Page 6 of Crosswind

When I move back over him, he looks at me.

"You've done your research," he says. "I could tell."

"I googled it," I say.

He stares at me. “You… Patrick."

"I wanted to do it right."

He closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them there is something in them that is warm and amused and fond all at once. "Of course you did," he says.

I kiss him. Start to move.

The first moment, his breath catching, his hands gripping my arms, his face, I go still. "Okay?"

"Yes." His hands pull me closer rather than pushing away. "Keep going."

I move. Slowly. His eyes close and his head tips back and I put my forehead against his temple and breathe.

"God," I say, quietly, almost to myself. "Jan. You're so tight."

He makes a sound. Not a word. Just a sound, low and unplanned, and his hands grip my arms harder and I understand that as clearly as any instruction he could give me.

I go slowly. Reading his face, his hands, the sounds he clearly did not plan to make. Jan who manages everything is not managing anything. He is just here, just with me.

"Don't stop," he says, into my neck.

I don't stop. I say his name, quiet in his ear, and feel him respond to it, and keep going.

When it happens, it is nothing like anything before. Jan's hands find my back, pressing hard, pulling me into him. He makes a sound that is not a word. Everything in me — my body, my chest, somewhere deeper I don't have a name for, arrives at once. I say his name again, not quietly this time.

Nobody has ever held me like that. Like they needed me there.

Afterwards his hand finds mine on the duvet without him looking. I find the ceiling.

I feel something I don't have a word for yet. Something large and warm and not at all finished.

"You're thinking," he says.

"Sorry," I say.

"I didn't say stop." A pause. "What are you thinking about?"

I look at the ceiling for a moment. The lamp is still on in the sitting room. The city outside is doing its quiet thing. Jan is warm beside me and the waiting is behind us and I feel… I feel the full length of the months it took to get here, every reason I found to wait, every moment I told myself it wasn't the right time.

"That I should have done this sooner."

He is quiet.

"I kept finding reasons to wait," I say.

"You weren't ready," he says.

"I know." I turn my head. He is looking at the ceiling, but when he feels me look he turns too. "Are you… was it…”

"Yes," he says. Before I finish. "Very much yes."

I let out a breath.