It's a Love Story

by Annabel Monaghan

It’s the revenge dress I packed to wear in front of Jack, but for some reason, it’s Dan who I want revenge against today. How dare he make me want something this much.

“You just unpacked a lifetime of crazy right there, but that doesn’t sound like a pity kiss.” “I hope not, Clem. I really like him. Are there patients dying because of this conversation? I know I’m being ridiculous.”

Don’t do the thing where you assume you know what Dan’s thinking and decide it’s over.”

He runs his eyes down my body. “It’s exactly like that, except Allie’s dress wasn’t quite that see-through.” My face flames and I cross my arms over my chest.

I can feel his eyes on me and hear his breath go jagged as I dry the bottom of my dress, now at mid-thigh.

“Your legs,” he says. “What?” “What?” He’s still looking at them. “You just said something about my legs.”

The air is supercharged. I can tell by the way he swallows that his heart is racing, and I’d like to reach out and touch his chest so I can feel it. That might be as good as the signed affidavit.

He takes my hand again and entwines our fingers. “Is it because I kissed you?” “You didn’t kiss me.” “Jane. I was there. It was—” He makes an explosion with his free hand. My smile is its own explosion—I cannot contain it. That kiss was exactly that, five seconds of fireworks.

His eyes are on my mouth like he can already taste me. I want to kiss him again the way you want another breath of air when you’re drowning. He leans toward me, and I say “Yes” in response to a question he hasn’t asked.

Dan kisses me like he wants to know every part of me. He’s cracking me open, making me feel like it’s okay to want something this much, and it’s equal parts exhilarating and terrifying.

His eyes graze my body. “We’re going to stop this over berries?” I smile. “He asked me specifically. I need to deliver the berries.”

“When you smile at me, I feel like I want to capture it. But it’s not the regular way like when I see something beautiful and I want to photograph it. When you smile, it does something to me, I feel it in my chest, and I just want to figure out how to get you to do it again.”

I smile from the deepest part of my heart. Like this smile has been waiting for him. “That,” he says and touches my lips. He presses his thumb to the corner of my mouth and I kiss it. “It’s the best smile,...

I want to say thank you, but instead I kiss him again, slowly, as if transmitting those words through my lips.

“I’m fine, it was sort of exciting. And then Dan rescued me.” My face goes hot when I see the smile creep across Reenie’s face. Cormack looks down at his paper, but there’s a hint of a smile there too.

Every time our eyes meet, my face melts into a smile and I have to look away. I have completely lost control of my face.

Laughter comes out of me as easily as my breath. It’s a new feeling to be so much myself and to still be invited deeper and deeper into this family. Knowing their family recipe gives me a very specific and unnameable kind of pleasure.

We’re just looking at each other and enjoying the crackle of energy that’s alive between us. I wonder if they can see it from space.

“So many topics we haven’t covered today.” He entwines our fingers.

Reenie puts her arm around me and tells me I did a great job, and everyone around the table says how delicious it is.

Dan lets out a sigh. “Good night,” I say to keep myself from saying, I really, really like you. So much that my chest hurts.

His face appears at bunk level, leaning in. “I really liked this day,” he whispers. “Besides the time we weren’t together.” “Same,” I say.

Sammy wanders out and climbs into Dan’s lap, nearly asleep still. He settles his cheek into Dan’s chest and Dan rubs his little back and my heart does a funny flip.

Aidan comes out with Katie in his arms and hands her to me. I love that he does this. I am the holder of Katie, the getter of muffins, the baker of pies.

I get the sense that he’s feeling as shy as I am about this new thing between us.

Dan lies on his towel and reaches a hand up to pull me down. In one movement, I am lying on my side next to him.

This thing with Dan is something I don’t believe in, but it’s growing inside my heart anyway.

This feels like wealth, I think. This is the thing you save up for. You live your whole life so that you can be surrounded by too many people in too small of a room and tell the story of how it all happened.

Love isn’t a helicopter ride to Catalina; it’s everyday care and treating the other person like they’re your house keys.

It feels good to want something for someone else, something that has nothing to do with you, just because you care about them. And I wonder if this is what love is. I rest my hand on my heart to feel if it’s changed. I think it has. I have.

Dan is leaning on the bar with Brooke by his side, but I’m the one he’s smiling at.

“That was—” Dan starts. “I don’t know what that was. But it was my favorite thing. We’ll always remember that.” Always. “Always” feels so good, as a word, as a concept.

“We should dance,” he says and turns me around. “You don’t dance,” I say. My face is at his neck level, and I raise my eyes to his, which are heavy on mine. He takes my other hand and then moves them up to his shoulders.

The song’s over, and we stay like this without any music at all. I love the feel of his hands on my back and his chest pressed against me, and if he’s not going to make any move to stop, I’m not either.

He takes a breath as if he’s going to finish his sentence, but then runs his fingers down my neck and kisses me again, a claiming kiss. It finishes the sentence for him. I am so beautiful. I am so wanted. Inside this kiss I am all the things I have believed I am not.

“Everything is different with you, Jane. I feel like I never shut up.”

We feel like this and it just stays. I can’t even imagine how awful it would be to lose a person like Dan.

“This just isn’t a thing that I do,” I say. He runs his hands up my hip and along my side, and I shiver. “It is now.” “Don’t take it back.” “I won’t,” he says.

There’s knocking on heaven’s door. That’s what I think when I wake up in Dan’s arms and the first rays of sunlight creep through the little window.

All of my raw bits are on the outside, and lying here with Dan, I am sleepy and sexy and playful. I rest my hand on his chest and memorize the rhythm of his beating heart.

Dan kisses me. “I am in hell,” he says. “They’ll never leave and never shut up.” “Go,” I say. “You want me to go?” “Never,” I say. I want to take it back, it’s too much too soon, but he smiles like he feels the same way.

kneels by the bed to kiss me goodbye. “Promise you’ll be here when I get back.” “Promise,” I say.

There is nothing about this week or this morning that I will ever forget. The periwinkle blue of his bathing suit, the seasoning on the kebab. The whipped cream in my coffee and the way he watched me drink it. The watercolors and the slow dance.

It’s like I’ve seen through a little wormhole to an alternate universe where this kind of love exists and I could have it. I want my mom to know this too.

“Love happens over breakfast.” Cormack smiles at Reenie. “If you want to know the secret to a happy marriage, that’s it.”

‘Love happens over breakfast.’ ” “It’s just something Cormack said when we were first married. Romance happens over dinner. The candlelight, the wine.” “Everyone looks a lot better than they usually do,” Cormack says and laughs. Reenie rolls her eyes. “Well, yes,” she says. “That’s the romance of it. But at breakfast everything’s just as it is, in the light of day. No one wears lipstick to breakfast. And this is where you talk about your day and the part of the roof that might leak this fall. You bring your real self to breakfast.”

“You can’t tie your own bracelet, you only have two hands.” “True,” I say. My heart is in my throat. I want this bracelet like some people want a beach house.

Ruby climbs into my lap and adjusts my bracelet with tiny fingers. “You have to wear it forever,” she says. “That’s how these things work.” “I will,” I say and mean it.

He smiles a little bit, and I can feel it all over my body. I love him. My heart is sending tiny bursts of energy into my body and out into the world.

How was surfing?” He takes my other hand. “I thought about you the whole time while my brothers gave me shit.”