Glühwein

by just_the_fics_maam

Summary:

The continuation of Lou and Oakley, begun in New Wine.

Glühwein is usually red, matured and spiced and mulled, served warm against the cold of a dark winter night.

Stands alone but there are references that are easier to understand if you have read New Wine first.

Chapter 1: Night Train

Lou does not feel nervous until the plane starts its descent over the twinkling nighttime lights of Berlin, and as the plane sinks lower and lower in the sky, the cityscape seems to broaden and engulf her, a blanket stitched with highways and streets and punctuated by the Siegessaule and the TV Tower, its spire pointing high into the sky while she sinks, lower and lower.

Everything is wrapped up back home in California, her boxes packed and labeled and stacked in a storage unit. The only things she has in the world are stowed above her head in this long, lean 767 and one big black bag in the belly of the plane.

There is no reason to be nervous, really, except for the months apart from Oakley; his quietness, the cryptic photographs and unaccounted-for weeks. She pulled down all of his photographs from her wall and folded them into the pocket of her overcoat, held tightly now over her arm in anticipation of freezing temperatures; in Berkeley she rarely even wore a coat, but in his quick and hurried note to her he said to dress warmly.

The voice he wrote to her in did not seem like him, the twists and turns of the sentences foreign and strange somehow, and maybe that is what twists her stomach into jumpy knots, that and a questionable barbecue sandwich wolfed down in New York, then two foolish cups of coffee in Amsterdam, until she is about to burst now, waiting for a restroom, and unable to leave her seat now that the plane has started to dip down is preparation for landing.

Closer to the ground now, Lou can see a blanket of snow covering the city, muting the tones of the lights and slowing the speed of the bustling city, just slightly. The runways are cleared and black, and she holds the armrests tightly as the plane lands, skips, squeals, jumps, and lands again, braking and rattling to a stop, finally, on the tarmac.

Twenty minutes later, she rolls her carry-on behind her across the terrazzo floor and finds a kiosk with tiny plastic cell phones. She buys one, snaps it together and pulls the printed email from her pocket, sending a quick text to the number he gave her. Six minutes later, a reply comes in that there is snow across the roads in Hanover, and he cannot get to her. Another quick message like a telegram with the name of a train to take to carry her all the way to Bonn. Should have flown you into Cologne, beautiful lady, I’m sorry. Will be there when you arrive at the station.

And then nothing. Oakley, brief and quiet, waiting for her somewhere out in that cold, dark night. The train ride is long, but then at least she can sleep, and get to him in the first glow of morning light. She settles into her berth, drinking hot tea, trying to settle her nerves, wondering how much of that old bursting, summertime love will flood back to her when she sees him, if any of it will, if there will still be an outlet for this warmth, brewing in her like the steaming tea, a soft, nameless affection that carried her through months of study. She turned down four different date invitations in the time they have been apart; it is funny to Lou because of how seldom she was ever asked out before she met Oakley, back when she would have taken any invitation more or less instantly. But after that night in the cave, the light flickering on the waxy black walls as he made love to her and knelt at her feet in disbelief, after she promised to be only his, the warmth of beauty seemed to blush in her cheeks and draw men to her.

By eleven o’clock she still can’t sleep, in spite of the long day of excitement, the miles she has run through airports today, and she reaches into her purse for the two tiny bottles of whiskey she bought in the airport shop. She looks around her, and seeing everyone asleep she tips one into her mouth, swallowing the burning liquid quickly, then sips the second, feeling the sleepy fingers of slumber finally sliding around her, enclosing her like a fist.

Drifting off as the train bends and turns on its smooth, dark tracks, Lou’s thoughts of nervousness and  her unsure, shaky stomach give way to the softer memories, creeping in as the lights of tiny towns whiz by the window. The touch of his hand, a life-changing thing, and Oakley himself, cocky and vulnerable all at once, giving her body its shape and crackling her skin to life like fire. His mouth on hers, pressed to her in the steaming shower, grasping her to him in the rivulets of hot water, her dress hanging low and clinging to her breasts and legs. Her eyes fly open and she feels quite warm all of a sudden; she slips her overcoat off and folds it against the window like a pillow and drifts off again, echoes of Oakley’s whispered words in her ear like a lullaby. Six more hours to go until Bonn.

She wakes up hours later, the train shooting through darkness still, and she leans up for a moment, suddenly ravenous, her head still fuzzy, looking out the window at the speeding landscape and the heads of the sleeping passengers in front of her.

“Hey.”

She turns suddenly, jumping, heart racing, and sees him. Oakley, in the seat beside her. He smiles.

 “How did… Where did you come from?” she asks, sitting up straight, shaking her head. A wave of dizziness. “Had some whiskey,” she says.

He smiles, reaches out and touches her cheek lightly with his hand. “I could not wait to see you.”

“I’m drunk, Oakley,” she says.

He laughs. “I met the train in Bielefield,” he says. He looks suddenly down, a shadow of worry across his forehead. “You were sleeping,” he says to his fingernails. “I didn’t want to wake you.” He frowns.

She lays her hand on his arm. “What is it?”

“I’m so sorry,” he says, looking into her eyes again.

“No, I’m sorry,” she says. “I feel like an idiot. I’m so fucking drunk.” She laughs, a little too loud.

He leans back, pressing his palms to his eyes. “I cocked up the travel plans,” he says. “I wanted it to be so perfect, and then everything changed, this week, and—”

She reaches up and presses her finger to his lips.

He kisses her fingertip and leans back. “I wasn’t even sure if you’d want to meet me,” he says.

She shakes her head. “Oh, Oakley.”

He looks at her and smiles, a teasing edge to his mouth, and she holds onto his arm, gripping tightly as he grabs her carry-on and pushes down the aisle behind the other lurching, sleepy passengers.

On the platform, the sky above is inky black, with twinkling stars, the air so cold and clear. She shivers, the fuzziness of liquor clearing somewhat on the knife edge of the cold.

 “Come here,” she says, pulling him to her until his warmth is pressed against her through the layers of their shirts and sweaters. She leans in and feels him exhale, deeply, the sound seeming to come all the way from his toes, and he kisses her, takes her face in both his hands and kisses her harder, sliding his warm upper lip over hers, claiming the space of her entire mouth, his fingers running over the edges of her ears and threading through her hair. She tilts her head back and invites him closer, and he leans forward into her.

“I kept my promise,” she purrs, then looks away, suddenly embarrassed.

“Is that the promise I think you mean?” he says, his smiling, whispered voice in her ear.

She nods. “Only you, Oakley,” she says, shivering at his touch. “No one else.”

And then he is walking her silently across the platform, down the steps and around the station, down the hard stone steps and finally into a waiting car, dirty and white. He slings her luggage into the back and she leans across and unlocks his door. He slides in, clicking the ignition key forward once, the heaters blasting warm.

“You rode the train to meet me?” she asks.

He nods. “I couldn’t wait.”

She hears his breath rushing strangely and she looks up at him and sees a spark, something urgent, almost scared in his eyes. She smiles and reaches out, taking his hand and pressing it to her breast. He moves closer to her, sliding his hands inside her coat and up under the edge of her shirt, along the sides of her bare waist. Her skin, so long without a touch, springs to life and she feels the tips of his fingers like electricity, blue flashes of light flying across her body. He leans over, throwing a leg over her and pressing her into her seat; he clicks the seat handle until the seat lowers flat, and he grips her legs with his, then leans in, easing her arms out of her coat; she rests back on the warm overcoat, its satin lining soft beneath her. He runs his fingers lightly through her hair.

He touches warm, wet lips to her neck and presses suddenly against her, rolling his hips into hers, and through the winter layers she can feel him, hard and stiff, straining forward. She pushes her hips up to meet his and he presses deeper and deeper into her softness, lacing his fingers in hers. She gasps, the low and rumbling desire rushing through her, acute, and he pushes harder, moving with quick, jerking motions, parting her lips with his and dipping his tongue in, teasing the edge of her teeth and sliding along the edge of her tongue. In the heat between them is the fragrance of something soft and homelike, laundry and shampoo, and she reaches her legs up to curl around his, riding the waves of rhythm as he presses deeper into her, then the sudden pounding pleasure as it radiates through her. She shakes and cries out, gasping, and he pushes to her again, slipping his hand across her soft belly and down low to feel the last of the damp pounding. He smiles, kissing her gently, cupping his hand around her, his fingers warm and sure, claiming her again.

They drive silently through the streets toward his rented rooms, Lou drifting in and out of sleep, and he rushes excitedly up the front walk to the low wooden door, pushing it open to let her inside. It is simple but comfortable, white plaster walls edged in pine and oak. He smiles and throws his coat off, and hers, and pulls her to him.

“I’m cold,” she whispers, laughing lightly in his ear. He bends low and lays a fire, hastily striking a match until the close-cut embers light and crackle, filling the room with their orange light.

“Lou,” he says, smiling against her ear.

“Mmm?”

“Let me see you again.”

She smiles up at him and pulls her sweater off, and he pulls on the woolen arms of it and throws it behind him, laughing. They pull and push and wrangle until their clothes slide off and lie at their feet.

She laughs, then covers her mouth.

“What?” he asks.

“I’m sorry for laughing,” she says. He draws his arms around her, resting his hands heavy on the swell of her bare hips. He nuzzles into her neck. “I’m just so happy,” she says. “I’ve been holding on for a long time.”

“Me too,” he says, his voice sleepy.

She closes her eyes and leans her head back, and Oakley leans in, gently kissing her neck. He slides his hand down her arms and stops short, his body tensing. She looks quickly at him.

“Oakley, what?”

He raises her hand up, cradling it in his own arms like a kitten, lightly touching the strands of frayed blue silk still tied there.

“You kept it,” he says.

“Of course I did,” she says, laughing. “And I hope it means something to you.”

He looks at her, his eyebrows pressed together. He swallows, a serious look passing over his features. “Yes,” he says.

“Because I don’t have much for your Christmas gift.”

“Hmm?”

“Just my loyalty. And a box of Dutch chocolates from Schipol Airport,” she says, frowning.

He laughs, looking into her eyes.

She smiles and reaches over to her bag, pulling the dark blue box from her carry-on. “Here,” she says, blushing red. “Now I apologize again.”

“Shh,” he says, tilting up the lid of the box and pulling out two shiny, flat chocolate buttons, firelight flickering on their candy sheen.

His brow furrows in concentration, and he presses the chocolates to her skin, one just below her collarbone and one on the inside curve of her left breast, and pushes her back onto the worn, brown leather couch. He holds the candy drops for a moment, pressing them to her flesh until the chocolate melts slightly to her.

“Mmm,” she says.

“Shh.” He leans down and brushes his lips on her skin. “Shh,” he says again, his warm shushing breath sending goose flesh across her body. She shivers. He smiles and pushes his tongue around the dark, smooth chocolate, leaning in and drawing it into his mouth, moaning lightly as he kisses the sweetness left on her damp skin.

He pushes his mouth to hers and with the taste of bittersweet chocolate she smiles and his spell is complete: Oakley, the same and yet somehow more of him than there was before. He fills up all of her conscious thought, his body lithe and muscled, his spirit lighter than the last time they were together, his lips dancing over her skin, his movements smooth and sure. She feels another laugh bubble up and lets it out as a light cry as he thrusts into her, his teeth grazing her shoulder, his back rolling, his body filling her the way she dreamed a hundred times, halfway across the world.

He looks at her again, his hips speeding, his grip tightening on her flesh, and she feels the gentle wave of pleasure hit again, its warmth pushing her closer to him. She arches her back, raises her hips into his and cries out again as he groans, a sound like choking in his throat, as his pleasure breaks at last, pounding into her as he pushes further, further in, his forehead pressed to her chest, gasping like a castaway washed finally to the shore.

His love is sweeter, now. Deeper. Mulled and spiced. She feels her body and soul inebriated again as he collapses onto her, his kisses slow and sleepy on her breasts, pulling the last of the cocoa sweetness from her skin, his hand circling around the frayed bracelet, her wrist pressed to his chest, its promise held between them, soft and silken, blue and green and warm as the deepest summer sea.

Chapter 2: Mountain View

Lou wakes up in the morning light and looks down to see Oakley, his chin perched on her stomach, his eyes wide open, resting on hers, teasing.

She smiles and sits up, pulling him close to her and wrapping her legs around his waist. She kisses him, his warm chest pressed to her, and settles back into the blankets. “Come here,” she says, her voice muffled against his shoulder. “It’s cold.”

“Come on, let’s go,” he says, pulling on her hand like a child.

“Where?”

“Out,” he says, tilting his head and smiling.

“I don’t have any clothes,” she says. “My bags are still in the car.”

He pounces on her, tickling her ribs. Then, just as suddenly, he stands and picks up a stack of clothes from the chest at the foot of the bed and flops it on her: an outfit from her suitcase.

“Where are we going, Oakley?”

“On an adventure,” he says, dashing from the room.

**

After breakfast at the corner café they stroll back to Oakley’s apartment and he runs quickly to the car. “I’m going to get petrol,” he says. “I’ll be back. Be ready in ten minutes?”

She nods, her stomach full of jitters. It is exciting to be with him. His energy is contagious, and so different from the hooded, heavy way he had over the summer. There is something buoyant in him now. Something just a bit lighter than air.

She walks to the bedroom and peers in the mirror, combing her hair back again into its ponytail and dabbing on some lipstick and eyeliner, flicking mascara lightly through her lashes. She packs her purse and checks for all the essentials – phone, keys, wallet – and then indulges her guilty curiosity, dancing like a naughty child from the medicine cabinet to the closets to the deep, wide kitchen pantry, but she finds almost nothing. Not even innocent things: it is quite bare here. There are two drawers in the bureau full of his clothes, and one toothbrush, and one bottle of shampoo, round and green, in the shower. It is clean, though not meticulously so. Her eyes scan the bookshelves, a half dozen volumes: two Grisham thrillers, a pocket guide to Germany, two books in German with pictures of people playing soccer on the covers, and one tucked in the corner. A pocket-size copy of Gardening for Dummies. She laughs, running her finger down the shiny yellow spine.

And then she sees it, and it stops her suddenly, her purse clutched to her side, the chilly draft from outside whispering across her arm. In the back corner in an alcove with a short, fat lamp, one picture frame. It is one of those frames with three blank spots in it, the kind that people use to show off their children’s school portraits on their desks at work, but here in this frame, there are two blank cardboard spots, and only one picture.

Hers.

She feels a weird sort of lump in her throat, and she picks up the frame. In the picture, she is looking away from the camera, smiling up at Petra, one day this summer when they were all out on the lawn together, watching Giovanni building the roof, drinking cold white wine and listening to the distant ocean. It is only the side of her face, her arm reaching up to hold her hat onto her head, a bright, open smile on her features.

She looks at the frame, turning it over in her hands. Why would he have only her picture? And then it sinks in, slowly, a realization chilly and stark because it is so completely obvious, and once she knows it, she can’t un-know it: he is nearly alone here, in this world. Strained relationships with his family, loose ties to old friends from uni, but none of those forged in iron.

What is he doing here, then? Why Germany? She looks around for another clue, a scrap of identity, and the strange and unsettling feeling seeps in through her skin. She doesn’t know him… at all. And he? She looks at herself in the mirror. She pulls her ponytail down and runs her fingers through her hair. She frowns. “He may have just idly put a random snapshot in a frame, and you’re reading too much into it.” She sticks out her tongue. “Louise.”

She looks over at the picture frame again and puts it back as she found it, half-concealed in that back alcove.

She hears Oakley come back in the front door, and she jumps to attention, puts her hair back up, and moves quickly to meet him, shoving thoughts of the photograph and the larger questions to the side.

**

She likes to watch him drive. He never did in Italy, not with her in the car, and he has a gentle kind of mastery to him as he navigates the mountain curves, the switchbacks hugging the edge of the Siebengebirge. The grade steepens and he furrows his brow, stepping on the clutch and shifting quickly down to second gear, a lovely vein pushing out along his forearm. She smiles.

“What?” says Oakley.

She looks over at him. “I’m just happy,” she says. “It’s been a long time since I was this relaxed.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Definitely,” she says.

He bites his lip. “I’m proud of you, Lou.”

“For what?” she says.

He smiles and looks quickly over at her. “Your school. Your degree. I’m proud of you. It’s a big thing. A big achievement.”

“Oh, thanks, Oakley,” she says, reaching out and smoothing her hand down his arm. “Really, thanks.”

“You’re so smart,” he says.

She laughs. “You are, too. And anyway, my kind of smartness doesn’t really do much for me.”

“Why do you say that?”

She looks out the window, Bonn retreating lower and lower into the hazy valley as the car ascends toward the mountain peak.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I always just thought that by the time I finished, I’d know what I was supposed to do, you know?”

“Hmm.”

“And I have some idea. I really do. I have that… job I told you about, and it looks really exciting. It’s just…”

He looks over at her, raising his eyebrows. “Yes?” he teases.

She frowns. “It’s just that I don’t feel that sort of sureness under my feet.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, when I am about to make a decision, and I make the right one, the ground just feels sturdy under me,” she says. “I can see the next step, and the one after that, and I feel sort of… infused with the courage I will need for the journey, and all that. Does that make sense?”

He nods.

“And with this job, I like the idea, but I chose it for a very logical reason.”

“Experience?”

“Yes, exactly,” she says.

“Well, it’s not a bad idea,” he says. “Getting more experience before you start your own nonprofit.”

She smiles. “You remember.”

“Of course I do,” he says, hitching an eyebrow and looking at her. “I remember everything about that night.”

She feels her face growing hot and she smiles, and she tries not to smile, and she can’t stop smiling.

“You remember it, too,” he says quietly, poking his elbow into her ribs.

She nods. “I do,” she says. Grinning like an idiot.

“But I know what you mean, about the feeling. About knowing you’re doing the right thing.” He pulls to a stop at a crossroads, waits for a truck to pass, and then pulls out slowly to the left, up a steep hill, the blinker ticking for half a mile before the steering wheel moves enough to turn it off again.

“Yeah?”

“Mmm hmm,” he says, his eyes suddenly very serious. He pulls the car into a low, sandy parking lot in front of a small store. “Need to make a call,” he says. “Coming?”

“Sure,” says Lou, and she hops from the car and follows him up and past the front of the store to an overlook edged by dark logs, worn smooth by the weather.

She takes a deep breath in, and the air is somehow smooth, crisp. Almost fresh like soap. The sky is  blank, bright white.

“It’s beautiful,” she says.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, looking right at her.

She narrows her eyes, tilting her head. She laughs nervously. “Oakley, I never know what to say.” She looks at him, at the phone held still in his hand.

“Say thank you,” he says.

She looks up. “Thank you.” He smiles. “Where are we going?” she asks.

He walks close to her, reaching his hands down and pinching lightly at her waist. He sighs and pulls her in for a bear hug, his arms wrapping all the way around her, pressing her to him. He lets go. He pushes her hair back with both hands, cradling her face between his palms.

“I want you to meet somebody,” he says.

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

He smiles and looks down. “It’s… It’s part of why I came here, to Germany, and to this part of the country, specifically. And it’s part of why I wanted you here, too.”

She reaches out and takes his hand in hers, idly plays with his fingers as he looks to the horizon and then back at her.

“My mother’s mother,” he says.

“Your grandmother?”

“Well, yes,” he says. “But I never saw her after I was six or seven. And even before then, I didn’t see her much.”

“She’s… here?”

He nods. “She lives another few miles up the mountain,” he says.

“Is she from here, then?”

He shakes his head. “No, and that’s why I never saw her after I was a boy,” he says. “After my grandfather died, she met and married a German man while on holiday to Venice. She came back already married.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Everyone was angry. And then it turned out that he had flown in the Luftwaffe briefly at the very beginning of the war, before he escaped from service and moved to the middle of nowhere, and that was all my family could take, I guess.”

“Oh, my.”

“I mean, the rationing and the Blitz and all that? It really wasn’t that long ago. Not really.”

“No.”

“And so anyway, we lost touch with her and she moved here with him, and then just a few months ago, when I was sitting in an Internet café, sending an email to you, actually, I found a census record from Bonn and I thought I’d look to see if she were still living, and maybe send a letter or a card. She was always kind to me when I was smaller,” he says. “I didn’t have many people, and I didn’t know then that I would make my sort of peace with George, so I…”

“No, it makes sense,” Lou says. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to reconnect?”

“Well, exactly,” he says.

“So, you’ve met her?”

“Once before,” he says. “Twice actually. Fairly briefly. But we speak on the phone quite often, once a week or so.”

“Oh, Oakley, that’s a really wonderful thing.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely. Yes,” she says, squeezing his arm.

“So I spoke with her last week and I mentioned you were coming, and she invited us up to stay with her for the night, eat with her.”

“She wanted to meet me?”

He looks at her, then down at her hands. He runs his thumb over her fingernails. “I wanted her to meet you,” he says.

The question – why? – it hangs on the edge of her lips, but it won’t push through.

“You don’t mind?” he asks.

“Mind? No!” She laughs. “Why would I mind? It’s… I don’t even know what to say,” she says. She looks down.

“Hey, hey. Lou, what’s wrong? Lou, come on.” He squeezes her tightly against his chest again.

“It’s dumb,” she says, waving her hand and wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

He looks at her carefully.

“My ex, he… I’m sorry, I don’t mean to bring him up.”

“It’s all right,” Oakley says softly, rubbing his hands up and down her back.

“He wouldn’t bring me home.”

“What?”

“He… He thought his parents wanted him to have a certain kind of girl, and he told me to my face I wasn’t that kind of girl, and he just… I don’t know. It feels silly to talk about it. He just wouldn’t bring me home to meet them. Even when it would have been easy. He met my parents after a few months, but I never met his. Never got to meet his.”

“They never got to meet you,” says Oakley simply, with no added decoration, and kisses the top of her head. He laughs.

“What?”

“I have shit for family,” he says. “I have so few relatives. But I think… I mean, aside from my parents, and they are really a special case, I think you have met them all. Or you will have, by the end of the day,” he says, looking up the mountain.

She smiles. “It’s strange, Oakley,” she says.

“What?”

“It should be complicated,” she says. “There are so many things in the way.”

“What do you mean?”

She walks toward him, resting her hand on the wooden guardrail. “Time, space, distance. I mean… sometimes I feel like technically, I hardly know you.”

He furrows his brow, reaches out and grabs her by the waist with one arm, pulling her close to him.

“But I do,” she says.

He leans in, kissing her softly on the cheek, then his warm lips on hers. “I know you,” he says, his voice low and husky. “And what I don’t know, I want to learn.”

She looks up at him, the rest of her words lost on the chilly wind. There are no other words, nothing else to say. There is only Oakley, and the way he has of filling up her entire view, flooding her consciousness until there is only him, and not a single question left to ask.

**

“I’m so glad you could come,” says Marie softly, her blue-green eyes shining across the table. She looks down at her coffee, steaming in a thin bone-chine cup, its edge painted in gold.

Lou smiles, slightly nervous. Oakley is on the back porch, looking at the little latched door, seeing if he can fix the hinges so it slams cleanly shut instead of bouncing crooked off the frame. Lou sits with his grandmother, a lovely quiet woman, and suddenly she feels terribly unsure.

“I’m sorry,” Lou says. “I hope I don’t seem unkind. Just such a long day and jet lag and everything.” She smiles weakly. “I sort of feel like I’m losing my bearings.”

Marie smiles.

“But somehow it isn’t a bad thing. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes,” says Marie. “I understand that.” Her voice is soft and tinged with a proper English accent, but with edges now and then of German vowels.

“Oh, you do?”

“Sure, of course,” she says. “When I came here I didn’t know the place at all. Didn’t know anything. This house was only half-built,” she says.

“Really?”

“Yes, Wilhelm and I built this ourselves. We spend the first year working on it during the day and sleeping in a tiny travel camper on the edge of the lawn. Cold nights, but very happy memories,” she says.

Lou smiles.

“What do you do, my dear?”

“You mean like, job?”

Marie nods.

“I just finished a public administration degree,” says Lou. “With a focus on urban planning. I want to work with community gardens,” she says. “I love the idea of getting people in cities into growing things.”

Marie smiles. “That’s lovely, dear,” she says. “I think everyone needs a little bit of green.”

“I feel exactly that same way,” says Lou.

Marie pushes back from the table. “You should see what I have, then,” she says. “Come this way with me.”

Lou follows her from the table down a hallway and down a set of creaking steps. Marie pushes open a door and Lou is hit with a blast of warm, humid air. She looks around and finds herself in a sort of cozy, cluttered shed-like space. Plants line the shelves and tables here, moisture hanging in the air and dripping from the ceiling. Along one wall, three tomato plants, and on the table, at least a dozen different herbs. Lush, thriving specimens.

Lou smiles, rushing forward and touching the edges of mint leaves. “Lovely,” she says, and feels a kind of calmness blanket over her. “Marie, this is lovely. You are quite a gardener.”

“I never was, until I knew Wilhelm,” she says. “He taught me everything I know.” She smiles. “He had a way of making anything come to life.”

“Ah.”

“Oakley’s grandfather was that way, too,” she says. “But in a different way. Wilhelm taught me to put aside all the things that didn’t matter.”

“Sounds wise.”

“Wise, yes,” says Marie. “But harder than you might think. I was a terribly practical woman when I met him. Going to Italy on holiday was the most impulsive thing I’d ever done in my life. And to come home with a husband? A foreigner?” She laughs. “My poor family thought I’d gone mad with grief. But really, my grief was finally breaking.”

“That’s lovely, Marie. What a wonderful story.” Lou smiles. “Gutsy.”

“Of course it was hard,” she says, reaching out for a watering can and gently moistening the soil of a few of the plants. “There were days I didn’t know if I really had gone mad, living in a half built house and washing my clothes in the sink of a caravan.”

Lou smiles.

“But one thing I know,” she says, looking in Lou’s eyes, her soft, gentle wrinkles drawing up as she smiles. “Love makes its own rules.”

Lou stops, holding her breath for a moment.

“I still miss Wilhelm, every day,” she says. “And I miss Andrew, too, in my own way,” Marie says.

“Are you ever sorry?” asks Lou, impulsively.

“What do you mean, dear?”

Lou blushes. “I’m sorry. I just… I suppose I’ve been thinking a bit lately.”

“About what?”

She laughs. “I’m so embarrassed. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, dear,” says Marie. She pauses for a moment, looking down, touching the tips of rosemary on a full plant near the door. “I am never sorry for love,” she says, looking Lou in the eye. “Nor of how far I went for it. And that’s true.”

Lou stands back, silent.

Marie sets her mouth in a straight line, pats Lou on the shoulder and walks toward the door.

“I think I’ll stay here a minute, if that’s all right?” asks Lou. “I miss gardens a bit.”

“Of course,” says Marie. “Take your time.”

Marie leaves and Lou wanders around the tiny space again, her eyes running over the tiny plastic pots and larger clay urns, all filled with carefully kept plants, the fragrance in the little hot room spicy and close and comforting. Her thoughts, earlier today, scattered and wild, take on a kind of rhythm, green and spreading but no longer chaotic. Cut back and tamed, just slightly. She smiles, leaning down to deeply inhale the scent of basil leaves. Then she turns, clicks off the light, and walks back toward the kitchen, the chill of winter air making her jump and dance as she walks quickly over the shiny wooden floor.

She walks through the house, quiet and dim but for the sound of the grandfather clock ticking at the base of the stairs. She walks up slowly, each step creaking.

“Oakley?”

She hears voices at the top of the stairs. Marie. Lou pauses before she reaches the landing, waiting.

“Take it, my dear boy,” Marie says.

“Marie. I… Are you really sure?”

“You need it more than I do,” she says.

Oakley laughs, lightly.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” asks Marie.

“I think so,” he says. “I don’t want to scare her, though.”

“So, you wait a while,” says Marie. “But you need to have it when you’re ready.”

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

“Or don’t wait,” says Marie. She chuckles. “I know that look in a man’s eye.”

“There’s no look,” says Oakley, his tone stubborn. Amused.

“No?” says Marie. “Maybe not. Maybe you’re just totally lost to the world. Done.”

“Completely,” he whispers. Lou can hear the edge of a smile in the way he says the word.

Lou shifts her weight and the stair beneath her foot lets out a loud creak. Oakley and Marie go silent. Lou takes a deep breath and walks up the last few stairs.

Oakley is gone from the doorway, and she sees only Marie.

“Linens on the chair,” says Marie. “Plenty of towels in the bathroom.”

“This is lovely,” says Lou. “Really, thank you so much.”

“Family is family,” says Marie, reaching out for Lou’s hand and squeezing it. “Coffee and real strudel in the morning, all right, then?”

“Sounds amazing,” says Lou.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Marie.”

Lou walks into the room, pine paneled with a vaulted ceiling, the one room at the very peak of the roof, its walls short and slanted to the center. She walks to the window on the far wall and gasps at what she sees: the valley, stretching out wide and broad before her, Bonn a tiny glowing smudge in the distance. She smells her palms and fingers, still spicy with the oils of basil and rosemary leaves she pressed and smoothed between her knuckles.

She unfurls the sheets from their stack on the chair, tucks them around the corners of the mattress, and draws the thick down comforter over them, tosses the pillows down. She turns out all the lights but one dim lamp and listens to the rush of water as Oakley showers in the next room. She slides out of her clothes and drifts off, feeling the calm and comfort of the rough-hewn house holding her tightly, seeping into her bones.

She wakes up with the touch of Oakley’s damp lips to her own, the slide of his warm hand along her hipbone, the fresh smell of soap. She laughs lightly and rolls to her back, wrapping her arms and legs around him, squeezing tightly.

“You’re so warm, Lou,” he says, reaching in to kiss her neck quickly, once, then twice.

“It’s these blankets,” she says, her voice sleepy.

“No,” he says, tracing a finger along her collarbone. “I mean you’re warmer. More relaxed.”

She smiles and shrugs. “I suppose. Vacation does that to a girl.”

“Well then I’ll just have to keep you on vacation,” he says, giggling and clamping her legs between his. “Stay with me a few more days, here.”

“Here, with Marie?”

He nods. “She has some little fix-it projects that need to be done. I thought I’d stay and help.”

“Ah.”

“Christmas here, on the mountain?” he asks.

“She doesn’t mind?”

He shakes his head. “She wants us to stay,” he says.

“I can’t see why not,” says Lou. “Although I won’t have presents for anyone.”

He smiles, licking her ear. She jumps and squeals. “You can give me my present now,” he says, reaching down and pushing her legs open gently, his palm on her inner thigh.

“Mmm,” she says, giving herself up to his warm lusty movements, the kiss, his lip shaking just slightly, the rush of his breath on her neck and shoulder. He holds her tightly, moves against her so slowly, the feeling of it like crackling torture. She pushes her hips up to his.

He stops, his eyes meeting hers in the dim light, his flesh warm on hers and his heart hammering in his chest. She leans up and pecks a kiss on the thin skin just below his collarbone, his pulsing heartbeat dancing on her lips.

“Lou…”

She looks up at him, smiling, rolling her hips softly up against his, lost and giddy in the warm ocean of his eyes, the keening heat of anticipation.

“Lou, I love you,” he says, and her own heart pounds beneath his hand, pressed to the soft flesh of her left breast.

She closes her eyes and he leans in to kiss her, his warm mouth covering hers, and pushes slowly into her, filling her, pressing on her hips, his hands tightening on her sides. She can barely speak from the slow, sliding pleasure, and she wants so much to speak.

“Love you,” she says, her lips thick and sleepy, her eyelids heavy. She pushes her hips up to his again, hearing his breath catch with pleasure in his throat. She reaches her hands up to the sides of his face, bringing him to her and kissing him again, his warm rhythm pressing her deep into the mattress.

He holds himself up on his arms for a moment, looking down at her.

“Always,” she says, the one word surprising her as it falls from her lips, and suddenly she knows it is true. She has loved him in one way or another from the moment she saw him, two stories below her at the ocean wall at Petra and Gio’s, calling up to her for his sandals. The heat then was brilliant, beaming down on them from the Italian sun, but this heat, here with him in bed, his hands moving gently over her body, is a slow kind of heat, like glowing coals or hot cocoa warming slowly but surely from the outside in.

She reaches up and grasps him to her, urgency in her movements against him, and his breath is harsh now, uneven, a sound in the back of his throat, and she looks up at him, his forehead pressed to hers, the shine of a tiny tear in the corner of his eye, a kind of wild, rollicking relief, joy pushing through his movements as he holds her to himself, makes love to her, athletic and unbounded.

Completely unguarded.

She comes undone, in a way, in his arms, as he quickens and gasps and comes, pulsing his heat into her, and her own slow waves of pleasure arching her back, pushing rings of delight through her flesh and to the tips of her toes. She loses track of time and space, part of the past and future and every place she walked today, flying out from the overlook into the bright white sky, breathing the fresh, cooling air, its edges tinged with mint. The warmth of the little greenhouse downstairs, the relief of traveling halfway across the world and up a mountain to find that somehow, thousands of miles from everything she has ever known, in the clinging warmth of Oakley’s silent embrace she is finally home.

Chapter 3: Stille Nacht

Lou grins and flips the golden potato cake over in the hot greasy pan. It snaps and fries quickly and the warm golden brown smell wafts up to her nose. Coffee and tea are brewing, and this is the last touch for her very first attempt at an English breakfast.

Finally the cake is crisp and brown on both sides. She lifts it gingerly to a paper towel and turns to Marie. “Does this look right, to you?” She holds her breath as Marie takes the towel, blows on the potato cake, and takes a small bite.

She smiles and nods. “Lovely,” she says, wiping her hands on a tea towel tucked into her skirt. “That’s just right.”

Lou quickly lays out the rest of the potato cakes in the grease and wipes her forehead.

“Don’t worry, it will be perfect,” says Marie.

Lou smiles. “I know, I just… It’s been a while since I cooked something this… detailed.” She lifts the last cakes from the pan to drain when they are cooked and looks at Marie with panic. “The eggs!”

“Oh! Dear, you’re right. It’s all right.” She pats Lou on the shoulder. “I’ll get the eggs. You go get Oakley.”

Lou sighs. “All right!” she says, happy to escape the heat of the kitchen for a moment. She smiles at the foot of the stairs, retying her apron and pushing her hair out of her face. She walks slowly up.

It’s been a slow kind of week. A lovely week. Something strange and timeless and protected about this house, as if she and Oakley and Marie are moving around in a little snow globe, the flakes drifting down with a little bit of glitter, a music box tune playing at just the right speed.

Nothing much has happened, and it’s been lovely. Meals and laughter, and boxes of old pictures. They found a tiny tree on the corner of the property, hacked it down with the wrong kind of saw and brought it inside, trimmed it with threaded popcorn and little paper cranes that Lou made from the gold and blue foil wrappers from the rest of the Dutch chocolates she brought for Oakley. He ate half the box in one night and then fed her the rest, a few at a time, always insisting that she close her eyes and guess the flavor. There is something strangely boyish in him still, something of a teasing eight year-old who pulls her pigtails to show that he likes her.

And she loves him. A surprising amount of love. It keeps her warm even in the coldest moments, the snow blowing around them on the tiny top-floor balcony, looking down on the valley, his arms around her. Pressed together, clouds of breath mingled, the light in his eyes so simple now.

Something is in the air; Lou can feel it. Maybe a bit of Christmas Spirit or a touch of magic. The smell of frying potatoes and sausage and toast and eggs. Old wood and books, candles, and the light evergreen of the Christmas tree drifting through all the rooms. This, and the strange nagging feeling that she is forgetting something. It has stalked her as she cooks, but she counted the pieces of the breakfast a dozen times, and there are no loose ends anywhere else: the bills at home are paid, the family phone calls placed last night, catching them all right after lunch at home. Nothing left to do but be here in the middle of nowhere with darling Oakley.

He sleeps wildly, arms flung wide, legs spread out as if he is frozen in the act of running or spearing an enemy on a Mycenaean vase. She lays down beside him, resting for a moment on the pillow, watching him sleep. His warm breath tickles her cheek.

She leans in, kissing the corner of his warm mouth. “Oakley.” He doesn’t move. “Darling dearest,” she says, poking him in the chest. “Oaaaaakley.”

His eyes flutter open for a moment and meet hers. He slings his arms around her, heavy, and pulls her in close. “Mmmfpf,” he says.

“Time to get up,” she says.

“No,” he says, and rolls over, grabbing the pillow tight to his chest.

 “Yes,” she whispers. She leans over him and talks directly into his ear. “It’s time for breakfast.”

His eyes pop open and he takes a deep breath. He smiles. “Ahh,” he says, grabbing her around the waist again. “Marie cooked again?”

“Nope,” she says, grinning. “It was me this time.”

He sits up, holding her to his chest. He sniffs her hair. “Smells like potatoes,” he says, laughing.

“Come on,” she says, suddenly nervous. “Let’s eat.” She stands up quickly and he frowns, then stands and pulls on long flannel pants and a t-shirt.

She walks down the stairs before he does, and sees that Marie has set the table, everything perfect, three places around the pine table.

Oakley stops before he sits down. “Lovely,” he says, grabbing Lou’s shoulders from behind and kissing her cheek. “Happy Christmas, Marie.”

“Happy Christmas, Oakley.”

Over breakfast her strange stomach butterflies dissipate a bit, and they fall into their normal daily rhythm: Marie tells the latest neighborhood gossip, Oakley asks a polite question here or there, and Lou laughs. She hasn’t laughed this much in the past year, but here it is easy. Oakley squeezes her hand under the table and pushes his plate slightly back.

“Fantastic,” he says, his hand splayed on his stomach. He looks at Marie. “Lovely.”

“Lou did the cooking,” she said. “And it was her idea.”

“What was?” he asks.

“The full breakfast,” says Marie.

Lou blushes.

Oakley smiles. “Well, it’s very delicious.”

“I thought it might be a nice memory,” says Lou.

He looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean… you know, Christmas morning, a breakfast like this…”

The doorbell rings. Marie gets up to answer it.

“Oh… I… It’s a lovely breakfast, Lou,” he says, making a strange face.

She frowns. “You didn’t like it.”

“No, no,” he says. “It was great. I… Lou, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, standing quickly, cursing the hot tears in her eyes, desperate to get up and away from his eyes on her.

“Lou, what…”

“I’ll be right back,” she says, as cheerfully as she can, and she runs out onto the back deck, the cold air slamming her lungs. She gasps and walks quickly around the side of the house, out of sight of the windows and doors.

She leans against the wooden slats of the house and pulls down her long sleeves, then brings her apron up to her face, crying into it, trying desperately to calm the swirl of emotion. Trying to figure out what is actually going on. Why she is crying in the first place. Finally she just sinks down on the stacked firewood, her face still covered, and gives herself over to the ridiculous tears. She will take a moment to figure out what’s happening, and then go back in and try to explain it to Oakley. If she even can. She wipes her tears and looks out over the valley, not snowy but a bit frosty, grey, and perfect. The sky is only bright white.

She hears his footsteps.

She looks up and sees him, and holds out her hand flat to stop him. She shakes her head.

He frowns and steps away and back into the house. She cries again, wishing suddenly that she had her own car or another place to be. Needing suddenly to be away from here. She buries her face in the apron, the only sound the wind in her ears and her own ugly, wracking, choking cough-sounds.

Suddenly she feels something heavy, and looks up to see Oakley spreading a thick fuzzy blanket around her shoulders.

“Why do you have to do this?” she says again, her own voice annoying her: high and petulant.

He laughs lightly. “I just want you to be warm, Lou.”

“No! That’s not what I mean!” She looks up at him, then frowns and scoots over to make room for him on the woodpile. He sits.

She looks at him. “You’re just so… sweet. I don’t… Oakley…” she starts crying again and falls over into his lap.

He runs his fingers through her hair slowly. “Lou, what’s the matter?”

She takes a breath.

“I loved the breakfast. It was delicious,” he says.

“But just delicious,” she says.

He laughs. “What else should a good breakfast be?”

She turns to the side, then lays on her back looking up at him. “Oakley… I know we don’t really talk a lot about things. About the way things are between us. And I usually like that. Why talk when there’s nothing that needs to be said, right?”

He nods. “Makes sense.”

“But I guess I need to talk it through.”

“Talk what through, Lou?” he says, a look like pain in his eyes. He looks up at the sky for a moment.

“It’s just… You’re so… You’re so good to me. You’re so sweet. Like, unbelievably sweet.”

He smiles.

“And you’re warm, and you’re quiet, and you’re so beautiful,” she says, reaching her hand up and touching his chin.

He laughs again, nervously, and blushes. “Lou, I don’t know—”

“And you just pour out your love on me,” she says.

He frowns. “And?”

“And I don’t have anything to give back.”

He looks confused. “Lou, what in the world do you mean?”

She folds her hands on her stomach. “This breakfast was supposed to be your… sort of…  Christmas present,” she says, ignoring the lump in her throat. A tear falls but she keeps talking. “I thought you might feel a little nostalgic for an English Christmas, so I thought I’d make a breakfast you would like.” She looks away, down the deck railing. Oakley traces the edge of her ear with his finger, then rests his hand on her head. “One that might remind you of being a kid, or waking up to see what presents you got, or something like that.”

“Lou, I did like it,” he says, an edge of exasperation to his voice.

She laughs then. “I’m probably being ridiculous,” she says. “I just wanted you to feel some nostalgia.”

She feels him sigh.

“I love the memories of Christmas. I guess I wanted you to feel some of those, too,” she says.

He turns her head so that she is facing him.

“But to you it’s just a delicious breakfast, and that’s fine, and I’m sorry for acting crazy. I just wish… I want there to be a way for me to show you how I feel about you. I don’t have anything. I just…”

He leans down and kisses her forehead.

“I just love you, you little shit,” she says, laughing up in his face. “I didn’t mean to, and now I do, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And I have no idea why you love me, or why you brought me here, or even why you like me, and so I guess I always wonder if you’re about to… stop.”

He looks out at the mountain edge for a moment, then back to her. “I guess I don’t say much, do I?” he says.

“Not really,” she says, hooking an arm around his leg and kissing his knee.

“To me it’s completely different,” he says. “I can’t believe you would even think these things.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, like… to me, Lou…” he looks up and sighs. “I just… you’re in my bones now, babe.”

She sits up, squinting her eyes at him. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s not even like love anymore,” he says. He pulls her head to his shoulder.

“What is it like?”

“It’s like air,” he says. “Every time I breathe in, it’s Lou. Every time I breathe out, it’s Lou.”

“It’s me?”

“It’s always you,” he says. “I don’t know how to explain it except you’re just always there. Even when you’re not. Like, after you left Italy, you…” he laughs and looks down, then looks at her. “You left your scarf,” he says.

She raises her eyebrows. “The scarf?”

He laughs. “Yes,” he says.

She giggles and blushes. “I was wondering what happened to it. God, what a hot night,” she says.

“It was.”

She smiles up at him.

“I thought about trying to send it to you, but it didn’t look like a terribly precious thing.”

“Not really. Not expensive, I mean.”

“But I liked it,” he says. “I liked having it. I kept it.”

“You did?”

“So I could remember that you were real, and not a dream. And when things were hard with my work at the villa, or when I was lonely, I just thought about you.” He shrugs. “When the work was bad, it was mostly just boring. And then I finished. And it was time to come here.”

She says nothing.

“Did you think about me?” he asks.

She nods. “A lot,” she says.

He smiles.

“So that’s really it?” she asks.

He nods.

“It’s really that simple for you?”

“Yes.”

“You love me because you love me, and you have my scarf, and that’s it?”

He shrugs. “Life is so complicated,” he says. He smooths her hair slowly. “This is just simple for some reason. I don’t see a reason to make it tricky.”

“Why did you come here?” she says.

“To Germany?”

“Yeah.”

“Well… It’s part of a sort of long story,” he says.

She raises her eyebrows. “Well, I’m here for a while.”

He smiles, grimacing slightly, and wraps his arms around her. “Can I tell you tonight?” he says.

“Uh… sure, I guess,” she says.

“It’s nothing bad,” he says, smiling down at her. “I just… let me tell you about it tonight.”

“All right.”

He hugs her. “Sit up and hug me,” he says.

She leans up and wraps her arms around him.

“You’re not angry with me?” he asks.

“Oakley, why would I be?”

“Because I’m not nostalgic for the tomato slices you made?”

She laughs. “I’m sorry, that was ridiculous.”

“Not that ridiculous,” he says. “What are you nostalgic for, Lou? What do you miss?”

She smiles. “It’s more a part of childhood than specifically Christmas day,” she says. “But I miss that little bit of excitement, that little pinch in your stomach, like on  your birthday or on Christmas morning, when you wake up and remember what day it is, and remember that there’s a whole pile of presents waiting for you under the tree. And all you have to do is just go down the hall and see them.”

He smiles. “That sounds amazing.”

“What are you nostalgic for?” she asks. “What are your golden memories?” She smiles at him, hooking her arm in his and huddling next to him.

He says nothing.

“Oakley?”

He turns to her, kissing the top of her head. “Lou, my best memories are you.”

It hits her suddenly, a punch in the gut. The fights with George, the scar on his shoulder, the empty apartment, the twisting anguish that was in him this summer. The photo frame with only her picture. It isn’t the result of a quick move or a temporary living space or an unsentimental young man rushing all over Europe. The realization sinks in, so steady and slow and slightly heavy, so full of gravitas that she knows it’s true: she is all he has. And then, even more miraculous: somehow, for him, that’s enough.

A gripping kind of warmth blooms in her chest, and she reaches out to him, pulling him to her and kissing him slowly, the blanket falling off of her shoulders and her worries fading in the same way: slipping off of her shoulders onto the ground, letting Oakley closer. Letting his arms grip her tightly, not trying to fight against it or talk herself out of it. Letting the warmth of his embrace draw her closer, bit by bit, to his lonely, lovely heart.

**

“Lou. Lou, wake up.”

She opens her eyes and looks out at the sloping green lawn of an unfamiliar house. “We’re there?”

He laughs. “Yes.” He leans over and pecks her cheek. He runs around the car and opens her door. She steps out and stretches, blinking slowly.

“So sleepy,” she says, smiling at him.

 “Well, it’s been a very Happy Christmas,” he says. “This afternoon was quite… merry.” He grins.

She elbows him. “I’m not tired just because of that,” she says. “Although you do wear me out a little.” She laughs.

He takes her hand and walks her across the lawn to a small group of people clumped by the side door of the wide wooden house.

This is Mr. Baumann‘s house, Marie’s neighbor who stopped by this morning to invite them all for drinks and caroling. Marie begged off, saying she was too tired, but Lou thought she would like to go, and Oakley shrugged and smiled and said he liked some carols sometimes, and so they bundled into the car and drove slowly and smoothly down the chill grey roads until they turned off to a gravel path, and by then Lou was fast asleep, although it wasn’t even sundown yet.

“Fröhliche Weihnachten!” shouts Mr. Baumann and Oakley claps his hand, speaking in short German phrases until Mr. Baumann and his wife laugh and speak back in English.

“I’m sorry,” says Lou. “I studied some German phrases, but I didn’t have enough warning to learn anything else.”

“It’s quite all right,” says Mr. Baumann. “We’re just glad you’re here.” He ushers them inside and she grabs a thick mug of steaming chocolate and a slice of stollen with dried apricots and marzipan run through it. Oakley pours steaming spiced glühwein from a carafe.

“Sure you don’t want any, Lou?”

“Yeah. I think I would get even sleepier,” she says. “I want to hear the carols.”

They walk back outside and up the side of the hill to the small nativity set that the Baumanns have set up. The figures are small, maybe a foot and a half tall, but intricately carved and painted in bright yellows and blues.

“This is beautiful,” says Lou.

Oakley reaches out and takes her arm.

“Where did they get these, I wonder?”

“Marie says he makes them all,” says Oakley. “Or, that he carves wood as a hobby. So I assume he made them.”

“Just gorgeous,” she says, kneeling down to look at the tender curves of the mother and child. She looks up at Oakley. “Can you imagine spending so much time on something that only gets brought out once a year?”

He smiles. “It makes him happy, probably,” he says. “He knows his calling.”

“I guess so.”

“I’m almost jealous.”

“You’ll figure yours out, too,” she says.

“Say it to me again, Lou.”

“Say what? That you’ll find your path? You will. I know you will.”

“No, not that.” He turns her to face him. “Tell me you love me.”

She smiles. “You old sap. I love you.” She leans in and gives him a quick kiss.

He looks at her, worry across his face. He bites his lip. “Walk with me, Lou.”

“Okay…” she says.

He steps across the back of the house slowly.

“It something wrong?”

“No,” he says. He grips her hand and pulls her to a stack of stones overlooking the whole sloping lawn, the little huddle of cars, the mountains around and one open V of the valley stretching out in front of them. The sun is setting, the sky apricot and purple.

He takes a sip of his wine.

“It’s perfect,” she says, looking out at the horizon.

“Not quite,” he says.

“No?”

“No, I owe you a story.”

“Oh, yes,” she says, leaning her head on his shoulder. “The story of why we’re here.”

“Well, first I spent the summer at the villa.”

“Yes.” She squeezes him. “I kept all the pictures.”

“You did?”

She reaches into her coat pocket and pulls them out. “Ta da!”

He smiles. “Oh, the grape arbor,” he says, flipping through the pictures. “I was so proud of that. And the rock wall, and the roof! That damned roof.”

They sit in silence for a moment.

“Then what?”

“Well, then I came across that listing of Marie.”

“Did you look for her?”

“I sort of did. I had been curious about her for a couple of years. I remembered her, and how she just disappeared completely.”

“Hmm.”

“I guess I was trying to connect back to something… familyish. I don’t know. So. Anyway, I found her, and there’s a great medical school in Bonn,” he says.

“Oh, you decided to go? Have you applied?”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to tell you.” He stops.

“Oakley… you have to keep talking.” She pinches him. “You’re so quiet sometimes.”

“I don’t want you to be disappointed,” he says.

“Disappointed in what?”

“I’ve found something else,” he says.

“You’re not in a cult, are you?” she asks, laughing.

“No, no. Nothing like that.” He breathes quickly.

“Oakley, what is it? Why are you nervous?”

“It’s… well… I just need to tell the whole thing. Okay?”

“Sure, yes. Of course.”

“Well, I came out here to learn some German and meet Marie again, and see about applying to Universität Bonn, and maybe get a job. You know, find a place to live and all that.”

“Right.”

“And I got here, and one day, maybe a week or two in, when I just got my things moved into the flat, I was walking around the campus, and I met some people.  A group was advertising. Or really, recruiting.”

“Oh, God, you are in a cult…”

“Shh,” he says, smiling. “Come on, Lou. Let me say it.”

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

“It’s a thing sort of like the Peace Corps,” he says. “But it’s based here. Right in Bonn.”

“Hmm.”

“And they’ll take me, even though I’m so old,” he says, leaning into her arm.

“Oh.”

He says nothing.

“Where, Oakley?”

He takes a deep breath. “Lou, I’m going to Ecuador.”

“Ecuador!?!”

He nods.

“I..” She holds her arms tightly around herself for a moment. “For how long?”

“For a year,” he says.

“Whooo.” She holds onto his arm, more tears, again. So much ridiculous crying today, and she is not much for crying in general. She sniffs and reaches up to wipe her eyes. “This is it, then?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, this Christmas. This is it. Then I get back on the plane, and you get on a plane, and it’s just postcards and good memories.”

“What? I.. No! Oh, God, Lou. I’ve cocked this all up, haven’t I…”

“No, I think it’s a good plan,” she says. “I really do. I mean, you always wanted something worthwhile to do, right? And some kind of thing like this? It sounds… good.”

“God,” he says, shaking his head. He pulls her to her feet and walks her down the path to the edge of the lawn. He leans on the stone pillar by the fence. “Lou, you asked me today why I loved you.”

She nods, wiping tears away and looking to the side.

“When I met you, I was upside down,” he says. “I didn’t think I could do anything.”

She shrugs. “You can, though.”

“I know,” he says, smiling and holding her arms. “I know that, now. I knew it then. I learned it from you, Lou. In just those few days together, I… I can’t even explain it. Nobody ever gave a shit about me the way you do. Never. Ever.”

“Aww.” She smiles.

“It’s just that little thing,” he says. “You believe that I can do something with my life, and so I believe it, too.”

“Another simple thing,” she says.

“Exactly. And so I’ll be going there, to a little village near Quilotoa.” He moves his hands excitedly. “To really do something.” He smiles. “There’s a little group of people there who are starting a school. Normally, they only teach girls in this little village until they are about nine or ten.”

“Hmm.”

“So I’m going to go, and teach them from eleven to sixteen. Biology, math, and literature. A little chemistry.”

She smiles.

“And football.”

She laughs. “Oakley, that’s… wonderful.”

“You’re not disappointed? That I’m not going to be a doctor?”

“That doesn’t matter at all,” she says. “The most important thing is that you do what you are meant to do.” She looks down. “But I will miss you.”

“We’ll be poor, for a year or two,” he says.

“What do you mean, ‘we’?”

He looks at her, a burning intensity in his eyes. He grips her hands, hard. “Lou, I have to put all my cards on the table,” he says.

“Okay…”

“I love you. I don’t want to be apart from you.”

“Well, me neither, but…”

“Come with me,” he says. “I know you have a job lined up, but… think of the adventure? Maybe? I… They need to make small-scale agriculture more efficient, so they can do without the girls while they’re at school. It’s all a delicate balance. They have so much knowledge and practice already, but they need to streamline it just a bit. Bring in some new ideas, just here and there.”

 “Hmm.”

“Backyard gardens, small-scale farms, farmer’s markets, all of that. They need you,” he says.

“I…”

“I need you.”

From the side of the house, the sound of singing starts.

He squeezes her hand, turns to walk. “Don’t decide right now, then.” he says. “Just think about it.”

She nods. The old hanging back, the wondering, the unsureness. And that nagging feeling of forgetting something. Again. But what?

Beside a crackling barrel of fire, Mrs. Baumann bends and lights a dozen candles in big glass vases.  The chill wind blows and then, the Christmas Magic again: in the first lines of “Stille Nacht,” the simple melody wrapping around her like a hug, the sky above grows soft and heavy and down drift a few flakes. They skip on Lou’s nose and cheeks and melt there, almost stinging. She looks up at Oakley and sees the tiny white flecks sticking in the ends of his blond curls.

“Oakley,” she says, pulling him to the side, leaning back against a great wide tree that spreads its branches out. Snowflakes filter through the fingers of the branches.

“I’ll go,” she says.

He pulls her close, his arms wrapped around her waist. “Really?” A wide, wide smile.

 “Yes,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

 He heaves a great, shuddering breath.

“What, Oakley?”

“Well, there’s one more thing,” he says, squeezing her shoulders.

She tilts her head. “What?”

“We have to be…” He shoves his hands in his pockets, then brings them out again and holds her hand in his. She looks up at him, his face ringed in snowflake-curls.

“Have to be what?”

She feels him push the warm circle of metal on her finger and her breath catches in her throat for a moment; her heart stops, the whole world stops, and the sound of the carolers only a few paces off seems so tiny and far away.

She looks down, a starburst of shining white gold, a simple band, worn with a thousand tiny, fine scratches to a burnished glow. A glittering faceted stone set in the center. An old-fashioned, octagonal cut.

“We have to be husband and wife to go together to the same village,” he says, his voice low, buried in her hair. “I’d do it anyway, Lou. I’d marry you today. I’m not asking because of this. Even if you say you don’t want to go with me.” She feels his hand shaking as he holds hers. “I’ll wait for you, if you’ll wait for me. I’ll do anything.” He swallows. “All my cards are on the table.”

She looks at the ring. “It’s beautiful,” she says.

“It was Marie’s,” he says. “Her grandmother’s actually.”

“What?! Oakley, I can’t take something like that. You have to… give it back to her.”

“She wouldn’t take it if I did,” he says.

“No?”

“She gave it to me the day she met you,” he says.

She looks down, tears on the edge of her eyes. “Why?”

“You’re something special,” he says. “She said she knew. And Marie has an instinct for love. Two long and happy marriages.”

Lou gulps. “She left everything behind to follow her love, didn’t she?”

He nods.

“Yes,” she says.

“Yes to what, Lou?”

“I… I don’t know exactly,” she says. “But the answer isn’t no. It’s yes. I’m not sure the details, Oakley.”

He holds her hands.

“Can that be enough, for tonight? Just a yes, and let’s figure the rest out later? But I’m… I’m in,” she says. “You played your hand and I’m in, too. But let’s think, or let me think, or…”

“You’re with me,” he says. “That’s all I really want. Just be with me. Stay with me.”

She opens her mouth to say more, and be bends to kiss her, but the world starts to spin, her mind in quickening circles. The ground seems to tilt to the side and she leans suddenly. He grips her hand.

“Lou, are you all right?”

She leans awkwardly to the ground. “I… I’m not sure,” she says. “I don’t know. I just feel a little dizzy.” The snowflakes thicken and he looks up at the sky.

“Might be the shift in altitude,” he says. “Are you hungry?”

“Not really. But I guess I am worn out.”

“Come back home, then,” he says. “If we start now we can get back before the snow gets too heavy.”

She nods and stands, leaning on his arm. They walk and say their quick goodbyes to Mr. Baumann and his wife, and then she walks with Oakley across the silent, blank lawn to the car, her head full of thoughts, her heart as full as Mary’s, pondering Gabriel’s strange words. She holds it all in her heart, the loose ends of life on three different continents, life in different worlds, Oakley’s own heart and hers swaddled, warm and firm, held close in that one word: Yes.

Chapter 4: Departures

The streets of Bonn are quiet and lit by the bluish glow of very early morning. Lou walks quickly, her hands in her pockets, with no design about where she is going. She imagines that she will make a large circle, or, given the order of these tight little streets, more likely a large, large square, even on all sides, large enough to settle her thoughts. Large enough to make up her mind.

She is thinking again, finally, the sleepy haze of Marie’s house finally lifted. She is thinking too much, maybe. Her mind in crazy circles like the night she fell to the ground at the Baumanns’ house, and Oakley teased her gently about having too much wine, but she had none.

That night in the dark of Christmas night she woke up in Oakley’s arms, his breath and beating heart rushing into her, his skin on her skin. Before, their bodies had reached across some kind of great divide to give each other pleasure, to touch warmth here and there, a rush of feeling and beating hearts and a glorious rhythm to dive into and get lost inside. But then, in the evergreen darkness Lou felt it, palpably: the divide was gone. His skin on hers was immediate, the merging of their bodies lasting beyond the minutes of coupling and tying her to him even when he rolled to the side, huffing and heaving a sigh in his sleep, smacking his soft, pink lips for a moment.

She leaned up on her elbow and looked at him, his face angelic in sleep. She curled closer to him, drawing her knees up to her chest, and pressed her palm flat over his heart, feeling its steady beat through his skin.

He turned to her, opened his eyes and looked at her through sleep-haze, held both his arms around her, tightly, and rolled suddenly on top of her, the weight of him pinning her deliciously to the soft bed beneath, and he kissed her once, twice, a dozen times, saying “I love you” and “Mmm” and she looked squarely into his blue, blue eyes and said, “I can’t wait to be your wife” and he slid his hands beneath her shoulder blades and pressed her chest to his, leaned in and brushed his lips over the sloping inches of her chest, gooseflesh raising where he touched, her hips bucking up into his involuntarily.

He laced his fingers in hers, brought her hand to his lips and kissed the gleaming ring. “You feel okay?” he asked softly and she nodded, all traces of dizziness and strangeness drained from her and they made love then, so slowly, a strange and shaky thing with the space between them closed to nothing, two halves sewn up.

She held back for just a moment, keeping back her breath at his tender touch, the press of his warm hand pushing into her, resisting the current that would tip her over that waterfall’s edge, knowing that there was no climbing back up to the top again after she fell; she would never have this view again – the world, the valley, the trees, the stars, and Oakley’s heart, undimmed by the thousand tiny ways that she would fail him in their life together. Knowing that his love might  never again be as pure as it was right then, in that moment. But he curled into her, his mouth on hers, and she felt the flex of his back beneath her calf, drawn up and around him, and Oakley, so usually quiet in the midst of the soft hush of sex, leaned into her ear and said “Come for me, love,” without even whispering, the deep timbre of his voice heavy with lust and command, a new authority there. And so she did, letting herself fall, feeling the pounding release of pleasure beneath his steady hand: slow, deep, almost painful, and she clung to him, his scent filling her breath, his skin and all of him soaking in through her pores, the feel and smell and sound of him a blinding light of pleasure, overwriting any memory of a former lover. To her now he was the only man, his breath the only breath, his perfect, beautiful form the only body in the world, joined with hers.

They fell asleep still joined together, married, almost, in their sleep, and when they awoke the valley was covered in a layer of crystalline white snow, drifts of it clinging to the hills and dips in Marie’s sloping yard, a perfect covering on the rails of her porch and the slats of the roof.

Marie smiled at them over breakfast, her eyes twinkling as she drank her coffee, seeing the ring on Lou’s finger, and though the two women said very little to one another that morning, there was an understanding there, a contract, a gentle, loving pressure: Be good to him, Lou. And she would, she would.

After lunch, they packed the car and gave long, gentle hugs to Marie, pressing kisses to her thin, wrinkled cheek, and drove back down to the curving roads to Bonn, and Oakley talked a bit of the two weeks ahead, of the preparation for Ecuador, the offices, the papers, the bags and boxes, but Lou only half listened, the heaviness of fatigue descending over her again, and then they arrived back to Oakley’s rented rooms.

He walked through them first, and finding everything right, lit a fire and adjusted the heater to drive the chill from the old bricks, and they sat together, quiet, under a blanket on the soft leather couch, and built the castles of their future together in images and words, the detail of Oakley’s vision of the decades ahead astonishing her, but always coming back to the two of them, the beginning of their shared life on the high Andes, the thin air cleansing what was left of the shadows of their old lives and walking forward together to the cracking beat of the cajón.

The intervening weeks, two of them, stretched out in pleasant sunshine, the snow melting slightly and hardening to a crunchy crust when she walked through it and over it, to and from the offices of the group traveling to Ecuador, loosely affiliated with the Red Cross, and updating her passport and calling home a dozen times to extend the lease on her storage unit, resign from her job, and tell her parents the news of her departure for a new horizon. She held back from telling them about her engagement, thinking perhaps the news of their elopement might strike them more kindly after meeting Oakley in person, when they could see his steady love, his quiet charm and regard. She didn’t tell Petra either, over the crackling connection to Greece, only that she was going on a mission trip with him, and Petra laughed warmly. Lou wished she could borrow some of Petra’s sureness about the future, but in the end Lou bore up under the uncertainty and believed a little more in Always and Forever with every day that she and Oakley passed in practical concerns in the little rented rooms.

And then this morning, Oakley left early to be first in line in some government office or another, transferring his work permit or his official residency or some such thing she only half understood, and she stood at the kitchen window sipping coffee and decided it was time to try to pack for Ecuador, to fit her life into an even smaller suitcase, the regulations quite specific.

She dragged her giant suitcase up to the bed, zipping it open and tipping its contents on the quilted bedspread, and then her heart stopped again for the second time in two weeks, as she saw within the pile of clothes, stuck to the inner wall of the suitcase and then sliding out like a fish: the tiny, metallic packet of pills, the first ten in the ring pushed out and swallowed, and the other eighteen sitting in a terrible row, perfect and white like teeth, and suddenly she knew what it was that she had been forgetting all this time, and she sat down on the bed with the weight of it.

So usually pragmatic; so typically practical. It was quite unlike her to forget a thing like this, and whether it was jet lag or disorientation or a trick played across the valley between her conscious and unconscious mind, the pills sat still and shining on the bed, a neat, clean, horrifying testament to everything she had let slide, all her judgment folded and stuck inside her suitcase, not brought out once for the whole trip.

The dizzy spells. The swirl of nausea just yesterday which she had waved away as too much buttery pastry with her coffee, and the reality of what was true – what was most likely true – settled heavily on her and she had pushed the silver packet of pills deep into the pile of sweaters and jeans and pulled on her coat and just started walking, her feet slapping down on the sidewalks, now mostly cleared of snow, and tried to calm her thoughts, tried even to just catalog her thoughts, but now she finds it quite difficult to think in a straight line, and indeed she feels a bit of that now-familiar dizziness set in, so she ducks into a café half in between the Palais Schaumburg and the botanical gardens. She orders a tea and an orange juice and as full a breakfast as she can imagine eating, hoping to get something steady in her stomach, enough to get back home. It was foolish to walk out so hastily like this, but there was nowhere else to go. Her hands shake from caffeine and fear and hunger, and when the plate arrives she takes a deep breath and sticks her fork into a potato.

“Lou.”

She looks up. Oakley, a manila envelope under his arm, his face confused.

“What are you doing all the way up here?” he asks.   

“I… uh… I went for a walk,” she says.

He laughs. “Quite a walk.”

She pushes the opposite chair out with the toe of her boot and he sits down. “Got everything in order,” he says, reaching across the table for her hand. “All set to go, tickets and everything set for Berlin.” He smiles at her. “I’m looking forward to our posh hotel,” he says, grinning like a child. He frowns. “I still need to call and have the gas shut off,” he says.

“Oakley…”

“It was a great idea to stay in Berlin the night before our flight,” he says. “It will be so much easier.”

She looks at him, pleading.

“What, Lou? What is it?”

“I’ll call the gas company,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can muddle through that conversation with the German that I know.” She smiles, briefly, then looks down. “Listen…”

He looks at her.

“Oakley, I want you to go to Berlin yourself.”

“What?” She hears a sharp intake of breath.

“I just… I haven’t had much time to myself lately, and I just… So much has happened, and it’s good stuff, but I just need to tie up some loose ends, and….”

“Lou, I’m not letting you out of my sight,” he says lightly. A touch of fear, though, is in his voice.

“It’s nothing bad,” she says. “I just have some phone calls to make, and I can do the thing with the gas company, and I can stay and make sure the landlord gets the keys back.”

He looks at her, squinting, trying to read her face for any clue. “Lou, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she says, too quickly. She takes a deep breath. “I just need to be sure.”

“Sure of wh—” He takes a deep breath and looks at her, something like irritation in his eyes. He looks suddenly at his watch. “I have an appointment in twelve minutes,” he says.

She folds her arms.

“I have to go,” he says. “I have to do this.”

“Of course, Oakley.”

He looks at her. “I’ll see you tonight?”

She nods and reaches her hand out to him. “Of course, Oakley. I’ll be there.”

He squeezes her hand briefly and drops it, then turns and walks away, out the door of the café and down the street, not looking back.

* *

She is asleep, again, when he arrives back home. It was afternoon when she drifted off so all the windowshades are still open and the lights are off; she wakes up when he clicks on the kitchen light and she sees him silhouetted against the yellowish glare. He lowers the blinds with a click.

“Oakley.”

He turns on the light beside the couch and looks at her, saying nothing.

“How did everything go today?” she asks, stretching her arms over her head and yawning.

“Fine.”

She takes a deep breath. “Look, I know you’re mad, and I understand why.”

He smiles without mirth and looks at her. “I’m not mad, Lou.”

“I just… I wish I could explain it, but I can’t right now.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he says.

It stings. She jerks her head back, just a touch. “What do you mean?” she says, not wanting to hear the answer. She already knows that he is right.

He takes a deep breath, sits down on the chair beside her, and folds his hands. He looks at her. “I’ve laid all my cards down on the table, Lou,” he says. “I have an open hand.”

She nods.

“There’s nothing more that I can say. If you want it, you have my whole life. Everything I am and everything I ever will be. It might not amount to much, but it’s all yours. And if that’s not enough, if you’re still not sure, then…”

“Shh,” she says, leaping up and straddling him in the chair, holding his face in her hands. “It’s not that at all, Oakley,” she says. “Not at all.”

“Then what is it?” His voice quiet. Small.

He leans his head back on the chair and looks up at her, his eyes tired.

“I just… It’s a big deal, all the things that have happened between us. We’ve… pressed a whole lot of life into just a few weeks.”

He presses his mouth together, nods slightly.

“I feel a bit like the world is spinning too fast,” she says. “Or at least, very fast. I just need to pause, just a brief little pause, and then I’ll be ready to jump.”

He runs his hands up her arms. “I guess that makes sense,” he says. “In some way.” He grins.

“What?”

“I guess I just jump without thinking,” he says. “Without looking to see how deep the pool is.”

“The pool is perfect, Oakley,” she says. “My feelings are just slow. They take a minute to catch up. That’s all.”

He draws both of his long arms around her and pulls her to his chest, the soft of his sweater on her cheek. He kisses the top of her head. “Promise you’ll meet me there,” he says.

“Of course.”

“Say it.”

“I’ll meet you in Berlin, Oakley,” she says. “And we’ll fly back to New York together, and we’ll get married in the little courtroom, and then we’ll go have some giant, floppy pieces of pizza and get on our plane to Ecuador,” she says. She traces the cable-knit patterns on his sweater. “In forty-eight hours I’ll be your wife.”

He tightens his arms around her. “I feel like you already are,” he says, nuzzling his nose into her hair and kissing her head again.

“You’re so good to me,” she says, looking up at him for just a moment, but the heat in his eyes blazes and she looks away. The question still hangs in the air, the oldest question: Why? But she doesn’t ask it. Not tonight.

He looks into her eyes again, holds her head so that she can’t look away, so that she has to look at him. He moves quickly, turning his body around and picking her up in his arms. She squeals, and he moves silently to the bedroom, carrying her with long strides, pausing to turn up the heater in the corner of the room, and laying her gently on the bed. He presses his mouth to hers, desperate. Seeking.

She reaches up and brushes his cheeks with her hands, and sees tears in his eyes. She pushes them in  wet arcs across his cheeks. “Oakley…”

He grips her arms. “If this is it, Lou, if this is our last night together, I…”

“Stop it,” she says. “It isn’t. I promise.”

He shakes his head. “You can’t… It isn’t… I have to say this,” he says. “I have to tell you these things.” He kisses her again, the sob sticking in her throat. She tries to speak, but she can’t, his heated intensity pounding in her ears, his words holding her to the bed. “You made my life so much better,” he says, circling her wrists gently with his hands, the tears running freely now down his face. “I’m completely different now. I’m the real me, Lou. Louise.” He sighs, resting his head on her chest. “Lou. Beautiful Lou.”

She tries to turn away but he catches her chin in his hand, turns her face back to him.

“I can’t let you… I can’t say goodbye to you even for a day without telling you.”

“Telling me what?” she asks, forcing herself to smile.

“You’re all the love I ever need,” he says. “Just you and me. The two of us. That’s it. And if this is the last of it, then…”

She shakes her head, biting her lip to keep it from trembling.

“Then at least I had it once,” he says. “I know it was real. Is real. And it will carry me through whatever happens next. That real love, Lou. It has a glow like fire.”

She looks up at him then, Oakley who hardly ever talks, and her eyes study him in wonder as he speaks these words of love to her; and she who can never stop thinking? She who normally cannot stop talking? Her words stick, they won’t come out past her lips. She can only watch him struggling, his wild words rolling up and down, his love pouring out on her, the words she yearned to hear with the tiny corner of her heart still holding back from him. He spreads it over her, words that she will never forget, although they come to her in little snippets now as she tries to hold back her tears. Her beauty, her loyalty, her love, her smile. He praises her with a thousand words she doesn’t deserve, and she can only look at him.

And finally his words run out, and he lays back beside her on the bed, his arm to his forehead, his breath slow and even, and she tries again to speak, but her body speaks for her then and she presses her knees into his sides, sitting on top of him, pulls his sweater and shirt off over his head, pushes her own clothes and his pants to the floor, leans in and kisses him, trying to send her message of love without words to his own lips.

It is urgent, heavy. She kisses him slowly, a word of thanks and love coming to her lips but never spilling out as she kisses down his ribs, across his tight, muscled stomach, and lower, the tickle of the light trail of hair on his soft, pale belly tickling her cheek.

He gasps, his arms up over his head, and she reaches up, puts his hands on her waist, and he slides them down where her hips bloom out, wide and warm, and she bends low again, suddenly taking him into her mouth and he makes a choking sound, then a light moan.

He calls her name, working his fingers into her hair, his hips raising up toward her, and she has him then, his morose, maudlin thoughts flying away from his lips and just her name, whispered over and over as she presses the flat of her tongue against him, grips his narrow hips with her two hands, moving slow at first, then faster.

And then he grips her arms, pulling her up toward him. She closes the back of her throat on the tip of him, smiling as she swirls her tongue again and he moans; his fingers dig into her arm.

“Lou. Lou. Come up. Lou.” And he pulls her forcefully to him, her eyes meeting his, and she slides down on him, her hands on his chest, the steady rhythm of her hips speaking for her, and she makes love to him, watching as his eyes close slowly from the pleasure of her movement, his lips parted, the breath rushing through. His arms loosen, his fingers and palms smoothing slowly over her arms, up her waist and curling around her breasts, pressing over her rosy nipples, dark and warm.

Loving him like this sets her free, cuts the tie to the old, worrisome Lou, and she presses on toward his pleasure, a look on his face like pain as she digs in, rests her forehead on his collarbone and speeds, gasps from her throat and his and then, “Oh, Lou!” He holds her hips tight in his hands and pushes up off the bed and into her, deep, pounding, rushing pleasure deep inside her. He pushes again and she rides the wave of his release, his slow warm ease as he pulls her to him, kissing her neck, the pads of his fingers pressing into her flesh. She closes her eyes, memorizing this moment: the look of him, the feeling of the breaking wave of pleasure. The white plaster walls in the dim, dim light, the smell of old wood and plaster, the scent of him, the warmth of shared heat, her legs twined in his.

She falls to the side, panting, and he lays still and silent, his eyes still closed. She sees him smile, and he opens his eyes and looks into hers deeply, all words of if this is the last time gone from his lips and only an edge of worry still in the line between his eyes.

They fall asleep together naked, his arm across her, his hand pressed warm to her belly, and she wakes nervously, feeling the motion of his fingers, pressing in his sleep around her navel, having dreamt of a huge, full belly and a kicking baby and of being stuck up on a cloud above him, looking down on Oakley in Ecuador, kicking a soccer ball across a dusty field with a gaggle of laughing little girls, passing the ball to one, who lifts up her heavy black skirt to kick fiercely and make the goal. In her dream she coughs and tries to fill her lungs with air, tries to call out to him but he runs up and down the field, his feet slapping against the dusty earth, the laughter of the children drowning out her shouts of love, a chill wind pushing her backwards and farther away from him until she is too high up to breathe at all and he is as tiny as the head of a pin.

She lifts his arm off of her and rolls slowly out of bed, moving smoothly and slowly so as not to wake him. She tiptoes to the front room where their bags sit, upright and ready for him to leave in the morning, and hers ready for the following day. She takes a deep breath, sure now of what she must do but protesting against it with her heart and her body. But her mind wins again, as it always does in the end, and she reaches down, grasping at the ring, trying to pull it off. The blue velvet box sits on the mantle and she opens it, looks down again at the ring, held tight to her knuckle.

“Damn it,” she says, pulling again, working the edges of her fingernails under the white gold band, but it seems to grip in even tighter. She laughs, the irony of this late-night scrambling hitting her with full force. Her hands are swollen already, her fingers incrementally larger than they were on Christmas night when he slid the ring easily on her finger, and now it won’t come off, no matter how she pulls.

After three more tries she gives up, sinks naked into a chair and cries silently, her hands over her eyes, and then she sits up and looks down at the blue and green silk bracelet, woven for her by Oakley in Italy, a sign of his innocent love, the very beginnings of his love, and she runs her finger under it slowly, loosening it, working up and over the tightest part of her hand and then off: it falls lightly into her palm. It is strange to have it off of her; it has been there since the night in the cave when he bent low over her, kissing the knot, loving her for her promises, but now that love seems much less sure. She will release him from his promise, in whatever way she can.

She unzips his backpack and slides the bracelet into his small leather case, between the plane tickets and the laminated passport, his young face – college? Even earlier? – smiling at the camera, an open book. Oakley, always an open book. She closes the case.

She dashes the tears quickly away and zips the bag back up. She will talk to him, explain it all tomorrow, once she knows for sure. And if he still wants her then, well… then they will deal with what comes next.

She walks silently back to the bedroom and curls into the warm space in front of Oakley, pressing her tears as silently as possible out of her eyes, her cries sticking and shaking her shoulders just barely. In his sleep, Oakley tightens his arm around her and his words echo in her ears: Just you and me. The two of us. That’s it.

She lies awake in his arms until dawn, not wanting to miss a moment of him, of that feeling of simple sureness in his touch. Maybe the last night like this. Maybe, in spite of her protestations, in spite of his words and her love, maybe in spite of it all this is it. But maybe not. She clings to hope, drifting to sleep finally at the sun breaks out over the horizon and pushes pale light into the room.

She doesn’t feel him let go, doesn’t hear him leave. She wakes up, the room warm and bright, and regrets, suddenly, her impulsive return of the bracelet. She’ll take it back, not risking the stab to his heart that such a gesture might make, and she’ll still explain it all, somehow make sense of all this with her words, with him, tomorrow morning. She dashes out to the front room to pull the bracelet from his bag and slip it back on her wrist, but what she thought was the sound of him showering was just the knock of water in the pipes to the upstairs neighbor’s flat. Oakley’s bags are gone, and so is he; the only thing he has left behind sits coiled and pale and heartbreaking in the middle of the breakfast table: the bracelet, its frayed edges curling around and around in a spiral. No note, no words. No way of knowing what it did to him to see it tucked inside his passport case. No way of knowing anything.

She curses herself, her stupidity, her silence, her holding back.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said last night, and he was right. She was always afraid, in spite of her pronouncements of courage, her declarations of readiness, her willingness to jump off the cliff with him, holding his hand. Her love was weak and cold and his was warm and strong, and maybe now she has pushed it past the point it can survive. Stupid, stupid heart.

She sits down suddenly, a wave of nausea hitting her, but this time her mind doesn’t spin. Instead, it sits, flat and dull, unmoving, ticking over her to-do list like the steady, droning rhythm of an old clock. She knows exactly what dull and lonely things that she must do today, and in what order, and in what silence.

And so, she stands up to do them.

Chapter 5: Arrivals

Summary:

A love letter

“Miss, do you understand what I’m saying?”

Lou nods vacantly, staring at the wallpaper of the doctor’s office.

The doctor places her hand briefly on her shoulder. “Are you feeling all right?”

Lou nods.

“It’s good news. Positive. You’ll be a mother,” says the doctor. “You’re lucky.”

“Mmm hmm,” says Lou, and she stands up and walks out, straight to the cold sun of the sidewalk. Good news.

And it does seem like good news. Sort of.

Lou isn’t sorry to hear it. And she certainly isn’t surprised. She's late, puking constantly, and random dizzy spells; she would have to be a fool to be surprised. But oh, she is a fool.

She laughs to herself and walks down the sidewalk, looking for another place to eat. It seems she has to eat every hour now. She feels infirm. It’s annoying.

But more than that, it worries her. What kind of change does this mean, and what will it mean to Oakley? Truthfully, he might be happy to hear the news. He might be happier than she is, even. Or he might be horrified, or shrink away, or he might even be angry. She wants to sit and daydream about a future life for them, a sort of fuzzy, faint idea of a sunny room with a crib and Oakley lifting some tiny giggling baby high in the air, but it all seems so far away.

She was glad that she sent him away, to do this day on her own, but now she is much less sure. It would be nice to have him with her right now, to have another set of eyes and ears, and arms to lean on.

She will have to tell him. But how? God, how. And when.

She sits at a corner table, orders, and pulls her notebook from her purse. She starts scribbling.

Oakley, I want to leave it up to you. If you still love me, then stay with me. If you don’t, then leave. Now. We’ll make it somehow on our own.

Too harsh. That won’t do.

I don’t want to ruin your plans and your dreams, Oakley. You need to do the things you need to do. I have had my chance. I’m done with school, and I can work anywhere, and any time, really. I can make things work out for me, but you need Ecuador, you need something you will get there. You need your own life. You need it more than you need me.

That might be closer to the truth. But she can see him already, shaking his head, refusing.

I don’t love you, Oakley. I don’t want to hold you back. I like you a lot but there’s someone better out there for you, and you can meet her later, when you are done traveling. When you’ve had a chance to live already. Then you can come back to her, and—

Lies. All lies. She loves him like a punch in the gut, doubled over, ill, completely ruined for anyone else. Even just the past eighteen hours, being without him, she feels like her arm or her leg is missing. She can’t do this for any amount of time. No longer. No longer.

She eats only the fruit salad, the hamburger seeming suddenly horrific and repulsive, although it was all she wanted twenty minutes ago when she ordered it. She pays her check and rushes out, sure now that she is done with this city, and it is time to go to Berlin and face whatever awaits her.

She drifts off a bit on the bus, and in the haze her brain starts to tell her tales, starts to make a rosy glowing future, a dream where Oakley is happy with the news, and she finds her courage and stays with him, and they go to New York or England or Ecuador and the point is that they are together, but that seems so much to ask of a young man. Younger than she, though only by a few years. Would a man Oakley’s age even want a child?

She needs something. Wants something. And then when the bus stops on the corner by Oakley’s apartment she knows what it is: she wants him. She would tell him about her dilemma, and lean on his arm, and he would run his fingers through her hair and kiss the top of her head and tell her what he thought was best, and whatever he said, he would be right. He has a solid simplicity to him. He always has, and that is what she needs right now. It’s a piece that she has always been missing, and he has it. She starts crying, thinking of how perfect he is for her. But she is perfect for no one.

She pushes the door open into the apartment and walks through it one last time, checking under the bare furniture and in the closets and finds nothing, just her bags, packed and ready to go. She leans against the wall again, feeling sick, again. She is already tired of it, and she is hardly three weeks in. Heaven help her in this terrible state. And she has to travel today. She doesn’t even know where she will be in 24 hours, or 48, or 72. With Oakley? Alone? On her parents’ couch? God only knows. Time to stop thinking about it.

She strips off her clothes and leaves them strung out across the bedroom floor and gets into the shower, thankful that the gas man said he couldn’t shut the tank off until tomorrow. The water is hot. Almost scalding. She stands in it, letting the jets of water dig into her back and her scalp. Willing herself back to conscious thought. Dragging herself back from this horrible, morose mental state.

Too much time alone, that’s what it is. She needs to talk to someone. She gets out of the shower and towels her hair off with an old t-shirt from her bag, and calls Petra, staring at her drenched face and drowned-rat hair. She is splotchy, with great circles under her eyes. Pale and puffy.

Petra doesn’t answer. She texts Oakley that she will be coming today instead of in the morning, and as she waits for his reply she dials her mother. No answer.

She reaches to shut off the bathroom light, and of course – because what else could happen on a day like this – her phone slips from her wet shoulder and into the toilet, landing with a dull thunk. It couldn’t be more perfect. Now she can’t call Oakley, and if he texts back, she won’t get the text, and he won’t know that she hasn’t gotten the text. She can only look for him at the hotel, and if she doesn’t find him? What then?

No. Stop the thoughts. She plunges her hand into the cold toilet water and fishes the phone out, vainly trying to revive it, but it is dead, for sure. She washes her arms off, shivering with disgust, and dresses, pushes the dead handset into her pocket, and leaves the old apartment for the last time.

At the station, the man at the prepaid wireless counter will not help her, says she can’t transfer a prepaid number. She tries a thousand ways and flips uselessly through her German phrase book, but in the end she gives up and buys a ticket for Berlin, the first train leaving in a little over an hour.

She wanders through the station and at the far end, surrounded by a small circle of people, she sees a group of teenagers acting something out. Closer inspection reveals a sort of nativity play, but a little different.

“What is it?” she says, walking closer.

“Dreikönigstag,” says a young woman wrapped up in a scarf. Ah. Epiphany. She watches the story, told and acted and punctuated by short songs. Mary and Joseph making their way to Bethlehem. The girl who plays Mary wears a padded belly and contorts her face with mawkish pain. The journey is long and there is no comfort, no room in the inn.

Lou stands watching the rest, but the people move in front of her blank eyes and she hardly sees them. She can’t stop thinking about Mary, exhausted and tired, not much to give. Joseph, walking beside her, halfway convinced she slept around on him. Not sure about her at all until the angel comes and commands him to stay.

The boarding call for her train comes, and she turns away, after dropping a couple of wrinkled euros in the open suitcase at their feet. A boy smiles to her and she smiles back, deep in thought.

When she gets outside, snow is falling. It falls lightly at first, but by the time she gets on the train it is quite heavy, covering the platform and the landscape that she can see with a thickening blanket of white. The train pulls from the station and she watches the sky anxiously. She wants to get to the hotel in Berlin before long, to find Oakley and tell him everything, and get it out of her mind and off of her chest, and let her fate happen as it will.

But the train slows, and then it stops altogether, and after a series of muffled announcements she can’t understand at all, she gathers from the other passengers that there is a delay, but they will keep moving as soon as they can. Darkness falls.

She pulls a chocolate bar from her bag, her last snack, and rolls her eyes at her stupidity at not packing more. Her mind is almost entirely absent at this point; she is conscious only of an urge to move forward, the need to get the train moving again. Berlin. Berlin. Berlin. She wants to get out of the train and push it herself, or claw at the banks of snow with her own stupid hands, and move the train cars forward on the rails. Toward Oakley. God, she needs to see him.

She tries to read her book, but the words seem stupid. She tries to sleep, but she can’t. Finally, she gets up and runs to the end of the car to the tiny metal restroom and then walks up and down the length of the car, breathing deeply and trying not to give in to the clutch of panic.

Finally, the passengers settle and the train creeps forward. Lulled by the motion, she sinks low into her seat and falls asleep.

She dreams again, this time looking out across a desert, the sky an inky black, one star shining brightly overhead, dimming out the others with its glare. She slumps back and forth and realizes she is on the back of a donkey, its sandy-colored fur pushing up over broad shoulder blades as the beast moves forward, one slow step at a time.

Her belly is huge. She is unwieldy, tired. Her back aches. Ahead of her, leading the donkey, a man leaning low.

“Joseph,” she calls, but he doesn’t turn around.

The donkey turns its head sideways, looks at her with one large, garish pupil, curls its lips back. “If you need him, you have to tell him,” says the donkey, and even though in this dream she knows that donkeys don’t talk, for some reason it seems right and proper that this one does.

“Joseph,” she calls again. The man keeps his head down, walking forward.

“Don’t you know his name by now?” says the donkey.

She looks at the man’s back again, confused. She looks down and sees the frayed bracelet around her wrist. “I don’t have anything to give him,” she says.

The donkey laughs. “That’s love,” it says. “Giving it all, even when your gift is a big mess.”

She frowns.

“Go on,” says the donkey. “Call his name. Give him what you have. To him, it will be a treasure.”

“Oakley,” she says.

The man turns but before she can see his face the train lurches to a stop and she jumps awake, gasping and holding her bag to herself, shoved suddenly, rudely back to consciousness. She looks up at the sky: not a single star. She looks to the seat next to her, a crazy vain hope that Oakley will be there, appeared from nowhere like he did on her trip from the airport to Bonn. But he isn’t, and the seat is empty. It seems like that was years ago. The train jerks forward again and then stops, a station pulling into view. Suddenly she needs the bathroom, urgently. Her head swims, her face hot, her breath speeding as her stomach riots. She tries to push through the line of passengers, but the stand, blocking the aisle, ready to disembark.

“Excuse me,” she says, wishing she could think of the right German phrase, and finally she just pushes past everyone, getting hard looks from the passengers she shoves to the side. The train doors open, and a rush of cold air blows through the car as passengers stream off and on.

“Sorry, sorry,” she says faintly, pushing ever harder, and then finally she lands at the door to the lavatory. She pushes it in and then falls when the train moves again, and covers her mouth, crawling forward into the tiny room.

A woman kneels beside her, a hand on her back. “Geht es Ihnen nicht gut?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Lou says. She looks in the woman’s eyes. “I’m pregnant,” she says, miming a baby belly in front of her.

“Ah, ah,” says the woman, and tries to help her up.

“I’ve got it,” says Lou too sharply, and reaches up to a handle on the wall. “Thank you, but I’ve got it,” she says, rushing in. She leans over the metal commode, not even closing the door behind her, coughing and retching into the tiny bowl, trying to hold her own hair out of the way. Someone steps in behind her.

“I’m fine,” she says, her voice pinched and wild. “Go away.”

When the fingers touch her hair and smooth down her back she knows. She can feel the electricity, the keening of every cell in her body toward the caress, even through the layers of sweater and coat. She leans forward again, puking the last into the toilet and reaching up to wipe her mouth and hit the handle. She turns around, and he has her in his arms held tight to him, a choking sound in his throat, tears in both her eyes and his, before she can even take a breath or say his name.

Oakley, kneeling on the floor beside her. Oakley, here in this nasty, dirty train lavatory. Oakley, wiping her tears. Oakley. Always and forever, Oakley.

–

EPILOGUE

She was beautiful then in that moment when she was hunched over in the tiny train lav, tears running down her face.

(I have told you this story a million times before, but I am telling it again. I know you will think I am exaggerating or making it up, but it’s true. Every word.)

I loved her the first time I saw her, back at that villa I told you about, the beautiful one where our friends were staying, when we first met. She slammed into me like a truck or a tidal wave, and I knew I was done with all other women by the end of that first week together in Italy. That’s all there was to it, really.

(I know, I know. This is all so silly and embarrassing to you. But hear me out. This will make sense soon. Just hang on.)

Her beauty is in all the things about her – her laugh, the way her hair floats when the wind hits it. Her face, a bit too serious, but then the light shines in her eyes when she finally smiles. The way she can make anything grow. You know what her garden looks like. She has a little bit of magic in her, and she always has.

I love her stubbornness. I would have to, because, God, she is a stubborn woman. But you know that. You are, too. She tried to talk herself out of my love a million times. She was never quite sure if I would be there on the other end, waiting, holding my hand out for her hand, until that day on the train when she leaned on me and finally let me care for her.

I just kept showing up. Every time I possibly could.

It killed me to leave her that morning to go to Berlin alone. I almost didn’t go. I almost just dug in and refused, but it felt quite fragile with her then, something large and unspoken between us like a great looming weather balloon, squishy and slow and full of helium. I wanted to hold her like a bird in my hands and not crush her. I left the bracelet to remind her, pinning all my hopes on the faded, tattered threads.

I got all the way to Berlin by myself, lovesick and miserable, but then the snow started to fall and pile up all over everything, and they said something about trains and the airport shut down, so I turned right around and got back on the train and waited in Bielefield again and watched every train that stopped. It was shockingly cold, and my feet and hands were numb, but I didn’t even feel it and I didn’t even care.

I must have checked a half dozen trains and I was starting to wonder if she was already halfway back to California, far away from me. I got on the last train of the night, and I saw her, suddenly, pushing people out of the way. (You know how she is when she has somewhere to go.) I felt it in my gut. I needed to get to her and protect her. All the feelings and instincts I had been holding back, hoping not to scare her, they all came out at that moment and I couldn’t help it anymore. I pushed even harder than she did through the crowd of passengers to get to her. I found her puking her guts up and elbowing a nice lady off of her, and she tried to elbow me away, too, thinking I was a stranger.

But you know me. I’m an open book. I loved her from the first and I loved her even better, crying and puking and looking up at me, confused about why I was there, and nauseated and worn out. And God, finally needing me.

It might sound strange to love someone for needing me. She would have been mostly fine without me, really. Brilliant and beautiful and she could have just kept on going without me, but I would have been a wreck. I already was a wreck, although I was trying to play it cool on the train in front of a hundred other people. But that night she needed me, and thank God I was there when she did.

(Bear with me, sweet girl. I’m getting to my point.)

I helped her clean up and I walked her back to her seat, and she was so tired and weak that she could hardly talk, but over the hours and miles to Berlin she told me the whole story, about the doctor and the baby and the dream, and her terrible fear, and then she sat up and looked me in the eyes and said she didn’t have anything for me but her broken down, puking self.  She said, “All I have is me. Just me. if you still want me, and this baby. If we can somehow make our lives fit in with yours, then I still want to be your wife, if you still want to be my…” But she started crying before she could say “husband.” And then she kept apologizing and saying that she had been terrible to me, and saying all sorts of other silly things – you know how she sometimes gets – and I just laughed and told her to stop being so dramatic and I held her while she cried, and she said she loved me terribly and threw up all over my shoes.

It was true love.

Which brings me to my point. You might think I’m a sentimental old fool, but this part is very important, and I want you to listen to me because I love you.

I am very unhappy to hear that Ian left you to find your own way to Glastonbury when he had taken you halfway there himself. I don’t get angry often, and I’m not a violent man, but I would love to go and find his little punk ass and throttle him. I’d do that for you, and much more. But don’t roll your eyes. You’d be worth a night in jail. You’d be worth a year.

My dearest, I heard that you were sad, and crying over him, and saying you had lost him because he won’t call you back, and that is why I had to write this to you, even though you might think I’m silly.

Maybe right now you’re sitting in your dorm room or the library or a café, and maybe you’ve been crying still, and I have to tell you right now, while you are reading these words, that when a man loves you, he does not leave you halfway to Glastonbury. He doesn’t leave you halfway to anywhere. He keeps showing up, every time he possibly can. When he holds your hand, he’s the lucky one. Not you. (Not that Ian should ever hold your hand again, nor would he even try if I had anything to say about it.)

But you’re a grown woman now and you’re stubborn, too, and I know you’ll do what you want to do. I know that you love adventure. I’m proud of you for getting safely to the festival without him, and for calling your friends, and for getting through it and even having some fun in the process. When I heard about that I knew that I didn’t need to worry about you anymore, that you were a little bit grown now. But even though I don’t need to, I still do, and I always will.

I know what I’m talking about, because when I was younger I was a lot like Ian. I liked to keep my freedom, and make sure the girls knew that I was the one to make the decisions. I was careless and I was stupid. And then I got bored with it, and I thought for a while that I would never love anyone, and no one would ever really love me. I thought maybe I didn’t even deserve anyone good. I thought it was pointless to even try. But all that changed the day I met her.

I rushed onto that last train like a crazy man because of my love. Love made me a fool but the best kind of fool. The kind that has to show love and keeps proving it no matter how many times a stubborn-arsed woman wavers and says she is still not sure. I went all that way and kept myself awake on a cold train station bench all night checking every coach because I loved her, and I needed her to know it, and I was half-mad thinking about her alone without me there to watch out for her while she slept.

And even though I didn’t know about you yet, I was doing all of that for you, too, and I would do it again, every day, all those hours, if it would make you know how much I love you and how much you’re worth and how no little shit in a ball cap who would leave you waiting at the bus station is worth even one of your tears, much less entire nights of them.

It’s probably night time now. You’re a night owl too, like me. Lean over to the window and look out, and find a star. (Remember that the stars still shine no matter how many fuckwads named Ian there are in the world.)

It was a star that held your mum and me together, all those years ago. Three stars, really.

The star in the east, in your mum’s crazy dream with the talking wise ass.

The star that she wears on her finger, still all these years later.

And then the most shining star of all: you, my beautiful, perfect daughter. The greatest gift I could have hoped for. My baby of adventure, born on a high plain in the Andes, almost exactly on the Equator, delivered into my own hands by candlelight and held tight between me and your beautiful mother as you took your first breaths, and then through that whole crazy, beautiful year and back home again to England, to the life we built together, first with you and then the two boys, the family that started when you appeared. You, my Stella.

Bella Stella.

Never settle for anything less than you’re worth.

Love,

Dad

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Oakley and Lou (Unrelated, 2007)