Nothing Left to Offer

I remember the first time.

We met down by the shore and walked along the beach together. She said she knew me, knew my work. Back then I was still a writer, still entranced by the dance of words and how I could get them to shift and turn upon the page to make a doorway open into some new way of seeing this world turn.

She took my hand as we walked, as though I connected her to something she could not otherwise reach.

I told her I had nothing left to offer, but she said, reaching up to kiss me on the lips, that none of that mattered.

Later, as the wind and the rain returned, blowing the waves into a storm, she came back with me to the cottage behind the dunes.

I sat in my chair in front of the fireplace, looking at the ashes of the fire that had burned there the night before, seeing in the cold remains some sort of metaphor I would once have grown into a story.

I looked up to see her stepping out of the last of her clothes. Pale green knickers easing down her thighs while she balanced on one leg, resting her one hand on the mantelpiece.

She turned to me when she was naked and took a couple of steps forward until she was standing between my open thighs. She leant down and kissed me again.

Then she sat down on the floor between my legs, curling herself up like a cat in front of a warm fire. Then, resting her head on my crotch, so her long red hair spread like flames across my thighs, she closed her eyes and sighed.

I rested my hand on her head, feeling the flow of her hair beneath my palm.

‘It is all right,’ she said, her eyes still closed.

And then I knew she was right, so I closed my eyes too.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]