I sat down on the edge of the bed, hands shaky, throat dry, wishing I had a shot of tequila. But I met October’s gaze and held it.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” she said softly.
“I was just thinking about my best friend from high school.”
Her brow furrowed. “A male friend?”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Well, I was thinking about some advice he gave me once when I wanted to ask out a girl but was being shy and stupid.”
“What was his advice?”
“He always told me to go for it.”
“Sounds like good advice to me.”
She stopped blinking, her gaze still locked on mine, little pilot lights burning in her redwood-colored eyes. She lifted my hand, pressed the tips of her fingers against mine and her palm into my palm, trying to figure out what I was feeling. And I tried to send her a message, tried to tell her through my skin what I couldn’t say with words.
I’m pretty sure she heard me loud and clear, because a moment later she dropped my hand and took off the hospital gown. It tied in the back, but she didn’t bother to untie it. She just lifted the whole thing over her head and tossed it onto the floor.
“Your turn,” she said.
I took off my T-shirt, dropped it to the floor on top of her hospital gown, and got in bed.
We scooted down under the covers, facing each other on our sides, and she moved in close. Her breasts were warm against my chest, her palm cool on my back. She ran her thumb across my bottom lip, maneuvered her lower body so that my thigh was firmly between her legs.
“Remember, nothing has to happen if you don’t want it to,” she said.
“What if I want it to?”
I don’t know who went first, but one of us—probably October—leaned in, and we kissed. It was clumsy at the start. My teeth banged into hers and my head was going in the wrong direction. She giggled at that; I righted myself, and then it was good and soft and warm. Her mouth tasted like tangerines and mint and her neck smelled like the jasmine that grew outside the house, and I didn’t stop kissing her for a long time, so long that after a while it got to be too much—physically painful, I mean—and I knew I was going to have to either get the hell away from her or go all the way.
“The ball is in your court tonight,” I said.
It wasn’t just that I was scared. It was that she was my boss, and that meant she had to decide how far to take it. At least that was my assessment and my excuse.
She rolled over, climbed on top of me and began unbuttoning my jeans.
“Are you sure?” she said. “Because I can be kind of naughty when I’m in charge.”
October did all the work that night, and afterward we were quiet; I held her close, our limbs entangled so that I didn’t know where my body ended and hers began. And I remember thinking that holding her felt so much more right than my last girlfriend. Meadow was tall and strong, and holding her had been like trying to hold a mare. October was a fawn in my arms.
I was a moment from dozing off when October whispered, “You know what I like about you?”
I couldn’t have answered that question if my life depended on it. “My dynamic, outgoing personality?”
She laughed and then said, “You understand how to exist inside silence. Most people don’t know how to do that.”
“I like silence.”
“I like silence too.”
Another long, quiet moment passed between us.
“Joe,” she whispered again. “What’s your favorite word?”
I told her I’d never thought about it and would have to get back to her on that. Then she asked if I’d ever heard the term “desiderium.” She’d just discovered it, she said, and was trying to come up with a way to develop the concept into an exhibit.
“What does it mean?”
“An ardent longing,” she said, “usually for something lost.”
I had the feeling October was trying to tell me something specific with that word, to forewarn me about what would happen if I wasn’t careful. Or, rather, if I was too careful. And as I drifted off to sleep that night, I actually wondered if I would ever be that close to her again. I knew there was a good chance our moment had already passed. I also knew that if I lost her, it would be because I didn’t have what it took to hold on to her, and that loss would be something I would have to live with for the rest of my life.
Desiderium.
The unrequited.
Even now, years later, when I think about that night, my jaw tenses and my dick gets hard, and there’s an emptiness, a craving, an ardent longing in my chest and in my gut that seems to define the word “desiderium” so completely, I almost feel as though I conceived of the concept myself.
TEN.
October was gone when I woke up, and I wandered over to her house and found her in the middle of preparing breakfast. Eggs, potatoes, toast, fresh berries. She was wearing the bottoms to the pajamas she’d had on the night before, along with the T-shirt I’d left on the floor, which explained why I couldn’t find it in the mess of covers before I’d pulled on my jeans and went looking for her.
I tried to help, but she wouldn’t let me. Cooking was another kind of art project to her, she explained. She preferred to make the food and, more importantly, to plate it herself.
