Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,54
with laser precision, Andrew leaned down and kissed me again. Then he whispered, “I was just thinking that if I could ever make you smile like that, I’d make sure I never let you stop.”
I felt his lips moving down my cheek and my neck and my collarbone. “Andrew, I—” I heard myself start to say. But then his lips were on my ear, and he was whispering, “Everything is going to be fine, G,” and whatever objections I was going to raise didn’t seem to matter. I laughed as Andrew carried me up the stairs to my room. And I didn’t think about how I hadn’t done this in well over a year or how this was the bed I had made love to my husband in for all those years or whether my stomach looked flat. I didn’t think about anything at all. I was lost in Andrew and the way he made me feel like none of that mattered now. He saw me, and I finally saw him too, for all the amazing things he really was. He was a man. He was an equal. And he didn’t have to say a word for me to realize that he was all mine.
Later, happy and drowsy and lying on my freshly pressed sheets, I was astounded. I had done it. I had had sex for the first time in twelve years with someone who wasn’t Greg. This feeling—freedom and happiness and fun—was what my life had been missing for more time than I would like to admit. Andrew and I lay in complete silence, lost in that sweet afterglow that I hadn’t felt in so long I had honestly forgotten about it.
In the vulnerability of that moment I said, “I get why Greg left me.” It just gurgled up out of my mouth, and I wanted to pull it back in as soon as it did. Why would I ruin tonight of all nights?
But Andrew just yawned, his hand trailing lazily up and down my back. “Greg is an idiot.”
“I understand the feeling of first-time passion and not wanting it to end,” I continued. “I understand the sweaty palms and beating heart and racing pulse he probably got with Brooke. I get wanting to have that all the time.”
He rested his forehead on mine and whispered, “I get that feeling too.”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. He kissed me so softly.
“That’s kind of what it feels like when you win your first tennis match,” he said, stroking my cheek with his finger. “You can’t imagine anything ever feeling that good.” He paused. “But then you go to practice every day. You drill and play and hit bucket after bucket of serves. You put in the time. And you win again. And again. And again. It still feels good, but you’re used to it now. The butterflies are gone, but the joy remains. In so many ways, it’s deeper, and it’s sweeter because you worked so hard for it. You committed to it. And that feels even better.” Here I was, complaining about losing that first-time feeling, and here he was, young and fresh and so incredibly wise. The butterflies end, but it’s the love that’s forming all along the way that really means something.
“Wow,” I said. I looked into those brown eyes, and I felt more than I wanted to let myself feel. “How do you even know that? You’re too young to understand the things you do.”
He shrugged. “You know, Gray, everything in life is a metaphor for pretty much everything else. If you can get one area under control, the others come a lot easier.” He winked at me.
I sighed, that glowy feeling seeping away, remembering that I had no area of my life under control. A familiar panic welled up in me as I realized that, despite what I had promised myself, I wasn’t ready to let him go. But I didn’t want anyone, not even adorable Andrew, to be in Wagner’s life. I felt trapped.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted.
“Do what?”
“I don’t know how to be a single mother. I don’t know how to date and have a son. I don’t know how to balance all these things and it’s not fair to you.” Andrew put my fingers, which were wrapped around his, to his lips. It was one of the most endearing things he did.
“No one expects you to have it all figured out, G.”