He sat up, and they reassembled themselves as efficiently as if they were getting ready for work. Her underwear had wound up behind his head. He held it out to her, dangling from one finger.
Practical cotton numbers. Six to a pack at Target. She was some vixen, boy.
She shimmied into them and then went to stand up.
He pulled her gently back by the arm.
They sat side by side a moment.
And then he leaned in and kissed her lingeringly.
They smiled against each other’s lips for a moment.
“I’ll walk you out.”
“You’d better not.”
He thought for a second. “You sit here, and I’ll go do parking lot reconnaissance. And then I’ll walk you out if the coast is clear.”
And so he walked her out to the car, under the moonlight, and kissed her again, quickly and illicitly.
And she went off to buy milk and juice.
Chapter 12
Two weddings, a funeral, and a fiftieth anniversary party, a Hummingbird meeting (at Avalon’s house up at Devil’s Leap—and Avalon had volunteered to run it) and a report on Egyptians, various other to-ings and fro-ings—while the next week wasn’t a tornado, every minute of it, from its start at four a.m. on Monday on through its conclusion on Sunday, was packed to the brim.
And while Eden was indeed joyously grateful for the business, it was a struggle not to pause in midsentence when she was talking to a potential client on the phone and indulge in a misty reminiscence about an orgasm that could have registered on the Richter scale. Or to interrupt a future bride endlessly hand-wringing about lilies versus roses by grasping her wrist, gazing earnestly into her eyes and saying,Yes, yes, but let me tell you about the best sex I’ve ever had.
Not that she’d had all that much sex in her life. It was just that she felt she could retire her nether parts, now that they’d partaken of Gabe Caldera.
As it was, she didn’t tell a soul. It was still too new. She wasn’t a guy, to announce a conquest to his friends over beers with high fives and ayeah, I banged ’im!spirit of joie de vivre. And she definitely didn’t tell Avalon, from a typically siblingesque complicated mishmash of reasons, including that she didn’t want Avalon to be right, and she didn’t want Avalon to be disappointed if it didn’t work out, and she didn’t want Avalon to gush.
Throughout the week, just the very thought of him created its own ecosystem: whenever the wordGabewould float through her mind—and she summoned it rather a lot—she went hot and weak and motionless, as if she’d suddenly stepped through the door of her nicely air-conditioned flower shop into some sultry jungle. (Which, coincidentally, was an awful lot like how her mom described menopause. Her mom spared no one the details of... well, anything, really.)
She could see what was in the next square on her whiteboard, but Gabe was a question mark. They didn’t text each other. That wasn’t what they did. Yet, anyway. She didn’t have his phone number. She didn’t know when she’d see him next.
But now she knew that her schedule was full of hair-line fissures through which light and air shone, and surprising nooks into which intimacy of all kinds could be shoehorned. And instead of worrying about what would happen next, she was, for the first time in eons, willing to be surprised.
On Saturday afternoon, Eden raced up to Avalon’s at Devil’s Leap to drop off Annelise for a Hummingbirds meeting—they were going to learn all about chickens today, courtesy of Mac, and Avalon said she’d bring Annelise home later that evening.
And after she kissed Leesy goodbye and returned to her car, whom should she encounter beeping open his truck in the driveway but Gabe Caldera. Looking a little sweaty.
“Hi,” he said. His voice a husk. Devouring her with his eyes.
“Hi.” The word left her in an expulsion of breath.
“How are you, Eden?”
“Never better. Really busy. You?”
“Oh yeah. Just helped Mac renovate the chicken coop.”
And apparently that was the end of verbal conversation. A lot of other silent things were being said, however. The air practically shimmered with heat.
Finally he said, almost idly, “You on your way out?”
“Yeah. I left Danny in charge of the shop. I have a mother of a bride and the bride coming in to go over some floral options in about an hour.”