Ian was still there in the morning. I got up and looked at him like if I blinked he might be gone.
He stretched and said he was hungry. He asked if I needed to get to the office early because he wanted to take me out for brunch.
“Sure,” I said and then we scrambled around the house, listening to music and getting dressed like it was something we’d always done together at my place.
We brushed our teeth. Smiled in the mirror at each other. He kissed me and said he’d meet me downstairs at the door. He was pulling the car around.
“I see everything is good this morning, Ms. Winslow?” Jeremy asked, pulling the elevator door open for me.
“Actually, it is.”
I’ve never been married before, and I couldn’t imagine being married to someone for thirty years, but I’m sure that being in love with your best friend must be what it feels like to be married that long. Having Ian at my place was like an extended sleepover with no parents and no rules. We’d stay up all night watching old movies and eating junk food. I never had to ask him for anything. He knew what I was thinking. I knew what he was thinking. When I was hungry, he’d call for pizza. When I got home, I’d have his bottle of Scotch. Every day, his pile of stuff in the corner grew larger. I didn’t know if he’d been seeing Scarlet. I didn’t ask about her. I didn’t think he wanted me to and I didn’t want to know. Every time I thought about her, I had to think of them together. I wanted to leave that in the past and move forward. Like Ian said so many times, he was where he wanted to be.
Two weeks or so after Ian moved in, I came home from work and wasn’t expecting him to be back from the school. I opened the door to a loft filled with lit candles and smelling like Thai food.
“Ian?” I called. “What’s this?” I put down my bag beside the door and was about to walk into the living room.
“Rach? That you? No! Don’t come in yet!” Ian shouted.
“What?”
“Don’t come in yet! It’s a surprise. I’m not ready yet.”
“Do you want me to go back outside?” I asked, laughing.
“No, just wait!” He sounded like he was rushing through the loft. “One more second.”
There was a loud pop that sounded like he’d turned on the stereo with the sound all the way up.
“Whoops! OK. OK! You can come in now!” Ian called. “Rachel?”
“Yes?” I walked into the living room just as the first chords of my song, that India.Arie song “Ready for Love,” began to play.
Ian was wearing an old FAMU T-shirt and blue jeans. Pictures of us in various stages of metamorphosis were set up all over the couch and taped to the window panes all the way to the ceiling.
“What’s all this?” I asked, already tearing up.
“It’s for you,” Ian said, coming over to me and pulling me into the room. “I know it’s not all that big—I’m not exactly raking in the dough right now—but I wanted to do something nice for you. An early birthday present.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said. My birthday wasn’t for two more weeks. I walked to the couch and picked up a picture of Ian and me waving orange and green pompons from the bleachers at our first homecoming game together.
“Actually, I did need to do this,” Ian said. “You deserve this. You deserve all of it and more. I’m just happy to be with you. I’m happy you let me be with you.”
Ian hugged me and pulled his face back to look me in the eyes. And the reality of something I’d been thinking about every day washed over me like a wave. Ian and I hadn’t kissed since that day at the office. We’d pecked almost like cousins. He’d kissed my neck. I’d kissed his cheek. But that was in passing. While we were coming and going. We slept in the same bed every night, yes, but it was six hours of spooning and planning. Or saying how excited we were to be together, but then, drunk on Scotch and JD, we’d fall asleep and wake up in the morning like there was nothing odd about it. I’d told Journey and even Krista about it. They were in shock. They said something was wro
ng, but I defended it carefully and earnestly. I said we were waiting. There was nothing wrong with that. Sometimes these things just took . . . time. Krista had rolled her eyes unconvinced. “You put a man in my bed and someone’s having sex. It can happen when he’s asleep, but it’s happening,” she’d said. “Our relationship is about more than sex,” I’d said. “We’re working some things out right now. He’s just left his wife. I don’t want to sleep with a married man.” Journey was on the same note as Krista one night online. She’d said, “Did you ask him if he minds that you’re not sleeping together? And what’s happening with the wife? Are they getting a divorce? Are they separated? Did you ask him about that?” I hadn’t.
Ian wrapped his hand around the small of my neck and closed his eyes, coming in for a kiss.
I closed my eyes, too, but my neck wouldn’t give way. It just wouldn’t. It was rigid with fear. When I was seventeen, I played Effie White in a high school production of Dreamgirls. There was a scene where I was supposed to kiss Lucas Hamilton, the school nerd and top thespian who was playing Curtis Taylor, right on stage in front of the whole school. I couldn’t do it. Grammy Annie-Lou said I stood there petrified, like one of those fainting goats that fall out stiff when they’re afraid. That’s kind of how I felt waiting for Ian’s kiss.
He tried two more times, but I just got more awkward and more stiff.
I peeked at him and saw that he was peeking at me, too, and wincing just a little.
“Oh . . . I can’t,” he said, letting me go suddenly.
“What? You can’t?” I asked like I hadn’t been thinking and subconsciously acting out the same thing.