He pulled Hester against him in the bed and whispered into the neighborhood of the hair on the nape of her neck, "I love you."
He held her a fraction tighter, but he could not pull the words out of her. Instead, she offered something similar in tone but noncommittal, a "You are a good sort" or "I know how you feel and appreciate your regard." Maybe it was only a sigh, as though he squeezed air instead of sentiment. Was it rude to tell someone you loved them before you were both meant to fall asleep?
Hester was his sister, though not by blood, someone with whom he felt instantly comfortable no matter the outward circumstance. She might have been only so elevated because he could only make family members of those who could not admit love even while cuddled against him in bed, in a pose that would have been intimate in most other circumstances. Even as that, he couldn't make the idea of love something safe to her. To her, at this stage in her life, no man whose blood doesn't pound through her veins could be one hundred percent trustworthy. They could want her and, indeed, have her, for however long that possession lasted. There was a scarcity of men willing to love her in a way that survived the morning. She could acknowledge the platonic love she had, but in writing or over the phone--always when there was a barrier.
Asking for her love while under the covers, in such warm proximity, was far too audacious of Evan.
This, while getting ready for their pre-Thanksgiving sleepover, wasn't the first time he had said that he loved her, nor would it be the last. While he had made his feelings known, he most memorably told her just after her ex--and his friend--Vaugh referred to her as a whore.
She wasn't a whore, not even in a metaphorical way. He wasn't sure that he could have loved her this much if he had thought otherwise. Vaugh didn't believe she was a whore, at that. Vaugh felt that she was unreachable after having been in his arms--much as Hester was in Evan's arms now and much different at the same time.
With Hester, Evan was content. Not satisfied. That was a different emotion because what was there to satisfy? But content because he had found one of his people. He thought that she would always be his in a sense. If they ever had sex--and he could not see a way that either of them would want this--she would never be his again. He would, in some part, be like every other man come morning. He would be like Vaugh, having had her and never having her again. There was a price to that satisfaction: to know you could never again be content with her. There wasn't an orgasm that could match that.
He had had other friendships with other women who were not his sisters. He loved them, but he would not have felt comfortable asking them to sleep in the same bed. He would not have invited her along to Thanksgiving with his family because hers were far away. He couldn't tolerate the idea that she would spend it alone. Hester said that she didn't mind either way and had done it before, but she appreciated it.
He thought that she needed him. Whether she did was beyond the point. He was a man who could be in her life, who could love her, without crossing that line.
Even with this, he did understand she was promiscuous. Not sexually (though she would have disagreed), but in her desires. She was here in his arms, not saying that she loved him, but she was looking toward the horizon for her next escape. He had known her a bit over a year and had loved her a bit less. She was already leaving by degrees. That was, he assumed, why she would not say that she loved him. Soon--he did not know how soon--she would leave, and she wouldn't care to look back. He could never make this place safe enough to put down roots. She had yet to find the family she didn't have to leave. In her going, she wouldn't cease to be Evan's family.
He'd had other platonic bedmates, though only for a night or so each. One left him to empty bedsheets for transience. The other, for maternity. Babies should be as serene as those nights, that grateful for being loved.
As they went to bed that night, changing in separate rooms before sharing his bed, I had felt anxious that, at some point, he would forget who cuddled next to him, that the night would make them a man and woman sharing the bed and not merely sexless siblings. It was not that it would necessarily be unattractive but that it would be so familiar as to be like walking in on a cousin in the bathroom. Yet the worry plagued him in the night such that he got up from her chaste allowance of his embrace and read something dull to remember himself.
In returning to the bed and to his slight shame, he turned his back to her and wrapped himself in a sheet so there could be no suggestion of impropriety. She did not reach out in her sleep to reaffirm some physical connection. He hoped that she was stone asleep and not merely the witness to his grappling against some psychic vestiges of Puritan forbearers, pointing out the lack of a bundling board. More than anything this night, he wanted to be capable of this intimacy with someone he had come to depend on, that she could be loved.
Aside from being a day where the average American eats nearly five thousand calories, Thanksgiving was a day of caring for constructed families as much as natural ones. Years ago, these three factors dovetailed in his then-fiancee. Teresa loved food the way one loves any vice from which one could not detox and survive. However, on her starved body, every bit of stuffing stuck. He and Teresa were never without well-wishers and thus had standing invitations to a half-dozen dinners.
Evan had, to Teresa's irritation, a more blessed metabolism than he was due. Teresa fretted over these dueling invitations--her family and his, some friends for dessert--until he came up with a solution honed over decades of watching bad sitcoms. "We'll tell the people at the first dinner that you are saving your calories to eat at the second dinner. At the second dinner, we'll tell them you stuffed yourself silly at the first. And, of course, you are much too full to have more than a sliver of pie for dessert." To him, this was the solution to a logic puzzle. To Teresa, it was the annual cure to her overwhelming anxiety that this holiday alone would undo months of dieting.
This lie seemed a minor omission to protect someone he loved--not as he loved Hester, not better, but a love--which was the whole point of cherishing his chosen others. Attaching to sundry souls to sew together a new family out of bits of ancestral family quilts was the only thing that made sense, a mutually nurturing family whose diapers he did not need to change and over whom he had no legal responsibility save for the one he would eventually wed. He and Hester cared for one another on an intellectual and spiritual level, not owing to the interference of hormones and lawyers.
None of this was to imply that he didn't love the family given to him by birth. He couldn't help but appreciate the gaggle of niblings his brother had provided him to practice his avuncular skills upon and who, Evan assumed, quit his own need for reproduction. He tended to reach his exhaustion level for the children several hours before it was prudent to excuse himself but appreciated mildly obnoxious children upon whom to dote.
After the fallout with Teresa, during which Hester had nestled in his life, Evan had winnowed down what he no longer needed. He sold off possessions to pay back the debts for the wedding that almost but did not occur. He was not sorry to lose these. People, too, those he had taken for friends, fell away. It was not that they favored Teresa--but for a few, they revealed they never liked her--but that they saw the whirlpool that might suck Evan down and didn't have rope enough to throw him again.
But tonight, he was thankful, which seemed appropriate to the occasion. It felt to him as though it were magical thinking to consider these setbacks and tragedies the impetuses pushing him toward something better. In losing his relationship with Teresa, he had gained Hester and Vaughn. He had his own life again, not one predicated by an erratic partner who had gradually fallen out of love with him. He needed to shed Teresa to have a life where he could have Hester as his sister. It felt like a lateral move at worst.
His family used to have a massive Thanksgiving spread, either at his grandmother's or his parents' home. His mother decided that it was a struggle to host so many people, so she only made reservations after that. It was nicer to be waited on by someone whom he would not have to see again, someone whom he could tip extravagantly from guilt rather than tended to by a harried family member. It allowed him to feel more gratitude, knowing that his family suffered only financially from the holiday. It also meant that he could avoid the slog of coping with a week of meals composed of turkey leftovers.
Hester had met his family a few times on lesser holidays, the explosion of summer fireworks or backyard burgers. They had warmed to her within an hour, though his mother implied she found Hester haughty. It was only fitting, he thought, that she would be a cousin to his family if she were a sister to him. His family had suggested, hearing that Hester would otherwise warm herself some grocery store stuffing, that she come to Thanksgiving, though he alone asked if she would be averse to spending the night before. She maybe ought to have been, both knowing it was unnecessary. It was also a sort of intimacy rare beyond the age of sleepover parties.
Hester needed the story, that layer of abstraction between what was happening and her. It felt almost like what Evan did for Teresa years ago, a story to keep her safe and let him enjoy the holiday. The pretense was more fun with Hester.
Evan made her a spy, keeping herself hidden from detection. He had purchased a tiny water pistol to keep in her purse, to hold when the pressure of someone else's family became too great. When he gifted it to her, clear green plastic, her lips quirked in delight. He would be the snarky, wet-behind-the-ears rookie and she, the cranky but softhearted veteran.
His briefing was that one of his family members was a notorious poisoner, but the intel did not say whom. The rest of the party were unaware of the imposter in their midst. She would have to engage them in conversation over a sampling of each dish to know for sure.
When Hester and Evan woke, it was with the slight confusion of the shared bed. He offered her breakfast, but the point of the day--after the thankfulness of family--was a glut of food. No sense filling up now only to be stuffed in a few hours. She nibbled toast with jam. He, though he had wanted to make something more robust, pancakes and eggs, had dry cereal.
They dressed in separate rooms. She emerged in a blouse instead of her customary fitted t-shirt and jeans. He wore a dress shirt, blazer, and slacks, conceding that she cut the better figure by trying less. Hers was the better disguise for this mission.
Heading for the car, she halted him, squeezing his shoulder. Her brow furrowed, tenting in the middle, as she tried to find the proper phrasing, as she downshifted from the most naked truth to one that she could choke out. "You are good to be around."
He gave a small smile, no stranger to subtlety. "You are also good to be around."
She nodded, walking to his car to go to dinner, her hand in her purse, finger on the trigger.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.