She curled into his bent arm and he pulled her into the curve of him, and she rested her head on his shoulder which went up... and down. Up... and down. As his breathing resumed regular rhythms.
“So you’ll sell me the house now, right?” he slurred happily.
She laughed. “What is it you said a few days ago? Over my dead body.”
“Funny. For a minute there I thought I might have actually killed you... with bliss.”
“For a minute there I think you did. I saw a bright light and everything. The only thing that brought me back into my body was the prospect of maybe doing this again.”
He smiled. Eyes closed. “Gimme a second or two.”
There would very likely be a picture of him next to the wordrepletein the dictionary.
“What do I have to do to get you to sell me Devil’s Leap?” she teased.
He breathed in and out, still wearing that faint smile. He appeared to be mulling.
“Fellatio,” he suggested sleepily.
Isthatall?she was tempted to say, like the strumpet she’d clearly become.
Out loud she issued a faux-scandalized, “Mac Coltrane!”
Her head was bumped up and down on his shoulder as he laughed silently to himself.
And then he sighed again.
With her cheek against his chest, his arm looped to hold her against him, their calves twined. Silent minutes went by. That satiety expanded into something that felt horizonless. As though the two of them were floating on a raft on a safe and beautiful sea, a warmth, a peace, heady and at the same time righter than anything.
When she was sixteen, she really knew almost nothing much about the physical part. The mechanics, sure. You could read about those. But not about its variations, and how it could be boring with one person and incendiary with another.
But she’d called this feeling, the one she was feeling right now, love, without questioning it.
She still didn’t know if it was a feeling to be trusted when it came to Mac Coltrane. And just that little notion alone crept in and sobered her, crisped up the hazy, blurry edges of postcoital bliss. And again she remembered yesterday’s gesture: the casual affection that almost was withdrawn before something like tenderness or surrender—his—could be construed.
She thought about this as his breathing was growing more even.
“Can I...?” She gestured at the tie boxes.
He hesitated. “Knock yourself out.”
She leaned over and plucked up the lid on one box. It was navy blue and featured a scattering of mountain goats. The kind you might count if you were trying to get to sleep.
“Goats?”
“Yeah,” he said shortly.
“So he knows about the goats?”
He didn’t reply.
She closed it carefully. She lifted another lid. Inside was a striped red-and-gold tie and there was a 49er helmet on it.
“You always liked the 49ers.”
“Yep. Still do. I’m irrational that way.”
The 49ers could not seem to win for losing in recent years.