Page 36 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Twenty-One

As I head downstairs in my dry pajamas, I find Jude and a towel-dried Walter Matthau at my front door.

His back is to me, and he’s wearing the sweats I lent him after the three of us staggered like swamp things out of the Venice canal.

I clock Jude’s wrung-out, balled-up suit in one hand, then the note scrawled on my Zombie Hospital notepad in the center of my kitchen counter.

It doesn’t take Veronica Mars to make sense of these clues. We scurriers recognize our own kind.

Still, it feels like someone is folding my heart into origami.

“You’re leaving?”

Jude spins around, his eyes moving up the stairs to me. He looks destroyed, and the sight of his expression sends me down the last few stairs to reach him.

“I’m sorry,” he says, nodding toward the note. “I tried to explain. I should go—”

“Please don’t go. Not yet.”

I notice he’s lit the gas fire in my living room, something I’ve not been able to figure out in a year and a half of living here.

It makes my small, open-floor-plan first-story kitchen and living room feel wonderfully cozy, romantic.

It makes it feel as if something pleasant is about to happen here—if it weren’t for the two massively uncomfortable people and the shivering dog populating the scene.

There’s something exciting about the way these casual clothes look on him. Not just because they show off his sculpted shoulders, but because comfort wear puts me in the mind of curling up on the couch, in front of the fire, which I would love to do with him right now.

I gesture at my butter-yellow sofa. “Can you stay? Can we talk?”

“You don’t owe me any explanation,” Jude says. “You did us both a favor, stopping what I was about to do. I’m just…” He rubs his face. “Not entirely myself right now.”

Discomfort rises off Jude like steam. I know that the kindest thing would be to let him slip away from the source of his discomfort—me. But I don’t want him to go.

“I’ll make pancakes,” I offer, moving into the kitchen and opening my fridge. I take out eggs and buttermilk. “I’m not even raging mad, and I’m offering to cook. I think you’ve helped me reach enlightenment.”

Jude cracks the smallest smile, and I feel like someone’s spread a weighted blanket over all my worries. When he pulls up a barstool and sits down, I celebrate with a low-key fist pump under the counter.

“What’d your note say?” I ask, as Jude quickly crumples the paper.

“Bad first draft. Nowhere near ready for a table read.”

“Question for you: Does the thought of quinoa in your pancakes make you want to run screaming?”

“It makes me want to run screaming toward the pancakes.”

I grin and dump some quinoa into the bowl of dry ingredients.

“Question for you,” he says. “Where’d you get this sweatshirt?” He points at the clothes I’ve given him to wear. The gray sweatpants must be my brother-in-law’s, left behind when they needed someplace to stay while they fumigated for termites.

But the sweatshirt—the only top I could find that would fit Jude’s six-foot-four frame—is the one Sam loaned me in Two Harbors when I was the one who needed dry clothes.

“You like Taj Mahal?” Jude asks, looking down at the graphic of the singer’s face on the front.

I hum a line from “Fishin’ Blues,” my favorite song off The Real Thing album, which I listened to a lot right after I met Sam.

I suppose the music was a way to try to feel him with me, to try to know something more about him, even though I never got around to asking what the sweatshirt meant to him.

Jude surprises me by joining in my hum. The sound is rich and honey-smooth, and unexpected, coming from him.

“I saw him on this tour,” he says, glancing at the sleeve where the cities are listed.

I put down my mixing bowl and cross the kitchen to see where he’s pointing. “That’s kind of wild, isn’t it?” I say. “Which stop?”

“Salvador.” He runs his index finger over the white print of the word.

I remember what I’d overheard him telling my brother-in-law at the barbecue. Half of Jude’s family is from Brazil.

“I spent summers there as a kid,” he explains. “At my grandmother’s house.”

“Well, it fits you,” I say. “You should keep it.” I’m unable to resist putting my hands on Jude’s shoulders. There’s that spark between us again. The one we’re trying to pretend we didn’t just ignite on the canal.

I drop my hands. We’re still standing very close. My eyes fall on the thin, pale scar running down Jude’s cheek. The one I’d noticed in Joshua Tree. The one almost but not quite hidden by his beard.

“That’s from the accident,” I say softly.

“Yes.”

I reach out and trace my fingers over Jude’s scar. He says he can’t remember the accident, and I’ve read in plenty of articles how common that is with near-death trauma. But I wish I could know what he went through.

He said in the canoe that he lost something after his accident. If I could only see it, could I help him get it back?

Is that what he was trying to ask me earlier, on the canal? For help?

Tucked under my pajamas, I feel the weight of the adder stone at my neck. What would happen if I looked through this stone at his scar? I know Jude doesn’t believe in that stuff, but maybe I do? Maybe I could believe for us both.

We’re inches apart, eyes locked on each other’s lips. I draw my hand slowly down the side of his cheek, and I think I feel him tremble just a little at my touch. I run my fingers through his soft beard with one hand. Then with both hands.

“Fenny,” he whispers, closing his eyes.

I answer by pressing my lips to his.

Jude kisses me back with heat and hunger, the kind that builds.

The kind that needs to be sated. It’s such a turn-on that when his hands circle my waist and his knees part so my body can slip closer, I’m ready to tear his sweatshirt in half.

My hands are in his short, soft hair. My nails run up and down his neck.

His lips trail my throat with soft kisses.

“Your neck makes me crazy,” he murmurs.

I giggle, surprised. “My neck?”

“It’s the first thing I noticed about you. Your smooth, elegant skin. Goes all the way down to your feet. Your perfect feet.”

“My feet?” I whisper.

“Ever since the wedding, I’ve wanted my mouth on so many parts of you. God, Fenny. I can’t believe this is happening,” he gasps. “Is this okay with you?”

“I kissed you, remember?”

“I will never in my life forget it,” he says, breathless. His hands move down my body, to my hips, my thighs, my ass. His tongue slips softly to meet mine.

It almost feels as if we’ve kissed before, as if we’ve practiced getting to know exactly what the other likes, exactly how much pressure of his mouth against my neck makes me moan like I just did.

What else could explain why we’re so good at this?

This is not un like the chemistry I had with Sam, in that it’s fiery fucking hot.

But these kisses feel deeper, like there’s even more to discover if we keep going.

My desire for Sam came on sudden and strong, like a crack of thunder, but with Jude, it’s like a well I want to drink from forever and never run out.

I want to dive into his depths with my mouth and my hands and my soul.

“Come upstairs,” I tell him.

He moans, which I take as a yes, but a second later Jude stops kissing me. He pulls away.

“Fenny,” he says, like it hurts.

I close my eyes, because it does.

His forehead presses to mine, and he sighs. “I want to come upstairs with you. I so badly want to do everything with you.”

“But?” I whisper.

“But I’m scared that if I don’t stop kissing you right now, I may never stop. Like ever.”

His hands hold mine.

“What’s wrong with that?” I say, peeking my eyes open because—

No.

Jude is letting go of my hands. Standing up, pushing back his barstool, moving toward the door. He reaches for Walter Matthau’s leash. He winces at the ingredients spread around my counter. And that makes me feel like someone punched me.

“Sorry about the pancakes,” he says. “I guess I’ve set you back into rage-cooking tonight. But it’s best if I go. We both have some things we need to figure out.”

He picks up his dripping suit off my entry mat and opens my front door. I feel too paralyzed with shame to stop him.

“What do I have to figure out?” I say, annoyed.

Jude takes a deep breath and then steps outside, onto my stoop. Turning to face me, he says, “You should figure out what’s going on with you and that other guy.”

It’s not what I wanted him to say.

“What do you have to figure out?” I ask.

Tania.

Jude looks at me with his downturned brown eyes. He gives me a smile that feels like a frown. “I have to figure out what to do,” he says, “about the fact that what just happened here felt way bigger than a kiss.”