Even thinking that felt sappy. But God, it might all be okay. I snapped out of this incoherent internal babbling to realize that Tolliver was having a hard time getting to the door of the Hamilton house because of the tree branches.
I opened the window, with a lot of effort. One-handed, it was a bitch.
"You need me to come help?" I called. My voice was startling.
I felt Tolliver was restraining himself from saying that was the last thing in the world he needed. "No, thanks," he called back, with wonderful restraint. Even hearing his voice made me catch my breath. There was something different about it, there was. Some tension that had kept him taut and stretched had snapped. I was as moony and dreamy as a girl who'd had her first French kiss, and I made myself enter the here and now.
The Hamiltons' door was opening, and I could see Ted Hamilton. He was wearing a hat, which looked ridiculous but actually was pretty smart, considering how much of your body heat you lose through your head. He and Tolliver exchanged a few words, and then Tolliver began making his way back over to our temporary home.
I opened the door when he reached the top of the steps, and he propelled himself inside.
"Oh, God, it's cold out there," he said, and he made a beeline to the fire. He piled on a couple more pieces of wood and stood there for a moment, his face as close to the fire as he could get it without actually singeing his mustache. He closed his eyes with the bliss of the warmth.
"Were they okay?"
"Yeah. Mad. Ted said a few words I think he'd been saving up since the Korean War. I was glad I'm not a member of the McGraw-Cotton family. He actually said he was gonna sue."
"Wonder if he'd have a chance in court."
Tolliver held out a hand, tipped it one way then another. "I want to say that would be ridiculous, but you know how the justice system can be."
We fell silent, looked at each other.
"Are you sorry?" he asked.
"No. You?"
"We should have done it a long time ago. You kept saying I should leave you. I didn't know if that was what you wanted or not. I finally decided to sink or swim. You were thinking what?"
"I was thinking I loved you so much that I shouldn't keep you around me, because you must not find out I felt that way. I thought you might think it was gross or sick. Or…you might feel kind of sorry and responsible for me, which would be worse."
"As far as I'm concerned, you're the original lemons-into-lemonade girl," he said. "You get struck by lightning, and instead of wailing and moaning about it and applying for disability, you discover a usable skill and figure out a way to make it work for you. You've got the brains and the charisma to make it in your very own business."
"Charisma," I said scornfully.
"You do, or hadn't you noticed the way men like you?"
"Adolescent boys like me," I said. "That's not exactly a big plus."
"Not just adolescents," Tolliver said. "They just don't know how to hide it."
"You're saying I'm a guy magnet? Get real."
"Not in the sense that someone like, I don't know, Shakira or Beyonce is. You're not a blond shake-your-booty kind of girl, but you've got your very own attraction, and believe me, men feel it."
"As long as this man feels it," I said. I looked up into his face.
"You made me stop breathing there for a minute," he said.
I looked down and smiled. "At least you know everything bad about me already."
"I didn't know you made that sound when you came," he said, and I did a little not-breathing all my own.
"I didn't know you had that slight curve in your dick," I countered.
"Yeah…ah, how does that…I mean, is that okay?"
"Oh, yeah," I assured him. "Touches something wonderful inside me."
"Oh? Hmmm."
"And I wondered, if you were up for it…"
"Yeah?"
"You'd maybe touch it again?"
"I think you could persuade me. If you went to great lengths."
"Would you like me to go down on you?"
By the light of the flickering fire, I could see his pupils dilate. "Oh," he said.
"Lick you? Like this?" I extended my tongue and did a little flickering of my own.
"That would do the trick," he said hoarsely. "Jesus, Harper, I don't understand why we don't have guys following us from town to town just to watch you do that."
"Because I've never done it for anyone but you," I said. "You don't think I'd say something like that to anyone else, do you?"
"Please," he said. "Please do that for me. And no one else."
I knelt before him carefully, and pulled down his sweats and the long underwear he'd pulled on before his excursion to the Hamiltons'. Somehow, him still having clothes on seemed to make what I was doing even naughtier.
I looked up to make sure he was looking as I made good on my promise. Oh, yeah. He watched my every move as if I'd hypnotized him.
"Oh, my God," he said. He reacted in a very gratifying way.
In my limited experience, men were always so glad to get sex, they were pleased with it no matter how inexperienced their partner was. They weren't there to run a critique group. They were there to have an orgasm. Provided you put their penis in the correct hole and made enthusiastic noises, they went away happy. It was like signing up for basic cable. That was what you'd sign up for if you were getting it for a person you didn't know well.
"For you, baby, HBO," I said, and made him moan.
I woke the next morning to brilliant clear light coming through the bare windows. I blinked and shuddered. I burrowed deeper under the covers, closer to the other body in the bed. Tolliver! I was in bed with Tolliver and we were naked. I sighed with bliss and kissed his neck, which was the easiest thing to reach.
"I guess I have to stop calling you ‘sis' now," he said, his voice heavy with sleep.
"Uh-huh."
"I guess Manfred is shit out of luck."
"Uh-huh."
"I guess the chainsaws we hear mean that there are people outside the cabin cutting up the tree, and we don't have any clothes on."
"Oh…no."
"Yeah, hear 'em?"
I did. Wouldn't you know that even though there were fifty empty cabins and houses around this lake, we'd be in the one that had neighbors? And I was going to have to get out of the warm bed to go to the bathroom, and I'd have to flush it by pouring water in. Yuck. And I definitely needed a sponge bath, for which I'd have to stand naked in the freezing bathroom, since there weren't any curtains on the windows and the stupid Hamiltons were out there trying to free their car from the clutches of the tree.
"I hope their car is a pancake," I said.
"You don't mean it."
"No. Yes. Sort of." I laughed. "I just don't want to get out of the bed."
"Do you think they'll stomp up the steps and look in?"
"Oh, yes, any minute." His hand found mine under the huge pile of blankets and he gripped my fingers tightly.
"I don't want to leave this bed, either," he said and kissed me. His hand released mine to skim across my ribs. "But I'm exhausted, too."
"Oh, poor thing. Did I wear you out?"
"I'm a shadow of myself."
"That's funny, you feel substantial enough," I said, rubbing my hand across his (okay, flat and muscular) belly.
"Woman, I need fuel," he said. "If I'm going to keep up with your insatiable demands."
"You haven't even met insatiable yet," I said. Then I dropped the smile. "I can't believe we did it, Tolliver. This is all I ever wanted."