Read Online The Donzerly Light by Ryne Douglas Pearson - Free Book Online Page B

kitchen. She filled the coffee maker with water to four cups, reconsidered with a glance back toward the bedroom, and brought it up to the six cup mark. Someone was going to be needing coffee this morning, and plenty of it. And aspirin, she figured. Coffee to wake, and the bitter white pills to make that state tolerable. Only tolerable, she thought, grinning impishly.
    Just desserts, just desserts. Drinking in the presence of unfamiliar titties brings just desserts.
    Oh, couldn’t the joy inherent in jealous delights be as satisfying as it was cruel!
    But enough of mean thoughts, she decided, pouring the water in the coffee maker’s top reservoir and putting the pot beneath it before flicking the switch to glow a promising shade of orange. Yes, enough of those thoughts for last night’s main transgression—but maybe a few more could be called forth for what she saw as she turned from the coffee maker and took sight of the living and dining rooms.
    Still a child, she thought, her head shaking disapprovingly. Still a child in so many ways.
    Her man was in bed, asleep, but the little boy that he could be had left its mark from the front door to the hallway. Coat draping over the couch, its hem and plenty more than that on the floor. His keys lay haphazard on the counter, not five feet—five feet!—from the tray she had put on the side table just for them, for both their sets of keys, after too many mornings dashing about crying ‘Where are my keys?! I’m going to be late! Where are they?!’ Coat, yes, and keys too, and she suspected there was another piece to the ensemble and went around the counter. And there it was, his briefcase, lying flat on the floor, half blocking the door.
    Deep breath in and deep breath out, and she moved the briefcase to where it should beat the base of the side table, and put his keys in their place in the dish atop the same, and took his coat and straightened and folded it over her arm, all the while a bright little smile budding upon her face like a flower waking to a warm and wondrous sun, forcing its way through defenses that said she should be angry after the same damn thing happening so many times. That he was not a child who needed to be picked up after. And though she thought those things, and though those things were true and reasonable, the smile still came, because she loved him. Loved Jay Grady. Loved her man.
    Had loved him since the day she first laid eyes on him.
    The smile brightened more still as she remembered that moment. Like it was yesterday. Clear as a sunny winter morn, though it had been nearly the end of summer. She had knocked on Miss Dorothy Wells’ door, the neighbor to the Stiles family, and there he was.
    Her heart fluttered at the recollection. Twelve years later, her breath would still depart her when reliving that instant.
    She had said hello—had managed to get those two syllables out—and he had said hello back. She had handed over the recipe book her mother had borrowed from Miss Wells’, and he had taken it. And then it happened. The ‘moment’. That awkward slice of time that could have been ten seconds or ten minutes, though she would never know which because for her time had seemed to stand still. A magic moment, she believed, because in that short time when the spark was lit between them (hotter for her at first, she knew, but set to smoldering for him it was as well) nothing moved. Nothing was said. All that existed in the whole wide world at that moment was a look. The meeting of their stares. The mating of their souls, she came to believe some time later.
    And when the world came rushing back again, and the moment ended, he had said thank you and she had said you’re welcome and she had stepped back one step and he had closed the door. And there she stood, staring at the door as though through it, her heart thudding in her chest, her mind a dazzling cacophony of skyrockets and pinwheels and joyous fireworks of all kinds. Her whole little being