12

When Lady Mae opened her eyes, it was still dark. Arbuckle breathed softly next to her in the small bed. Their feet touched, and Lady Mae drank in the smell of him as he lay beside her. She gently placed her hand upon his chest, careful not to wake him, and felt the rise and fall of his breast, the rhythmic beating of his heart.

She had been nervous but certain the night before when she took Arbuckle by the hand and led him to her bedroom. She was no stranger to what would happen—her mother had taught her the many ways of which love looked. And when her lips fell on his she wanted all of him—not just in that moment, but forever. They stood facing each other; they did not speak, not exactly, but there in the dark of night their hands found each other’s buttons and hooks, bumping into each other and laughing shyly. They made love slowly, tenderly, as if the moment itself might vanish right in front of them. It was nothing like Lady Mae had expected, but had been everything she had dreamed of.

“Arbuckle,” she whispered. “Arbuckle.”

He took a deep breath in and opened his eyes. Lady Mae raised herself and leaned on her elbow. With her other hand she traced her finger along his arm.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning to you.”

He rolled over and brought his hand to the back of her neck, gently bringing her head to his. He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her lips. And there, just as dawn was about to break, he kissed her again and again. “Lady Mae,” he said when he finally pulled away. “All them nights up there… I don’t know…”

He drifted off and kind of smiled, one side of his mouth higher than the other. “I ain’t ever thought this would happen—you and me. Thought on it, sure. Be lying if I said I hadn’t.”

“And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of you. But guess I didn’t know for certain till I saw you in the square.”

“Are you telling truths now?”

“When you left,” she said and sat up on her elbows. “It was like half of me was gone,” she admitted. “I thought of you up there, all alone. Pictured myself sometimes there, too. What it might be like the two of us with no one else around.” She leaned her head down and kissed his shoulder.

“The way I thought on it,” she heard him say. “All those years apart, they just too long. You’re my family, Lady Mae. Only thing I know that’s true in here,” he said, and touched his heart.

“Ain’t much space for nothing else in mine but you neither,” she said.

“And now here we are.”

“So what do we do now?”

Arbuckle brought his face to hers, touched her cheek with the back of his fingers. He brushed her hair behind her ear and found her lips in the dark of the early morning.