of tea. True story,” I assured her when she looked up at me. “I could’ve been five, eh. She sat by my bed and everything.”
She laughed, and I smiled down at her and thought, That’s better.
“What did you dream?” she asked.
“About you in the water,” I said. “That I couldn’t get you out.” Even now, on a fresh, bright November morning with the sun shining and the breeze blowing, it gave me a chill to remember.
“But you didn’t have to get me out,” she said. “I got myself out.”
I stopped, slapped a hand to my heart, and said, “Just shove the dagger in deeper, why don’t you.”
She was laughing, at least. “All right, you helped me at the end. And carried me to the ute.”
“Yes, I did,” I said. “In an extremely manly and competent fashion that I’d like you to remember. But maybe,” I added as we started walking again, “I didn’t take care of you after that in the way that I should’ve. Could have let you down, in fact.”
“Last night,” she said. “Sorry about that. It was stupid. I—”
“Daisy.” I turned on the sidewalk and put my hands on her hips again. Somehow, that was where my hands always wanted to go. “Let me say this. Please. I need to get it out.”
“OK,” she said. Looking wary. Looking guarded.
I said, “I thought about it, afterwards. After the nightmare, when I couldn’t go back to sleep. Thought about you trusting me, telling me. You didn’t … bring up the subject in the way I expected, I guess.”
“How do you expect frigid women to ask for your sex therapist services, normally?” she asked.
“Don’t say that word,” I said, and, yes, I was angry again. “Don’t think it. It’s not true. If somebody breaks a leg, you don’t expect him to walk again without some help, do you? If you concuss a fella over and over again, he’s not going to think straight for a while. He’s going to have a hard time thinking at all, in fact. And if you hurt a woman during sex—a sixteen-year-old girl during sex, and you do it over and over, she’s going to be scared to have a sexual response with a man. No different from a work injury, because that’s what it is.”
“A … work injury,” she said. “I’m not—”
“Right,” I said, “I’m using the wrong words again. Bugger the words. I’m trying to tell you. We were already there.”
“Already where?”
“Already here,” I said. “I’m holding you right now because I love to hold you. I kissed you when you came home last night because I wanted to kiss you, and you put your foot in my lap because you wanted to flirt with me, and you wanted to tease me. And, no, there was nothing one bit wrong with having that foot in my lap. Sexiest thing a woman’s done for me in a long time, and I’m glad that you didn’t read it in a women’s magazine. You’ve given me your honest response every time, and I’ve given you mine. It’s felt pretty bloody good every time, too, and I want to keep doing it.”
“But it’ll be too slow,” she said. I could see her pulse beating, right there in her throat. I could feel the faint tremble of her body under my hands. I wanted to kiss her here and now, on the George Street pavement, with pedestrians veering around us on their way to work, with the second glances when somebody recognized my face.
“So we’ll go slow,” I said. “I’ve gone fast enough times in my life, times when it didn’t mean a thing. I’m not proud of that, but it’s true. Maybe it’s time to learn how to go slow, the way they used to do. But there’s one more thing I need to tell you, so listen to me.”
“Right,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“It’s not sex therapy,” I told her. “It’s just us. You and me. Going out. Staying in. Courting.”
“Courting?” she said.
“Yeh.” The tenderness was there inside me, squeezing my chest. I put a hand on her face and felt the tension in her soften. I told her, “You deserve to make love with a man because you want to do it, because you can’t go another minute without touching him, and you know he can’t go another minute without touching you, either. If it takes a while to get there, that just makes it more fun. You deserve to enjoy every step of the way.