
He shrugged. “Auden must’ve rubbed off on me.” He nudged her leg with his knee. “Or maybe it was Rilke.”
She giggled. “The bullheaded optimism reminds me more of Browning. Maybe Frost.”
“You would be the expert,” he conceded.
Seconds ticked by. Meg wanted to ask about his first love, but something stopped her, pinned her tongue against her teeth. Perhaps it was a feeling he should be the one to volunteer such information. Or perhaps she was delaying the imminent possibility that she should feel the need to compare herself to someone he had once loved. That was a fight she could never win - not as long as she fought it with herself.
“Your food is getting cold,” he pointed out.
Meg nodded once. She picked up her bowl and resumed eating, never tasting the food as it passed her lips. Her thoughts were too remote to lend themselves to something so menial.
John took her dish when she was finished. She watched as he walked both bowls to the sink and ran water in them. When he turned to approach the bed again, his expression had changed. He was no longer trapped in his thoughts: he was blasting them at her.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his body angled to face her. Meg sat up a little, clarifying he had her attention. When he cupped the side of her face, her breath left her in a soft whoosh.
“The first time I saw you” - he chuckled, shook his head slightly - “you were a vision in that ridiculous pink dress, traipsing through the forest like some kind of wood sprite.” His thumb traced her cheekbone, and his voice dropped in reverence. “Beautiful girl.”
Meg swallowed. So many thoughts swirled inside of her, she felt dizzy. Seeing the mess of emotions, she didn’t know which to pick up and examine first - which to feel. She couldn’t hold all of them.
“Kiss me,” she whispered finally, so softly she wasn’t sure any sound had come out.
His eyes blazed, and then he did. Submissive, trembling lips driven by the power of a man’s body, pushing mightily against hers. He kissed her in earnest, now with more of an edge. This time his tongue pried at the seam of her lips, and when they were fully committed, him unto her and her unto him, he groaned very slightly. Meg felt a rift open beneath her. She didn’t care whether she fell or not, so long as John fell with her.
They moved past the initial shock of it, and their hands began to move. Gliding, stroking, squeezing. John leaned into Meg, pressing her back against the mattress. Her knees fell to the side, allowing him space to move over her. He touched her face, her hair, her neck, her shoulders. His fingers mapped out the side of her ribs and the flare of her hip; his hand brushed over her stomach and grazed the underside of her breast.
Meg turned on her side, determined to maximize their conjoining surface area. She bent her top leg and hooked it over his hip - and at that he shuddered. His hands froze, one wrapped around the back of her neck and the other at her waist. His chest heaved against her as he breathed great, insatiable breaths.
Logic didn’t apply - at least not in the way one would normally think. There was no physics, no judgment. Those principles simply didn’t exist. It was a heady feeling, being free of them. Rather than bashful, Meg felt emboldened. She saw John’s hesitancy for what it was: not a sign of disinterest, but an indication of chivalry. He was frightened of pushing her too far.
Actions, not words. Meg covered his hand, the one resting at her waist, and pushed it downward, until his warm palm came in contact with her naked thigh. The shirt she wore had ridden up to her hip; it nearly crested her silk clad buttocks.
A little guidance was all it took. John’s misgiving was gone, replaced by palpable yearning. His movements were restive, bordering on reckless. His hand moved down and up and down her leg, growing more pyretic with each pass. His teeth lightly abraded her earlobe, while his lungs shoved heavy gusts of breath against her neck, just above where the shirt buttoned.
Meg’s skin tingled from the blood that thrashed against it; she needed his bare skin against hers more than she needed air to breathe. She fumbled with the buttons on John’s shirt. His hand circled her wrist for a moment, a spiritless attempt to arrest her progress, then slid away, smoothing back down her front to her thigh. He kissed her hungrily as she slipped the last button free, then rolled away, allowing her to push the sleeves off his shoulders.
Even in the feeble light, Meg could appreciate the beauty. A man without his shirt was a man bared to the world - it was a sight she’d always loved, because it revealed the muscles and sinew and bones he used to create and construct and perform. And yet, now, looking at John, it felt like the first time she’d beheld such a thing.
Broad chest, covered in a light thatch of hair. Burnished skin sheathing curved ribs and concrete muscle. Strong, corded arms. Shoulders that were powerful and layered in hunks of solid meat that flexed and stretched as he moved.
She laid her open hand against his chest and trailed her fingertips down the shallow trough between his abdominal muscles to the fine, silky hairs on his stomach. John stared at her, entranced, his hands still.
“Touch me,” Meg whispered, half desperate. His nostrils flared as he worked his jaw, causing that telltale muscle to tic in the hollow of his cheek. He levered himself over the top of her, holding the brunt of his weight on one elbow while inching his right hand up over her panties to splay his fingers against the bare skin of her hip.
His breath left him in a gentle hiss while his eyes drifted down, watching his hand as it plowed steadily upward, pushing the loose flannel of Meg’s shirt farther along her side. He kissed her swollen lips, then shifted his weight onto his knees and pulled himself up to kneeling. He dropped light kisses along her ribs before glancing back up at her face. “Incredible,” he murmured.
Then, touching her lips: “Meg.” Just that - just her name, barely whispered, as he gazed down at her with unadulterated wonder in his eyes. It caused every muscle along her spine to cinch tighter, an aching cramp that closely resembled the miserable yearning in her belly.
He started unbuttoning her shirt at the bottom, first exposing her navel. The tip of his tongue sketched a wet line up the center of her torso as he bared its soft, milky skin one button at a time. When he reached her chest, he stopped and looked up at Meg, silently begging her permission. She nodded, her lip trembling, then pulled in a jagged breath as he released the final two buttons and dipped his head to lick lightly between her breasts. The fabric slid slow, fast, faster across her nipples until, a moment later, it fell and left her torso almost completely uncovered.
His movements were unhurried and deliberate, his palms and fingers and lips and tongue taking time to savor every inch. Meg’s back bowed off the bed
as his hands glided up the bumps of her ribs to rest at the base of her full breasts. A low growl rumbled deep in his throat, sounding like the expression of a craving that was only just restrained. His hands cupped her breasts as he kissed them, lavished the same attention on each nipple as he had on her mouth.
Meg’s hands, meanwhile, roamed over his back and shoulders and chest. Her heart quickened in time with the fluttering of her fingers, and John’s motions, too, accelerated. It was a gentle grappling, a fanatical exploration of unmapped frontiers.
His knee pressed between her legs, and Meg squeezed her thighs around his. The sensation of a rigid warmth nudging against the inside of her leg caused a deep-rooted unspooling of something hard and knotted in her gut.
He sat up semi-abruptly.
“Oh God, Meg.” His left hand fisted in his hair while his right gripped his leg; his eyes remained on her body. He dropped onto his side next to her and tugged at her waist, pulling her on top of him so that her breasts jostled against his chest. Holding her face between his hands, he kissed her chastely. “Tell me you know how insanely gorgeous you are.” He was whispering for some reason, while Meg’s breath spilled wildly into the dense air around them.
Her cheeks were suffused with pink, proof that every one of her arteries and veins was dilated to accommodate the multiplication of her blood. At his statement, she flushed a deeper red. “Gorgeous?” she asked, trying the fit of it on her tongue. She would never have believed it of herself before this moment. Seeing the glint of awe in his eyes, though, how could she question it?
He kissed her, and the whole world slowed. Her blood shimmered, her muscles unscrewed, her bones deliquesced. He was doing it on purpose: braking. Meg closed her eyes as he kissed the inside of her wrist, her palm, the first knuckle on each of her fingers. When his lips left her skin, she knew it was over - and she’d never wanted anything less. He covered her with his shirt, and she felt paradoxically colder.
John softly kissed the corner of her mouth, then drew back to lie beside her. He wrapped her in his arms and whispered into her ear. “I want to know you, Miss Lowry. Tell me everything.”
There was more to his words than met the eye. They’d been on the verge of crossing a line - but first he wanted it to mean something.
* * *
She told him about the home she’d grown up in: an old, wooden craftsman style house in Rustic Canyon, facing Santa Monica Bay. The dormers like gabled dollhouses and balconies like so many pulled out drawers. She described the sprawling rose garden and the man named Esteban whose job it had been to tend the flowers for as far back as her memory reached. She spoke of the library jammed with books: the place where she’d spent hundreds of hours turning pages until her fingers turned sore and her joints ached.
Her father was an engineer who’d been exempt from the draft during the Second World War because of his job, designing and machining parts for military trucks. His pervasive sense of guilt at not having served on the front lines alongside his contemporaries had lent him a wary, defensive edge in his older age. The wealth he’d accumulated during those wartime years, Meg felt, was his only real source of comfort.
Her mother was twelve years his junior; she had insisted that Meg call her Irene from an early age. Irene was a concert pianist-turned-private piano teacher who’d studied at the music conservatory in San Francisco. In the course of her education, she’d furtively picked up an idea or two about feminism, in a time when it wasn’t yet fashionable to adopt those leanings. She could have been a strong female role model for her only child, had she taken any particular interest in motherhood to begin with. Instead, she’d delegated roughly half her maternal obligations to her fraternal twin sister, Meg’s Aunt Virginia, a blithe yet kindhearted woman who even now had yet to meet a man she considered worthy of marrying.
She talked of her time at Berkeley, only superficially alluding to her relationship with Michael, which, sadly, had shaped her undergraduate experience in many more ways than she cared to admit. She painted herself as a pariah, an impostor of sorts: an old soul in a land of incipient spirits. “Not because I’m any wiser,” she clarified. “It was more like I’d been surpassed by my own generation. Everyone around me was fighting for something they believed in, and I was left trying to fathom where I fit in the whole scheme of change they’d already dreamt of and launched a thousand missiles from.” Looking down, she admitted, “Still am.”
John rested his chin on her shoulder and drew the bridge of his nose along the hard line of her jaw. He sat against the headboard, his bent legs spread apart, while Meg sat between them, reclining against his chest.
The entire room beyond the circle of watery light shed by the bedside lamp had vanished into unknown blackness. Meg knew it was late, but she was afraid to find out just how late.
“I’m such a heel,” she said.
“Why?”
“I’ve completely monopolized the conversation. I want to hear about you.”
She could feel his smile against her cheek. “Don’t worry, sweet Meg. There will plenty of time for that.” He turned his face to kiss the side of her head, and every one of her cells unfurled and languished in relief. “Besides, I almost forgot.” She turned to look at him, lifting her eyebrow in question. “There’s dessert.”
Meg grinned. She reluctantly arched forward, allowing him to slip out from behind her. A moment later he returned with two spoons and a container of congealed blackberry cobbler. They sat side by side to share the sticky dessert, their legs aligned from hip to ankle.
By the time they finished, the air had grown noticeably thicker, full of something Meg couldn’t name. Her thoughts spun in ineffectual circles, kicking up mud without gaining traction.
At some point her body would need sleep - and so, she supposed, would John’s. How strange that basic needs like rest and nourishment were all but forgotten in his company, completely eclipsed by an entirely different set of desiderata.
Still, she felt on the brink of overstaying her welcome (assuming she hadn’t already), precisely because she despised the thought of saying goodbye.
“Meg.” John’s voice was a gentle intrusion.
“Hmm?”
“I want you to stay,” he began. Yes, she thought, holding her breath. I want that, too.
But he wasn’t finished.
He touched her face, tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I want that more than...” He shook his head. “More than you can possibly imagine. But even more importantly, I want to do the right thing by you. I realize time isn’t something we have a lot of, but I don’t want to...rush you.”
Surely he could hear the rush of her blood and the knocking of the boulder in her chest. “You’re not rushing me,” she whispered. Too eager? She didn’t care.
He seemed to bite the inside of his cheek, repressing a smile, then bent to kiss her forehead. “I’m glad.”
Meg’s forehead puckered in confusion as he stood and handed her shorts to her. “If I’m going to let you walk away from me tonight, I’m afraid there’s one favor I’ll have to ask,” he said.
“What’s that?” That he turned away to keep from watching as she slid into her shorts did not escape her notice.
“Spend tomorrow with me.”
She closed her eyes, nodded her head. “I’d like that.”
He smiled as he touched her cheek. “Come on, then, beautiful. Before I change my mind.”
Chapter 5
John lay on his back with the frayed cotton sheet bunched around his waist, his arm bent beneath his head as he gazed upward. The sun had risen more than an hour ago. He’d monitored its ascent by watching the light’s steady advance as it bled in a slanted line across the ceiling and filled a water glass on the bedside table.
He had been here five weeks now. Until a few days ago, he’d awoken each morning with thoughts of where he would go and the supplies he would need when he got there. What sights he would capture. What stories he would attempt to tell.
Now these ideas had been supplanted by an entirely different array of thoughts. Pouting pink lips. Lily-white skin. Almond-shaped eyes. Dulcet laughter and halcyon youth.
Meg.
He reached beneath the sheet to adjust himself, relieve a little of the pressure built up over so many hours of unfulfilled yearning. He’d slept in the nude as usual, imagining her impossibly soft skin pressed against his. It was more than enough to drive him mad with craving.
He wondered whether she would allow him to draw her - Christ, not naked or anything, just...as he saw her. He couldn’t imagine she would mind. She was so agreeable, after all.
Careful there, he reminded himself for the umpteenth time. He’d never considered himself the type to exploit a person’s shortcomings, but perhaps that was because he had never been in a position to hurt someone like he could Meg. He hated that he could wield so much power. He’d never disliked anything more than he detested the thought of harming her in some way.
Was he being arrogant? Perhaps. She did possess a quiet strength, after all. It could be that what he perceived to be her shortcomings - the naiveté of youth - weren’t really faults at all. Or, it could be that his concerns were unfounded, that she didn’t feel for him the way he felt for her. Besides, although her mannerisms often mirrored those of a decorous schoolmarm, there was something ferocious about her, too - a penchant for exercising her ability to think for herself. It was a beguiling combination: callowness mixed with tenacity, mixed with a form of self-awareness uncommonly found in adults of any age, let alone a twenty-two year old.
Twenty-two.
Jesus, what was he doing? He’d been kissing girls while she was still in diapers. His first falling out with his father had transpired before she was even born.
So maybe pursuing her hadn’t been his cleverest idea - but hell if he could stay away from her now. Besides, it wasn’t as if there was anything unlawful about it. Never mind the fact that he’d have his seventieth birthday while she was still in her fifties.
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