Chapter 18
The First Kiss
They went on four dates in August, and he did not kiss her at any of them.
It was a thing she noticed with a mixture of gratitude and a kind of helpless, rising, nervous impatience, like a person standing on the edge of a pool who has been told that the water is warm. He walked her to her door. He said good night. Once, on the second date, at a table on the sidewalk outside a Thai restaurant on Grant Street, he took her hand across the table and held it for a full three minutes while the waiter brought the noodles, and she felt it so intensely that she could not taste a single thing she ate.
She did not blame him. That was the odd part. She understood him perfectly. He was waiting, not for permission, but for a sign that she was there. He had watched her walk out of a relationship. He had seen what it cost. He had made himself a promise, she thought, that whatever came next would be at her pace, and not his, and he was keeping it so carefully, and with such steady good humor, that she could have wept.
He's being so good, she thought.
It's almost unbearable.
She had the strange, sharp feeling, after the third date, that she was the one who had to say it. She stood in the dark at the top of the stairs with her back against her door and the key in her fist, and listened to his car go away down the street, and said, out loud, to the hall, "You're a coward."
The hall did not argue.
She was not afraid of him. It took her a while to be sure of that. She went over it, carefully, at night, in bed, as one tests each rung of a ladder. She was not afraid he would be angry, or sulk, or leave. She was not afraid of the way he looked at her. She was afraid of something older and stupider and much harder to catch. It was a small cold reflex, at the back of the neck, that said: You'll have to be good at this. It said: There's a way it's meant to go. There's a sweater to wear. It said that if she kissed him, there would be a Sarah who did it right, and a Sarah who was watching, and she did not know which of them would show up.
She told him so on the fourteenth.
It was a Thursday evening, after a long hot day, and he had come to the library at closing.
He had not said he would. He had texted at five, a single line, i'm outside. i've got a bike. She had come out through the staff door with her bag over her shoulder and her hair in a loose knot, and found him on the pavement, in the late golden light, holding a bicycle by the handlebars.
It was old. It was a lovely thing. It had a long low frame the color of a ripe plum, painted by hand, and cream tires, and a wide curved saddle of tan leather. A little brass bell was clamped to the handlebar. It had a wicker basket. Every inch of it shone. She had never seen so many separate things polished.
"It's the Schwinn," said Daniel.
"The lamp one?"
"The one that wasn't a lamp." He gave the bell a flick. It rang, a bright small silver note. "I finished it on Sunday. I've been, it took me ten months. I thought, I'd like to ride it somewhere. I thought, it should go somewhere with someone."
"It's beautiful."
"It's yours. I mean for tonight. It's a loan."
"I haven't been on a bike in eight years."
"That's all right. It's like, it's like a pen. You hold it right, and it does the work." He had another one, behind him, a battered gray road bike, leaning on the wall. "I brought mine. I thought we'd do the river. It's flat. There's a, the light is good. I've got sandwiches."
"Sandwiches."
"In the basket. I made them myself. They're very, there's a lot of mustard."
She looked at him.
He was standing in the sun with the bicycle held out to her, in a pale blue shirt with the sleeves rolled, tall and rather anxious, with his hair sticking up, and she thought: I could do it right now. I could just walk across the pavement.
She did not.
She took the bike. She put her hands on the grips. They were cool, and a little worn, and fit her palms. She swung a leg over the bar, with a good deal of ceremony, and sat, and felt the leather give.
"Don't let go," she said.
"I won't."
"Don't let go."
"I've got the back."
She pushed off.
It wobbled. It swerved. She yelped, and the whole street swam, and a bus-stop sign came at her like a spear. She felt his hand on the saddle, and then not on the saddle, and then she was upright, suddenly, rolling, with the wind in her face and the long plum-colored frame humming under her, and the pedals turning, as if of their own accord, a smooth round beautiful turning, over and over, and she heard herself laugh. It was a high, wild, astonished laugh.
"I'm doing it!"
"You're doing it!"
"I'm doing it!"
"Look where you're going," shouted Daniel, from somewhere behind, and she looked, and there was only the road, and the sky, and the long gold evening ahead of her.
They rode the river path to the old mill.
It took forty minutes, with a great deal of stopping. She was bad at it for the first mile and good by the third. They went single file under the cottonwoods, with the water flashing at their left, and the dust of the path hanging gold in the air, and Daniel's dark shape in front of her, easy on his bike, turning every so often to check that she was there. He called out the hazards. Root. Dog. A very large goose. She called back. At a long straight, with the sun low and the river wide and brown and shining, they rode side by side, not talking, with their shadows going together on the cinders, and she thought she had never been so happy in her body.
The bench was empty.
It stood where it always stood, under the same tree, with its little brass plaque. They leaned the bikes against it. He took out the sandwiches, wrapped in wax paper, and two bottles of lemonade, and they sat, the two of them, a foot apart, looking at the water. She ate hers in four bites. It had a great deal of mustard. It was one of the best things that she had ever tasted.
The light was going.
It was a long, slow, golden going, the sort you get in August, when the whole sky seems to be made of honey. The shadows lay across the river. Dragonflies went over the water. Far away on the other bank, a man was fishing, alone, and the line shone like a hair. It was very quiet. She could hear the creak of the tree, and the faint ticking of the bicycle chains as they cooled, and, somewhere, a bell.
"This is where we sat," said Sarah.
"Yes."
"In April."
"I know."
"I didn't know you'd, I didn't think you'd bring me back."
"I thought it was the right place."
"Why?"
"Because it was the one where you walked away." He said it simply, with his eyes on the water. "I thought, it would be good to have it be a place where you also came."
She was quiet.
She had thought she was ready. She had been ready all day. But now, with her hands round a bottle of lemonade, and the light on his face, she felt a tightness come into her throat. It was a small, foolish, familiar thing. She put the bottle down on the bench.
"Can I tell you something?"
"Of course."
"I'm scared."
He turned his head.
"Not of you. I want you to, I need you to know that. It's not you." She drew up her knees. She wrapped her arms round them. "It's that I keep thinking there's a way to do this properly. That there's a thing I'm supposed to do. And I'll do it, and I'll be good, and then I'll hear myself, and I'll think, who is that? And it won't be me. It'll be a, there's a person I get. When I'm trying. I don't want her. I'm so tired of her. I don't want her to be the one who kisses you."
He did not say anything.
"I don't know how to explain it. I don't know how to make her stay in the other room."
"You don't have to."
"I do."
"No." He was looking at her. He had turned right round on the bench, with one arm on the back of it, and his face was open and plain in the failing light. "I think you just, if she comes, she comes. And I'll say, hello. I'd like to meet her. I'll say, you can go now. We've got this." His mouth lifted. "I'm very good with strangers. I once talked a man out of a parking ticket."
She laughed. It broke out of her, damp and shaky.
"And if I don't kiss you tonight," she said, "and it's, because I'm too, because of her?"
"Then I'll walk you home. And I'll say good night. And we'll do it again tomorrow."
"You would."
"I'd do it for a year."
"That's too long."
"It's not too long," said Daniel. "I'd do it for ten. I think, it's the only, if it's you, I don't mind how long."
She looked at him for a long time.
She looked at his eyes, which were brown, and wet, and calm, and the little lines at their corners. She looked at the white scar across his thumb. She saw it all, as she had seen it from the first, a plain, kind, unassuming face that did not know how remarkable it was. And she felt it come, then. It did not come as a rush. It came like the tide, in a quiet inlet, filling slowly from the bottom, so that for a long time you do not notice, and then you look and the whole bay is full.
"Daniel."
"Yes."
"Can I?"
He did not answer at once.
He sat very still. She saw him take it in. She saw it go through him. His lips parted, and closed. When he spoke, it was a bare whisper, and steady.
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"I've been sure since the pond."
"I'm going to, I'll go slowly."
"Okay."
"If I stop, I'm not, it's not a thing. It doesn't mean."
"I know."
"I just want to be here. I want to be, I want it to be me."
"It is," said Daniel, very gently. "It's you. I can tell."
She unwound her arms.
She turned on the bench. She was shaking, a little, and she put one hand out, and laid it against his cheek. It was warm, and slightly rough, and she could feel the line of his jaw under her palm. He did not move. He had closed his eyes. His breath came out in a long trembling stream across her wrist, and she saw the pulse in his neck.
She leaned in.
It was the smallest distance. It was no more than a few inches, and it took, she thought, about a year. She felt the heat of his face before she touched it. She felt his lashes move. And then her mouth was on his, lightly, in the last of the gold light, in a hush so deep that she could hear a leaf fall.
It was very soft.
That was the first thing. It was so much softer than she had thought. It was a slow, warm, tentative pressure, like the first touch of a hand on a sleeping animal. He did not move. He did not take. He held perfectly still under it, as a man holds who has been told that if he breathes, the bird will fly. She felt his hand come up, very slowly, and close at her elbow, with the lightest imaginable grip. It was only there. It did not pull.
She drew back an inch.
His eyes opened. They were enormous. They were so dark, and so wet, and so naked that she almost looked away.
"Hi," she whispered.
"Hi."
"That was."
"Yes."
"Is it, was it all right?"
"It was," said Daniel. His voice cracked. He tried again. "It was the, I think it was the nicest thing, I don't have a word."
"Me neither."
"I'm going to cry."
"Don't."
"I might. I've been, it's been a long, I've wanted to, since. I don't even know when." He laughed, breathlessly, and a tear ran down the side of his nose. "I'm sorry. I said I'd be calm."
"You're not calm."
"No."
"You're crying."
"I'm very, I'm just happy, it's," He stopped. He put the back of his wrist against his eyes. "It's a lot. It's a lot of happy. I don't know where to put it."
She laughed. She was crying herself. She did not know when it had started. She took his wrist, gently, in both hands, and drew it away from his face. And then she kissed him again.
This time it was not careful.
It was longer, and deeper, and a great deal less sure. It was the kiss of a person who has been holding her breath for a year. She felt his arm go round her, warm and solid, and his hand spread flat between her shoulder blades. She felt her own fingers slide into his hair. It was thick, and a little damp, and it stood up under her palm. She heard a sound, small and low and entirely helpless, and was astonished to find that she had made it.
When they broke apart, they were both gasping.
They sat there, with their foreheads together, in the dusk, breathing the same warm air. The river went by. A frog started up in the reeds. The whole world had gone the color of a ripe peach, and then of dusty rose, and her heart was banging so hard against his that she could not tell whose was whose.
She waited.
She waited for the other voice. It was a thing she had learned to do. She held herself very still, and listened, the way you listen for a footstep on a stair.
Did I do it right?
Was that what he wanted?
Is he
It did not come.
She sat there, and the silence in her was so complete, and so clear, and so strange that for a moment she could not think what it was. It was not an absence. It was more like a presence, a deep wide steady calm, the stillness at the heart of a clear day. She felt it settle in her. She felt it fill her up. She was a woman on a bench, with a man's arm round her, and no one at all was watching.
Oh, she thought.
It's safe.
It was such a quiet discovery. It did not feel like a revelation. It felt like putting her hand on a wall in the dark and finding that it was there. She leaned her head on his shoulder. She breathed in, and out, and the whole of her body let go, one muscle at a time, in a long soft sigh.
"What?" said Daniel, into her hair.
"Nothing."
"You went all."
"I know."
"Are you okay?"
"I'm better than okay." She lifted her head. She looked at him, with her face wet, and a smile that was spreading, slowly and inexorably, from ear to ear. "I'm trying to think what the word is."
"For what?"
"For when you aren't afraid."
He stared at her.
"It's a, I don't think it's a very, I didn't know it was a thing. I thought it was a, I thought afraid was just what being a person was like. I thought everyone had a little bit of it, all the time, like a hum." She laughed. "And it's gone. It just, it's quiet."
"Oh, Sarah."
"It's so quiet."
"I'm glad."
"I'm so, I don't, thank you."
"Don't thank me."
"I'm going to."
"You did all of it," said Daniel. "I only sat here."
"You sat here very well," said Sarah.
He laughed. He pulled her in again, and she went, willingly, against his chest, and they sat there on a bench in memory of a man who liked to sit, and watched the last red edge of the sun go down behind the mills.
It was dark when they started home.
They walked the bikes. It was too beautiful to ride. The path lay pale in the dusk, and the first stars were out, and somewhere in the reeds a thousand frogs were singing. She walked beside him with her hand in his. It was the first time. She had not known how a hand would feel, after all that. It was big, and warm, and a little rough, and it fit round hers, closing naturally, as if the two shapes had been made for one another a long time ago, in some other room, and left to wait.
Neither of them said much.
At the end of the path, at the iron bridge, he stopped. He looked down at their joined hands. He gave hers a small, shy squeeze.
"Gus said twenty minutes," he said.
"What?"
"It's, I just thought of it. It's a, we've been, it's been almost ten months." He was grinning. It was so wide that his face looked about to split. "It's a very long twenty minutes."
"It's the longest."
"I think he's going to be very embarrassed."
"I think he'll say it took longer than expected."
"I think," said Daniel, "that it was worth the wait."
She stopped on the bridge.
She turned to him, in the lamplight, with the black water running underneath, and the whole of the city strung out in front of them in a long glittering line. She put her hand flat on his chest, on the blue cotton, and felt it beat under her palm. It was going very fast.
"Daniel."
"Yes."
"I'm going to say a thing."
"Okay."
"I'm not saying it because it's a, I'm not in a hurry. I'm not telling you that I'm ready for the, for whatever. I just want to say it. Because I'd like to hear it said." She took a breath. "I think I've been wanting to do that since a pond."
He laughed. It was a choked, broken, wholly unguarded sound. He put his arms round her, and picked her off her feet, a little, in the middle of the bridge, and she shrieked, and the bicycle fell over with a clatter.
"I'm sorry!" said Daniel.
"The bike!"
"I'll fix it!"
"You'll scratch it!"
"I can fix a scratch," said Daniel, and put her down, and kissed her again, on a bridge, in the dark, with a plum-colored Schwinn lying on its side beside them with its wheel still spinning. She kissed him back. She was laughing into his mouth. She thought that she had never in her life been so easily and so entirely awake.
Far below, the river went on, black and slow and shining, toward the sea.