Eve’s Wedding Knight

her bared neck, like the stalk of some delicate Sower-a buttercup, maybe, or a wild primrose. He thought it seemed too fragile to support her head and the jaunty, childlike tousle of her straw-colored hair. Yet he knew there was nothing fragile about her body. He remembered the graceful arrangement of muscles in her back…the silky-firm resilience of her flesh beneath his fingertips…

“So,” she said on an exhalation that was both a celebration of freedom and a sigh of pleasure, raking supple fingers through her hair, “you don’t go home to your parents’ for Thanksgiving?”

“Haven’t for a while,” said Jake gloomily. He was staring down at the plate in his lap, thinking that he was rapidly losing interest in its contents. He heaved a small and, he hoped, inaudible sigh. “When I was married we did. My wife saw to that. Family was important to her-probably because she didn’t have any to speak of. Only child… parents were both dead.”

“So,” said Eve, as she had once before, “she only had you.”

He snorted, utterly without mirth. “Did she?”

“Stop that.” She shook her head and leaned toward him, forearms resting on her knees, both hands encircling the bottle of beer. In a tense voice, she said, “You’re not being fair.”

He said nothing, but waited in wary silence for her to explain. After a moment, not looking at him, she lifted the bottle and took a sip. Her movements were quick and jerky-almost, he would have said, angry. She swallowed, still looking past him, then muttered under her breath, “Or she wasn’t.”

“Oh?” he said very quietly, for it was a subject, and they were feelings, he seldom if ever allowed himself to touch upon. “How do you figure that?”

She made a hissing sound, impatient and angry. He could feel himself shoring up his defenses even before she drilled him with a look and fired. “Look-this guilt trip you’re on-didn’t it ever occur to you that your wife wasn’t being fair when she put the entire responsibility for her own fulfillment on to you?”

“That’s not-” he began, withdrawing behind his bulwarks.

“Any of my business…I know,” she finished for him in a gentler tone. “And you’re thinking I don’t exactly qualify as an expert on marriage and divorce. But I have been in a lot of relationships, and I’m a terrific observer of other people’s, and I do know that human beings are so complex, and their needs are so different, that it’s just not possible for one person to provide everything another person needs. A woman in the happiest of marriages still needs her girlfriends. Still needs challenges, goals, mental stimulation, spiritual nourishment. No man could possibly fill all those needs, even if he devoted all his time and energy to the job. It’s just not possible.”

“All his time and energy?” Jake said bitterly. “How about none? I was gone all the time. And when I was home, I was wrapped up in my work-especially the last few years. Are you saying I bear no responsibility for making my wife happy?”

“Of course not.” Eve gestured impatiently with the beer bottle. “Obviously you can’t mistreat or neglect somebody and expect them to be happy in spite of it. I don’t know how to explain. It’s…complicated.” She subsided, momentarily defeated, then drew breath and blurted out, “All I’m saying is, your wife needed to get a life. If she’d had one, maybe she’d have been able to share and understand yours.”

In the silence that followed her unpardonable outburst, Eve sipped beer and listened to the echoes of her own words. Get a life. I used to have a life, she thought, and was suddenly as lonely and wretched there with Jake in that cozy little space as she’d been out on the edge of the marshes, hearing the call of the wild geese at sunset. I want my life bock.

“I’m sorry.” She mumbled the words, not looking at Jake’s face. “I had no right to say that.” She tried for a lighter tone. “In my own defense, I think it’s because…I miss-”

Jake’s soft-gruff voice interrupted her. “You’ll get your life back-I promise you. You will.”

Her gaze snapped back to him, and his eyes were waiting for her, black and impenetrable, but at the same time familiar and somehow welcoming, like a well-known and wall-loved room in the dark. How had he known? she wondered. It was as if he’d heard her heart talking.

And when had that long, unsmiling face with that patrician nose and those melancholy eyes, the unruly hair and five-o‘ clock shadow, become so pleasing to her eyes? Gazing at him, she felt her heart twist inside her, and a terrible longing all but overwhelm her.

What would it be like, she suddenly wondered, to turn to him as he came to their bed late at night, to feel his arms around her as she snuggled close to him and whispered, “Guess what I saw today? The most amazing thing…” Or to walk with him through an autumn woods, on a day when the sky was the crystal blue of sapphires and the scent of wood smoke filled the air, and breezes swirled leaves like confetti. And finding herself too overcome by the sheer loveliness of it for words, to just look at him and reach for his hand… What would it be like? Would he understand? And would she ever have the chance to know?

“I wish…” she whispered, then stopped.

“What?” Jake prodded.

But she shook her head, smiling a little the way people must when they ache inside. Because she couldn’t tell him what she’d just at that moment realized, which was that getting her own life back wasn’t going to be enough. That it was never going to be enough for her again. Because she wanted Jake’s life back, too.

Oh, it was complicated. He had such issues! She wanted him free and unencumbered. Unencumbered by guilt over the failure of his marriage, free to love again. Unencumbered by his quest to bring Sonny Cisneros to justice, free… to love her.

“Come on, tell me what you wish,” Jake urged her, and again his eyes seemed to darken and glow. As if he already knew.

“No-it’s nothing.” But her breath caught and a terrible fear seized her. What if it never happened? What if he never did manage to shake off his emotional baggage? What if she never got a chance to find out if he was the one-the right one-for her? Or…what if she found out he was, but that he didn’t feel the same? That would be the very worst thing, she thought. Far, far worse than never finding the person you were meant to share your life with-to find that person, and after waiting and searching for so long, to have it be only on one side.

“Waskowitz-” he was regarding her with a teasing glint in his eyes “-I’d never have thought you’d be one to mince words.”

“I’m not,” she said stubbornly, grabbing a sip of beer more out of a need for distraction than thirst. “But I’m not going to tell you this. It’s too-” she waved the bottle “-complicated.”

“And I’d never have taken you for a coward.”

Coward. Her eyes jerked back to him, collided with his with a jolt she felt clear through to her soul. No, she’d never been a coward. Afraid, yes. Terrified out of her wits. And always, the more frightened she was, the more determined and reckless she became, just to prove to herself that she was brave.

So now, when she looked into Jake’s eyes and they stared back at her, gleaming with challenge, in the face of that, and her own fear, what else could she do? She leaned across her folded legs and his drawn-up knee and the plate full of the remains of Thanksgiving dinner, and kissed him.

In her lifetime she’d ridden camels, shot rapids, jumped out of airplanes, plunged in a submersible to the bottom of an inky sea. But this… this was surely the bravest and most reckless thing she had ever done. Her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there; her hands felt frozen, her breath came in shivery sips, or not at all. She heard a rushing in her head as if she were in freefall, and the wind whistling past her ears as she plummeted down… down…down toward a distant unseen earth.

Not that he didn’t give her plenty of help; she knew she’d never have survived the humiliation if he hadn’t. With all the time in the world to see what was coming, he must have leaned toward her, met her halfway; she never knew for certain. But there was his mouth, sooner than expected… vibrant and warm.

Her breath caught; trembling, she swayed slightly, breaking the contact for a moment. He altered the angle of his mouth and found hers again. And this time he leaned into the kiss with deepening pressure, and his lips opened under hers. Startled, she retreated just a little. There was time for one quick breath before her body rocked forward again almost of its own volition, seemingly governed by hungers beyond her control. Her lips parted, their mouths met, and this time clung… melded… merged. As if it had always been intended that they should.

Except for the pounding of her heart, her world went still and silent. As if at that moment she had entered a place of perfect peace and safety…after a long and difficult journey, at last found her harbor, her home.

She would have wished for such a moment never to end, but of course it had to end, and did. Jake pulled away