A Weak Moment

I did show Hope Notre Dame before we left Paris. But I showed it to her from a boat. 

From a table next to the glass-enclosed sides of an excursion boat, to be exact, on a four-hour dinner cruise that I’d never in my life have considered wasting time on in the past. And, of course, she loved it. 

We hadn’t made it out of the hotel that afternoon. It had been that bath.

Now, I watched her, the low light of candles illuminating her animated heart-shaped face as she smiled and talked, drank wine and ate more fish, as the light caught the sparkle from the silver beads on her blue dress, and I remembered.

Hope, lying over me in the bath and sighing as I ran slow, slippery hands over her, then turning the tables again once we’d pulled back the duvet on the big white bed. Hope exploring my body and my tattoo, giving everything she had to this new experience, just as I’d known she would.

“It really does go all the way,” she’d said, running languid hands over my chest, my shoulders, all the way down my arms, as if she were memorizing me. “I remember you saying that in the car.” She leaned down to kiss her way over the whorls decorating my chest, and I sighed and closed my eyes, and then opened them, because I wanted to look at her. 

She should have looked fragile, perched over my body like that, but she didn’t. Hope was lit from within, and today, that light burned so strongly. So fiercely. 

“It’s private,” she said, her fingers brushing lightly over my shoulder, tracing the intricate pattern that covered my skin from pectoral to forearm. “I remember that, too.”

“Mm.” She had me on such a buzz, I didn’t want to talk much. I just wanted to feel her. “Not a secret. It’s my whakapapa. My genealogy. My ancestors, my iwi, my whanau—my tribe and my family, the parts of it I want to think about—and my own journey. It’s a…” I smiled slowly, and she smiled back. Her light burned a little brighter, and something in my chest tightened, then released, the same way it had when she’d told me her swan story. “A Maori thing. A tribal thing.” 

“The parts you want to think about,” she said quietly. 

Not asking, and because she didn’t ask, I told her. “Not my small whanau. That isn’t so good. My big whanau. My grandparents. My cousins.”

“Ah.” It was a sigh, and her lips were over my heart now. “Yeah.” 

I couldn’t help tensing as I waited for the next question, but she didn’t ask it. Instead, her fingers went to my pendant, suspended from its braided black cord and resting between my collarbones. I hadn’t taken it off before our bath, and now, she stroked the greenstone that lay cool against my skin and asked, “And this?”

“Yeh,” I said. “A tribal thing as well. Personal.”

“Does it mean something?”

“Mm. A hei toki’s the adze. For strength. Determination. Courage as well. It’s a reminder.” 

She hummed at that, moved her mouth up to kiss my neck, her teeth teasing the sensitized nerve endings as her hand continued its leisurely journey down my arm. “I’d say you’ve got all of those,” she said, breathing the words into my ear, then sinking her teeth delicately into the lobe, making me jerk a little. “And that you don’t have to use any of them right now.” 

I didn’t enjoy letting a woman take the reins, didn’t like having my body at the mercy of another person. But this was better for today, I thought hazily as she continued to kiss me, to stroke me. I lifted my hands to her small breasts, felt her instant response, her indrawn breath. I pulled her higher so I could taste her there, and she didn’t have all the control after all, not then. So we kept on that way, because the position allowed her to control the angle and depth of my penetration, and let me relax, too, knowing I wouldn’t be too much for her tender insides. I could touch her so easily as well, could take her along with me, could watch her head going back, her soft lower lip being caught between her teeth, and that was even better.

And the sight of Hope’s slim torso bent like a bow, one of my hands covering her breast, the other pleasuring her as she rocked her way to sweet, slow fulfillment in the golden light of an autumn afternoon…surely Paris didn’t offer anything more beautiful than that. 

“What are you thinking about?” she asked now, turning from the view of Notre Dame standing in Gothic splendor in the midst of the Ile de la Cite. 

“Thinking that you’re beautiful,” I said before I could stop myself. 

I saw the softening in her eyes and thought, Shit. This was why I didn’t do relationships. Now I’d given her the wrong impression, had aroused expectations in her that I couldn’t fulfill. 

All she said, though, was, “Hmm. You’re not so bad yourself, you know?” before turning back to the window. Letting me off the hook, and I couldn’t have said whether that was what I’d wanted or not. 

The moment passed, the soft chamber music provided by the onboard orchestra continued to provide its discreet accompaniment, and the wine in the bottle dipped a little lower. I could see Hope starting to droop, so I scooted my chair over so I could put an arm around her and watched the floodlit monuments of Paris drift slowly by. And the next time I looked down at her, her head was on my shoulder, her lips had parted, and she was asleep.

“That’s so sweet.” 

I turned my head to see the fiftyish American woman from the next table watching us. That was the downside of this kind of journey, I guessed. Fellow passengers.

“Are you two on your honeymoon?” she asked.

“Pardon?” I asked, startled. “No. No. On holiday, that’s all.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” she said, sounding flustered. “You just looked so much in love, I thought…”

I wouldn’t tell her about the nondisclosure agreement I’d pulled out the night before at a restaurant a few kilometers from here. Let her preserve her illusions.

“She’s a beautiful girl,” the woman said. Clearly the last of the true romantics. Well, she was in Paris.

“Yeh.” That one, I could agree with. “She is.” I looked down at Hope again, at the vulnerable line of her part showing white in the midst of her tumbled hair, and somehow, I’d kissed the top of her head. I couldn’t help it, not really. She was just too sweet there.

“Would you like…” My newfound friend hesitated. 

“Yes?” I asked, doing my best to be polite. It was lucky that the boat was almost back to the dock. 

“I thought you might like a picture,” she said. “To remember your night by. I could take it, if you like.”

I hesitated for a few seconds, then was reaching into the pocket of my trousers, pulling out my phone, and handing it to her. “Please.” 

A minute later, she was handing it back, smiling at me again, and turning to her husband, beginning to gather her belongings. I shoved the phone back into my pocket without looking at it as the boat slowed and maneuvered toward the dock and Hope stirred in my arms and blinked her way back into consciousness. 

It had been a weak moment, true. But at least it had only been a moment.