The Waif and the Stray

I stare into his eyes, waiting. Waiting. Nearly there. Nearly. So very nearly.

"C'mon, Lou, use me. Get off on my hand. Come all over me."

And that's how he does it for me, with those words that make me feel gloriously dirty and beautifully loved. It slams through me, a dark explosion that leaves me in bits. Me and a sorry shell of me. All of me and tiny bits of me. His eyes on me the entire time, hardly blinking, drinking deeply, and, as I struggle, his hand tightens around one arm, supporting me, probably bruising me. It shocks me to hear myself wishing it would leave a permanent mark.

"Fuck. Wow, Lou. Louisa."

I fall into him, a shaking, gasping mess, and he has to scramble to keep hold of me, to control our slide sideways to the bed.

"Wow, wow," murmuring to me, holding me safe and tight, arranging my useless limbs around him, "Fuck, Lou. Wow."

His thumb swipes away the tears I'm not shedding. Gradually, my peripheral vision starts to recover but I'm still shaking so much Jude flails around with an arm until he yanks his crumpled duvet over my back and legs. Brushing the wild skeins of hair out of my face, his eyes still wide with wonder. Bright too, a shimmer to them.

"We're doing that again and again until we die. Or until we're too old, Lou. One of those."

I can't form any words in reply so I knot my fingers into his hair, tightening them until I know it's pulling at his scalp. He moves his head closer and closer until we're kissing in the softest, most tender moment of my twenty-one years. Which is when I understand it's not a little bird inside me at all. It's just all me, for good or bad. Just me. After all these years this is a lot to take on. Even when I press my eyes shut to concentrate on the different ideas and feelings rising up inside, I can't see them clearly. Jude's nearness seems more real.

Sounds from the rest of the house rise up to us. Crockery being stacked and cutlery being stowed in the kitchen, a rush of water down pipes, the heavy, clumsy scrabbling of a seagull on the roof over us.

Jude rolls away onto his back, a hand dragging across my body until it comes to rest flat on my ribs.

"It's your birthday next week?" he asks.

"Mmhmm."

"So you should come up to visit next weekend."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Really. Will you?"

I think about how long the coach had taken to drive from Leeds through London then down to Brighton. "Maybe I'll ask Kev for a day off. Friday or Monday."

"Try for both, why don't you?"

"Ok."

His hand twitches against my ribs. "You know, me taking you home -- it's like an indication, you know, that I'm serious about you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

I smile to myself, twisting to see his profile as he looks up at the ceiling, at the oblique streaks of the last of the evening light falling over both of us.

"Careful, that could sound like you're almost trying to tell me you're in love with me or something," which I'd meant to sound more like a tease than it ends up being.

He rolls back to me and props himself up on one elbow.

"Well yeah, maybe I'm working up to it, Lou. Is that gonna freak you out?"

"What do you mean?"

"I don't want to scare you off. You're pretty skittish about that sort of thing."

I open my mouth to protest. But stop myself because, well ok, he's probably made a good point. We lie there in silence, maybe both of us needing the time to absorb what's going on. And after a while I roll on my side to face him, pushing one of my legs between his, wrapping my feet around his, thinking about the scar he should have there, but doesn't.

Eventually, I ask, "You'd give this ownerless waif a place to belong?"

He eases back until his face is more in focus than before. "You remember that?"

"You calling me an ownerless and unclaimed waif? Well, yeah."

"Huh," he considers me, his eyes moving over my face. "But yes. That's what I'm thinking. We could make a place for both of us to be. With each other."

The tight, controlled beat of my heart loosens into something bigger, more generous, less fearful. I imagine that when I'm an old white-haired lady with cataracts in my eyes, I'll remember this moment as something vital in my life. The first time a man -- anyone, actually -- has offered to be part of my future. To imagine it, want to form it and share it with me. His fingertip runs along the line of my ribcage, tracing the possibilities for us, carving them into my mind as surely as if he's drawing them onto my body in black ink.

"What d'ya think, Lou?"

"Honestly, it's about the best thing anyone's ever said to me, Jude."

He flattens his hand out, a press of his skin to mine, a sweet smile pulling at his mouth. "Yeah, we're gonna be ok, you'll see," in a soft voice, dipping his head to kiss me just at the curve of my breast, a touch to the heart. "You'll see."

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