The Venus Fix

Twenty-Four

For dinner, Noah took me to a small restaurant that wasn’t in any of the guidebooks but was packed. He introduced me to Bella, the owner, who was in her sixties and had big blond hair and earrings that dangled down to her shoulders. Despite the crowd waiting at the small bar, we’d gotten a table immediately, along with a basket of hot corn sticks, dripping with butter, and a plate of spicy pickled okra that I wasn’t sure I wanted to taste. Once I had, I couldn’t stop eating them.

I let Noah order for me-crab étouffé atop a plate of dirty rice-and then ate more than I should have. The wine was crisp and cold, a welcome respite from the food that was setting my mouth afire.

Afterward, we walked over to Blues Palace, an unassuming club. After the band had played a few songs, the sax player noticed Noah in the audience and called him up onto the stage, insisting he play with them. He looked at me and I nodded. Once on stage, he sat down at the piano and his fingers took off.

Until I met Noah, I’d never listened to music just for the music; it had always been in the background. But I’d discovered that if you give yourself up to it and really listen, your body begins to resonate with the notes, and you hear it inside of you as a sensation as much as a sound.

Noah improvised for more than an hour and we got back to the hotel a little after one in the morning. There was enough moonglow coming through the open window for us to see each other. Without speaking, he reached out, put his hands around my waist and pulled me toward him. I felt as if I were moving in slow motion. First there was his face, with his soft blue eyes looking at me, and then it was closer to mine. I could feel his breath on my cheeks while his fingers gripped me, digging through my sweater and into my skin, the pressure contrasting with the gentle expression on his face. And then there was nothing but the blackness inside my own eyes and the sensation of his lips compelling mine to open. Lips moving in a way that makes nerve endings burst. Lips moving in a way that sends shivers up the back of your neck. Lips that cover your mouth and tease you alive. Lips that do not stop even as one kiss moves into the next, and the next one after that.

The rest of my body felt the kiss as if every pore of my skin was experiencing the same sensation and reacting the same way. It doesn’t make sense now, but that was exactly how it felt. As if his fingers were suddenly kissing my waist, and our thighs were kissing each other, and my breasts, beneath my sweater, were kissing his chest, and my shoulder bones were kissing his arms.

His lips kept returning to mine even as he moved me toward the bed and laid me down and pinned my arms to my sides. For one moment, he raised himself up on his elbows and hovered over me, smiling, watching me, before swooping down and taking a kiss away from me, and then giving me one back.

“Don’t move,” Noah whispered in that slow drawl. “Don’t move. I want to undress you.” And then he unbuttoned the first button of my shirt and put his lips on my collarbone and kissed me there.