Hidden

Epilogue

Turns out that Tish’s room wasn’t just on the same floor as mine, it was next to mine. We shared a wall, and that Saturday night, after the maybe-okay-she-probably-was-flirting-with-me dinner partner, and too many glasses of wine, I lay on my back in bed listening to her move around her room: the TV turning on; her smashing into something and swearing loudly; running the water for a bath.

I turned on my own TV then. I had willpower, and I was exercising it, but every man has his limits.

When I was about to drift off into a wine-fueled sleep, I heard her door open. I sprang from my bed and pressed my eye against the peephole, fast enough to catch her walking past, her hair wet, wearing the kind of loose cotton clothing one might wear as pajamas, hugging a blanket to her chest.

I pulled on my jeans and a sweatshirt, grabbed the bottle of wine I stole and the corkscrew from the prize pack. I almost forgot my room key, but remembered it right before my door clanged shut. Key in my pocket, I walked in my bare feet down the hall to the elevator.

Tish was nowhere to be found.

I waited thirty seconds for the elevator, and then I was in the empty bright lobby with one person behind the desk. Was I imagining it, or were the front doors still rattling in their hinges?

Outside, my eyes adjusted to the night, searching for movement. There. Something white in the dark, moving away quickly, a determined destination.

I followed her. I tried to walk casually, to make sure I didn’t spook her like a deer in the woods. She was heading toward the golf course. The sky was clear and full of stars, the air damp from the irrigation system, the grass wet and slick against my tender feet. The moon was rising in a sliver.

She walked through the first tee-box. She seemed to be almost running away, or maybe I imagined that because in this moment it felt like we were running away together.

She stopped on the other side of the ladies’ tee on the second hole and spread her blanket along the slope.

Then she whirled around and spoke into the night. “Why are you following me?”

I thought she sounded afraid.

“It’s me,” I tried to reassure her. “It’s Jeff.”

“I know who it is.”

“Oh, sorry, I—”

“No, it’s okay. You’re here now.”

She sat on the blanket. I hesitated for a moment, then followed her, setting the wine bottle down next to me. The corkscrew dug into my thigh, but I left it there.

“What are you doing out here?” I asked.

“Told you. Conjunction.” She pointed to the sky. “See that bright star near the crescent? That’s Venus.” I nodded. “Now look left. That fainter star’s Jupiter.”

“Neat.”

“Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not. Truly.”

She turned toward me. In the darkness I couldn’t tell if her face was registering annoyance or if she was trying to gauge my seriousness.

“I mean it,” I said. “Tell me more.”

She lay down, her legs straight below her, her arms at her sides. “If we had a telescope or binoculars, we could see Mercury too. And in a couple of months, Venus is going to traverse the sun, like an eclipse, and that’s really rare. It only happens twice every hundred years or so. Not again in our lifetime.”

I chuckled.

“What?”

“Nothing. You’re cute.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I don’t mean it in a bad way. I like how enthusiastic you are about things.”

“I talk too much.”

“I like listening to you talk.”

“Okay,” she said, but then she fell silent while we watched the black sky and the bright stars.

I lay there, listening to her breathing, feeling the world spin underneath us, tilting as all the wine I’d drunk refused to release its grip.

After a while, I heard her shifting. I looked over. She was on her side, facing me, her hands tucked under the side of her face, her knees pulled up.

“This is…nice,” she said.

I moved so my position mirrored her own. “It is. It really is.”

“I’m glad I came.”

“Me too.”

I reached out and stroked the side of her face. She made a small noise—a gasp—but didn’t pull away. Her skin was soft and my brain was fuzzy, and the only thing I could think of was how her lips would taste.

I kissed her. Hungrily. Slowly. Her lips. Her face. Her neck.

I kissed her.

And she kissed me back.

Afterward, we lay wrapped in the blanket, our clothes scattered around us, loose limbed, our tastes mixed together, mixing with the night, mixing with the stars. Our foreheads were touching, our mouths inches apart, then together again, small kisses, resting against each other. My thumb rubbed little circles into the small of her back, and her hands rested on my waist, holding me inside her. She was warm, so warm, and the small beat of her pulse kept me hard enough to stay in place.

“Someone may have heard that,” she said eventually, smiling against my lips.

I kissed her again. “Shh. Don’t worry. No one heard.”

“The birds did. And the stars.” She let out a sob, then caught it. I felt a few tears fall against my cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Tish. This is my fault.”

“That’s not why I’m crying.”

“Why then?”

“Because I feel so happy. And I know I’m never going to feel this way again, and that makes me sad.”

“Do you want to? Feel this way again?”

She pulled my hips closer and it was my turn to gasp. “Of course I do. But, we said…we said we wouldn’t. We shouldn’t have done this. We can’t.”

“We can’t,” I agreed, though maybe she’d been asking a question. “A one-time thing.”

“Yes.”

Her hands moved to my face, forcing me to look her in the eyes I was already lost in.

“We can’t tell, okay? We have to…this has to be our thing. Ours.”

“Yes.”

“Promise?” she asked.

“Promise,” I agreed.