Steam and Sugar

The last of the guests had gone maybe twenty minutes before, and the quiet that came after was the kind I wanted to bottle. The depot had that low, warm hum that old brick buildings get at night, all that stone holding the day's heat like a battery. Outside the tall windows the snow was still coming down, fat lazy flakes drifting through the lamplight, and in here it smelled like pine garland and woodsmoke and, faintly, like coal, because I guess a place never fully stops being what it was.

I was twenty-eight, and I had been catering these things for seven years now, and I could count on one hand the parties that left me standing around after with nothing to do but feel good. This was one. My trays were picked clean. The gingerbread competition had gone to a retired schoolteacher who cried when they announced her name, and Thomas, who owned the place, had hugged her and handed her a bottle of wine like it was a trophy, which I suppose it was.

I was stacking my serving boards by the door when Zeke found me.

I should back up. Zeke and I go back seven years, to a summer when I was twenty-one and catering weddings out of a rented kitchen with a bad oven. He drove the shuttle bus for one of the venues. He was twenty-three then, quiet, funny in a dry way that took people a minute. We spent that whole summer flirting at a distance you could have driven one of his buses through. And then the summer ended and I moved and he moved and neither of us ever said a word about it. That was the missed chance we were both apparently still carrying around, because when I ran into him at this party, three hours ago, we both just stopped and stared and laughed like idiots.

Now he was standing at the wine fridge in the corner, the big humming one, pulling out a bottle of red. He caught me looking and held it up.

"You did all the work tonight," he said. "Least I can do is pour."

"You didn't do nothing," I said, walking over. "You ate half a tray of the candied walnuts."

"That was work. Emotional support eating." He poured two glasses and handed me one. "To the schoolteacher. She deserved it."

"She really did. Her roof was structurally perfect. I checked. I was rooting for her." I took a sip. It was good, better than the stuff I'd been schlepping around all night. "Oh, that's unfair. That's the good stuff and you waited until after."

"I know." He grinned. He had a good grin, always did, crooked on one side. "Thomas only brings it out when he's feeling sentimental."

"Is he feeling sentimental?"

"He cried during the awards. Don't tell him I told you."

I laughed, and it came out easier than I expected, that loose laugh you only get around certain people. "God, this is weird," I said. "Good weird. Seven years, Zeke."

"Seven." He leaned against the fridge, and the hum of it filled the pause. "I did the math on the drive over here. Seven years, and I still almost missed my exit because I was rehearsing what to say to you."

"You were not."

"I was absolutely. I had three openings lined up and I used none of them. That walnut line was not one of them. That was improv."

"Well, for what it's worth," I said, "I rehearsed too. On the train up. I had a whole plan where I'd be very casual about it."

"How'd that work out?"

"I've said the word casual four times tonight and you've noticed every one."

He laughed, head back, and I felt that old pull, the exact one, the one from the summer I was twenty-one. It hadn't faded. It had just been sitting there, folded up in a drawer, waiting.

"You know what I keep thinking about?" he said. "That rainstorm. The one in August. You and me stuck under the awning by the loading dock for forty-five minutes."

"Forty-five," I said. "I timed it. I was standing there doing arithmetic in my head about how long a rainstorm has to last before it becomes an excuse."

"Same. I was doing the same math. And then the rain stopped and you went inside and I thought, well. That was the door and I didn't walk through it."

"You didn't."

"I didn't." He looked at his glass, then at me, and the grin softened into something more careful. "I'd like to walk through it now. If you would. That's me asking, not assuming."

And there it was, plain, after seven years, and I have to tell you, reader, my whole chest went warm, warmer than the brick walls had made it. I set my glass down on top of the fridge so I wouldn't do anything clumsy with my hands.

"Yes," I said. "Obviously yes. I've been waiting on that question so long I'd nearly given up on it."

"Nearly?"

"I kept a little flicker going. For sentimental reasons."

He stepped in slow, giving me every chance to move, and I didn't move. His hand came up to my jaw and he kissed me, soft at first, then not soft, and seven years kind of poured out all at once. My hand found his shirt front and held on. When we broke apart I was breathing like I'd run up the depot steps.

"Okay," I said. "Okay. Worth the wait. Ridiculous that we waited."

"Fully ridiculous." He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. "So. There's a whole evening left. Thomas is somewhere in the back doing accounts. There's a fire in the big room. And I have a room at the inn two streets over and absolutely no plan beyond wanting to keep standing next to you."

"That's a terrible plan."

"It's the only one I've got."

I laughed and kissed him again, shorter this time, my choice, my speed. "Then let's go bother Thomas first. He'll pretend to be shocked and then he'll be delighted. He's been making little comments all night."

"He has not."

"Zeke. He asked me twice if I was seeing anyone. Twice. While handing me a napkin."

We gathered our coats, and I took one last look at the room, the decorated gingerbread houses glowing under the string lights, the snow stacked up against the windows, my trays stacked and done. Seven years of a folded-up feeling, finally unfolded.

The back office door was half open, warm light spilling out. Thomas looked up from a ledger and saw our faces and, I swear, put down his pen very slowly.

"Well," he said. "Finally."

* * *

The walk to the inn was all fresh snow and streetlamps, and Zeke held my arm on the icy patches without making a production of it. The inn was old, creaky, heated by radiators that clanked like they were arguing. His room was on the second floor, small, with a quilt on the bed and a window full of falling snow.

He shut the door and we just looked at each other for a second, both of us grinning like we'd gotten away with something.

"So," he said. "I want to do this right. Tell me what you want. Tell me what you've been thinking about, all these years, if you've been thinking about it."

"I've been thinking about it," I said. "A lot. More than I'd admit to most people."

"Then admit it to me."

I took a breath. "You. That summer. That awful cot in the staff room and you in that uniform shirt. I want you to take this shirt off, the one you're wearing, and I want to touch you. Can I?"

"God, yes," he said, and pulled it over his head, and there he was, thirty years old and better than my memory, which I hadn't thought was possible.

I put my hands on his chest and he undid the buttons of my blouse one at a time, asking with his eyebrows at each one, and I kept saying yes until there was nothing left to say yes to. My bra went the same way. He regarded me as something he'd been promised and thought would never arrive.

"You're beautiful," he said. "You were then. You are now!"

"Less talking," I said, and pulled him toward the bed.

His mouth went down my neck, my collarbone, and then lower, taking his time, and I lay back on that creaky old quilt and let him. His fingers found the waist of my skirt and he paused.

"This too?"

"Everything," I said. "All of it."

He worked my skirt and tights down and off, and then his mouth was between my thighs, warm and patient, and I learned quickly that he had only gotten more sure of himself in seven years. I said his name out loud, more than once, and my fingers found his hair and held on. When he slid two fingers into me, slow, curling them just so, I came apart embarrassingly fast, arching off the mattress, one hand slapping the headboard.

"Sorry," I gasped.

"Do not apologize," he said, grinning up my body. "That was the best thing I've seen in seven years."

"You're going to keep saying that number."

"It's earned." He kissed his way back up. "I've got condoms in my bag. Should I?"

"Please," I said. "Yes!"

He got it, rolled it on, and came back to me, settling his weight down over me, careful, asking with his eyes one more time. I reached down between us and guided him in, both of us making sounds we'd been holding back all evening. He went slow at first, deep, watching my face, and I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him closer, closer, the radiator clanking, the snow coming down past the window, and seven years of waiting turning into the best kind of reward.

We were still catching our breath when there was a knock at the door.

Three soft knocks. Zeke and I looked at each other.

"You expecting someone?" I whispered.

"No!"

"It's me," came Thomas's voice through the door, low. "I saw the light. I brought the rest of that bottle. I can absolutely leave it in the hall."

I started laughing into Zeke's shoulder before he'd even finished.

"We're decent," Zeke called, pulling the quilt up over us. "Mostly."

The door opened a careful few inches and Thomas came in, still in his coat, snow on his shoulders, holding the bottle and two more glasses. He was thirty-five, big hands, gray coming in early at his temples, the kind of man who owned a depot full of old machines and kept every one of them running out of pure stubbornness. He looked at the two of us tangled in the quilt and smiled, slow and real.

"I knew it," he said. "I called it at the walnut tray, Zeke. I told you."

"You told him?" I said.

"He told me," Zeke admitted. "At the awards. He said, watch the wine fridge. And then we went and stood at the wine fridge like a couple of fools."

"You're welcome," Thomas said, setting the glasses on the nightstand and pouring. He handed one to each of us and kept the bottle for himself, drinking straight from it, which felt right for him. "To the schoolteacher."

"To the schoolteacher," we said.

He sat down on the edge of the bed, easy as anything, like the three of us had done this a hundred times instead of never. The snow kept coming down past the window and the radiator clanked its argument and I thought, looking at the two of them, about how long I had wanted one good, brave, unlikely night.

"Stay a while," I heard myself say.

Thomas looked at me over the bottle, and then at Zeke, asking something without words. Zeke looked at me, his fingers laced through mine on top of the quilt.

"That's up to her," Zeke said. "Dianne?"

I took a sip of wine, buying myself one heartbeat.

"Stay," I said.

He set the bottle down and took off his coat, folding it over the chair as if he had been staying in inns his whole life. Then he sat back down, closer this time, and the bed dipped and my shoulder brushed his arm and neither of us moved away.

"So," Thomas said. "Seven years you two danced around each other."

"Something like that," I said.

"And now?"

"Now we're catching up," Zeke said. He squeezed my hand under the quilt.

Thomas laughed, quiet, and refilled my glass. "The gingerbread was good tonight. Yours especially. That lattice work on the mill, I don't know how you did it."

"Piping bags and bad decisions," I said. "I started that lattice at two in the morning."

"And the walnuts," he said, nodding at Zeke. "This man ate half a tray. I watched him. I thought, either he's nervous or he's in love."

"Both," Zeke said, and I felt my face go warm.

The wine was good, dark and a little sweet, and the snow kept coming down and the room got warm the way small rooms do when three people breathe in them. We passed the bottle around and talked about nothing for a while. The schoolteacher and her winning chapel with the spun sugar stained glass. The old engine out in the yard that Thomas swore he'd have running by spring. Zeke's route and the woman who waited at the third stop every morning with coffee for him.

"You never told me you drove a bus," I said to him. "Seven years of summer and you never once said what you did."

"I didn't think a caterer would be impressed by a bus."

"I catered a wedding on a bus once. I was very impressed."

Thomas snorted into the bottle. "Catering a wedding on a bus. I believe that. I've seen this town do stranger."

I looked at him then, at Zeke's hand warm over mine, at Thomas sitting easy on the edge of the bed with snow still melting in his hair, and something that had been sitting quiet in my chest for a long time stood up and cleared its throat. You know how a thought gets loose and you can either chase it or let it run? I let it run.

"Can I say something?" I said.

They both looked at me.

"Say it," Zeke said.

"I've been catering for seven years. I've been to a hundred of these parties and watched a hundred couples and gone home alone to my own bed every time, and for most of that time I've had this..." I stopped. My cheeks were already hot. "This thing I'd think about. A fantasy. And it always had two men in it."

The room went very quiet. The radiator clanked once.