my hand on October’s thigh and left it there for as long as it took for her to get it too.
Eventually she set her mug on the bedside table, spun her body sideways, and rested her head in my lap.
“I want to tell you something,” she said quietly. There was a pause, like she was searching for the words. “I want you to know why I’m so drawn to you. And why I think this is important enough to go through what we’re going to have to go through to be together.”
I slid my hand into hers and said, “OK.”
“It’s something I feel when I’m with you, that I don’t feel with anyone else. Chris says I’m always so busy noticing everyone else’s feelings that I ignore my own, and maybe he’s right. I don’t have a lot of friends that I confide in, and it’s never been easy for me to get close to people. But I wanted to be close to you the moment we met. I feel all this deep, creative energy when I’m with you, and it makes me want to explore things and express things that I’ve never had the courage to explore or express. Am I making sense?”
As usual, her words at once softened and baffled me. “Yes.”
“In a way, I guess what I’m saying is that you inspire me. And you feel like home.”
I let go of her hand, stroked her hair, and she whispered, “Cafuné.”
She picked at the frayed hem of my cargo shorts. The warbler outside the window was singing now, her song full of sweet, buzzy “Z” notes.
“There’s a magnitude to all of this,” October said. “That’s what you’re feeling. The magnitude of moving through life without any idea how or when this is going to end but embracing it anyway.”
I let her words sink in. “Are you saying you think this is going to end?”
She flipped onto her back and looked up at me. “I’m saying that I’m scared too. But we’re here now, and that’s all that matters. And I’ll tell you something else.” She put her index finger to my chest and drew what I’m pretty sure was a heart. “I think that love lives in a space inside of us that never ends. That’s why it’s the ultimate art project. Because while a book, a painting, a song, a piece of pottery, a tree can outlive us, none of those things will exist forever. But love is an energy. It’s infinite. So, no. Regardless of where you and I end up, I don’t think this is ever going to end.”
We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary that day. After we finished our coffee we made love, and it was slow and intense. I melted into October, she clung to me, we whispered and laughed, and it was as if our closeness, not the act itself, was where our pleasure came from. I almost never had sex like that. So out of my head. So present.
When we got out of bed we were hungry, and October wanted to have a picnic, but the contents of her fridge were meager. She had milk, bread, cheese, anchovies, and Luxardo cherries. All I had was beer, chocolate milk, and tequila.
We went to the farmers’ market in San Rafael and got two big bags of groceries. Predictably, once we got home, October wouldn’t let me help her cook. But she did give me the task of scrubbing a bag of red potatoes and washing the lettuce. Though when she saw me rinsing the heads under the faucet, she laughed and said that wasn’t the best way to wash lettuce; she showed me how to break the leaves apart and swish them around in big bowls of water until all the bugs and grit sank to the bottom.
I opened a bottle of Pinot Noir and we drank it over the course of the afternoon while October poached the potatoes, sous-vided chicken thighs, and made a salad.
At some point I found a Truth or Dare game in the junk drawer in the kitchen. The game looked like a deck of cards, but one side of each card had a truth question on it and the other side a dare. I told October that if she wasn’t going to let me cook, she had to play the game with me. I shuffled the cards, picked one, and said, “Truth or dare?”
“Truth.” She was working on the salad dressing, using a marble mortar and