| SIX By Joan Stephens Sixth Meeting
For several minutes Catherine reveled in the warmth and strength of his embrace. For once he wasn’t holding her lightly, as if she would break, but was holding her firmly against his body. It was a hard, muscular body but with its strength safely held in check. With a sigh, she nuzzled her cheek against his chest over his heart, wondering if that heart held even a tiny spark of love for her. At times, for a second or so, she would catch him looking at her with such yearning in his eyes, but then he would look away, and when he looked back at her, it was as if he dropped a shutter over them allowing no light to shine forth. She had tried to overcome the inauspiciousness of their first meeting, becoming more careful of her fellow human beings and their feelings. Safe and secure in his arms, she knew now when she had fallen in love with him. Looking back over their previous meetings, she had come to realize that she had loved him from the first moment she heard his voice. It was as if her life had been incomplete before then and that he filled a void that had been empty for as long as she could remember. The love she felt for him was bursting to pour out and inundate him, but he had become such an important part of her life that she hesitated to tell him, afraid that he would leave her.
She forgot tonight that he could almost read her like a book unless she consciously made an effort to keep her feelings from him, and he was feeling her hesitation and fear. Naturally he thought the worst: that she was going to tell him that she would not see him anymore, that she had met someone who could live with her in the sunshine. Pulling back from his arms, she reached up and caressed his cheek. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time,” she said. “It’s so soft, like peach fuzz.” He couldn’t keep from nuzzling into her hand. “Not nearly as soft as your hands, Catherine.” Smiling at his compliment, she took his hand and pulled him with her to the doorway of her apartment. “Will you come in, Vincent? I would like you to become a part of my world for a little while.” He hesitated at the doorsill. For only a little while? “Please, Vincent,” she entreated. “You ask me to trust you; now I ask you to trust me. There is nothing here that can harm you. It is just a small part of my world: a part that you can safely enter.” Without taking his eyes from hers, he stepped over the doorsill into the softness of her home. Looking around, he could see at first glance that it was not a place made with him in mind, but then, when she had decorated this apartment, she had not known of him. Already there had been changes made out on the balcony: more pillows, wrought iron chairs replacing the flimsy plastic ones that had been there when he first came to visit her, a wind screen that was more for privacy than the wind. She had adjusted a part of her world to him. “Come. Sit on the love seat. It will hold your weight,” she assured him with a gentle smile. Leaving him to gingerly sit in the indicated very fragile looking couch, she hurried into the kitchen to return with two glasses of iced tea. Handing one to him, she settled into the love seat opposite him, pulling her legs up under her. She smiled at him. He looked so uncomfortable. “Relax, Vincent. You won’t break anything. And even if you do, it needed to be replaced anyway if you are going to remain in my life.” Remain in her life? He looked at her in shock. What did she mean by that? He had sensed since he had arrived that there was something that was bothering her. He was sure that she had met someone Above and was going to tell him about it. It was evident that she wanted to retain his friendship, but he didn’t know if he could remain only her friend. “Vincent, I’ve asked you into my home to tell you something and to keep you from bolting before I finish telling you. I’m afraid that I will drive you away.” He could only shake his head. Sitting forward intently, she swung her feet to the floor, leaning her elbows on her knees. “First, I have to ask you if you will always stay my friend regardless of what I tell you?” He nodded mutely. She nodded in return, relief showing plainly in her eyes. Vincent silently girded himself for what he considered to be the death of all his dreams. He had come there prepared to leave without the fulfillment of his dream. So far into himself that he didn’t hear what she said at first, he only looked up at her when she repeated his name loudly. “I’m sorry, Catherine. What were you saying?” “You’re scaring me, Vincent. It’s hard enough telling you that I love you without you disappearing right before my eyes.” “Wha-a-t?” he stammered. “I said that I love you, but if you can’t love me I can accept that as long as you remain my friend.” She sat back in an agony of confusion, waiting for him to react to what she had said. He seemed to be in a state of shock as if he hadn’t expected her to declare her love for him, but that didn’t make any sense if what he had said about feeling what she felt. He should have known . . . unless . . . he didn’t believe what he sensed. Or . . . he didn’t love her. Vincent was frozen with disbelief. He had dreamed of hearing her say the words, had rehearsed what he would do when she did, but on hearing the words, he realized that he had convinced himself long ago that no one, not even Catherine, would ever say those words to him. He was totally unprepared for the emotions that roared through him: disbelief, shock, amazement, relief, and over and above all a sweeping love that enervated him, leaving him unable to think or move. Frightened by his immobility and the way he stared at her, Catherine leapt from the sofa and flew to his side. She gathered his unresisting body into her arms, crooning to him, “I’m sorry, Vincent, so sorry. If I had known that this would happen, I would never have told you. Please, pay no attention to what I said. We’ll just stay the friends we are. Ok?” Her words finally penetrated the fog of confusion that had settled over him. “You don’t love me then?” he mumbled into the warmth of her neck. “Oh Vincent, what do you want me to say? Of course, I love you. If you want the love of a friend, you have it, or if you want the love of a lover, you have that too. You only have to tell me what you want.” He literally shook himself back to normal; he had heard her correctly. All the emotions and feelings he had felt from her this past week were her fears that he did not love her the way she loved him. “Ah Catherine, if you only knew how I have longed to tell you of my love, but I have had to wait until you loved me. And you do love me, don’t you?” he asked, almost frantically. With tears in her eyes, she nodded. “Oh yes, my love, I’ve loved you from the first time I met you. It just took me a little while to figure out my emotions. I’ll always love you.” Desperate to hold her, he swung his arms up around her and pulled her tightly against him. “I love you, Catherine. I will love no one else. You are the part of myself that I have been searching for all these years.” She reached up, entwining her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck, and pulled his face toward hers. Shyly she looked deeply into his eyes, and then arching upward, she kissed him. If he thought that the emotion she had kindled in him before was love, the feeling that shot through him at the touch of her lips on his was a nova compared to the glow of the sun. He knew himself to be utterly and completely lost in their love, and he felt her there right beside him. They broke apart: he to gently trace the outlines of her lips with a calloused and clawed finger, and she to smile tremulously at him as he slowly lowered his mouth to hers. For several minutes they drank of each other’s love and growing desire until Vincent slowly released her to hold her gently to his heart. “Catherine, do you know what you have done for me?” She slowly shook her head. “You have given me my humanity in one golden moment. Whatever happens, whatever comes, I will know forever that I am a man capable of gaining the love and trust of a woman. There are no words to describe how grateful I am to you for this greatest of all gifts except to say I love you.” Unable to reply, Catherine merely laid against his breast, silently weeping that all her misgivings and all his fears were a thing of the past. He loved her, and he was never going to leave her. And he knew she loved him and would never leave him. She marveled that in only six meetings they had come to know and love each other. But they had the rest of their lives to love and live this dream.
Fini
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