Canon Ch. 01

Amy. He was holding Amy in his arms. Even as he carried her, confident in his strength, he felt weak....

They were at the door of the garage. As he turned to put her down, she murmured, "Bet you can't carry me all the way to the house..."

He looked down - and was lost in her eyes again. Her lovely mouth bore a tiny smile.

"Watch me," he rumbled, with a small smile of his own. He carried the tiny teen down the walk, and they both knew why; to extend the joy and pleasure of his holding her.

Something about his eyes, thought Amy, as she snuggled into his chest. So soft and warm and...

Something...

Finally, and reluctantly, he set her down on the hardwood floor of the kitchen, inside the back door. Her arms were slow to disengage from his neck - and slid around his waist when they did. She hugged him, and he hugged her back for a moment. Neither wanted to let go.

Finally, they did; but they still stood close together, and neither moved from the spot.

Amy looked up at him. Geoff could see that there were words in her mouth that needed to come out.

"What is it, punkin?" he asked softly.

"Geoff," she said in a small voice, "Do you really think I'm pretty?"

He stifled a laugh and said, "No, Amy. I don't."

Her face was blank, watching his. He smiled gently and said, "I think you're beautiful. Gorgeous. Stunning." He touched her cheek. "I think you're the most beautiful girl - or woman - I've ever seen."

She turned her head sidewise, suspicious. "That's just because you've known me so long, Geoff." She pointed at her face. "Look at these goofy eyes. How can they be pretty?"

He laughed and shook his head. "You really don't understand, do you?"

"Understand what?"

He smiled. "C'mere." He led her down the hall to the guest bathroom, now his own, and stood her in front of him before the mirror.

Amy felt very small standing in front of him; her head barely reached his shoulders, which were twice as wide as hers. In the mirror, he loomed behind her like an affectionate mountain.

"Now watch," he said. He held up a magazine in front of her face, covering the left half. "What do you see?" he asked.

She looked, trying to figure out what he was driving at. "A blue-eyed girl," she finally said.

"Pretend you don't know her. What's she like?"

Amy trusted Geoff, and knew he was trying to show her something. She gazed at the mirror and thought.

She had never looked at only one side of her face before, and she suddenly saw it. "She looks - innocent," she said. "Naïve, even."

Geoff nodded, his eyes warm. "Still a child in many ways," he said quietly. "Open, and honest, and trusting. Sweet and kind. You're all of those things, Amy." She looked at him in the mirror, and she saw the love in his eyes. She felt warm inside, like when he was carrying her a few minutes before.

Then he covered the right side of her face. "What do you see?" he asked, just as softly.

"A brown-eyed girl," she said.

"What is she like?"

Amy looked - and after a moment, she gasped, a sharp intake of breath. "She's different!"

"That's right. How?"

Amy stared, and spoke slowly. "She's - not innocent. She's not naïve. She - she knows things."

Geoff was nodding. "She's warm, and passionate, and intense, and a little - mysterious. She knows what she wants, and why she wants it; but she doesn't show everything she knows. She's not a child at all; she's a grown-up woman, and a woman to be taken seriously.

"And you're all of those things too, Amy."

He took away the magazine. "Look now."

Amy did, and knew she would never see her own face the same way again - or think about getting contacts.

"You see it, don't you?"

She nodded, slowly, both her eyes wide. Then they rose to Geoff's in the mirror. "You see what I do. What other people see -"

She turned to face him and put her hands on his bare chest. "But they don't understand like you do," she said. "Who else could have ever shown me this?"

He grinned. "Well, I've known you a long time."

She laughed and hugged him again, and he held her. Once again, that strange and now almost familiar silence fell upon them, but not between them. He stroked her hair.

She finally leaned back and looked up at him with an enigmatic smile. "Shower," she said with a twinkle - and then she ran down the hall without looking back. Geoff watched her go, feeling an ache in his heart that he had not felt for a long, long time.

His arms felt empty now. So strange a feeling. He had all but forgotten it.

Geoff was an old man, but he was not an old fool. He smiled wryly. He knew exactly what he was feeling.

She had had a crush on him, long ago, and now he had a crush on her - and the one was just as silly and futile as the other.

He sighed, vaguely sad, and went back to the newspaper on the kitchen table.

But a moment later, he heard, "Geoff?"

He turned and looked up, and there she stood, at the door of the kitchen - barefoot, pink-cheeked, and wrapped modestly in a towel. Her long hair was pinned up, giving her a sweet Victorian look.

"Can you show me how to work the steam room?" she asked. "I can't find any dials or controls."

He smiled. "Sure," he said. He followed her down the hall, transfixed by the pale loveliness of her bare shoulders and back as well as her legs.

He knelt and showed her how to work the simple knob on the tiled wall. "Just turn it on and let the room full with steam. Watch the thermometer, here; there's one outside the door, too. You want it in the green area. Don't let it get too close to the red. If it gets too hot, turn it off; if it gets too cool, turn it back on again. That's all..."

She was bending over him, nodding, and his eyes dropped to her towel; it had fallen away from her chest, just an inch or so, but enough to afford him an oblique glimpse of her puffy pink nipples.

He looked away quickly, but every detail was burned into his consciousness. As big as quarters, pale pink, sweetly swollen with youth, and with prominent button tips of a darker pink - and with a delicate blue vein visible beneath the translucent skin of the left one.

He stood, and so did she. "Thanks, Geoff," she said with an unaffected, innocent smile. "I guess I should have been able to figure it out for myself."

He smiled back, shaken. "Maybe," he said, "but it's better to be safe. Enjoy your steam, Amy."

As he walked back down the hall, his mind spinning, he wondered if she had intended to give him that little peek. Probably not, he decided. There was no hint of it in her smile...

As he passed his room, he glanced inside - then did a doubletake and looked again.

His bed was made. Made well, too. He went in for a closer look.

Geoff grinned and took a quarter from his nightstand. When he flipped it onto the bed, it bounced. He laughed and turned to go back to the kitchen - and then he saw what lay on his desk.

It was a framed 8x10 portrait of Amy, smiling out at him. She wore no glasses, and one lovely hand cradled her cheek as if she were thinking. Her shoulders were bare, with only a corner of blue fabric behind her wrist indicating that she wore anything at all. It was innocent and sensuous and beautiful, all at once.

There was a signature:

"To Geoff, I love you so very much! Your own Amy"

The grizzled old soldier wiped his eyes, and was glad that Amy could not see him. He considered a moment, then set the portrait on his nightstand, beside his bed.

He looked at the quarter that still lay on his wool blanket, and thought of Amy's sweet pink nipples.

I know what I need, he thought. He headed for the living room.

---

Amy thoroughly enjoyed her steam; leaning naked against the dripping tile wall, sweat pouring from her bare white body, breathing the searing fog and remembering Geoff's strong arms carrying her and his bare chest against her cheek. She breathed deeply, letting the heat bake that memory into indelibility.

She wondered if he had seen her nipples. Probably not, she decided. Perhaps she had not dared to let her towel fall far enough from her chest.

She let the heat and moisture take her own heat and moisture away, and she smiled. It was enough just to be here with him. So why had she tried to do that?

She didn't know. But she smiled anyway. It was okay, somehow. Of that, she was sure.

---

A little later, after finishing her shower and changing into shorts that were just a little tighter and a little skimpier, and a T-shirt that was just a little flimsier and cropped just a little higher, Amy went into the kitchen to prepare dinner.

And stopped.

There was music coming from the living room - music that she knew.

Her mouth open in wonder, she looked around the corner into the big room. She saw Geoff, still shirtless, lying on the bearskin rug in front of the fireplace - and between the speakers of the CD player. Even above the music, she could hear him humming; deep bass tones resonating from his chest.

Eight notes, repeated over and over; the cello part of Pachelbel's "Canon in D."

Amy crept quietly to the rug, and carefully sat down crosslegged beside him. She just watched him for a while; the piece was not long, and she didn't want to disturb him before it was finished.

Finally, the last notes faded, and he opened his eyes. He saw Amy, and his lined old face broke into a warm smile. "Hello, punkin," he said. "How was the steam?"

"Wonderful," she said. Then, "Geoff, that's my favorite music in the world."

He smiled, and to her surprise, he said, "I know. It always was."

"Huh?"

"When you were little, I used to hold you on my chest and hum along with it while you listened. It always calmed you down, let you relax, even put you to sleep. Then I'd carry you to bed and tuck you in." He smiled. "I used to love that."

"Geoff," she said, her voice full of wonder, "I still do that. I hum along with the cello part, and it calms me down and makes me feel like everything is all right."

She smiled. "That's what I did the day Daddy told me I couldn't go to Stanford. And by the time I was finished, everything was all right. And the main thing that made it all right was..."

Her strange eyes widened as she realized it. "...was that I was going to get to live with you."

Her eyes were suddenly wet.

"What is it, punkin?"

She looked at him through a misty veil. "I've missed you," she quavered, "and I didn't even know it."

He lifted an arm, and she lay down next to him and snuggled into his side as he curled it around her and held her close. "I've missed you too, Amy," he whispered. "And I didn't know it either till I saw you again."

They lay quietly for a few moments. Then - as he knew she would - she breathed, "Can I listen again?"

For answer, he turned slightly, and she moved her upper body over him and rested her head on his chest, her ear pressed to it. It was instantly so familiar, even though she had no conscious memory of it, that she knew it was the same.

Then: No, not quite the same...

Amy climbed onto him and rested her whole body on his, and he wrapped both his arms around her and held her close. She snuggled against him, her ear on his broad chest, and he felt her relax.

Now, it's the same, she thought, and smiled.

He felt that smile, and smiled himself; then he kissed her head gently, lifted the remote, and started the music again.

He held her gently, tenderly, stroking her long hair, and he began to hum.

---

Amy felt the eight familiar notes, the foundation of her beloved Canon, resonate through her ear, her head, her whole body. She began to hum too; her hands crept up under his arms, curled onto his shoulders, and she clung to him as the violins began to weave their counterpoint and harmony with the cellos.

Geoff held her, his cheek brushed by her hair, and hummed. He let the deep tones flow from his heart, from his body into hers.

He had loved the Canon from his own childhood, and loved it more when he could give it to that precious child that he had held like this, so long ago; and now he knew that it was no longer the Canon that he loved. It was the miracle that he held in his arms, this special treasure, this wonderful, perfect young woman that the child had become.

He loved Amy. Right or wrong, he did; and he knew to his bones that it was right.

Amy, too, felt the truth of it; his age didn't matter, nor did hers. The deep and unconditional trust and love between them, their banked and buried desire, was flowing now without restraint. She loved Geoff, not as a father figure, not as an ideal or a memory, but as a man. Right or wrong, she loved him; and she could not have been more sure that it was right.

They hummed the same notes together over and over, her sweet and wordless voice an octave above his as the music swirled and danced around them and bound them together.

Without words, without thought, without even consciousness of their separate selves, Geoff and Amy - and the Canon - became one; one thing, one being, one soul.

As the music wound down to its final notes, they stopped humming and lay together in the echoing silence. Both their bodies and both their hearts still quivered like bowed strings, even as they held each other in stillness.

Amy opened her eyes and lifted her head, and saw Geoff looking down at her. His eyes were as warm and soft as she knew her own to be, and his smile as peaceful and accepting. She slid upward on his body, and he helped her, drawing her toward him effortlessly. He stroked her cheek with his strong hand, and they gazed into each other's eyes from inches away - and still, they spoke no word. None were needed.

Their lips met, at last - and their kiss was as right, and as familiar, and as safe and comfortable as home.

Their mouths opened, and their tongues met too; they touched and probed and slid round each other as if they had been kissing for a thousand years. They were not tentative nor uncertain; they were sure, and comfortable, and secure in their kiss, and in their love.

They had both come to realize what they felt, and to realize that it was safe, and good, and right, all in the brief time it took for their favorite music to play out to its end.

Amy lifted her lips from his and looked at him - and, with a warm and knowing smile, she touched the firm bulge below his waist. She had felt it against her belly for long minutes without conscious awareness; it was as right and comfortable as their humming. She squeezed it - and his response was to lightly touch the dampness at the crotch of her shorts and trace the unseen crease at her center with a fingertip. She shivered.

Without words, they both understood.

No fear. No secrets. No self-consciousness, and no hiding what they felt. Their trust was absolute, their love as solid and secure as the earth beneath them.

They kissed again, and Amy lay on top of him - as snug and comfortable as she had when she was a child - but with a depth of passion that children cannot know. .

There would be no lovemaking that night, nor the next, not the night after that. Geoff would not rush her, she knew, nor give her anything she wasn't ready for. They would learn each other's bodies at their own pace, and there was no hurry.

But soon...

She kissed him again, and again the Canon began to play. This time, their voices did not hum.

But their hearts and bodies did, as they kissed and touched and moved against each other, slowly and gently.

Soon...

(to be continued)