For now, though, we had a quiet Saturday night.
One with a roaring fire, one with a slight breeze coming in from an open window, because despite the chill, I liked to smell the ocean, hear the distant crash of the waves. I was curled up on the sofa. Debussy was playing. Jay was wearing jeans and a soft cotton tee. It was a little pocket of perfection. And I didn’t plan on ruining it by demanding the truth.
“Wren is planning our wedding,” I told Jay as he poured me a glass of wine. He did not let me pour my own. The second my glass was even close to empty, he was there, refilling it. I hadn’t bothered to comment on how I could pour my own damn wine. Jay knew very well I could pour my wine. He wanted to do it. One of many small gestures that yes, may have spoken to his penchant for control, but it also communicated the way he wanted to take care of me. The small, intimate things he wanted to do.
Like fill my cup.
Which he did.
Every damn time I breathed him in, saw his verdant eyes watching me from across the room, every morning I woke up.
“I’m not surprised,” he replied when he had finished pouring my wine and was moving on to his own.
Another thing, he always took care of me before he even thought about himself. Always. And not just in the bedroom—thought that in it of itself was somewhat of a rarity.
Though I hated sweeping generalizations about men and women, some unfortunately, for the most part, tended to exist because they were true. Women in love, women in lust, women in a committed relationships tended to go out of their way to care for men. In a hundred and one little ways, one hundred of which usually went unnoticed by men because they weren’t exactly wired to notice the way their woman got them a beer before they finished theirs, the way they picked up their favorite brand of yogurt at the store, sucked their dicks not because they particularly liked the act but because they wanted to give them pleasure.
Men, as a rule, didn’t exactly go out of their way to do the little things, because mostly they didn’t notice them.
Jay noticed everything about me. Even things I hadn’t noticed about myself. And the way he felt for me, how deep his commitment went, was becoming more and more clear since we’d gotten home.
“You have no issues with Wren planning our wedding,” I clarified when he sat down beside me then proceeded to pull me so that I was practically sitting on his lap.
Jay liked me close.
Before the split, sure. But more so now. As if he thought I might run off and put an ocean between us again. As if he worried he might push me away again.
“Even if I did have an argument, I don’t like my chances of winning it,” Jay said, sipping his wine. There was a lightness to his words, to his voice, to his gaze that warmed my insides. “But no, I don’t have objections to Wren doing it. Do you?”
I shook my head. “Of course not. I have no earthly choice in the matter, and if my super powerful, badass fiancé doesn’t like his chances going up against Wren, I certainly wouldn’t fare well.”
Jay reached up to pull my hair out of the messy bun I’d piled it into earlier. He brushed out the strands with his fingers. “I think you doubt your own strength, pet,” he murmured.
I smiled at him. “You know that a Wren wedding will have a lot of fanfare,” I warned, going back to the subject at hand.
He nodded. “I’ve met Wren, so yes.”
“The guest list will be monstrous,” I continued.
“Again, not surprised.” Jay spoke with ease, with no tightness to his jaw, no shuttered over his eyes. It was unnerving, seeing him like this.
Relaxed.
It was unnerving yet wonderful. I didn’t want to wreck it, this comfortable, easy moment between us. Because I knew no matter how much it seemed like things had changed, how much Jay had changed, I knew that people, especially men—especially Jay—did not change that much.
This evening would not become the norm. I ached to hold on to it just as it was, not creating a single ripple.
But as much as I didn’t want to yank apart our pockets of peace, I wanted to make sure nothing went unsaid between us. Relationships did not crumble because of things said in anger, words used as weapons. Sure, they made marks. But they did not cause irreparable damage.
It was what wasn’t said. It was thoughts, feelings, fears, reservations, swallowed because speaking them seemed too hard, too uncomfortable. They burrowed, those unsaid words, like termites, eating away at things under the surface.