We were at a family restaurant, but we didn’t feel like one yet, a family. But to a passing observer we might have appeared to be one. Ava was so eager to tell Charlotte about her day that she’d gotten ketchup all over her fingers from dipping fries without looking.

“And Max told me it was time to go home, but it wasn’t!” she said, widening her eyes dramatically.

Charlotte gasped and opened her mouth in sympathetic shock. “So what did you do?”

“I asked Mr. Singh if it was recess or home time, and he told me,” said Ava. “He told me the truth.”

“Why do you think Max was trying to tell you a lie?” I asked.

“He’s mean,” said Ava.

“Or maybe he likes you,” Charlotte said, tilting her head to the side. Her hair tumbled over her shoulder, glossy and enticing despite our surroundings. I stole a fry from Ava while she was engrossed in the story, but Charlotte noticed me doing it and raised an eyebrow.

“If he likes me, why would he be mean to me?” Ava said.

She had a damn good point.

“You’re right,” said Charlotte, “it doesn’t make sense. Sometimes people can be weird, and do things like that when they should be doing the opposite.”

“Or he might just be mean,” I added. “Don’t need to make it more complicated than that.”

I wanted to protect my little girl. The juvenile snowball-throwing and name-calling crushes of my childhood seemed less benign when applied to her. More on the side of cruel.

“I’ll tell you what, Ava,” Charlotte said, lowering her voice and leaning down closer to Ava’s rapt face. “Your dad was a little mean to me a while ago, and now we’re friends. You could try asking Max if he wants to be friends, that is if you want to be friends with him.”

“Dad, you were mean to Charlotte?”

Ava staring up at me crushed some part of my heart into a tiny ball, fragile against the world’s influence. I thought for a second to resist the knee-jerk urge to deflect. “Yes, I was, honey, but I was wrong. A few weeks ago Charlotte was nice to me but it scared me.”

Simple, but to the point. Maybe I should filter my feelings through the way I’d explain them to Ava more often.

“I’m glad you’re friends,” she said, with a finality that ended that line of conversation. The warmth of her statement suffused both me and Charlotte with a happy, giddy grin. Our eyes met and the swelling in my chest continued to grow.

She was so beautiful, sitting across from my wonderful daughter and slowly drinking the last few sips of a chocolate milkshake.

I wanted to know more about her, to slowly unfurl everything there was to understand about Charlotte Travers. The past couple of weeks had been a languorous blur of meeting Charlotte at her house, retiring to her bedroom to explore each other, tasting, touching, giving voice to our desires. It had been slowly melting the frozen core of me, to be so physically close to another human again.

I’d forgotten what intimacy could feel like.

A couple of days ago, I’d been struck by the sudden urge to get to know Charlotte better. If I wanted her so much, there must have been something motivating that, right? It was time to follow the connection down whatever rabbit whole it took me. No matter how much it terrified me.

Because it did. Growing closer to anyone other than Ava gave me chilling nightmares, recurring dreams of loss and death. I’d started journalling back when Sarah died to try to exorcise some of the pain of grief, but I wondered if it was helping.

At any rate, Charlotte said yes. To a night out. So here we were.

“Are you excited for Thanksgiving?” Charlotte asked Ava. I was thankful she broke the silence, that was sure.

“Mmm, I don’t know,” she said.

“What do you normally do?” Charlotte asked. It was an innocent question meant to uncover traditions, but in our company it landed like a soggy pie falling off a ledge.

“I don’t know,” mumbled Ava.

“This is our first Thanksgiving back together,” I said to Charlotte. “Did the foster family do anything special?”

I couldn’t bring myself to call them by name. It still hurt too much.

“Not really,” said Ava. “Just a turkey and no chores.” She stared at her plate intently, focusing on a smudge of ketchup near the edge.

“We should all do something fun, then,” said Charlotte. Her hopeful demeanor calmed the spiral into which my thoughts were rapidly descending. “What do you think, Ava?”

“Ok,” she said. Her eyes were brightening at the prospect, fixed on Charlotte.

“Maybe some pumpkin pies, a turkey, what about whipped cream?”

“Yes!”

“That sounds really nice,” I said. While I stared at her, fighting the strange melding of feelings in my stomach, Charlotte took my hand and squeezed it under the booth table. It was absurd how my heart pounded in response, more erratic than it had been the first time she kissed me.

It was the tenderness of the gesture that got me, a mundane, affectionate thing. The kind of moment that you lose when someone passes away and you’re all alone in your grief. Though friends might call, leave you casseroles and try to hug some of the pain away, if your wife isn’t there anymore you miss the small things. Kisses, unconscious moments of sweetness found midway through the day or in the middle of the night.

“So we’ll have a Thanksgiving dinner together?” Charlotte asked.

Ava and I responded at the same time, a firm and optimistic “yes.”

That was that.

* * *

Once Ava was asleep, I brought a glass of wine to Charlotte in the living room. She took it eagerly, probably just as nervous as I was now that our buffer was out cold and snoring. We’d have to talk to each other like adults.

“That was nice of you,” I said, finally. The sip of wine I’d taken seemed to go straight to my head. Or maybe that was Charlotte’s warm, friendly presence, focused on me.

“What was?”

“Offering to do Thanksgiving,” I said. “I think it will mean a lot to Ava.”

“I hope it does,” she answered. “I’ve had a lonely year. I know what it’s like to dread the holidays.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We sat in silence for a minute or two, close enough on the couch that I could feel Charlotte’s leg against mine. I wanted to ravish her all over again, but the mood was wrong. It was more intimate and quiet. More emotionally naked than physical.

“What happened?” I asked her, not specifying more than that. We’d avoided talking so much these past few weeks that I didn’t even know where to start.

“Last fall, I had a breakdown,” she said. Though she looked at me with confidence set on her brow, I could see vulnerability wavering in those eyes. Charlotte was poised when she wanted to be, but perhaps I was beginning to get to know her, the real her.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Been there. It’s rough.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know what caused it?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Your ex?” I ventured, treading into the dangerous territory we’d so studiously avoided. No exes, no grief, just sex. At least that had been my understanding, an unspoken agreement forged through our passion.

“His name’s Duncan,” she said. “When I met him, my mom was so happy she cried. He’s a doctor, a really good one. You know, she was poor and a single mom for a long time and didn’t want me to have to have the same kinds of struggles.”

“Understandable. But everyone has their battles.”

“Some more than others. Duncan was so sweet to me, so kind. I was the luckiest girl from my whole town, everyone said so. But he didn’t really love me.”

The tone in Charlotte’s voice made me want to hug her and never release her from my arms. But she sat so perfectly still and upright I worried that if I reached out to touch her, I might shatter the resolve keeping her strong. It seemed best to let her speak and not interrupt. Leave her enough space to be whatever she needed to be.

“I’m sure you’re thinking, that can’t be true, you’re being too hard on yourself,” she said. “But I’m not. I loved him so much, and he enjoyed the attention, the social approval, you know. Just never really felt the same way about me. I think he thought he wasn’t built for love, until he met his new wife.”

“Why were you with him then?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity for the sake of kindness. Charlotte was so poised. She radiated the warmth that was so often missing in our world, and yet she’d been willing to live a life with someone who didn’t appreciate that?

Too painful to be true. I had to understand.

To my surprise, Charlotte laughed, a bright, happy sound that almost exploded out of her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “We’d been high school sweethearts. I loved his mother, you know, the whole family was so dear to me. I think I just accepted him for who he was and tried not to change him.”

“Even though the thing you were trying to accept was fundamentally the opposite of what relationships are supposed to be?”

Charlotte’s face, which had been smiling thoughtfully as she reminisced, suddenly darkened. I regretted my words immediately.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No, you know what? That’s not ok. I know we’re just getting to know each other, and I know you have a lot of baggage you’re dealing with. But I do too. Just because I haven’t had someone die doesn’t mean I don’t have pain that keeps me awake at night. Duncan really hurt me, and sure I might have been stupid about our relationship, too hopeful, too accepting of a status quo that was horrible for me. But that doesn’t mean you get to act like I was a complete idiot.”

“I don’t think you’re a complete idiot,” I said. I drew Charlotte closer, reaching my arm around her to try to squeeze her and hold her tightly. She shrugged off the motion but let me stay close.

“You just think that I accepted something completely unacceptable.”

“Well,” I said, staring deeply into her eyes. Those lashes got me every time. “Yeah.”

I could see the pain swimming in her irises, the way an optimist was struggling so hard to be pragmatic. Charlotte was just a good person. Kind, generous, giving. Only she didn’t give any kindness to herself.

I wondered, then, if I was being just as awful to her as she’d been to herself. I didn’t think I had it in me to feel for a woman ever again, and she deserved to be out there, single and looking for a man who could love her the way she ought to be.

Selfishness drove those thoughts back into my subconscious mind while I marvelled at Charlotte’s long lashes.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said. “You deserve to be treated like a beautiful person who brings light into people’s lives.”

“That’s very sweet of you,” she said. It felt less like an acceptance of my comment and more like deflection.

“I’m serious,” I said. “You’ve done a lot for me, and for Ava. She’s so much better because of you being there. For her, and for us.”

To my surprise, mentioning Ava made Charlotte start to cry. I panicked.

“No, no, no, don’t cry. Please.”

Charlotte’s tears were then joined by her laughter, soft and infused with sadness. She took a deep breath and exhaled it shakily. “Tears are like kryptonite for men, aren’t they? Strong, masculine bass player completely unsettled by water leaking out of my face?”

I rubbed my hand along her back. “I mean, I wouldn’t call myself masculine but if the shoe fits..”

“How did you not hear the first part of what I said. Just focussing on the things you want to hear?”

It worked, though, she was smiling through the watery expression.

“Maybe all those years playing in a rock band have given me hearing problems.”

“Selective hearing problems.”

“Sure,” I said. As I watched Charlotte’s face for signs of what I’d done wrong, I felt another tug at my heart. “You ok?”

“No,” she whispered.

The admission touched me so much I hugged her. “I’m not letting go unless you tell me I have to,” I said.

“I lied,” said Charlotte. Her voice was wavering with emotions, so I squeezed her tighter. As if that made a difference. “About why Duncan left me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Why did I lie, or why did he leave me?”

“Either one, I guess.”

“I can’t have kids,” she whispered. “We both wanted them so badly, but it turned out I can’t.”

“Do you know why?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing I can do,” she said.

“I know this is such a repetitive thing I keep saying, but I’m so sorry, Charlotte.”

“Thanks. It hurt. I lost myself for a while there, but my work’s been really understanding. When I told them that was why Duncan left me, they took my request for a leave of absence seriously. I mean, I teach Kindergarten. They probably didn’t want me morose around all those children every day.”

“Then why did you agree to teach Ava painting?” I asked. I shouldn’t have, maybe, but I couldn’t help myself. The curiosity overwhelmed me in the same way my body often did around Charlotte, a need spilling over into the world despite my efforts at restraint.

The look in her eyes as she met my gaze was stunning. I could feel it reverberate in my chest.

“She needed me,” she said.

I wanted to know if she thought I’d needed her too. But I wasn’t prepared to ask that just yet. So I held Charlotte, trying in the only way I knew how to comfort her after opening herself up to those wounds again. We sat together late into the night, just being close. We sipped our glasses of wine, marvelling in the comfort of each other’s presence.

* * *

The next time I went to Charlotte’s during the day, I knew I wanted her. There was a different tone to my desire, though. I wasn’t sure I recognized it, but I liked the feeling: warm, all-encompassing, vivid. The sight of her rounding the corner to lead me to her bedroom made my heartbeat speed.

I was excited to touch her again, to join our bodies in a reverent act that felt closer than I’d been to anyone in years.

Her hair was down, loose and glossy in the late morning light, and when Charlotte turned back to make sure I was following her, our eyes met. The intimacy of the moment shook me.

I saw her differently now, not as an overly friendly neighbor whose care sometimes felt intrusive, but as a fellow lost soul. Someone recuperating from blows that would have felled many others. Someone whose feelings could listen to my own and let me be a wailing, angsty mess without judgment.

It made me want to kiss her even more than I already did. When our lips touched, grazing each other gently at first, something inside me stirred, deep down. A piece of the ice held in my solar plexus shimmered, thin and starting to melt ever so slightly. I could sense that I was on the edge of a meaningful moment, but I wasn’t ready for the plunge.

I focused on Charlotte’s mouth instead, pushing my tongue past her lips, tasting the flavour of sweet fruit she’d just been eating for breakfast. She always smelled like berries somehow, maybe the effect of one of her painting substances, or maybe just the way Charlotte walked through life. It was refreshing and enticing all at once.

Though I leaned over her, walking my hands higher on the bed until we were horizontal, Charlotte took up space in a way that felt formidable. She stared up at me, direct and confident, and said she wanted to take charge.

“Be my guest,” I said. My raised eyebrow was likely a bit over the top, considering the circumstances, but I always liked an assertive woman.

Charlotte had a softness to her no matter what she did, though. As she pushed me back up, pressing me against the wall while she stood mere inches away, I marvelled at the tenderness in her touch even while she assumed command of the situation.

She maintained eye contact, devastating in its intensity, as she slowly ran her hands down my body and kneeled in front of me. From this angle, you could have said that I was the dominant one, but one look at Charlotte’s face would have disabused you of that notion. She knew what she wanted.

It was unbelievably sexy.

I don’t deserve this.

But I was also not the kind of man to stop her. Maybe that meant I was weak, or selfish in some way. I preferred to think that I was a broken soul finding solace in the touch of a like mind, each of us pouring ourselves into physical connection in the absence of something that could fully heal us.

Charlotte’s gentle hands worked their way over the front of my jeans, finding me hard already from anticipation. And when she took me in her mouth, her pillowy lips incredibly good at wrapping around my cock, I gasped. Her eyes never left mine, a piercingly sexy shared moment while she milked me for all I was worth.