I walked to Elliott’s front door. For months after he left town, I would ride by to see if a FOR SALE sign had appeared in the yard. It never had. And so maybe a tiny bit of me had always been clinging to the hope that he would come back home. Now that he had, my body felt jittery, tingling, alive with the mere thought of being in his arms. I was a forty-five-year-old woman, for heaven’s sake. But he made me feel like some hormone-addled schoolgirl. I was here to have a serious talk with him, I reminded my pounding heart.

But then the front door flew open before I even knocked. And I don’t know if it was me or him or some law of physics or chemistry or nature, but the moment I saw that man, my mouth found his, and his hands were underneath my dress, which I knew was too short, where he could grasp perfectly to pull me into him. Then his mouth was in the hollow of my throat and my hands were in the waistband of his jeans, and I couldn’t even have told you what talking was, much less have done it. Elliott lifted me in the air, and I wrapped my legs around him, my arms around him, my mouth on his mouth. I felt so small and safe in his arms, like I was floating on air, until I came down, soft and slow, on the thick comforter on his bed. I was thrumming with what would come next, grasping for it. Every look, every touch these past couple of weeks had been foreshadowing this exact moment that I realized I couldn’t wait one more second for.

I pulled Elliott’s T-shirt over his head greedily. But he, now shirtless and gorgeous, unbuttoned the top button of my dress, kissing the skin underneath it. Then the second button. Then the third. It was slow and languid, and every time he touched me, I felt like I might burst into flame. He sat back, staring at every inch of me like I was the only woman he had ever seen, like my skin was fresh and young and perfect, like I was new, untouched.

“I love you,” he said firmly, seriously. “I mean it.”

I nodded, pulling him to me, wrapping my arms around his strong, smooth back. “I love you too,” I said, in his ear, so he would know I meant it.