“I’m going to say that there was music on, Debussy,” I whispered. “That you waited for the sun to set. That you slid a diamond onto my finger, that you didn’t kneel. Instead, you pulled me out of my seat so I could stand beside you, and you asked me to stand beside you, to walk beside you for the rest of your life.” My voice was thin and wispy. I feared I sounded pathetic.
Something moved in Jay’s eyes. Something soft and tender. All the muscles of his face were relaxed, he wasn’t holding himself taut, wasn’t bracing for attack. He threaded his fingers with mine, his large and lithe, mine delicate and breakable in his grasp. He rubbed the naked area of my ring finger.
“We’ll get you the diamond,” he stated. “One of a kind.” He kept grip of my finger but looked me in the eye now. “And we’ll play Debussy every single night in our home. I’ll alter my proposal just a little, to remind you that although I think you aren’t just my equal but are superior to me in every single way, that I’m honored to have you at my side, but I’ll always be in front of you, protecting you from everything in this world...” he trailed off. “Except me.”
“Don’t you get it, Jay?” I whispered back. “The last thing in the world I want is for you to protect me from yourself.”
His eyes shimmered with something I couldn’t catch. “Wren.”
I blinked. “Wren?” I repeated.
“She said something of the same variety.”
I stared at him for a beat then grinned. “She’s a smart woman.”
Jay leaned forward and kissed my head gently. “Yes she is.”
“Soooo…” I made the single syllable word drag into many so I wouldn’t have to carry on with the sentence.
I was wearing a white bikini that tied up at the sides. Well, it was supposed to tie up at the sides. I had spent the majority of our beach day fighting Jay off. Though, I hadn’t been fighting him that hard. The strings had only been not so securely refastened but five minutes ago. We were laying on the daybed that Jay had carried onto the private beach. Carried. While wearing a short sleeved linen shirt and white shorts. His tanned skin gleamed with the sunscreen I’d slathered on him even though his coloring meant he likely wouldn’t burn. But I warned him of holes in the ozone layer here and skin cancer, and he’d relented.
My worries about skin cancer and holes in the ozone layer dissipated the second my hands started rubbing his naked skin. First the smooth, unblemished, magnificent skin of his arms. I moved rhythmically, slowly, eyes glued to Jay’s skin, watching my hands rub the lotion into it. He was relaxed at first, apart from very clearly being turned on—as was I, despite the fact I’d only just cleaned up from him fucking me against the kitchen counter the second I came out in aforementioned bikini—but when I moved up his arms and onto his scarred back, he tightened. His jaw turned iron, veins in his neck pulsed and his previously liquid irises turned to stone. I bit my lip, considered stopping, but when he didn’t tell me to, I continued. He had wanted to stop me. Wanted to cling to the rules of an arrangement that no longer existed. The arrangement that I had thought he created for pure control, but I was beginning to understand that the arrangement had existed primarily to protect him.
Without his strict rules, he had no defenses. He was laid bare to me. And the way he was gritting his teeth, holding his body, told me he was fighting to give me that. Give me him.
I moved slowly with the lotion over the marks in his skin, feeling the rough edges, hurting for the boy in the past who had just wanted his parents to love him.
I wanted to lay my lips on the marks of his body. Show them a tenderness that was decades too late. I wanted to take away Jay’s pain, but if I did that, I’d take away the man he was. The man I’d fallen in love with.
I rubbed the lotion in. And he let me.
Then he carried the daybed onto the beach we had to ourselves. Then he untied the strings of my bikini.
Eventually, they were tied again. Eventually, he let me run up to the house and come back with cheeses and wine, which was what he was drinking while idly loosening the string at my hip once more. Eventually, I spoke, drawing out that single word because I feared what I was going to say afterward would tear through the perfection of the day.
“So?” Jay repeated after I’d been quiet for some time.
I looked from the sapphire ocean to Jay’s mossy gaze. “So I have to go to work in the morning,” I looked down at my hands, hating that reality loomed over us, hating that this perfect, almost summer day wasn’t endless. Hating that I couldn’t just live here, in this daybed, with Jay in his white linen looking every bit the handsome hero of some 1950s flick.