On Leave

I'd been a paramedic for sixteen years, and I figured by now nothing could make my pulse jump. Then Gerard walked me through the door of The Pit and my pulse jumped so hard I felt it in my teeth.

The place was packed. Loud music, dark corners, bodies everywhere. The air was thick and warm and it smelled like beer and sweat. Gerard's hand settled on my lower back, firm and steady, and he leaned close to my ear.

"Stay with me," he said. "It's a lot at first."

"A lot is one word for it," I said.

He laughed. Gerard is thirty-eight, a major, built like the door of a bank vault, and he still laughs with the unguarded joy of someone on summer break when something actually gets him. It's one of about four things I'll admit made me marry him at thirty-five.

We pushed through the crowd toward the bar. The bartender was a short guy with a shaved head and a rag over his shoulder, and when he saw Gerard his whole face changed.

"No way. Major Reyes!" He came around the bar and they shook hands, a real handshake, the kind with history in it. "You didn't tell me you were coming in tonight."

"Surprise visit, Donnie. I brought somebody." Gerard put his hand on my shoulder. "This is Asher. My husband."

Donnie looked at me. Not a quick look. A slow one, top to bottom, and then he stuck out his hand.

"Asher. Good to finally meet you. He talks about you more than he thinks he does."

"All good, I hope," I said.

"Some of it," Donnie said, and grinned.

I'll be honest, that look affected me in a way I can't quite describe. Being sized up like that, by a stranger, in a room like this. My face went hot but I didn't hate it. That surprised me more than anything else that night.

Then a hand landed on Gerard's back and a voice said, "Well, look what the base dragged in."

The guy was thirty-four maybe, sandy hair, easy shoulders, a drink in one hand and no urgency anywhere in his body. Gerard turned and pulled him into a half hug.

"Ren. You still haunting this place?"

"Somebody's got to keep the standards up." Ren looked at me and stuck out his hand. "You must be Asher. He's been promising to bring you by for what, three years now?"

"Something like that," I said.

"And he picks tonight. Bold choice." Ren's grin was knowing in a way I couldn't quite name, and I felt exposed again, like everybody in this room knew something I was just starting to learn. Which, fair. They kind of did.

Gerard ordered us drinks. Whiskey for him, beer for me. Donnie slid them over and said, "First one's on the house. Consider it a welcome."

We found a high table near the edge of the floor and Gerard talked with Ren about people I didn't know, names and postings and who got out and who didn't. I drank my beer and watched the room. There was a lot to watch. Guys dancing close. A couple by the hallway at the back, one with his hand inside the other's shirt. Nobody hiding much of anything.

"This whole club," I said, leaning toward Gerard. "It's what I think it is?"

"Partly," Gerard said. "It's a soldier bar first. It's other things after midnight."

"And we're staying until after midnight?"

Gerard held my gaze for a moment. That look I know. The one where he's decided something and is being polite enough to let me pretend I get a vote.

"We're staying until you want to leave," he said. "Not a minute sooner. Not a minute later."

Ren raised his glass. "To new experiences."

We drank. The beer was cold and good and my nerves were sitting right at the top of my chest.

Then Gerard set his glass down and stood, and held out his hand to me.

"Dance with me."

"Now?"

"Now!"

"Gerard, I don't dance. You've seen me at your sister's wedding. There's footage."

"There's footage of a man who wasn't trying." He kept his hand out, steady, patient. "Come on."

I took it. My heart was going pretty good by then, I'll admit that part.

The floor was tight and hot and the music was some heavy thing with a bass line you felt in your sternum. Gerard turned me around and pulled me back against him, his chest to my shoulders, his hands on my hips, and started moving us. He could actually dance, which figured. The man doesn't do anything halfway.

"Relax," he said against my ear.

"I'm relaxed."

"You're a board with a beer in it."

I laughed and let my hips loosen a little. His hands slid around to my stomach and he pulled me back tighter against him and okay, yes, I felt that, all of that, and my breath caught.

And then I opened my eyes and realized people were looking.

Not staring. Not rudely. But watching, the way you watch a couple dancing close in a room where everybody came for exactly that. A guy near the wall with his drink, eyes on us, small smile. Two women by the speakers, one nudging the other. Ren at our table, raising his glass again.

"Gerard," I said. "They're watching us."

"I know."

"You planned this."

"I hoped," he said, and rolled his hips against me slow, and my brain lost the thread for a second. "You've spent sixteen years taking care of everybody. Sixteen years being the calm one in the room. Tonight I want you to just feel things and let a room full of strangers see you do it."

"That's insane."

"Probably."

"Everybody's going to know we're..."

"That's sort of the point of dancing with somebody, Asher."

I turned around in his arms, face to face, and looked up at him. The lights were low and red near the edges and he looked good, better than a man who's been married to me for seven years has any right to look in a room like that.

"If I hate it, we stop," I said.

"If you hate it, we stop," he agreed. "You're not going to hate it."

I put my arms around his neck and we danced. And I'll tell you, once I stopped fighting it, it was good. Better than good. The bass in my chest, his hands on me, the eyes of maybe two dozen people drifting over us and away and back. Being seen. Being wanted, secondhand, through him.

At some point Donnie turned the music up a notch and the whole floor tightened, bodies closer, and Gerard's mouth found my neck, just breathing there, not even kissing, and I gripped the back of his shirt and held on.

"Gerard."

"Mm."

"People are watching and you're doing that."

"Do you want me to stop?"

I thought about it. I actually thought about it, standing in a crowd of strangers with my husband's mouth at my throat.

"No," I said. "Don't stop!"

He made a low sound against my neck, approval maybe, and his hand slid down my back to the waistband of my jeans, resting there, not going further, just sitting heavy and warm, and every eye that drifted our way felt like a hand on me too.

Ren appeared at the edge of the floor with fresh drinks and set them on a rail beside us. He didn't say anything smart this time. He just nodded at me, one soldier to another almost, like I'd passed something.

Gerard pulled his head back and looked at me. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright.

"How are you doing?" he asked.

"I'm doing," I said. "I'm doing something, anyway."

"You want to keep going or take a breather?"

I looked past his shoulder. The back hallway. The couple from earlier had come back out, adjusting their shirts, grinning at each other like they'd shared a secret. Down that hall, whatever happened stayed whatever happened.

"How late does this place stay open?" I asked.

Gerard smiled, and it was the smile from the summer-break laugh, the one I'd follow anywhere.

"Late enough," he said.

Gerard finished his whiskey in about three swallows and set the empty glass on the rail. "Come on," he said. "There's a place I want to show you."

"Another place? I've only seen two rooms so far."

"There's a third." He took my hand and led me off the floor, past the hallway with the couples, past a door I figured led to the office, and around a corner I hadn't noticed. Back there it was dimmer, quieter, the music muffled through the wall. There were booths. Real ones, high backs, and heavy curtains hanging across the openings. Some of the curtains were drawn shut.

"Some of these are shut," I said.

"That's how it works here, Asher. Closed means busy. Open means free." He stopped at one with the curtain hanging loose to one side and looked in. Empty. A long leather bench in a U shape, a small table, low light from somewhere I couldn't see. He looked at me and waited.

I knew what he was waiting for. I stood there in the dim red light with my pulse loud in my ears and thought about it for real, the way I think about anything. Running calls, cutting people out of cars. You make a decision, you commit.

"Yeah," I said. "Okay. Show me the booth."

He grinned and pulled the curtain mostly closed behind us, enough that the floor was a blur of shadow through the gap. Inside it was warmer. The leather bench creaked when he sat down and pulled me down next to him, thigh to thigh.

"So this is the third room," I said.

"This is the third room." His hand came up to my jaw and turned my face toward his. "Asher. I'm going to kiss you now. I've been wanting to since the dance floor."

"You kissed my neck on the dance floor."

"I'm going to do more than that." He said it quiet, right against my mouth. "I've been thinking about it for three years, every time I came here without you. Sitting right where you're sitting, thinking about you."

"Then quit talking," I said, and he did.

He kissed me the way he does everything, all the way, no halfway. His hand slid into my hair and his other arm wrapped around my back and pulled me half across his lap, and I went, and I kissed him back hard enough that my teeth bumped his. He tasted like the whiskey and underneath it like him, the same after seven years, and something in my chest just let go. I let out a noise into his mouth and didn't care who heard it, which was a first for me, Asher the calm one in the room.

He pulled back an inch, both of us breathing. "There he is," he said.

"Where who is?"

"The guy I married. The one who used to say yes to things." His thumb moved along my jaw. "Here's what I want to do to you later, so you can think about it while we sit here. I want to take you down that hallway, into one of those little rooms, and get you out of these jeans all the way. I want to take my time with you. Do the things I've been replaying in my head for three years on the drive home."

I swallowed. "That's a lot of buildup."

"You have no idea how much buildup."

"Okay," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant it to.