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## I.*— Tori —*The apples were back.I want to go on record. I want the record to reflect the fact that on the afternoon of July the fifth, one year and three weeks after we had walked out of Cabin 4 at Cedar Ridge with our bags on our shoulders and I had looked at a sheepskin for the last time and grieved it — the little blue bowl of apples was on the kitchenette counter next to the kettle. Four of them. A green one, a red one, a yellow one, and the fourth one was in between colors and I did not know what it was, and I did not care, because they had put the bowl back.“Beck.”“Mm.”“The apples are back.”“I know, Victoria.”“*The apples are back,* Beck.”“I heard you the first time.”She was at the doorway to the bedroom with her duffle in her hand, not because she was unpacking yet but because she was standing in the bedroom doorway looking at the bed the way a woman looks at a place she has been trying to get back to for a year, and I was on the other side of the main room in the little bowl of apples, and she set her duffle down on the rug and she came across the cabin to me and she took an apple out of the bowl and she held it up between us.“Apple?” she said.“Beck —”“They are for eating. Victoria. I have explained this to you before. The apples are for eating.”“The apples,” I said, very slowly, looking at her, “are for *seducing,* Beck. I am going on the record about this. You have not changed my mind.”She exhaled through her nose. The small laugh. The old laugh.She put the apple back in the bowl.“Unpack,” she said. “We have dinner reservations at the lodge.”“Lodge —”“I made dinner reservations at the lodge at seven. I know what you are going to say. I know. I — I wanted the porch for after.”“*Rebecca.*”“Unpack, Victoria.”I unpacked. It took me fourteen minutes. She unpacked in six. Her things went into the drawers in the order her things had gone into the drawers for twelve months in an apartment in Halifax, and my things went in loosely-folded on top, and she watched me do it without saying a word, and when I was done she pulled me in by the hem of the old tee I was wearing and she kissed me in the bedroom doorway, short, warm, and she said, “Let’s go eat.”—Dinner at the main lodge was strange.There was no team. There had been a team last summer, all twenty-three of us, loud and hungry and in sock feet coming through the front door with duffles — and on the fifth of July one year later the main lodge dining room was quiet and the fires in the stone fireplaces were low and the lodge kid who had built them for us last June was now taller by three inches and he recognized us both and said *Cap! Zhang! Congrats on the season!* and he did not care that we were holding hands, and Beck said, *Hi, Matty,* and Matty brought us a plate of something with butter on it, and we ate.There was a fresh bowl of apples on our table.“Beck.”“I know.”“Are they doing this on purpose.”“I don’t think Matty knows what the apples mean, Victoria.”“The apples *mean,* Beck.”“I know they mean. I live with you.”We ate. Two glasses of wine. No bourbon. Beck had banned bourbon in Cabin 4 on the drive up — she had announced it like a league commissioner, *there will be no bourbon on this trip, Victoria, we are not drinking anything we do not want to drink, do not pack bourbon, I am not packing bourbon, we are done with bourbon at Cedar Ridge,* and I had laughed into my travel mug, and we had not packed any.She paid the check.We walked back up the path in the dark. The solar lanterns were still at intervals. The same lanterns, staked along the same trail, lit by the same dusk at the same elevation, one year older. Beck walked close to me. She held my hand. She had been holding my hand for fourteen months without flinching in public, and I had been getting used to it, and I was not done getting used to it.At the bend in the path where the porch lamp became visible, she slowed down.“Tori.”“Mm.”“Can you — wait on the porch for a minute. Sit down in the left chair. I need to grab something inside. Just — for a minute.”“Okay.”“And don’t move.”“Don’t move?”“Don’t move, Victoria.”I did not move.I sat on the porch. Left chair. The cream throw was folded on the arm of the right chair and the gray throw was folded on the arm of the left and I pulled the gray one over my lap because it was the right chair’s throw but I had claimed it a year ago and I was claiming it again, and Beck went inside.She was in there for two minutes and forty seconds. I counted.She came out.She had the cream throw over her arm. She had two glasses of ice water, which — she had, earlier on the drive up, made a specific speech about how she was not going to make the bourbon mistake again, and here were two glasses of water, the safest liquid in the cabin, delivered to the porch with her stupid captain-like precision — and she had a small velvet box in her left hand.I saw the box before I saw her face.I stopped breathing.She set the water on the small table between the chairs. She set the cream throw on the arm of the right chair. Then she picked up the small table and she moved it six inches out onto the porch, past our chairs, and she put it down, and she slid her Adirondack six inches closer to mine, and she sat down next to me, not across from me, and she put the velvet box on the porch rail in front of us.She did not open it.She turned her face to me.“Victoria.”“Beck.”“Hi.”“Hi.”“I have a thing I have been writing for six weeks and I did not bring the paper with me because I wanted to say it without the paper, and I am going to say it now, and I need you to let me get through it. Okay? I am asking you. I need you to let me get through it without saying anything.”I nodded.My right thumb had already pressed to the inside of my left wrist, to the compass tattoo, without my permission. I felt it pressing. I did not move my thumb.“I love you,” she said. “I have loved you for seven years. I was late for six of them. I have apologized for the six years I was late, and you have forgiven me for the six years I was late, and I am not going to bring up the six years I was late again, because I am going to be the woman who makes up for it, not the woman who talks about it.”I breathed.“You washed my hair on day eleven in the shower in this cabin,” she said. “I want you to know I think about that — I think about that — I think about that at least once a week. I did not know what to do with being taken care of. I still sometimes do not know what to do with being taken care of. You do it anyway. You washed my hair again last Sunday. You do it every Sunday. You are going to do it every Sunday for the rest of my life, if I have my say, and I am asking to have my say.”My eyes were wet.“The morning after the first night we slept together in this cabin,” she said, “you were in my practice jersey in the kitchenette making me coffee and you made a joke about strawberries. It was not a funny joke. I laughed. I want you to know I had the thought, that morning, that I was going to be in love with you for the rest of my life. I thought it one time, that morning, and then I thought it twice on the drive home three weeks later, and I have been thinking it once a day every day since, and I want you to know — because I am the captain of both of us and I am responsible for the record — that I have been right about it. Every single day. I have been right about it. I am going to keep being right about it.”She reached over the chair’s arm. She picked up the box.She did not open it.She turned it over in her hand.“I would like to be married to you, Victoria,” she said, quiet. “I would like to be married to you in this cabin if you will have me. I have a ring. I have a judge’s phone number in Baddeck — I called him in April, he is expecting a call, he does elopements — and I have a weekend on hold at the lodge in November if you want a witness-ed wedding. Del and Lily and your mom and my mom — who is a problem, I know — and Coach, and Mack if Mack is free. I have a plane ticket to New York on hold for your dad and a block of rooms held at the lodge for a Saturday. I have — I have everything, Tori. I have the plans in both directions. I did not want to pick. I wanted to ask you.”She stopped.She turned the box toward me.She opened it.It was a thin gold band with one small clean stone. I knew — I knew before she said it — that she had got the sizing right. I knew, in the way you know a thing about a woman you have been sleeping in a bed with for a year, that she had measured my ring in my sleep at some point in the last six months, because that was the kind of woman she was. She had done it. I did not know when. I was going to ask her.“Will you marry me,” she said.I could not speak.I nodded.She waited.I nodded again.She said, very gently, “I need to hear it, sweetheart.”“Yes.” My voice cracked. “Yes, Beck. Yes.”She slid the ring on my finger.She did it without ceremony. She took my left hand — my thumb still pressed to the compass on the underside of my wrist — and she lifted it off, and she put her own thumb where my thumb had been, and she held my wrist, and she slid the ring on my fourth finger.She kissed the ring. Then she kissed my knuckles. Then she kissed my mouth.The kiss was slow. It was controlled. It was — I want to note, for the record that she and I were keeping together now — it was the kiss of a woman who had all night. It was the kiss of a woman who knew the deadbolt was ten feet behind her and the nearest neighbor was nine miles down a mountain and she had rented the entire compound, as I was about to discover over coffee in the morning, for the whole week.I pulled back an inch.“Inside,” I said.“Inside?”“*Inside,* Beck.”“Inside, Victoria.”I stood up. I reached for her hand. Not my right hand. My left hand. The hand with the ring on it.She took it.I led her back into the cabin by my left hand, and the porch lamp stayed on behind us, and I turned the deadbolt myself.—## II.*— Tori —*She had laid a fire.I had not seen her do it. She had done it, apparently, in the two minutes and forty seconds she had been inside — she had built a small neat fire in the grate with dry kindling and one log, and lit it, and it was crackling now at a low warm orange, and the main room of the cabin was doing the thing main rooms of cabins do when somebody has engineered the entire scene, which is glow.I stopped in the middle of the rug.I looked at her.“Beck.”“Mm.”“You laid a fire.”“I laid a fire.”“*Rebecca.*”“Victoria.”“You made a dinner reservation at seven and you laid a fire at six-forty and you put a ring on the porch rail at nine-oh-three and you had a judge on hold in Baddeck and a plane ticket on hold for my father. What *else* have you done tonight that I do not know about.”She looked at me from the doorway to the bedroom, where she was taking her coat off.“I rented the whole compound,” she said, mildly. “For the week. I was going to tell you tomorrow.”“*REBECCA MORRISON.*”“Victoria.”“You — we — *the whole compound —*”“It was the least I could do. I was not going to share you with other guests this week. I wanted — I wanted the lodge to ourselves. Matty is here. Matty is the only other person here. He is not going to come up to the cabin.”I was going to say something. I do not know what I was going to say. My mouth was open and my left hand was up at my own face because I was still looking at the ring, and she had taken her coat off and hung it on the hook by the door, and she came across the rug to me, and she put her hands on my waist, and she said, quiet, one corner of her mouth up:“So. Whenever you are ready.”“Ready for what.”“For — I don’t know, Victoria. I am asking you. What would you like.”I laughed.I laughed because she had never, in seven years of knowing her, asked me *what would you like* like that, with her hands on my waist and her eyes on my eyes and her whole body waiting, and I threw my arms around her neck and I kissed her stupid, and I said, into her mouth: “One bed.”“Tori —”“One bed, Beck.”“One bed, Victoria.”She walked me backwards to the bedroom.She undressed me like she had undressed me a year ago in this room, slow, one piece at a time, except this time she paused, halfway through, and she took my left hand in hers, and she looked at the ring, and she said, quiet: “I am going to have to — I am going to have to recalibrate.”“Recalibrate.”“Every time I touch that hand I am going to — I am going to catch on it. You are going to have to be patient with me while I figure out the geometry.”“*Beck.*”“I am telling you in advance. So you are not surprised. I am going to catch on it a lot. I have been catching on rings for about ninety minutes. Mine is in my pocket. I keep — I keep forgetting it is there.”She pulled a second small velvet box out of her jeans pocket.She handed it to me.“Yours,” she said. “I — I bought them at the same time. I could not — it would have been weird to put only one on the porch rail. And I am wearing one too, in — assuming you want. Do you want.”I sat down on the edge of the bed. I opened the box.It was a thin gold band with no stone. Just the band. Plain, and warm, and exactly her.“I want,” I said.“Yes?”“*Yes,* Beck.”I slid it onto her finger myself.She looked at her own hand on her own thigh, for a second. Her face did a thing. She did not cry — she had not cried during the proposal, which I had suspected she wouldn’t — but her face did the thing where every tell she had, all at once, went soft, and she breathed out the long breath, and she said, quiet, mostly to herself: “Okay.”Then she looked up at me.“Lie down,” she said.I lay down.She did not follow me onto the bed immediately. She stood at the edge. She looked at me for a long count with her eyes going up my body and down my body, unhurried, like she had the whole week and she did. I had, at some point during the undressing, ended up wearing nothing but her practice jersey — *hers, her, personal, #9 MORRISON,* which I had put on again this morning under a sweater because I was incorrigible — and the jersey was loose at my thighs and pushed halfway up my stomach, and the ring on my hand was flat against the quilt, and she was standing there in her jeans and her long-sleeve tee, the little gold band on her finger at her side, and she was just *looking.*“Beck.”“Give me a minute, Victoria.”“Take your minute.”She took her minute.Then she pulled her shirt over her head.—## III.*— Beck —*I was going to take my time.I want to note — I want to note for the record Victoria and I were keeping — that I had decided, on the drive up Highway 105 at approximately eleven forty-two this morning with her asleep in my passenger seat and her hand slack in mine across the console, that I was going to take my time tonight. I had lain awake in our bed in our apartment in Halifax for the last two weeks staging this trip in my head, and the part I had restaged most was the night, and the thing I had decided about the night was that I was not going to rush a single minute of it.I was going to have her, and I was going to have her for as long as I wanted to have her, and then I was going to let her have me, and I was going to be slow.Slow was the whole plan.I got my shirt off. My sports bra. My jeans. I stepped out of them. I walked across the rug in my underwear to the bed and I climbed onto the bed on my knees and I straddled her thighs — not putting my weight down, just there, hovering — and I pushed the practice jersey up her body slow with both my hands flat on her ribs.“Arms up, sweetheart.”She put her arms up.I pulled the jersey over her head. I folded it.She laughed, because of course she laughed, because I had folded a jersey while straddling her half-naked on the last night she was legally my girlfriend and first night she was officially something else, and I said, calm, into her laugh, “I am not damaging the jersey, Victoria.”“Beck.”“I am serious.”“You are *ridiculous.*”“This jersey has a season on it, Victoria. It has — it has history. It is the jersey you wore on the kitchen counter in my condo on the night we went public. I am not going to —”“*Beck.*”“Okay. I am done with the jersey.”I set it on the nightstand.I came back down.She was on her back in the lamplight, hair dark on the pillow, left hand flat on the quilt with the ring — *the ring,* *my* ring, the one I had asked a jeweler on Barrington Street to make in February — catching the lamp, and her compass on her right wrist, and the phoenix on her ribs, and her eyes on my eyes, and my throat did a thing. I had not let it do the thing in front of her for a while. I let it now. I did not say anything about it.I leaned down. I kissed her throat. I took a long time.I kissed her throat and I kissed down her collarbone and I took one nipple in my mouth, slow, and I did not move off until her breathing had gone short and her hips had lifted off the quilt the small involuntary lift she did, and then I moved to the other side, and I took longer. I used my teeth gently, once, on the edge, because I had been wanting to, and she made a small broken noise into the ceiling and her hand came into my hair and rested there, the ring hand, and I caught on the ring on my scalp and I laughed against her sternum.“Told you.”“Beck —”“Told you I was going to catch on it.”“Don’t — don’t *stop*.”“I am not stopping.”I was not stopping.I kissed down her stomach. I traced the phoenix with my tongue — slow, all the way along the top feather, because a year ago I had done this same thing and I had told myself I had waited six years for it, and a year later I told myself I had waited seven, and I was going to do it every time we got into a bed for as many years as she would let me. I kissed her hip bone. I kissed the inside of one thigh, slow. Then the other. Then I put my hand flat on her stomach and I pushed her thighs apart with my other hand and I did not hurry.She was already ready for me.I looked up at her. Her eyes were on mine.“Open for me,” I said.She opened. I went down.—I want to be specific about how I went down.I put my mouth on her first — just the flat of my tongue, slow, a long slow sweep, one pass, and then I pulled back and I watched her face for one breath, and then I did it again. Two passes. Three. I was not building heat yet. I was teaching her body that this was going to be a long one, and I was going to be patient, and she should settle in, because I was not in a hurry.She got it. Her hand in my hair eased. Her hips relaxed flat onto the quilt. She exhaled out through her mouth, long.I went in.I used the flat of my tongue in a slow broad circle for a count of maybe thirty. Her hips shifted. I stayed on the circle. Her breathing picked up. I stayed on the circle. I felt her start to tremble a little under my palm flat on her stomach, and I stayed on the circle, because I wanted her to know I was going to let her go up slowly and I was not going to rush her.I pointed my tongue. Smaller circles now. Tighter. Direct. I moved my palm from her stomach to her hip bone and I pinned her there gently, because she had started to roll her hips up into my mouth without meaning to, and I wanted her still, because I wanted to control this.I added a finger.One finger. Slow. Curled. I went as deep as I could go and I stayed there a second before I began the slow curl of the pad against the spot inside her I had memorized. She made a sound. A small wet broken sound, her head tipping back on the pillow, her hand fisting in my hair, her whole body going taut for a second and then relaxing again.“Good girl,” I said, against her.She made a sound I will hear when I die.I added a second finger.I went slow. I built her in very specific waves. I had a list in my head — flat tongue slow circle / point tongue tight / one finger / two fingers / slow curl / faster curl / suck gently / suck harder — and I worked the list methodically like a drill, because tonight I had the luxury of the drill, because I had the whole week, because she was wearing my ring.She went up the first time maybe four minutes in.I felt it build in her thighs before I felt it in her mouth. Her thighs started to shake against my palms. I kept the rhythm. I did not speed up. Speeding up was the mistake amateurs made. I kept the rhythm and I kept my mouth in the same pattern and I let her come up into it on her own pace, and she did, and her back came up off the quilt and her hand tightened hard in my hair and she said — she said — she said my name, *”Rebecca,”* broken, all the way out, the first time she had ever used my full first name in bed, and she broke on my mouth with her thighs clenched tight against my ears and her hand pulling my hair with the ring catching my scalp again, and I did not stop.I did not stop.I stayed on her through the whole moment. I slowed the pattern, gentled it, went soft at the end, but I did not come off her. My fingers stayed curled. My tongue stayed flat. And when she started to breathe out, shaking, I was still between her legs, and I kissed the inside of her thigh, and I said, quiet:“Again.”“Beck —”“Again, Victoria.”“I can’t —”“You can. Look at me. Victoria — hey — hey, look at me. You can.”She looked at me.She was wrecked.She looked at me with her eyes half-shut and her mouth open and her hand loose in my hair, and she said, “Okay.”I went back down.The second one was longer. I took my time building her. I used two fingers curled and my mouth flat, and I worked her slow, and she went up in stages this time — a little higher, a little higher, a little higher, hanging just under the edge for a long time, and she started to say *please* on a loop — *please, please, please, Beck, please* — and I let her beg for it for a count of maybe ten before I gave her what she was asking for, and when I finally let her go she went differently than the first time, deeper, longer, a whole-body one, her thighs shaking and her fingers in my hair going tight and then going slack and her voice breaking on a long broken sound that was not a word.I stayed with her all the way down.When she was breathing again I crawled up her body. Slow. Kissed up the center of her. Kissed her sternum. Kissed her throat. Kissed the corner of her mouth. She turned her head and caught my mouth with hers, and she did not stop kissing me, and my hand slid back down between us.“Beck —”“Shh.”“I *literally cannot —*”“Shh, sweetheart.”I put my fingers on her. Not inside — just on. The pad of my middle finger pressed flat. I did not move.She twitched.“You’re going to be a third time for me.”“Beck —”“I know.”“I’m not *going to be able to —*”“Yes, you are. Victoria. Look at me. Look at me. You are going to be a third time for me, sweetheart. I am going to take you there. Put your hands above your head.”She put her hands above her head.I started moving my finger.Slow. Slow. Slow. Forehead to forehead. My mouth on her mouth. My other hand on her jaw, thumb on her bottom lip, and I kept the pace deliberately slow, because I had figured out a year ago that you could take her to a place by going slow that you could not take her to by going fast, and I took her to that place.I took her to that place.I took her up slow. I watched her face. I did not say anything except her name, and *good girl,* and *my Victoria,* the exact vocabulary she had trained me to say in her ear over twelve months of Sundays, and when she broke — the third time, her whole body shaking against me, her mouth open against my mouth, tears actually going sideways into the pillow because she had gone too high for her body to handle without water coming out of her eyes — she broke saying my name, soft and broken and all the way out.“Rebecca.”“I know. I’ve got you.”“Rebecca —”“I’ve got you, Victoria. I’ve got you.”I held her through it.Her hand came down from above her head. The ring hand. She put her palm flat on my chest over my heart — the place her hand always went, the place her hand had gone eleven months of every single night we had slept in the same bed — and she closed her eyes and she breathed, and I held my own breath for a second because the ring under her palm and my ring on my finger were both against my sternum and I was not ready to be coherent about what that did to me.She breathed out, long. She opened her eyes.“Okay,” she said, small voice, wet voice. “Okay. Okay.”“Okay?”“Okay, Beck. I — your turn.”“You sure.”“Get on your back, Rebecca.”—## IV.*— Tori —*I am going to say a thing, and I am going to say it plain.I had been thinking about Beck Morrison on her back for eleven months.I had been thinking about it in the specific way I had been thinking about it because Beck Morrison on her back was, for the first eight months we had been together, a thing that did not fully happen. She would lie down. She would let me top her. She would, once or twice in the right weather, lie down and let me take her apart. But she did not go on her back and *stay.* Her hands were always doing a thing. She was always half-reaching, half-directing, half-managing, half-running the scene from underneath even when she had agreed to let me run it. I had loved her for it. I had also, very quietly, been wanting her to one night stop.She had stopped, by degrees, starting in November. A little more every month. I had not said anything about it. I had let her get there.Tonight I was going to ask her to get there all the way.She was on her side next to me. Still fully clothed below the waist. Still in her underwear, her bra on the chair. Her hand on my stomach. Her mouth at my temple. Her breathing slowing after three. She had just made me cry and she had not broken a sweat and she was looking at me with the small private not-quite-a-smile that she had in bed that she never wore anywhere else, and my body was a wreck and my heart was full and the ring was on my hand and the ring was on her hand and I was going to do this tonight.“Get on your back, Rebecca.”“Victoria —”“On your back, Beck.”She looked at me.She blinked, once, slow. Her jaw did the thing.Then she rolled onto her back.All the way. Flat. Hands at her sides.I sat up.I straddled her hips in my underwear — only my underwear, because she had taken everything else off me — and I looked down at her on her back with her hands at her sides and her hair dark on the pillow and the ring on her left hand on the quilt, and I leaned down and I kissed her, slow, and I said into her mouth:“Don’t move your hands.”“Tori —”“Hands at your sides, Rebecca. Unless I tell you otherwise.”A beat.“Okay.”“Okay?”“Yes, Victoria.”I sat back up.I pulled her underwear off her, slow, one leg at a time. I threw it off the side of the bed. I did not care where it went. I slid back up her body and I kissed her one more time, deep, and I sat back on my heels on top of her and I looked at her — *bare,* on her back, hands at her sides, watching me — and my whole chest did the stupid thing.I leaned down and I kissed her collarbone.The scar one. Always the scar one.I kissed down her sternum. I took one of her small beautiful breasts in my mouth and I stayed there — longer than she had stayed on me, because I was not racing, because I was taking payback in time — and she made a small sound through her teeth, and her hand on the quilt twitched, and she did not raise it.I switched to the other side. I took longer.I kissed down her body.I traced the thin line of muscle at her stomach with my tongue. I kissed her hip — one, then the other. I kissed down the inside of her thigh, the one with the small birthmark on it, the one nobody else in the world knew was there except me, and I put my mouth on it and I kissed it for a count, because I had marked it as mine a year ago and I was going to remark it every time.I went down on her.I took my time.Beck was always quiet when I went down on her, and tonight was not different — she did not make a lot of noise, she did not babble, she did not beg. She exhaled. She breathed out through her nose in short controlled breaths. Her hand on the quilt went into a fist. Her heels hooked back into the bed. Her thighs pressed, not hard, into the sides of my shoulders. I stayed slow. I stayed unhurried. I used my tongue in long flat passes and I let her go up at her pace, and when she went — maybe six minutes in, because Beck was a slow burn and I had learned to let her burn — she went on my tongue quietly, a single sharp exhale, her fingers fisting the quilt, her hips coming up off the bed one inch and settling.Quiet. Her.I stayed with her all the way down.I kissed up her body slow.I kissed her mouth. She turned her head to me. She kissed me back, soft, and her hand at her side finally twitched and I said, quiet, against her mouth: “Hands.”“Victoria.”“Hands at your sides, Rebecca.”“Tori —”“Stay there.”Her hand went back.I got off the bed.She watched me. She did not ask. She did not move. I went to our bag on the chair at the foot of the bed and I unzipped the little compartment, and I got the harness and the strap out of the bag, and I walked back to the bed with them in my hand, and Beck on her back was watching me, and her breath had picked up, small, short breaths through her mouth.I put the harness on at the foot of the bed.I did it slow. Deliberate. She watched me.I did not look at her face while I was adjusting the straps, because if I had looked at her face I would have lost my nerve, and I was not going to lose my nerve tonight.I climbed back onto the bed.I crawled up between her thighs.I knelt there. I looked at her.“Beck.”“Yes.”“Hi.”“Hi.”“Is this okay.”“Yes.”“Tell me if it’s not.”“I will.”“Promise me.”“I promise. Victoria — *I promise.*”I leaned down. I kissed her. Long. Soft. My hand at her jaw. Her hand on the quilt twitching, twitching. She did not raise it. I lowered my weight onto her, slow, and she opened her thighs for me without being asked, and my hips settled between hers, and I could feel her against me, and I stayed there, not moving, kissing her. I kissed her for maybe two minutes without doing anything else.Then I pulled back an inch.“Lift your knees, Rebecca.”She lifted her knees.I reached down between us.I positioned myself.I went in slow.I went in an inch. Stopped. Watched her face. Her eyes closed. Her jaw tightened. Her mouth fell open. I went in another inch. Stopped. Her hand on the quilt was white at the knuckles.“Beck.”“I’m okay.”“You good.”“Yes. Keep — keep going, sweetheart.”I went in the rest of the way.Slow. She made a small sound — the sound I was going to spend the rest of my life trying to earn out of her — and her thigh trembled against my hip, and I held still, all the way in, and I put my forehead on her forehead and I breathed with her.“Hi,” I said, quiet.“Hi.”“Okay.”“Okay.”I moved.I want to be specific about this. I moved slow. I did not build fast. I held my forehead on her forehead, and I ran one hand flat up her ribs and cupped her jaw, and I started with a slow deliberate roll of my hips that I had been practicing in my head for a month. Beck made a small choked noise. Her hand on the quilt came up, finally, and settled on my waist — not gripping, just resting — and I kept my pace.“You don’t have to be in charge right now,” I said, into her mouth.Her eyes closed.“I’ve got you, Beck.”“Tori —”“Let me.”“Okay.”“*Good girl.*”Her whole body jolted.I felt it from her core out — the wave of it, the clench, the shiver. Her eyes flew open. Her mouth was open. She looked up at me, wrecked, all the captain gone, and I kept my rhythm and I kept my forehead on her forehead and I said, quiet, “Again?”She nodded.I moved.I went slow. I kept the pace. I used the exact vocabulary she had trained me on, and I used it deliberately, the way she had used it on me — *my good girl, my captain, let me, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.* Each phrase different. Each one landing a different way. Each one making a small specific part of Beck Morrison on her back under me come unstitched.Her first time on my strap was about seven minutes in.She had gone from quiet to not-quiet around the four-minute mark, and she had started to say *please* around the five-minute mark — small, quiet, half-breathed *please*s that were not loops, they were careful and spaced out and Beck — and at the six-minute mark she had said, quiet, into my mouth: *harder.*I went harder.Her hand flew up off my waist and into my hair, the ring hand, and her heels hooked behind my thighs, and she broke on a long cry with my full name in it — *Victoria,* three times, the third one cracked all the way — and her whole body came up off the bed and clenched and her hand fisted in my hair pulling me down into her mouth and she broke kissing me with her mouth open and her breath sharp, and I did not stop, I did not pull out, I held still deep and let her go around me and held her through it.Her arms came up.Both of them. Up off the bed, around my back, pulling me down, pulling me flat against her. Skin to skin. My chest flat on her chest. Her breath wet in my hair.“Victoria —”“I know.”“Don’t — don’t —”“I’m not going anywhere.”“Don’t move.”“I’m not.”I did not move.I lay on top of her, her arms locked around my back, her face pressed into my neck, her breathing short and wet against my collarbone. The ring on her hand was cold on my shoulder blade. The ring on my hand was warm against the back of her neck. I did not move. I let her breathe.She breathed.She breathed for maybe forty seconds.Then she said, small, muffled into my neck: “Your turn.”“Beck.”“Your turn, Victoria.”“I’m — I’m okay. I just — I want to hold you for —”“Roll.”“Beck —”“Roll, sweetheart. Your turn. I am going to take care of you now.”—*— Beck —*I rolled us.I took her weight and I rolled us so that she was on her back and I was between her thighs, and I did not let her sit up, because I had plans, and my plans were specific, and I was going to execute them.I kissed down her body.She was, at this point, approximately as much a puddle as a woman can be. Her eyes were half-shut. Her mouth was open. She was breathing in that specific way she did when she had been taken apart very thoroughly and there was no captain-brain left in the room. She watched me kiss down her body through her lashes and she did not say anything.I sat back on my heels between her thighs.I ran my hand flat up the inside of her thigh. I looked up at her.“Rebecca —”“Shh.”I put my hand between her thighs.“Beck —”“Let me.”She let me.I took my time. I used my fingers on her — two, curled, the way she liked it when she was already worked — and she made a sound I had never heard before, and her hips bucked up, and I used my other hand to hold her down.“Slow,” I said.“Beck —”“Slow, sweetheart. I have you.”I built her.I built her slow. She had already gone once, and she was exhausted, and I took my time. I kept my mouth on her throat, on her collarbone, kissing up the side of her neck in a long slow line while my fingers worked her slow, and she was half-sobbing, half-laughing, and her hand was in my hair at the back of my head pulling me down, and her compass tattoo was against my cheekbone.I was going to say a thing.I had not planned to say it. I had planned to say it on a porch in November, or in a kitchen on a morning after a wedding, or across a table at a dinner — somewhere formal, somewhere with a witness, somewhere that was not the middle of our third moment in an hour on a cabin bed in Cape Breton.The word came up in my throat.I let it.“Look at you,” I said, quiet, into her ear.“Beck —”“My good girl.”“Oh —”“My Victoria.”“*Beck —*”“My wife.”She cried.She went on my hand with her mouth open and a sharp wet sound in her throat, her whole body arching, her hand in my hair pulling tight, and she cried — she went crying, the word landing in her ear at the exact moment her body unlocked, and it was not the pretty crying, it was the real crying, the wrecked crying, and I held her through it, my mouth on her jaw, my fingers slow in her, until she came all the way down and her hand in my hair went loose and her breathing slowed.I eased my hand out of her.I got the harness off her. I did not ask permission. She was too wrecked to reach for anything, and I worked the buckles with one hand and slid the whole thing down her legs and over her ankles, and I dropped it off the side of the bed, and I came back up to her and I pulled her against my chest.She came into my chest.Her face in my neck. Her ring hand flat on my sternum. Her leg hooked back over my hip. Her breath wet against my throat.She said, very small, against my skin: “Say it again.”I pressed my mouth to the top of her head.“My wife.”“We’re not — legally —”“Tori.”“Beck —”“I don’t care. Say yes or no.”She did not hesitate.“Yes,” she said, into my throat. “Yes. *Yes.*”I closed my eyes.I held her.I held her for a long time.—## V.*— Beck —*I woke at five forty-seven the next morning with her asleep on my chest.This was not new. She had slept on my chest every night for fourteen months. What was new was the ring on her left hand flat on my sternum, under the duvet, the small cool weight of it pressed into my skin just below my collarbone, and the fact that when I woke up and lay there for eleven minutes without moving she did not stir, and I spent eleven minutes looking at the ceiling of Cabin 4 with her breath against my throat and her left hand on my heart, and I thought, very plainly: *you have never been luckier than you are right now, Rebecca. Do not forget that.*I eased out from under her.She made a small noise, rolled into the pillow I slid under her arm, and kept sleeping.I made coffee.I want to be specific about the coffee. I made two mugs. Hers with cream, one sugar, the way she had taken it for seven years. Mine black. I put them on a little tray from the cupboard under the kitchenette sink, and I walked out onto the porch in the big robe I had not taken off in two days, and I set the tray on the little table I had moved out from between the chairs last night, and I sat in the left chair, and I pulled the gray throw over my legs, and I waited.She came out at six forty-two.Bare feet on the cabin floor, then bare feet on the porch boards. She was in my robe — the other robe, the one I had brought because I had known — and her hair was a disaster and her left hand was holding the robe closed at the throat and she was squinting into the cold pink light, and she came over and she sat in the right chair and she took her coffee without asking if it was hers.She drank a sip.She closed her eyes.She leaned back in the Adirondack.“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said.“Good morning, Victoria.”She opened her eyes.She lifted her left hand to her face to look at the ring. She turned it this way. She turned it that way. She watched the stone catch the morning light. I watched her watch it.“I am not going to get over this,” she said, to the ring.“Okay.”“I am not going to. I want you to — I want you to be prepared. I am going to look at this ring like a raccoon with a marble for the rest of my life. You should know what you signed up for.”“I signed up for a woman who makes breakfast jokes about strawberries. I know what I signed up for.”“*Beck.*”“Victoria.”She drank her coffee. She watched the valley. The solar lanterns along the path had not turned off yet. The sun was just barely over the ridge behind the cabin, a thin yellow line on the porch boards by our feet, not warm yet, just light. The stream was doing the stream thing down the valley. A hawk was, I noted, doing a slow circle out over the trees — possibly the same hawk from a year ago, probably not, I was not a hawk expert.“Beck.”“Mm.”“I want the lodge wedding.”I smiled into my coffee.“Okay.”“In November. With Del and Lily and my mom and your mom — even though your mom is a problem —”“My mom is a problem.”“— and Coach. And Mack, if Mack is free. And the team, if the team is free, which I want on the record I am inviting them specifically because Del will throw a fit if I invite Priya and not Novak —”“True.”“— and nobody else. My cousins can send a card.”“Okay.”“And we honeymoon here.”“Here here.”“Cabin four, seven nights, again.”“Already booked.”She turned her head.“Rebecca.”“Victoria.”“You already booked it.”“I booked all of November at the lodge at the same time I booked this week, for — just in case. And I booked cabin four for the first week of December at the same time. In case.”“*Rebecca.*”“I plan.”“You planned the honeymoon before you picked a wedding date.”“I planned the wedding in February. I have notes. I have a spreadsheet.”She started laughing.She laughed into her coffee mug. Real laugh. The loud one. The one she had been giving me more often lately and that I kept a running tally of in my head because I was, apparently, the kind of woman who kept a running tally of her wife’s laughs.*Wife.*I was going to have to get used to that word.I was going to get used to it. I had, approximately, fifty years.She set her mug down. She reached across the small table. She took my left hand in her left hand, our rings clicking against each other, quiet, on the arms of our chairs. She turned our hands so the two rings sat next to each other in the morning light, and she looked at them for a second, and she said, very quiet, to the rings: “Okay.”“Okay?”“Okay, Beck.”We sat on the porch for a long time.We did not talk. We drank our coffee. The last of the solar lanterns clicked off, one by one, down the path, in sequence — the same sequence I had watched on the morning I had sat out here a year ago with the weight of the clause in my chest and the list in my head and her asleep in the cabin behind me not knowing any of it — and this morning she was awake on the porch next to me with a ring on her hand and my ring on mine, and the lanterns clicked off, and the sun came up over the ridge, and I thought, very plainly:*I used to think the right play was no.**The right play was always her. It always will be.*I did not say it out loud.I did not have to.She was holding my hand. The ring was on her finger. The deadbolt was closed behind us. The coffee was warm. There was nobody else on the compound. I had all week. I had the rest of my life.I drank my coffee.—*— for the list. — Aurora*

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