Once Upon a Time in Bliss

by Lexi Blake

  She buttoned up her coat and strode out into the courtyard. He hadn’t even kissed her good night. He’d made a big deal about asking her out, and then he’d dropped her off at her doorstep and walked away. It didn’t take an idiot to know he’d changed his mind about wanting her. Maybe because he’d gotten a look at Holly and realized there were much better prospects in Bliss.

  Nell growled a little. She wasn’t going to think that way. She liked Holly. Holly had been through a lot, and just because Nell wanted a man who likely thought Holly was more attractive didn’t mean that she would be unkind to Holly. Holly couldn’t help the fact that she had great boobs and Nell didn’t. Women should stick together, not allow a man to come between them. Holly was her friend, and if she started dating Henry, then Nell would stand by her and support her.

  Perhaps she was meant to be alone like her mother had been for her whole life.

  Snow covered the courtyard, the world blanketed in white. She walked across, leaving small imprints where her feet touched the earth. This was what she needed. If she stayed in her borrowed room, she would end up crying and feeling sorry for herself. She’d wanted to go back to the cabin, but apparently Henry had called Rye and he was going to close the place up for the night, so now she was stuck here. She wasn’t going to let one man who didn’t want her wreck her night. It was beautiful in a way only Bliss was. The air was fine, and the stars made a map of the heavens.

  Nell turned her face up. A billion stars shone down on her, every single one a miracle. This was what she needed. She needed to be alone and to find her peace. She would sit out here for a few minutes and soak in the beauty of this particular night. There would never be another one like this one. It was like a snowflake—perfectly unique.

  “What do you see?”

  She gasped and turned. Henry was sitting on the tabletop of one of the picnic benches. So much for being alone and finding peace. “What?”

  His face was serious in the moonlight. Naturally he had to be here, sitting there with his graceful body and handsome face. “What do you see when you look up at the sky?”

  She shook her head, trying to figure out why he was here. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who looked up at the sky as his evening’s entertainment. “Why do you care?”

  His head turned up, and she could see the way he squinted as he looked at the stars. “Because I see a bunch of stars that died a long time ago, but I don’t think that’s what you see.”

  “No,” she replied. She glanced up. The night sky was so beautiful. Velvet and diamonds. “That’s not what I see, but I’m not dumb. I took science classes. I know the light we see is old.”

  His face turned back down, staring at her. “Light travels at a speed of one hundred and eighty-six thousand, two hundred and eighty-two miles a second. Given that speed and the relative vastness of the universe, it isn’t hard to deduce that some of those stars we look at every night are already gone, turned supernova and blasted from existence, but hey, it’s pretty, right?”

  Maybe Henry was as cold as the snow under her feet. She was starting to shiver. She had on galoshes and they weren’t doing a lot to keep the chill away. She should have put on a fourth pair of socks. “You want to bring science into something that should be emotional. Should we not find a flower in bloom lovely?”

  “A flower in bloom is dying.” He pointed a finger at her like she’d just stepped into a trap he’d set.

  Was she back in debate club? “Yeah, well, a baby just born is dying.”

  “My point exactly.”

  She shook her head. Why was he killing her perfectly pleasant alone time? She was supposed to be able to come out here and let him go, not argue against his nihilistic views of the universe. “If I listened to your argument and gave it an ounce of credence, I would just kill myself because nothing matters.”

  He shrugged as though that was a foregone conclusion. “Hence my question. What do you see?”

  She sighed. She should leave, but there was something deep inside her that just couldn’t shy away from a fight. “I see light and life. Yes, it might be from a long time ago, but I’m alive in this moment and that’s all that matters right now. I see a blanket of life. I see the cradle of creation.”

  He snorted. “You’re going to tell me you believe in God?”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  He simply stared at her as though the answer was obvious.

  She took a long breath. All in one day she’d been called a lesbian and an atheist. Neither one was a bad thing to be, but getting labeled hurt. “You’re really more small-minded than I thought you would be. I believe that love exists at the heart of the universe. I don’t know how or why we exist, but I know deep down that it’s to serve that love and to learn from it. It might not be God as you know it, but it’s real and valuable to me.”

  “How do you know?” He whispered the question, but there was an odd desperation behind it.

  “What do you mean?”

  He jumped off the table, his feet hitting the snow. His face was a perfect, gorgeous blank. “How do you know there’s some pocket of love at the center of the universe? How do you know we’re not fucking random and we live and we die and that’s the end and nothing matters? What’s your empirical evidence?”

  Henry seemed to be a professor right down to his soul. She tried to find a way to explain it that he would understand. She went back to her college physics class. “All right, the first law of thermodynamics teaches us that nothing is lost.”

  He shook his head and gave her a grunt. “That describes energy in closed systems, Nell. Do better.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, standing her ground. “No. You think bigger. Energy converts. It changes form. It isn’t lost. Why would our souls be lost?”

  There was a brisk laugh that came out of his mouth. “You’re running on the very sketchy theory that we humans have souls in the first place.”

  She sighed. He wasn’t the one for her if he didn’t even believe in souls. “I have a soul, Henry. You do, too. Nothing in the universe is wasted. Everything evolves for a reason. There’s no biological reason for the ability to love, for the human need to sacrifice for others. Tout Darwinism all you like. I believe in the theory, too, but only to a point. It isn’t present when one human being sacrifices his life for another. It isn’t there when a man runs into a burning building on the off chance that he can save the people inside. It isn’t there when a thousand soldiers run onto a beach they know they will die on because they want their children to be free. Darwinism isn’t there when people risk their lives to stand up for what they believe in when they know they’re going to die for it.”

  He was silent, simply standing there, his big body stiff and unmoving. There was a flat line to his mouth that told her she hadn’t gotten through to him. He’d been perfectly polite during dinner, but at some point he’d changed his mind about her because he thought she was a flake.

  The funny thing was she still would have gone to bed with him. All she’d required from him was that he be polite and somewhat kind. She was ready to understand sex. She felt something deep for him. It didn’t necessarily matter that he didn’t love her. She couldn’t control that, and he was only here for a little while, so she’d been okay with it. But he didn’t even like her. He was like a million other people. He thought she was a naïve idiot. She couldn’t sleep with a man who didn’t even like her. She was too picky. She’d finally found a man who called to her and he was like so many. Closed-minded. Unwilling to listen or to think even for a moment that she had something important to say.

  She couldn’t sell herself so cheaply.

  Perhaps the time had come to ask Holly about a vibrator. Holly talked about sex toys sometimes. She could name it and have a relationship with it. When she wasn’t in the mood, maybe she could watch the news with it sitting on the pillow beside her.

  God, even her potential sex life with an inanimate object was boring. Henry was still standing
there staring, and it was time to cut her losses.

  “Uhm, I guess I’ll go back inside. Thanks again for dinner.” He’d been a gentleman, insisting on paying. She turned to go. She would read until she fell asleep, if she could fall asleep. But she had to get out of here. She couldn’t stand how cold her feet had gotten.

  Nell had moved exactly two steps before he was in front of her, his big chest a wall blocking her progress.

  “I don’t understand you,” Henry said, his face a complete blank.

  “You don’t have to.”

  He was close. So close. She could feel the heat of his body. “I should leave you alone.”

  Then why wasn’t he? Tears threatened. God, she hated that. She couldn’t be calm. She always had to get emotional. No matter how many times she got kicked, her heart still got involved. Her brain was willing to let go, but her heart still wanted, and she couldn’t seem to make it stop. “Then go away. I didn’t come out here looking for you. I’m not going to follow you around. I promise I’m not going to bug you. It was a bad date. We can both walk away.”

  He frowned, his face setting in hard lines. “It wasn’t a bad date. It was nice. I liked talking to you.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m not stupid. You didn’t have a good time. You got rid of me as fast as you could.”

  “No, I didn’t. The cook said there was a storm coming in. I wanted to get up the mountain before it hit. I’m not used to driving in the snow.”

  He’d driven with complete competence. “That’s dumb. You’re an excellent driver. You wanted to get back so you could get away from me.”

  His eyes seemed to find the ground. “Maybe.”

  Her heart sank. “Well, don’t let me intrude. I’ll try to avoid you from now on.”

  She would do exactly that. She wasn’t going to force herself on the man. It hurt too much. Why? She’d only known him for a day, and she didn’t truly know him at all. So why was her heart breaking? Why did she think she was missing out on something good? Why did she think she would regret not being with him for the rest of her life?

  “Damn it, Nell.” His hand shot out, grabbing her elbow and stopping her from walking away. “I’m not good for you.”

  Yeah, she got that. “Fine. Then let me go.”

  His fingers tightened. “I tried. Do you have any fucking idea how hard it was to let you go in the first place?”

  “I think it was pretty easy since you did it without batting an eyelash. Let me go. My feet are getting so cold.” It was sinking into her skin. She was going to embarrass herself by shaking and chattering.

  He leaned over and shoved one muscular arm under her knees, hauling her up before she could protest.

  “What are you doing?” She’d never been picked up before. She couldn’t think of a time she’d been cradled in another human’s arms. She’d been a baby, most likely. This was what it felt like to be adored and cuddled and beloved. And she had to make it stop.

  He didn’t let her go. He started walking toward the doors, his long legs making quick work of the distance. “I’m taking you inside where you’ll be warm.”

  “I can walk on my own.”

  “But you don’t have to. See. This is the problem. You want to be a completely independent female, and I want to carry you around and protect you and do all the dumb crap you shouldn’t have to do.”

  What game was he playing? He was saying one thing and doing another. “Let me down. You made your choice when you dropped me off, and I’m going to do us both a favor and make you keep to it.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have walked outside. You shouldn’t have let me get another shot.”

  He was so frustrating. “I wasn’t giving you another shot, you Neanderthal. I was trying to forget you.”

  He kicked open the door and started walking down the hallway. At this time of night, it was deserted. “And I was trying to forget you, and you made that utterly impossible by walking out into that courtyard. Did you know there are three separate courtyards in this compound? This one is the furthest one from your room.”

  She kept her voice down. The community was very tolerant, but they did enjoy a bit of gossip. “If you’re trying to say I came looking for you, I didn’t. I don’t even know where your room is.”

  “It’s two doors away from yours.” He wasn’t even winded. He seemed to support her like she didn’t weigh anything at all. “We both walked the furthest destination we could and at roughly the same time. I’d been sitting there for five minutes and wondering if I shouldn’t go inside. Either one of us could have taken a simple left or right and we wouldn’t have met tonight, but that didn’t happen. You walked all the way here and I walked all the way here and we met.”

  “And we can unmeet.”

  His head shook. “No, I thought we could, but now I’m wondering.”

  “You said you were bad for me.” She kept arguing, but a bit of hope was starting to light inside her.

  “I am, but I’m starting to wonder if you might be good for me.” His arms tightened slightly, cradling her closer.

  She loved how small she felt in his arms, but she didn’t love what he was saying. “That’s not fair.”

  “The world isn’t fair. That’s why you do half the shit you do.”

  “It’s not shit, and the fact that you can call it that is precisely why you should put me down.”

  He stopped in the middle of the hall, setting her on her feet. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

  He pushed every single button she had. Nell started to turn to go, but she just couldn’t. Not without giving him a piece of her mind. He’d shoved his mean-spirited beliefs at her and made her feel dumb. She should walk away. It was what she did, but she couldn’t. Not when he was standing there looking secure and blasé, like he didn’t care at all. “You think what I do is shit?”

  “I think it’s naïve,” he corrected. “It’s braver to accept the world as it is. Smarter, too.”

  An ember of anger settled in her gut. “You know what I think?”

  Henry seemed to steel himself. “I think you’re probably going to tell me.”

  “I think you’re the coward. I think everyone who accepts that the world is unfair and doesn’t do a thing about it, they’re the cowards. Doctors push every day to find new medical breakthroughs. Scientists push to invent new technology. And I push every day so this planet is a better place for everyone, and you can look down on me and call me a kook, but people like me are the reason we have a democracy. We’re the reason women can vote. We’re the reason we have words in our vocabulary like human rights. Philosophers, thinkers, activists are the reason for every breakthrough humanity has made in becoming a more fair place. You think we’re not fair now, buddy? Go back a hundred and fifty years and try being a slave in the South. Activists changed that. And they were considered naïve and foolish, too. The things we accept as normal and fair today were once fought for and won by people like me, so I will keep my naïveté and you can keep your cynicism. I hope you two are very happy together.”

  She turned to go. She wouldn’t think about him again. She’d said what she needed to say. Now she could forget him and move on.

  Except his hand reached out, grabbing her elbow and spinning her around.

  Nell gasped, her body off-balance. She started to stumble, but Henry’s arms went around her, hauling her back up. She was right where she’d been before, cradled against his big, strong chest. “What are you doing?”

  “Something dumb.”

  “You put me down.”

  “I can’t. I tried, but you keep talking, Nell.” He walked across the smaller courtyard, the one she should have gone to but didn’t. It took him about five long strides to get inside the wing where their respective rooms were. “I was going to leave you alone. I was going to play it smart.”

  What had changed his mind? “Henry, stop.”

  “I tried to stop. I tried to be the gentleman, but I’ve decided that the universe doe
sn’t want that.”

  “You don’t believe in a higher power.”

  “No, but I’m starting to believe in you.” He looked down at her, those deep brown eyes of his hot on her face. He’d said the exact right thing to make her melt. She knew she should call him a liar, but she didn’t want to. She wanted him. She wanted to know what it was like to be in Henry Flanders’s strong arms. He would leave, but she would know what it meant to be held by him, loved by him.

  “Oh, Henry, are you going to make love to me?”

  He managed to get his door open without ever putting her down. He was in the room in two strides, placing her on the bed. Like all the single rooms at the Mountain and Valley, it was a small double bed.

  He looked down at her, one hand finding her hair. “Make love to you? Yes, I think I am. It’s going to be a change of pace for me.”

  She had no idea what he meant by that, but her head was whirling and she wasn’t sure she was capable of making a decent decision, and that was kind of cool. Mistakes. She rarely made them, and life was made of brilliantly beautiful mistakes. Her heart might break later, but she would know what it meant to feel this passion.

  She wanted. She wanted in a greedy way, and it was lovely. So much of her life was about giving that this moment seemed perfect because it was shared by two people who wanted the same thing. Pleasure. Connection. Love. She wasn’t foolish enough to think that making love meant being together forever, but in a way it did. She would remember it forever. He could forget her all he liked. She didn’t control that, but this experience would remain in her heart for as long as she drew breath.

  Henry unzipped his coat and tossed it to the side. “Give me your coat, and then I want you to take off your shirt very slowly.”

  He pulled at his own clothes. He wore the same thing he’d worn to dinner. A plain black cashmere sweater over a black T-shirt. He pulled them both over his head and they went the way of the coat, slung to the corner of the room in a random pile. She couldn’t help but stare. His chest was a work of art. It was rather shocking. When he was wearing clothes, there was a blandness to his features that belied the hard state of his body. He was quite cute. She wouldn’t deny that. He was handsome but in a professorial way, not a superpredatory, athletic way, yet his chest told a different tale. Perfectly sculpted and defined, Henry liked to work out. No doubt about it.