“But this is where the not knowing part comes in. I have no real idea how you feel about me. One minute, I'm sure you feel the same. The next you're telling me it's just a silly game. One minute, I'm telling you I'm lost without you. The next you're telling me to sod off.”
“So that's what you don't know? You don't know how I feel about you?” I almost laughed, it was so obvious. “I'm not the one who's been dating someone else, Wilson. I'm not the one convinced it's inappropriate to be with me. I'm not the one who has been fighting this every step of the way.”
“That's still not an answer, Blue. How do you feel about me?” His voice was insistent, and his hands were on my shoulders now, pushing me away so that he could see my face. I couldn't answer. Not because I didn't know but because I did.
“Can I show you something?” I said suddenly. Wilson dropped his hands in frustration and turned away, running a hand through his hair.
“Please. It might help me to explain. I'm not as good with words as you are, Wilson.”
I leaned forward and grabbed his hand, pulling him behind me as I walked through the house. He followed, but I could see that I'd hurt him by not answering his question. I tugged him through the door in my kitchen that led to the basement, and I clattered down the stairs, not releasing his hand until we reached my workbench.
I pointed at my latest work-in-progress. “This was that huge lump of wood you helped me drag in a while ago. You asked me if I was going to make a life size replica of Tyrannosaurus Rex, remember?”
“This is it?” Wilson stared in disbelief at the carving that was still big, as far as carvings went – but when we'd lugged it in, it had been too big to get it on the work bench, and we'd had to use a dolly to even get it into the house. It had to have weighed 250 pounds. Since that day, I had carved away enough mass to actually hoist it onto the table myself. I pointed at the large sections of wood that I had cut away, creating a climbing, circular structure, almost like a circular staircase built for fairies in a wooded glen. It was going to be my first carving for Mr. Chen. “Do you see how the carving is created by removing wood? How I almost remove more than I keep.”
Wilson nodded, watching my fingertips skim along the valleys and shadows I'd created.
“It's not just about what's there but what isn't there. Do you understand?” I stumbled a little bit on my words, knowing what I was trying to say and not knowing if I was actually saying it.
“I think so. The space creates the silhouette, the dimension, the form . . . right?”
I smiled up at him, thrilled that he understood. He smiled back, so sweetly, so fondly, that for a minute I couldn't find my breath, and I scrambled to regain my train of thought.
“That's exactly right.” I nodded, my eyes re-focusing on the sculpture in front of me. “Jimmy taught me that when you carve, it's the negative space that creates line, perspective, and beauty. Negative space is where the wood is carved away, creating openings that in turn create shape.” I paused and took a deep breath, knowing this was something I had to say. If I loved Wilson – and I knew that I did – I would have to make him understand something about me that wasn't easy to grasp. It would make loving me hard. I had to warn him. I turned to face him and met his gaze, beseeching him without artifice or apology.
“Sometimes I feel like I have a huge, gaping hole from my chin to my waist, a wide open negative space that life has just carved away. But it's not beautiful, Wilson. Sometimes it feels empty and dark . . . and . . . and no amount of sanding or polish will make it into something it isn't. I'm afraid if I let you love me, your love will be swallowed up in that hole, and in turn YOU will be swallowed up by it.”
Wilson touched my cheek, intent on what I was saying, his brows lowered in concentration over a compassionate grey gaze.
“But that's not really up to you, Blue,” he said gently. “You can't control who loves you . . . you can't let someone love you anymore than you can make someone love you.” He cradled my face between his palms. I reached up and held onto his wrists, caught between the need to hang onto him and to push him away, if only to save myself from what he made me feel.
“So you're afraid to let me love you because you fear you have a hole that can't be filled . . . not by any amount of love. But my question to you is, once again, do you love me?”
I braced myself and nodded, closing my eyes against his gaze, unable to say what I needed to say with his eyes, so full of hope, trained on my face.
“I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about you,” I confessed in a rush. “I can't imagine that what I'm feeling isn't love. But 'I love you' doesn't feel adequate to express it.” I plunged headlong into babbling. “I desperately want you to love me. I need you to love me – but I don't want to need it, and I'm afraid that I need it too much.”
Wilson's lips danced across mine, and he reassured me between kisses, professing his own need. His hands smoothed my hair, his lips traced my eyelids and the corners of my lips as he continued to whisper all the reasons, one after the other, why he loved me. When his words became poetry, How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways, I sighed and he captured the sound with a kiss. When tears swam in my eyes and trickled down my face, he followed them with his mouth and trapped them between our lips. When I whispered his name, he tasted its flavor and lapped it up until I was dizzy with his attentions and wrapped around him like a frightened child.
But I wasn't afraid. I was gloriously ebullient, weightless, and free. Light. And though we spent the day in my apartment in blissful bouts of kissing and touching, interspersed with hushed conversation and drowsy silence, entwined like sleepy snakes, by some unspoken understanding, we didn't make love. And it was all new to me, novel and decadent, kissing for the sake of kissing, not as a means to an end, but as an experience in itself.