V-Day (5 page)

“Are you sorry you didn’t get any skiing in
this weekend?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” she sighed. “I like skiing,
but I can’t say I’ve been under-exercised at all.”

“I can attest to that,” he said, rubbing his
sore abs ruefully. “It’s been a great workout. I work on my
endurance a bit more, and I can change my major to bagpipes.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself,” she
winked. “I don’t think your endurance needs that much work.”

He watched her take a hungry bite of muffin
and lick a glob of grape jelly off her lip. How beautiful she was,
so natural and at ease with herself in a way the young girls he had
known never were.

“It snowed last night,” she noted. “Build a
snowman with me?”

Laughing and shaking his head, he couldn’t
deny her any request, and soon found himself running to his house
for enough winter wear to survive her seemingly inexhaustible
appetite for outside activity.

The snowman, lopsided and slightly pathetic
from their failure to take the project seriously, was his first one
in years.

“Here, I think this side is a bit wonky,” he
said, aiming to adjust the oddly deformed shoulder, but ending up
knocking half the snowman’s body off.

Deflecting her mock revenge for the death of
her masterpiece, Daniel scrambled over the mass of defunct snow
person, and sought refuge on the porch.

“Prepare for icy death, Vouks,” she growled
though clenched teeth in an adorable improvement on Clint
Eastwood’s most menacing moments, and launched a fleet of snowballs
at his head.

Dodging off the steps, and away from the
fragile window panes, he headed to take cover behind the obscured
bench in her backyard.

“Are you running from snow?” she scoffed,
foiling his attempts to avoid a soaking by twanging the branches
above him and dumping a slew of icy slush down upon him.

“Hey now,” he yelped, shaking off the
burning cold and tackling her into the snow bank behind her and
falling on top of her in a laughing heap. “No more Mr. Niceguy,” he
ground out.

“Good,” she sighed. “I was wondering when
Mr. Badboy would arrive.”

“You want bad?” he asked. “You want mean?
I’ll show you mean,” shoving a whole glove full of snow up under
her shirt, just as she countered with a wad of snow down the back
of his jacket.

Shivering and giggling, breath coming in
puffs that hung around their chilled mouths and red noses, they
laid there a moment, feeling the heat rise again within them. All
of a sudden, as his awareness of her rose, his realization that
every curtain twitch brought a prying eye from one of his mother’s
long term friends nagged at him.

“Wanna go in and… warm up?” he recommended,
suggestively.

“Thought you’d never ask,” she smiled, and
bounced towards the house, having rolled him into the snow for one
last shot.

He knew what he was feeling for her was more
than a weekend fling, and that sooner or later they would have to
deal with going out in public without worrying about twitching
curtains.

For now, though, it was enough to have her
all to himself in their own little world.

***

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said softly as
she entered the bathroom after removing her sodden clothes and
slipping into the frothy teal robe. The steamy air in the room
smelled of the rose bath oil he had added to the hot, bubbly water
in the tub, and the flickering candles shone and reflected in the
water and the mirrors around them. It was a bit cheesy, he knew,
but sometimes you just couldn’t beat the classics.

Setting aside her robe as she sunk into the
large tub, he soaped his hands and ran them up her long, wet arms
and kneaded her gently sloping shoulders.

“Mmmm,” she groaned, basking in the warm
water and the tender pressure of his fingers. “You know what? The
moment I decided something was going to happen this weekend – it
was when I was watching you stroke your violin. I wanted to know
how it would feel to be touched that way, too.”

Feeling the feline satisfaction she was
gaining from his hands, he lingered on her shoulders, and grazed
the skin up and down the lovely column of her neck, and molding the
glorious incline of her chest down to the mounds of her breasts, he
closed his eyes and read her body with his hands, aided by the
slickness of the water and oil, and treasuring every soft sigh that
he inspired in her.

She sat forward and rested her head on her
upraised knees and he stroked the length of her back, along each
bump of her spine, down to the cleft at her tailbone.

“You have beautiful hands,” she sighed.

“And until tonight, I never even knew what
they were really for.”

Like a water sylph, she turned to him
without making a ripple, and pushed at the waistband of his
boxers.

“Join me, please?” she asked, achingly
beautiful and with such tenderness in her eyes it stopped his
heartbeat, and his breath froze, lest he break the moment.

“Always,” he said at length, and slipped
into the water under her, feeling her cover him as if her whole
body was embracing him.

After washing his body with hands now
familiar with his own hills and valleys, and without breaking the
contact of their mouths, she raised herself over him, straddling
his thighs and taking him into herself in one swift movement, and
rode him. At first, her movements were languid and dream like,
increasing in tempo and fervor as they crashed against the joy of
each other, again and again.

“Oh Bronwyn,” he groaned deeply in his
chest, feeling himself spill into her welcoming body. “I love you
so much.”

Clutching her against him, hoping she could
feel the true intensity of the small words he had to offer, he held
her as she came on him again, crying out at the hot wringing he
felt inside her.

“I love you,” he whispered again, not really
expecting an answer but just wanting to say it at long last.

Her soft crown of reddish hair clung to him
in moist tendrils and she rested her face against the pulse beating
in his throat, and soon they retreated to the bedroom where he
loved her again, and then slept the deepest, soundest sleep he had
ever had.

***

“Plans today?” he croaked with a rusty
voice, seeing her already dressing across the room as his eyes
opened the next morning. Sunday. The day things would go back to
normal. His smile was tentative but open, not knowing what exactly
to expect but feeling that something had changed between them.

She kept her back to him as she buttoned her
blouse.

“I’ve got to do some laundry,” she shrugged,
bending a knee to don her socks. “And, you know – make my lunches
for the week, and stuff like that.”

She turned to him, finally, and the smile
she wore was not the one he had hoped to see. Instead of the eyes
of his lover, he saw the polite dismissal of a warm but distant
acquaintance.

“Don’t you have things you have to do, too?”
she asked, leaning one knee on the bed.

“Yeah, I suppose…” he muttered, suddenly
feeling embarrassed at being in her bed, like a call girl that had
overstayed her welcome. “My folks come back today, so I should make
sure the house is in order, and I’ve got to get some practice time
in.”

“Good – you can’t let the violin slide.
She’ll get jealous of me,” Bronwyn joked lightly, and strode to the
door with an obvious message – there would be no repeat of last
night’s emotion this morning, despite how he had hoped the
morning’s departure would go.

“Coffee’s on downstairs,” she tossed over
her shoulder as she retreated out of the bedroom to let him dress
alone.

The thought of hanging around for a friendly
coffee between strangers with the woman he knew more intimately
than any other human on the planet seemed about as appealing as
having a doctor’s exam in front of a lecture hall full of his
classmates, so he dressed quickly and prepared an equally blithe
excuse for his hasty departure as soon as he got downstairs and
retrieved his instrument.

It was then that he realized his error – he
had told her he loved her, and that didn’t fit in with her plans
for a weekend of fun.

Now, feeling used and discarded, it was up
to him to make his getaway, indicted for the crime of letting
himself feel more than they had agreed upon when they entered into
their weekend liaison.

And enjoy the burn of regret for having said
too much, too fast.

***

Luckily, his mother never really pressed on
how his weekend went, because he found himself without enough
energy to lie effectively. She was too busy flouncing around with a
disturbing swish to her step, humming, and he could only assume her
Valentine’s Day had been more productive than his, though his
father still maintained his seclusion behind the wall of newsprint,
as always.

At least his sister’s Valentine’s Day dance
had been a bust, filled with the usual junior high drama, but he
was even too preoccupied with his own thoughts to glory in her over
the top misery.

But one thing was now starting to go right
for him, and, two weeks after the rise and collapse of his first
love affair, he finally received a satisfied nod from his violin
instructor over his rendering of the tango medley. But, frankly, if
it took this much pain to understand the tango, accompanying the
stinging memories of pleasure that suffused the notes with new
meanings, then he’d rather flunk.

One afternoon, lugging his weary body home
from class, undecided if his sluggishness was from emotional lull
or a budding head cold, he spotted Warren’s car in the drive and
nearly fell over at the sight.

“Oh, now – that’s exactly what I needed,” he
muttered to himself, with an irrational bubble of laughter in his
chest. How much more perfect could his rejection get?

When he did something, he sure did it
right.

Shrugging off his mother’s concern over his
haggard appearance that night, Daniel felt himself shrinking
further into a shell, though unwillingly. He wanted to take it like
a man and move on with nothing more than a sense of triumph for
scoring some action, but he had come to accept that he wasn’t built
like most men seemed to be. Or maybe all men felt this way, but
nobody wanted to admit that love and agony sprang as fiercely in
the male breast as in their female counterparts.

In any case, the bitter irony was that he
seemed to feel ten times more love for Bronwyn than did Warren, yet
it was the hunkish blockhead who was now enjoying her company,
while he steeped in his own unmanly grief.

For the hundredth time, Daniel clutched his
short hair in his hands and tried to focus on the paper flickering
on the computer screen before him. But what did the baroque period
matter to him any more?

Ping-click-clackety, something pelted
against the glass of his window, sending a thrill of shock through
him, and bringing him to an immediate stand, which resulted in a
serious thunk of his head against the slopped ceiling of his attic
room.

“Dammit,” he cursed, rubbing his goose egg,
until another clatter at the window recalled him to the matter at
hand.

He spotted her with a jolt – Bronwyn,
standing below his window.

A debate raged within him, his desire to run
to her warring with his dignity, which demanded he close the blind
and ignore her.

In the end, it was his curiosity that won,
and he held up one finger to ask her to wait for him.

Thinking he should know better, he slipped
into his shoes and steeled himself against whatever further
humiliations awaited him below.

***

“Hi, Dan,” Bronwyn said as he appeared at
the backdoor, caution etched in her every feature.

“Hi,” he responded simply, casting his eyes
for signs of Warren. “Warren not around?”

She closed her eyes and sighed deeply. “No,
he went home.”

“Feeding time?” Daniel quipped in a cold
voice.

“Something like that, I guess,” she scoffed
without humor. “I didn’t ask him here, by the way.”

Daniel shrugged, knowing there really wasn’t
much more he had to say until he knew why she was there. Following
her into her yard, he held his silence, and leaned against the step
railing as if to brace himself.

“Warren’s not coming back.”

Daniel wanted to say something like an
apology, but he couldn’t lie, so he nodded slowly, as if to ask her
to get to her point.

“I don’t even really know what he wanted… He
just wanted to make sure I was still on the hook, I guess,” she
sniffed. “But, I’m not.”

“That’s good,” Daniel responded, meaning it
earnestly, no matter what had gone on between the two of them.

In the dim porch light, he looked at her,
noticing a fatigue in the lines of her body that hadn’t been there
before, and, against his will, feeling a tug of want and affection
for her, and the urge to curl her into himself for support.

“Everything’s okay?” he asked, not wanting
to care, but unable to control it.

As if a small dam broke in her, she sucked
in a ragged gasp and turned luminous eyes to him. “No, not really,
Dan.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything, I don’t know…” she said in a
tired voice and rubbed a hand over her face. “I shouldn’t have
treated you the way I did, Dan. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” he replied, feeling a small
layer of his dignity return with her admission. “It’s okay. I mean,
it’s not your fault I felt things were more serious than you
wanted. I guess, it’s no one’s fault that we wanted different
things from being together.”

He reached out a tentative hand to her jaw,
and she turned her lips to his palm.

“I guess I just read too much into it all,”
he laughed, self-deprecatingly. “Rookie mistake.”