How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [101]
“Trust you? I do!”
“You don’t trust anybody,” he says definitely, and smooths his hair away from his forehead. “And with good reason.”
It strikes me that I am falling, really falling, and that recognition alone is good enough to make me straighten. I sink to the stool. I struggle with what I should say. My hands are shaky, and I’m swollen with the wish to make love.
He doesn’t fill up the space with anything, only lets me think through what he’s said, what we did. I feel like flash paper, as if I will go up in a single blast at the flame of his hands, and I shift away. “I don’t know how anymore. To trust anyone.”
“There is one way to know some things.”
“How?”
“Ask yourself what you want. And then go for it.”
“But that doesn’t always work.”
“No?” He’s sitting on a stool now, his long body relaxed and sexy, but it is that face I always want to look at—his beautiful, wise eyes. “Give me an example of something you wanted and it didn’t work out.”
“Oh, thousands of them,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Let’s start with Sofia’s father. I wanted him and I ended up—” I don’t want to say screwing up my life, because there is so much that’s good. “It ended being a very dark time for me. Out of something I thought I wanted.”
He nods, his finger sliding down my arm. “What did you really want, though? At fifteen, did you want sex? Or did you just want to kiss him and be with him?”
To my horror, tears spring to my eyes. “I had no idea what I wanted except to be held, to kiss him. I didn’t know all the stuff that we would do.”
“Right. He wanted sex.” His hand twining around my wrist is so gentle I can’t bear it. “You wanted kisses. Big difference.”
I feel slightly sick to my stomach and look at the door. “I think I should go.”
He stands with me, puts his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t panic, Ramona. It’s only talk.”
“No. It’s you. It’s … me.” I look around the room, at the clean serenity, the undisturbed quiet. “It’s all of this. I have to go now.”
Jonah captures me from behind as I am running away, his arms coming all the way around my body. He puts his face into my hair. “Don’t run.” His body feels reliable against my back, solid and real, and I find myself leaning into him, letting go of … everything. My head fits into the cradle of his shoulder, and his cheek presses into my ear.
“This is scaring me, too, Ramona. It feels dangerous and unreliable, as if it could really hurt.”
I put my palms on the arm that circles my throat. “Yes,” I whisper.
“But it also feels magical. Like my blood is filled with glitter. Like a spell was finally broken.”
His voice in my ear has color and texture and richness. I close my eyes and it flows down the side of my neck, into the hollow of my throat. I think, I am in love with him.
He’s rocking me gently as he says, “Do you know how I see you?”
“Foolish?”
“Generous. Independent. Loving.” He kisses my neck. “So loving.”
I turn in his arms. “What do we do, then, Jonah? I don’t know how to leap without fear of the consequences anymore. I don’t know if I can.”
“No leaping,” he says, and kisses me. “Just one step at a time.”
I raise my eyebrow. “Well, I did like second base.”
He looks at my mouth, presses forward subtly. “Me, too.”
I leave him, walking home through the dark beneath whispering trees. Once he is out of my sight, the cool night air washes the smell of him from my skin, my nose, and I am left with a hollow terror.
I have not been in love. Until now I thought my love was channeled in other directions, into my child and my breads and my family. With Dane, I said I was, but it didn’t feel like this—as if all these years I’d been living in moonlight and had no idea there was even a sun. Until Jonah arrived. Jonah feels like sunlight, and my light-starved skin craves him.
It’s one thing to live in moonlight and never know there is a sun. But once you know, how can you ever be happy with night again?
In the dark of my neighborhood, I put my hands over my stomach, feeling my heart flutter in panic. He’s too much. It’s too dangerous.