easy does it
In the early hours of the day, the kitchen is chilly and mute, blue-gray sunlight drifting in through the windows to cast empty shadows across the counters and floors. The wind rattles through the house, sliding in through any gap it can find, and Jamie thinks that, if she tilts her head just so, she can hear the way the boards beneath her feet, the wood and stone surrounding her, bend and bulge to make room for it.
She tucks herself a little tighter into her sweater and looks across the table at Flora and Miles as they happily eat their cereal, talking to one another and Hannah. Owen is leaned back in his chair at the head of the table, his cup of tea cradled in his hands and steaming a little, still. Providing warmth, perhaps, where the house tries to leech it. Beside her, Dani shifts and their shoulders brush together and, as much of a jolt passes through her at the slight touch, the real magic is this:
That secret, little smile Dani sends her way after.
Like they are each from a hidden world that belongs to only them—where they exist and twine together in one existence, away from the prying eyes of everyone else—and are only visiting this realm for breakfast, of all things. It says a hundred secrets they’ve whispered in the dark to one another, limbs laced together warmly beneath the sheets as they caught their breath, as they kissed slowly and loose-lipped. Learning and familiar.
It’s been six months of nights spent tangled together in Dani’s bed. Six months of dinner dates in the empty kitchen late at night; of drinks at the only pub in Bly and phone calls before bed. Six months of Dani slowly figuring out sexting and Jamie nearly regretting teaching her about it when she’s interrupted in the middle of the work day with a less-than-appropriate message or worse: photograph.
Six months after that first kiss in June when they’d been walking the grounds one evening. Jamie saying something about her lost family, her shadowed childhood, and Dani turning right then and there and just kissing her. Beneath the sunset-pinked trees at the edge of the property, the heat of the summer pressing down against her skin, sticking her tight to her clothes, as Jamie presses forward into it.
Dani.
Jamie loves Dani.
It’s been right there on the tip of her tongue for three full months. She’s come so close to blurting it out on more than one occasion that she’s talked to Owen about it. Hannah. She’s called Rebecca in London and asked for advice on when she’s allowed to just say it. More than once for each of them.
So often, in fact, that Dani might be the only person sitting at the table that doesn’t actually know.
It aches in her chest, rattling around and begging to be set free, but Jamie hasn’t yet. Is too frightened, perhaps. Or maybe there just hasn’t been a good enough time.
Whatever it is, Jamie can see her own pinching emotion reflected back at her from Dani’s smile that morning so clearly that it’s nearly blinding. She’s waxing poetic about wanting to spend a fevered hour beneath the heat of Dani’s mouth in her own mind when Miles’s voice catches her off guard.
“—this afternoon, Miss Clayton?” he is saying.
Dani tears her eyes from Jamie’s and blinks, dazed, then seems to catch up.
“What’s that?” she asks. Then, “Sorry.”
But Miles doesn’t mind. Doesn’t even register her apology. Just repeats his, “I was asking if we’ll still be painting the school room today,” with little fanfare.
Understanding blesses the soft lines of Dani’s expression. “Yeah, of course,” she says. “You and Flora are going to have to put on clothes that can get paint on them, though, okay?”
Miles nods and Flora lights up the room with a smile of her own. “Oh, splendid,” she says. “I had a dream last night that we all painted a family of bears on the wall! One for each of us. Owen, yours had a mustache.”
“Did it?” Owen asks. “Sounds like a handsome bear.”
“Oh, he was.”
The conversation falls apart then, the children too excited about how they’ll be spending their day to settle down. That’s one of the funny things about Dani: before she showed up, it was like pulling teeth trying to get Miles or Flora to participate in anything resembling a chore. The school room is one that’s needed repainting for a long time—given the humidity of the rainier seasons and its position in the house, the paint has been chipping for years. Jamie always figured that, at some point, she was going to have to just give in and do it on her own, but, now that Dani is here, it seems she’s acquired three new sets of helping hands. Maybe it’s the years of teaching two dozen students in America, or maybe it’s just a special talent, but Dani has managed to turn the mundane into the extraordinary so many times that Jamie wonders sometimes if she might actually be Mary Poppins.
Wonders if that makes her Bert.
Briefly imagines dancing with a cartoon penguin and almost jumps out of her chair when a hand touches her arm.
But it’s just Dani, giving her a look that’s half-amused, half-concerned. “Sorry,” she says, but Jamie shakes her head.
“Don’t hafta apologize for touching me, Poppins,” she says, giving a little wink, and Dani’s cheeks blush pink. “Just caught me off guard.”
Beneath the table, Dani’s hand is still on Jamie’s arm, her grip loose and lovely, sparking like wires up and down the length of Jamie’s skin. She remembers that morning—Dani pressed into her back beneath the covers, one of her arms wrapped around Jamie’s stomach, her fingers moving fluidly and madly between Jamie’s legs. She clenches her thighs together and tries to calm down.
It doesn’t work.
That’s the thing she’s learned the most often since that first kiss in the gardens: being with Dani is almost like being on fire all the time. Jamie can’t seem to catch a break, and she really believes now that she wouldn’t even take one if it were offered.
“You’re so pretty,” Dani breathes, but that’s clearly not what she’d meant to say. It just comes out in this drifting voice that Jamie recognizes because she has one just like it. Part of her is constantly reassured when Dani speaks like this that she is not the only one left dazed by their each interaction.
“So are you,” Jamie says. “Before you ask, I’m going to go pick up the paint after breakfast.”
Dani’s eyebrows lift a little, then settle back down. That’s what she’d meant to discuss, apparently, and, now that Jamie has finished the thought for her, she seems a bit more in control of herself and the situation.
“You’re a saint,” she says next and Jamie rolls her eyes.
“Hardly.”
Across the table, Hannah is getting to her feet and the children are doing the same, grabbing their used dishes and toddling after the older woman to take them to the sink. Dani and Jamie linger at the table for a beat, neither of them willing to release the other from their hold when faced with a long day spent beneath the watchful, innocent eyes of two children.
Finally, Owen stands up and they have no choice. Their only alternative is to spend the rest of the day sitting right there and Jamie thinks she’d end up getting a little stiff if they decided on that.
Dani offers to take Jamie’s mug to the sink and Jamie smiles.
Says, “Thanks,” and watches her girlfriend make her way over, setting the dishes she’s carrying on the counter beside where Miles is obediently filling up the sink with warm, soapy water.
“Who’s going to be my dish-dryer?” she asks, her voice enthusiastic despite the content of her question.
Still—magic as ever—Miles and Flora flood the air with eager I will’s and let me’s.
Owen gives Dani an impressed look. Hannah just smiles and leans against the island counter.
“I’m gonna head to the hardware shop,” Jamie says, seemingly to no one in particular, but it has its intended effect.
Dani turns around from the sink and smiles over at her. “You really are a saint,” she says without a hint of joking.
“Just make sure the little gremlins are dressed and ready when I get back,” Jamie tells her. “Housework waits for no man.”
“Hear, hear!” Owen says and Dani laughs as she steps around the counter to reach Jamie, still standing there.
“If you think of anything else you’ll need, let me know,” Jamie says and Dani nods, reaching out to touch Jamie’s cold hand with her own.
“I will,” she says. “Thank you. Again.”
Jamie shrugs. “No trouble. Won’t take too long.”
Normally, this would be the part where Dani would give her a quick peck on the cheek or on the lips and say her goodbyes. Just a quick thing because they’re half-a-year into being together and that’s the sort of thing couples do. Or so Jamie has seen on TV and is learning now—she hadn’t much experience before Dani. It’s happened so often in the past that it’s practically routine now, but things are different just then.
Something changes.
Because Dani does lean in and give Jamie a quick kiss on the lips. She does say, “Hurry back,” like she normally might have, but there’s an extra part thrown in at the last second.
“Love you.”
Dani says it so quickly, so thoughtlessly, that Jamie responds before she even processes the significance of those two words.
She just says, “Love you, too,” and goes to pull away.
But, before she can, everything comes crashing into her like a freight train. Dani seems to be undergoing the same realization Jamie is given the way her eyes are wide and unblinking.
They stare at each other for a moment—seemingly forever. Dani stands in front of Jamie, the light from outside brightening her hair into a halo like an angel’s, and her blood is pumping swift through her heart and veins. It’s strange that all she’s doing is standing in the kitchen—Miles and Flora and Hannah and Owen standing just behind Dani—and yet she feels like she could very suddenly run to the moon and back without needing a break.
Like she could fly or spread her arms around the world without an ounce of trouble and squeeze it tight. Like she should because Dani just said she loves her and shouldn’t that make her capable of anything?
She thinks so.
“I love you,” she hears herself say, slower this time, making sure that Dani understands.
Dani’s lips part just barely and she nods like she’s agreeing to something, but Jamie isn’t sure what. “I love you, too,” she says. “Hey.”
“Yeah?” Jamie asks, her eyes tracing the gentle shape of Dani’s face, the dip of her nose and the slender arch of her neck.
Dani leans forward a little, their foreheads brushing. “I love you,” she repeats.
Their lips brush together, soft and singing reverence in a kiss that can’t be sustained because each of them is smiling too much for that. Cool fingers wrap themselves around Jamie’s hands and it very suddenly doesn’t matter who else is in the room for this. It might as well just be them.
An ordinary morning. Breakfast in the kitchen and work to do later. After a night spent doing normal things; making dinner together and watching TV. Jamie vacuumed her flat and Dani wiped down her counters and then they fell into bed together because that’s what it is to love someone.
That’s how you do it.
In the little in-between times. Love in offering your jacket when it’s cold; in pressing your chilled toes against the warmth of your other’s skin; in brushing your teeth side-by-side and holding hands when you’re waiting in line with your shopping basket at the market.
What is so frightening about that?
What better time to say it than when you can’t keep it contained any longer?
Nothing.
There isn’t a better time.
Easy does it.
Life ticks on around them—the children laughing and splashing one another with water, Owen making a joke that only Hannah finds funny, and that soft, green paint waiting to be picked up in town—but Jamie takes a moment to breathe. To let the puzzle pieces slide together, colors mixing in and stirring out smooth. Clean.
Leans in and kisses Dani again, longer this time, and says what she’s been wanting to say all along, which is this:
“I love you, Dani. I love you, too.”
..