My stomach drops heavy and sweet into my pelvis and it’s that, the familiar, early throb of wanting and horniness that stills my hand in the middle of my adjustment on the scope.
Feeling horny feelings is a little different than feeling safe and accommodating feelings.
I breathe out, slow, and get the focus into a place that just a few tiny nudges with the fine adjustment will bring the cells up. I leave it there because I want him to have that moment where he can see everything, and it looks like the slide will be a pretty good one.
“Okay, it’s almost there, just use the fine focus.” I move my head from the eyepiece, and he’s right there, reaching for the adjustment knob before I’m completely moved away. Our temples press together for a moment, and his hand moves under mine again.
When I take a breath to steady myself, it doesn’t work because I just suck in mint and the warm, clean smell of his skin.
Which somehow makes me think of how easy it would be to just turn my face into his neck.
“Oh,” he says, then, under his breath, and I can feel his big body go still.
“Yeah? You got it?” I keep my voice low, too, because I totally understand.
“I do.” He takes his hand off the knob and rests it on the bench. I sort of want to put my hand over it and weave all my fingers through his.
I just look at his hand, instead.
There’s a white scar through the middle knuckle that has the faint impressions of where suture knots rested as the laceration healed. I wonder how he hurt himself. I want to run a finger along it.
“What do you think?” I really, really want to know.
“There’s a bunch of different things, and some things that I think are on top of other things. The color is more translucent than I expected.”
“Right. Different densities of material will take the stain differently. What else?”
“There’s more than one kind of thing. I think a couple of strings from the swab. Then little dots, pieces of things. I can tell what the cells are, though. I can see the walls, and the nuclei?”
I kind of laugh, because it’s just so awesome, the way his voice is serious but his mouth is smiling.
He looks away then, and he’s just inches away.
His eyes find mine.
“Thank you for showing me this,” he says.
“Yeah, of course.” Now I’m looking at him, not just at his brain.
He straightens up, but I sit up with him, and we’re still looking at each other and I don’t know what’s going to happen or what he’s going to say and suddenly, I am looking at his mouth.
I can’t believe I’m doing that, so I look back into his eyes.
But his eyes don’t seem surprised at all.
Then he reaches up and he curls that big hand around the nape of my neck and I swear to God, all the breath in my body rushes to the surface of my skin in this insane flash of heat that makes it so I can’t breathe back in, not ever, it feels like.
His face is so serious, and my brain is totally scrambled against working out what will happen next, even though I must know because he pulls me to him, without any hesitance at all, without any of the reluctance I would think he would have given how dedicated he is to his professional life.
He pulls me right to him, and then, his mouth is against my forehead, pursed in a kiss, but not exactly, because I can feel him breathing, and his hand on my nape has tightened, to hold me right there.
I can’t even process this, and I close my eyes, and as soon as I do, everything in the entire world is his hand on my neck, his mouth on my forehead.
“Jenny,” he whispers along my hair.
He says it again, without even his voice, just his breath. Holds me to him, right there.
I keep my eyes closed.
I need the entire world to stay just like this.
* * *
He’s standing at the bus stop with me until my bus comes because I wouldn’t let him give me a ride home.
The snow is coming down again; during the last week it had reliably started up in the afternoons and snowed all night. I liked to snuggle in my bed and listen to the plows in my neighborhood in the wee hours of the morning, their bright lights whooshing by my windows.
Every morning had a new unspoiled blanket, with only a few little alley-cat prints in it.
Even a full two and a half weeks from Christmas, they are predicting a white one.
I smile and look up at the fat flakes coming down.
“Does it snow in Seattle?”
He’s wearing a striped, wool ski cap with a sporting-goods logo and one of those heavy canvas coats with the big cargo pockets all over. He’d be warm for a crisp fall stroll, but standing still in the ankle-deep slush at the bus stop, the snow coming faster and faster, and the occasional blasts of below-freezing wind, he is obviously miserable.