Chapter 128

• We’re lying on his bed again; I’m loosely held in his arm as we stare at the ceiling in companionable silence. I'm content and truly happy for the first time in my life. We’re saying nothing, just lying side by side, his hand twirling a strand of my hair and gazing up, finally sated, and it feels like perfection. It only took half a dozen times, in as many hours, before he finally stopped wanting sex every time we stilled to catch our breath. My body is tingling in ways I never knew it could. Any embarrassment at being naked with him is gone, just sheer euphoria and exhaustion in its place. Months of pent-up frustration have finally been realized, and now here we are, comfortably silent and entwined as we recover.
• I can hear Nora in the kitchen making us lunch; it’s late morning, and the sounds of her clanging pots and the low mumble of the television she has on seem homely. The blinds are shut, the room is still dim, but everything feels right like I’m finally where I belong. Like I waited my whole life to find myself exactly here in this time and place with him.
• “I can’t imagine anywhere else I would rather be right now,” he says softly, as though reading my mind, his eyes coming to rest on my profile adoringly.