“Let’s go to your place.” Her voice sounded normal again.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
She put her hand on his knee. “Yes. It’s a wonderful idea.”
“Me, too.”
She had never even seen the little street that held Will’s townhouse. It was a block from the mishmash of wide Liberty Street, but it was quiet and secluded. The townhouse itself must have been more than a hundred years old and yet it looked to be in good shape. The interior was completely restored and modernized, even if the granite kitchen countertops weren’t quite to her taste.
“Is this your son?” She held up a photo of a tall, dark-haired young man. He smiled awkwardly at the camera.
“Stepson,” Will said. “His biological father showed back up, rich in Boston, and now my ex has remarried. The kid doesn’t want for fathers.”
She liked it that he had an old Baldwin upright piano, a bookshelf with titles that looked as if they had actually been read, and on the wall was a framed movie poster from The Violators. Will explained how he had bought the townhouse from a P &G guy who had done the rehab as he showed her though the downstairs.
“Play something for me.”
“I can’t really,” he said, embarrassment clouding him. “I tilt now.”
“I’ll sit next to you.”
So they did. His fingers tentatively began The Blue Danube, gathering confidence as he went. It was all wrong: he couldn’t use the pedals. “I played this by ear when I was six. It made my mother think I was some kind of musical genius. Hardly.”
“I love it,” Cheryl Beth said.
Then he tried “Isn’t It Romantic” from memory. She leaned into him. It felt like magic.
He left on a low lamp as they walked back into the living room. She mock-pushed him onto the sofa and straddled him. Now the dress was much shorter and she didn’t mind. She felt his hands on each side of her face as he pulled her in close for a kiss. It was easy to respond to his lips and she kissed back, using her tongue, too. He was a good kisser. Then his hands were on her hips, pulling her closer. But his eyes held a wariness.
“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered and kissed him deeply.
“I worry…”
“I have worries,” she said. This confession didn’t keep him from nibbling on her neck, which set many nodes of her nerves into a delighted alert status.
He whispered, “What?” His mouth again met hers again and their tongues danced around together.
“I worry you won’t be a legs-and-butt man and you’ll want a 44-D woman.”
His face gave up a broad smile. “I am a legs-and-butt man, all the way, lifelong. You couldn’t be more attractive to me, Cheryl Beth.” His hands were moving up her legs inside her skirt. It had been a very long time since she had felt this, and he had a light, teasing touch.