Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(91)

“Okay,” I say. “You are.”

“Give me a minute,” he says, kissing my neck.

I buck a little, the buzz only a little desperate, but it feels good to let him play, and kiss. “Take a minute.”

He puts his mouth over my ear.

Then his movements slow more.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you.”

Then he moves inside, and I can’t breathe, his hands tight at my nape and shoulder, his thrust sure, and it opens everything, everything, and there is so much to see, I can’t even speak, or even name everything I am looking at.

He’s still telling me he loves me, soft, almost to himself, the way he moves, for once, doesn’t have any grace in it.

And it’s that breathless lack of grace that yanks me over, sensitized and raw, the light from the lamp too bright, and before I think he can even understand what it is I’m saying, I tell him, “I love you, too.”

But he hears me, his arms tight around me, his laugh perfect, both of us coming all over each other.

Once we catch our breath he pulls me to sit, and I drape in his lap. He gets the throw from the back of the sofa down around us.

I reach over and turn the lamp off, and the ambient light from the windows halos into my vision, distorted from all the darkness around it.

We watch the snowfall.

“What did you bring?” I ask, just before I start to feel sleepy—I remember the paper bag he came here with, still on the porch.

“Oh, I forgot. I made you a pinhole camera.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. From a cereal box. I was hoping you’d like that.”

I do like that. I turn and look at him, and he touches over my face. “We can go take pictures later?”

“When the snow lets up.” He yawns. “What does f/16 mean?”

“It was the setting on my camera when I took the last picture of my mom.”

I snug my arms around him and feel him eventually relax into sleep.

It’s so quiet, I think I can hear the snow.

I close my eyes.

Listen harder.

Between Evan’s breaths, I can definitely hear it, the sound of snow.

I listen so I know the very moment it lets up.





Christmas


“Okay,” Evan says. “I’m hanging it up.”

I can barely hear him over the bathroom vent, and I have my nose pressed against his shoulder blade because of the horrible chemical smells, but when he reaches up to unscrew the red lightbulb and turn on the bank of lights over the vanity, I stop his arm.

“Not yet, we haven’t had the moment of the big reveal.”

He runs his hand over my hair and turns me in his arms so I can lean into his chest.

“So,” he says. “It’s kind of dark in here.”

“It’s a darkroom.” I breathe in his smell to crowd out the developing chemicals.

I don’t mind the dark, and because it’s Christmas, we’ve been busy putting lights up everywhere. High, so everyone knows we’re okay. In here, the dark has kept the fragile negative from getting overexposed.

Out there, the Christmas lights expose everything, us, our new and fragile love, the New Year.

Light and dark have their purpose, in them, we can see different kinds of things, or protect others. Or sometimes, the most beautiful lights would not be seen as well without some blackness behind them.

Joy is myriad and luminescent.

He kisses my neck. “How well can you see the picture?”

The room is small, with lots of white and reflective surfaces, but it really is light tight. The red bulb makes everything grainy, and I really can’t pick up good visual details, of anything, but I’ve been in here so long, Evan talking me through the whole process because I’ve wanted to know everything.

He’d been as precise in the process as a seasoned bench scientist, explained his homemade enlarger, the developer, stop bath, fixer, and the stages of rinsing.

The bathroom was crowded with both of us inside, hardly any room to move, especially with the piece of plywood he’s cut to lay over the vanity as a table.

Everything he had explained to me before he put in the safelight and I watched his grainy shadow move my print through the process.

I had insisted on an eight-by-ten, and I was anxious, because his enlarger could be a little iffy with the film exposed from the pinholes. I’d had to wait until yesterday to use the camera to expose my film because Christmas Eve’s Eve had stayed gray and stormy, and we’d stayed naked.

Christmas Eve dawned sunny, and we took my camera outside to expose my film.

To make out in the snow that had gotten hip deep through the drifts.

My mom came into town today, a full trolley of luggage with suitcases that made Evan’s van incredibly useful, and I was so proud of her for playing it cool with Evan.