But this, right here, this was what I needed, this and nothing more.23FionaI woke up in his bed the next morning and for one crazy moment, I thought I was having a panic attack—until he rolled over, looked at me with dazed, half-asleep eyes, and kissed me.
“Morning,” he said, and the whole night came flooding back.
His lips, his arms, his body. We ate, we slept together again, we drank more wine, and we slept together again—before finally passing out from sheer exhaustion, our bodies tangled together beneath the sheets.
I’d never given myself so fully to someone, so without reservations. I couldn’t think of the last time I spent hours naked in someone else’s presence. He looked at me like I was a painting hanging on the wall of a museum, except I was a painting he could touch, and he was hungry for the feeling of the brush strokes beneath his fingertips. I let him look at me, and reveled in it, felt a strange excitement at every glance and stare. It drove me crazy, and I felt the self-conscious confusion, all that self-loathing, slowly melt away.
“Morning,” I said.
He sat up, stretched, and I marveled at the muscles in his back. He stood and walked into the bathroom, and I stayed there under the covers. I was still naked, really needed a shower—but I knew that as soon as I stood up, he’d stare at me with that look again, and it scared me how badly I wanted that.
I wanted him to look at me like he loved me, even my flaws, all of me.
When he finished brushing his teeth, he came back and kissed me. “Want breakfast?”
“Coffee,” I said.
“You got it.” He pulled on sweats and a shirt. “Want clothes?”
“That’d probably be for the best.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you stayed naked.” He tilted his head. “But I doubt we’d get much done today if you did.”
“I’m sure.” I smiled and stretched, then got out of bed. I felt his eyes on me as I walked to the bathroom, so incredibly aware of every motion—but when I looked back at him, his face was absolutely adoring, and I felt that lack of confidence disappear.
“I’ll get started downstairs,” he said, “unless you need help in the shower?”
“No, I think I’ll manage.” I shut the bathroom door before he could insist.
I stood in front of the mirror, a stupid smile on my face, before taking a shower, using his toothbrush, and putting on a pair of sweats and an old t-shirt. Downstairs smelled like coffee and pancakes, and I smiled as he gave me a mug and gestured at the frying pan.
“If you’re hungry,” he said.
“I think I can indulge a bit.”
“Smart move.” He nodded toward the living room and I followed his gaze. “Looks like we got a little aggressive last night.”
The papers were knocked onto the floor, ruining our two-pile system. I sighed dramatically.
“You’re such a brute,” I said.
“I think that was from you. Couldn’t help yourself.” He grinned at me, waving a black spatula in the air. “You were swept away by the pleasure of my talents.”
“Oh, god. If you ever say that again, I swear there will never be any more pleasure happening here.”
“Duly noted.” He turned back to the stove and flipped the pancake.
I wandered over to the documents and started cleaning them up. As I shuffled them together, I started to notice a strange pattern that I hadn’t seen the night before. I wasn’t totally sure what I was seeing, but it nagged at me as I put them back into some semblance of the order we had the night before. I tapped at my tooth with one fingernail, then pulled a couple papers from the useless pile, and held them up into the air, then placed them in the important pile. I wasn’t sure why, but I thought they’d provide context for certain payments that occurred on a regular monthly schedule, and seemed to disappear from the underlying accounting at the end of the next month—never to be seen again.
“Breakfast is ready,” he said, placing a plate down at the table. He sat and sipped his coffee and dug in, and I joined him a second later, still thinking about those numbers.
“Thanks for this.” I sipped my coffee and let out a breath. “God, I’m so addicted to this stuff.”
“Same. I go to bed each night looking forward to drinking it the next morning.”
“That’s not ideal.”
“I know, but I can’t help it.”
I laughed and we ate in silence for a couple minutes before he finished and leaned back in his chair.
“Can I ask you something?”
I hesitated. I knew that tone. I’d heard it a hundred times. He wanted to have the conversation—he wanted to ask me about the scar, how it happened, the whole thing.
And for the first time ever, I found that I didn’t dread it.