“Are you asking if there were others after you?”
“Yes.”
He savored another bite, likely to give himself time to consider. Nat’s greatest gift and biggest downfall was soul-baring honesty, but he had a way of wrapping that trait in word packages tied with ribbons to distract from the message. Her stomach clenched.
“Three.”
January felt deprived of oxygen. That was it? The guy could rub sentences together that made her weep from joy and laughter and sorrow, but all he gave her was a number. Three. She was mildly horrified with herself that she should take that number to be three too many. He deserved companionship and intimacy and all the love she hadn’t shown him by staying.
“You?”
“Hoo…” January said on a gusty exhale. She reeled from the crippling entitlement her heart still held for him.
“That many, huh?”
Her turn to take a bite. “No. I mean, not really. No place has ever really been permanent for any length. And no one wants to love the girl who leaves.”
He swallowed. Visibly. Then became preoccupied with pushing a cooked carrot around with his fork. He had given her honesty. The least she could do was reciprocate. Trouble was, how to be honest about something she had been scared to tell anyone?
“Dear Agnes…”
He made eye contact. His mouth stretched, a ghost of a smile.
Her stomach recoiled as if she’d eaten habaneros, not cooked potatoes. “I’m afraid a certain person will think differently of me if he knows I was once intimate with a woman. Signed, One Time, Never Again.”
Nat didn’t flinch. He didn’t reclaim interest in the meal or unfold his long legs or even glance away from her confession. The consummate advice professional.
“Dear One Time, Never Again…”
Already she loved him. Before he offered up whatever gift-wrapped words he had for her, she felt a tingly rush of acceptance from across the blanket.
“Experimentation is natural. That you were honest with your certain person makes it more than okay.”
The rancid turn of her stomach eased. She realized he, as Agnes, shared that same acceptance with others. His column wasn’t just a silly diversion. Agnes allowed Nat to do what he did best—bring comfort to others.
“In retrospect, it was nothing,” she said. “Crazy, really. I thought I had feelings for her, but it turned out that loneliness is an insidious bastard. It masks itself as other emotions and tries to change you in ways you can’t imagine.”
He poked at his food but didn’t eat. “You’d be surprised.”
That they shared this maudlin state of loneliness all these years apart had to mean something. That she hadn’t felt it once since coming back had to mean something important.
Nat pushed his meal aside and reclined on the quilt, hands laced behind his head, knees bent and wide. “What did she look like?”
January wasn’t sure why he should want to know until his lips twitched in amusement. He ignited a playfulness that danced through her entire body. She came at him knowing full well he dissolved to liquid at the onset of the first tickle.
“Why? So you can picture it?”
“Purely…to keep the conversation…going,” he said, dissolving into unguarded laughter at her touch—first her hands, then her knees bumping his hips, then her hands pinning his wrists to the floor in total surrender.
“Change the subject before I die of mortification. Right here.”
“We can’t have that, now, can we?” he said, as soft as a secret. His gaze mapped her expression.
They were breathless. His chest filled strong and proud; his exhales mingled with hers, inches apart. She had two choices: lean in and fill the vacancy, if only for a time, or take the high road.
January backed away but curled up beside him, fingers linked. She propped her neck against his rigid bicep, and they settled into a comfortable silence. The occasional crackle of a flame to dry wood curled through her ears and eased her muscles. She struggled to recall a time she felt more content.
“Nothing held your attention in college, except…” she prompted, snagging the dangling thread of conversation to get her mind off of rolling over and straddling him, to distract her from her hunger for his hardness at her apex, his palms discovering what time had done to her body.