Love Among the Ruins Ch. 04

"Hi there," he shouted. "Would you, um, would you like to dance?" He gestured toward the dance floor for added emphasis.

The woman looked a bit surprised and looked around uncertainly for a few seconds, but then replied, "Yeah, sure."

Damon, himself surprised by his success, stood in place like some idiot for a few seconds before the woman's quizzical expression jolted him into movement.

On the dance floor they swiveled and shimmied, but mostly just got jostled around by the substantial crowd that had now accumulated there. The lights, the throbbing music, and the closeness of sweaty bodies began to make his head swim.

In a brief lull between songs, the woman stepped up to Damon and shouted in his ear, "Uh, thanks for the dance. My friends are here now, but, um thanks."

She turned and fled. Damon never even got her name.

Which was perhaps just as well, because Damon was beginning to experience serious vertigo now. Dodging flailing elbows, he wound his way off the dance floor and found a pillar to lean against for stability.

As his head spun faster his stomach began to churn and his mouth began to fill with the peculiar liquid that preceded a purge. He lurched towards the men's room, hoping that he would get there in time and that there would be an open stall.

He didn't have time to even close the stall door behind him as his stomach convulsed and he fell to his knees, violently ejecting most of the night's meal and drink into the toilet. Several unpleasant minutes and multiple heaves later, Damon picked himself off the floor, flushed the toilet, and staggered to the sink. As he rinsed the acrid aftertaste of vomit from his mouth with water from the faucet, he saw reflected in the mirror his disheveled, pitiful appearance. His eyes were bloodshot and his face appeared puffy. His shirt was splotched with stains. Others in the room regarded him with a mix of disdain and caution, as you might an odiferous homeless person muttering to himself.

Damon splashed water on his face, tucked in his shirt, and departed the men's room with as much dignity as he could muster. It wasn't much.

Re-entering the main part of the club, he was assaulted by the din of the music and frenzied press of bodies. He had to get out of there.

He somehow managed to slip through the crowd to the exit and out into the night air. But his head still spun and his queasy stomach threatened to repeat its theatrical display of displeasure. Damon leaned back against the wall and gulped down air in an attempt to quell the disquiet in his guts and still the twirling carousel behind his closed eyes.

He began to shiver and now regretted his decision to leave his jacket in the car. It had been mild for a mid-winter day, and he parked not half a block from the restaurant. He wasn't likely to need his jacket he had reasoned. But now the night chill had set in and he had little reserve of energy to fend off the cold.

He wrapped his arms around his chest for warmth, teeth chattering now, desperately trying to regain his bearings sufficiently to at least stagger back to his car, where he could sleep this off for an hour or two and then somehow get himself home.

Was this really what he had sunk to? he thought. The one weekend when Trevor is gone, and he's become a drunk about to pass out and freeze to death on the street? Was Trevor, the last remnant of his family, all that was keeping him together?

Damon's head continued to spin. He opened his eyes and stared intently at the line formed by the boundary of the curb and the street, hoping that would orient him, steady him. But it only seemed to make things worse, so he closed his eyes again and leaned his head back against the wall. He felt faint and began to totter over when hands grasped his arm to steady him.

"Whoa, there," a voice said nearby. "Let's try to stay upright here. You'll be okay. Just take some deep breaths and you'll be okay."

Damon opened his eyes so he could identify his helper, but his eyes watered, his vision blurred, and the indistinct blobs of light and dark that he was able to perceive made his head gyrate even more violently.

He squeezed his eyes shut again and, as instructed, took a few deep breaths.

"That's it," the voice coaxed. "Keep breathing. That's good. Just keep on breathing. You're doing good."

Damon started to feel a little more stable, so he tried opening his eyes. He caught a glimpse of a figure with long hair wearing something silvery, but vertigo again threatened to overwhelm him, so he pressed his eyes shut once more.

"Okay, a few more breaths. Good, good. Okay, you don't need to see, I'll guide you. Can you take a step now?"

The firm hands guided him forward and Damon took a tentative step, then another. He wasn't exactly feeling better, but he felt no worse, so he continued to place one foot in front of the next.

"You're doing good. My car's not far. I'll guide you there. Keep breathing. Yes, that's good. We're almost there..."

------------------

The next morning Damon awoke disoriented. Oh god, his head! He sat up gingerly and looked in the mirror over the dresser on the other side of the room. He couldn't see the vise tightly clamped across his temples that he would have sworn was there. He looked at his alarm clock. 10:14 it read.

His alarm clock. His. He was in his home, but he had no recollection of how he got here. He sat in bed, trying to ignore the throbbing behind his eyes, and replayed last night's events.

He remembered the dinner date (unfortunately); he remembered going into the club; he remembered asking a woman to dance; then things got hazy. A bathroom? Oh, god yes, the bathroom. The awful memory of puking his guts out. Then trying to leave the club. Did he get out? He couldn't recall anything after that.

But here he was. He got home somehow. Oh please, dear god, oh please oh please don't let me have driven myself home in that state! Surely even being that drunk he wouldn't have been so foolish.

Damon rubbed his temples for a few minutes with little effect on his aching head. He needed to take something. Very slowly he crawled from bed and made his way to the bathroom. He washed down two painkillers with a couple of handfuls of water from the sink. It hit his stomach like a puddle of cement. He needed some food--some toast or something--or it was all going to come back up again.

He looked in the mirror. His hair was sticking up every which way, his eyes were puffy and bloodshot, his lips dry and cracked. He wore only his boxer shorts. He didn't remember undressing, but then again, he didn't even remember walking into his own house, so that should be no surprise. He staggered toward the kitchen.

Carefully navigating the hallway by extending his arms to brace against the wall, he began to smell coffee. What the hell? And as he walked into the kitchen, he heard papers rustling in the dining room just around the corner.

He pulled open a cabinet and extracted a mug. Then came a voice from the other room.

"Oh, you're up!" it said.

More rustling of paper and then Bobi, a folded section of the morning paper in hand, stepped back into his life.

A few minutes later, Damon sat at the table with a half eaten slice of toast on a plate in front of him and nursing a heavily creamed mug of coffee. Bobi sat across from him.

"Now that you've put me through triage," Damon said, holding up his mug and nodding to the plate, "will you tell me how we got here? And why you're wearing one of my t-shirts and my wife's athletic shorts?"

"Well, my clubbing dress isn't very comfortable to sleep in and I didn't want to risk getting coffee stains on it," Bobi explained with a bit of a mischievous smile.

"Your clubbing dress..."

"Yeah. I sometimes go clubbing with some girlfriends from school. We like The Boathouse. We've been there quite a few times."

"So... you were at The Boathouse. Last night."

"Yup. I couldn't hardly believe it when I saw you come in. You're not the usual... the usual demographic for that place, as they would say in my PoliSci class."

"So you watched me the whole time?"

"You make it sound like I was spying on you!" Bobi objected. "I just... noticed you, is all. You're a good dancer, by the way."

Damon lowered his head onto his open palm. His headache, which had been lessening, returned with renewed vigor.

"So, you saw what happened after I danced?"

"I saw you go to the back after the dance. When you came back into the club, you looked a little... unwell."

"And what happened then?"

"Well, after a few minutes, this was after you went out the front door, my girlfriends had to use the bathroom. So I went outside and found you."

"But, why? You said it had been several minutes. Wouldn't you have just expected me to have been gone by then? Driven off, or walked away, whatever?"

"I don't know. I just had this feeling I needed to check on you."

"And after what I said to you last time... the last time you were here. Why would you even care what happened to me?"

Bobi leaned across the table and took one of Damon's hands in hers.

"I forgave you that a long time ago. You know, 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone' and all that stuff?"

"I'm sorry I said that to you, Bobi" Damon said, looking her in the eye, then staring down at the table.

"I can't tell you how many times I've replayed that scene in my mind with deep, deep regret. It makes my stomach hurt whenever I recall it."

"Well, the truth hurts. What you said wasn't half wrong. I have been taught to be, well, kind of submissive, to not trust myself. You said it kind of mean, but you didn't lie."

Tears welled up in Damon's eyes and he felt a deep well of emotion begin to bubble up within him. There was longing and loneliness, mixed with guilt and hope and... love.

Damon's shoulders started to shake. He buried his head in his hands trying to stave off the flood, but it was no use.

Calmly and quietly, Bobi rose and walked around the table to stand next to him. She gently grasped his head and pulled him into her body.

Wracked with sobs, Damon croaked "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry for hurting you, and for tempting you, and, and, for all the ways I've been weak. I'm so sorry..."

She stroked his head as he cried out his insides. When he finally calmed, she knelt beside him, took his hands in hers, and looked up at him with utter seriousness.

"There is one thing you have to apologize to me for. One. Do you understand? And it's one crappy little remark you made when you were upset. And you've apologized now like a hundred times for it and I forgave you for it months ago anyways. So we're done with that.

"All that other stuff, about tempting me and you being weak and stuff, that's either nonsense or just things you're just still working through because life is, like, just really, really messed up. Just regular life. And a year and a half ago we thought the world was ending, so there's that.

"And while we're talking about apologies, it's my turn to apologize to you. Because for like a whole year you did everything you could to keep what had grown between us alive, and I did everything I could to shut it out. To shut you out. Like a little scaredycat. So I must have put you through hell that year, because I know you have real, true feelings for me, or you wouldn't have kept at it for so long.

"You talked about all the times you regretted what you said to me last time I was here. Well, over the last months I've regretted a whole year of things I did or didn't do. Things that hurt you. And for that I am really, really sorry. A thousand times sorry. Can you forgive me?"

Bobi clasped Damon's hands tighter still and gazed unflinchingly into his eyes.

"Yes, yes, and yes," Damon replied fervently. "To all of that, yes."

"Then stand up and give me a proper welcome back kiss."

Damon stood somewhat shakily, pulled Bobi to him, and gave her a long and sensuous kiss.

Eventually pulling back, he held her gently by the shoulders and regarded her.

"You've changed," he said.

"And you've got really, really bad breath," Bobi replied.

An hour later, Bobi stood by the front door, hair damp, with a silvery dress slung over her arm and a pair of high heels dangling from her fingers. She still wore Claire's shorts and Damon's t-shirt, though the latter was now covered by a coat. The day outside was chill and blustery.

Damon, also with damp hair, now wore a pair of jeans and a long-sleeve shirt.

"You look almost human now," Bobi observed.

"I almost feel that way, too," Damon replied. "Amazing what a hot shower can do. I still think it's mankind's greatest invention."

"Okay. Well, I've got to go. But I'm expecting that dinner invitation. I'm looking forward to meeting Trevor. I want to get to know him."

"And I want you to get to know him. I want that very much."

There was a brief pause, then Damon said, "Thank you for rescuing me last night. And the other time, too."

"Now you're just being silly," Bobi said, pulling his head down and giving him a brief but passionate kiss.

"And thank you for brushing your teeth." she winked at him. "I'll see you soon."

She turned and walked out the door.

---------------

Some summer days seemed designed for weddings. This had not been one of them. The front had blown in in the early morning, bringing winds and periodic showers and scuttling their plans for the garden ceremony. They instead had to move everything inside to the small reception hall at the venue. It had been a scramble and the ceremony started 20 minutes late.

But somehow everything happened that was supposed to happen--rings and vows were exchanged, guests ate and danced, and the happy couple greeted, thanked, danced, and, well, never had a free second to eat, sadly.

Finally, guests had departed, family had waved goodbye, and the happy couple had driven off to their weekend honeymoon getaway.

They lay nestled in bed together, even though it was still light out.

"This seems a little decadent, don't you think?" Damon said, indicating the light of the setting sun streaming through their window.

"Well, it was still raining when we decided it was too stormy to take the tour. How were we to know that the storm would blow over so quickly?" Bobi countered.

"I couldn't have concentrated on it anyway," said Damon, "knowing what was in store for me later."

"Oh, so you *do* want me to read aloud from the book of poetry I brought along?" said Bobi teasingly, and turned as if to get out of bed to retrieve the book from her bag.

"Not a chance!" Damon said, pulling her to him and delivering a long, passionate kiss to his wife. "You're the only poetry I need."

"Oh! You do know how to sweet-talk a girl, don't you?" Bobi replied, tousling Damon's hair.

"You know, I know we've done this like a bunch of times, back when. So why do I feel like a teenager who's never done it before?" Damon said.

"I know what you mean. But that 'back when' was another lifetime ago, wasn't it? Those were different rules for those few days. The you and I that live in the normal world, the real world, we've never done this before."

"I guess you're right. I'm kind of nervous."

"I'm not," Bobi stated confidently. "I'm anxious in a 'I want to do this' kind of way. But I'm not nervous. I trust you."

"You sure know how to sweet-talk a guy," Damon teased.

Bobi kissed him again, then let her hands roam over his body. They soon discarded their few remaining garments and let naked flesh press against naked flesh.

Bobi reached down to stroke Damon's manhood and he lovingly stroked her warm and moist womanhood. Bobi pulled him still closer and their bodies merged and writhed and heaved until both had exhausted their passion together.

They lay entwined in each other's arms.

"Was that like you remember?" Bobi asked after a long while.

"Yes. And no," Damon replied. "The sensations are the same, but the pleasure is deeper."

"Deeper?" Bobi asked, looking at him now.

"Yeah, I guess that's the word. Or maybe there's not a word for it. But it's different than before."

"Because?"

"Because I know it's forever, I guess. I can just be in this moment, and even though the lovemaking starts and ends, in a way it goes on forever, because I know we'll always be together. It makes it eternal and that changes it. How about for you?"

"Hmm. Maybe it seems, I don't know, maybe more serene than before? Less urgent. But you're right, it's just easier to let it be, and to be carried away on that serenity, the trust that the other person and the love and the expression of that love will just always be there."

They lay silent in the comfort of each other's arms for a long while.

"Will this be the only way it will be?" Bobi finally asked.

"Uh, what do you mean?"

"Well, if we, like, wanted to do some of the stuff we did back before, can we still do that?"

"Oh yes, we can definitely do that!" Damon reassured her.

"But if we do it like that, can we still do it like tonight?"

"Yes, we can do that, too. We can have it both ways."

"I'd like that," Bobi said in a quiet voice.

Then they both drifted off to sleep.