Chapter 7: Toast With a Purpose

His apartment was above the ferry shed, up an outside staircase that rang under my shoes.

One room, a kitchen along one wall, a bed under the slanted roof, and a window full of the lighthouse beam.

He had set the table for two with mismatched plates.

"Toast with a purpose," he said, and put a grilled cheese in front of me with tomato soup on the side.

It was the best thing I had eaten all week.

I told him so, and he looked at his plate and went red again.

We ate with the window open and the sea loud below us.

When I finished, I pushed my plate away and looked at him across the table.

"Seven o'clock," I said. "You promised."

"I promised dinner."

"You promised tonight."

"I did."

"I'm not good at waiting."

"I noticed." He stood and came around the table. "You waited at a gas station."

"That was different. I was waiting for the wrong person."

He put one hand under my chin.

"And now?"

"Now I'm done."

I stood up into him.

The kiss was nothing like the shed.

It was slow and deep, and he took his time.

He kissed me until my knees went, and then his hands found the hem of my T-shirt and waited there.

"Say it," he said against my mouth.

"Take it off."

He pulled it over my head.

His eyes went over me and stayed.

"You didn't have to look so sure about it," he said, quietly.

"I'm not sure about anything else."

"Good. Be sure about this."

"I am."

He unhooked my bra with one hand and dropped it behind me.

His mouth came down on my collarbone, then lower, and I put my hands in his hair and held on.

When he took my nipple into his mouth, I made a sound I had never made for Rocco.

I felt him smile against me.

I walked him backward to the bed.

I pushed at his chest until he sat, then pulled his shirt up and off him, and it was my turn to look.

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