The soup kitchen closed at two. We cleaned up, distributing the pots and bowls back to their owners, and went home. I didn’t repeat Harper’s news and wouldn’t until I knew for sure. But in that time, as I chatted with my people, exchanging smiles and hugs, I realized I wasn’t needed anymore. I didn’t know whether to feel free or lonely.

Chris’s rental car was in the front yard. Inside, the dining room sconces glowed and a beat-up wooden table stretched from entry to egress. He sat in one of the plastic folding chairs from the back porch.

“Hi,” I said, dropping my bag by a table leg. It had been scratched to the raw wood by an army of cats. “This is… big.”

“Biggest I could find.”

We stepped toward each other as if we were molding the space between us.

“I’ll bite. Why does size matter so much?”

Fingertips touching. Palms pressed flat together. Bodies against each other.

“We have a lot of stories to tell and I don’t want to run out of space.”

I glanced at the tabletop. A hundred rings marred the wood, but there wasn’t a story on it that I could see.

With my head turned, he laid his lips against my cheek and kissed it, breathing deeply. “You smell like paprika.”

“I need to wash up.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Tell me what the table’s for first.”

“It’s the distance between who we were and who we are.”

“No wonder it’s so big.”

In one smooth motion, he picked me up, then carried me upstairs. We didn’t make it to the bathroom. By the time we were at the top of the stairs, we were kissing as if we wanted to eat each other alive, clawing our way to each other’s skin.

Half-dressed, he propped me against the wall outside my bedroom and peeled off my pants. I unbuckled and unzipped him, feeling the throb and heat of his arousal in my fist. I’d never imagined how much I’d want it, and I’d never imagined I’d ever feel so empowered to take it. My boldness shocked and freed me.

Holding me up by the legs, he pushed toward me and I guided him so he could drive into me with the force of an animal. I grunted. He exhaled.

“I’m having you in the shower too.”

“And on the table?” I gasped as he thrust hard.

“Table’s not for that.”

Angling his hips to put pressure on my clit, he took me faster. I was aroused beyond all thought, but it was hard to concentrate against a wall.

As if reading my mind, he took my hand from his shoulder and guided it between my legs. “I want to see you make yourself come.”

I started to object. That would be too shameful. Too embarrassing.

“Show me,” he said, deep inside me.

My reaction to his intensity wasn’t in my mind or heart. My spine vibrated and I nearly came from his command.

Any thought of shame was drowned and washed away. I rubbed my clit as he fucked me, letting my orgasm wash away any idea of shame. With him, I was fully myself.

“Yes,” he hissed and thrust harder, grabbing the flesh of the backs of my thighs, slowing as if savoring every thrust. He buried himself in me, pinning my hand between his body and my clit. I felt his pulsing as he filled me.

When he was done, he gathered me in arms that never seemed to get tired and carried me to the shower, where we made love again.

---

Chris pulled our one comfortable chair in from the living room and placed it at the center of a long side of the table. His hair was slicked back and he smelled of spicy soap.

“Stay here,” he said before kissing my forehead.

“Okay?”

He was already on his way up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

He wouldn’t discuss where we were going or what we were doing. He had some kind of future for us on his mind, but had made it clear he wasn’t interested in bringing it up yet. I was relieved, because though I wanted to discuss our future, I feared I wouldn’t like the results of the conversation.

Because how could this work?

I needed to find a new life, and he already had one. He was based in New York, and though I might travel, I didn’t know if I could ever really leave Barrington.

Chris came down more slowly than he’d gone up, taking his steps carefully, looking around the three boxes stacked in his arms.

The boxes of his letters.

He placed them on the table and pushed the stack to the center. “Our story is here.”

“Oh, Chris. Didn’t you see? I’m so sorry, but most of them are impossible to read.”

He slid off the top box. It landed on the table in a poof of dust. “I’m here to fill in the gaps.” He opened the box and grabbed a handful of envelopes. “Upper left corner is the day I left. Bottom right is the seven hundred and forty-nine dollar check. We’ll go horizontally. If I calculated it right, we should have enough space for all the letters folded into thirds.”

“I don’t get it. You want to…”

“Lay it all out. My entire story.” He plucked a letter off the top of the pile and took out the paper. It was water damaged and all the ink had run. “This is on letterhead.” He flipped the envelope over so he could see the postmark. “Right. So it goes about…” His eyes flicked from one edge of the table to the other. “Here.” He laid it two thirds of the way to the right, letter tucked under the envelope flap.

I picked the next one off the pile. The postmark had crumbled away. I slid the letter out, unfolding it. Letterhead again.

“‘—time I moved to Park Avenue.’” I read what hadn’t been washed away. “‘—aller than I’d like for Lance, but zip—’” I scanned to the bottom, where a few more words had survived.

“Zip code matters,” he said. “I had a place on the Lower East Side that was fine. All the roommates moved out and I just took over the lease. But Brian, my partner, was pretty adamant that I was always going to be a second-rate player below Fourteenth.” He shook his head as if getting the dust off. “Street. Fourteenth Street runs east-west. There’s below it, where the creatives live, and above it. He said I needed to have a Park Avenue address, even if it was big as a closet.”

“How big was it?”

“It had a two-burner stove and a sink as big as that postage stamp.” He took the envelope and laid it next to the first letter. “But I had Lance, even if he was miserable in that tiny studio.”

“How could you tell?”

“He shit in my favorite shoes.”

I laughed. He took another letter off the pile.

I grabbed his hand. “Wait.”

It was my turn to take the stairs two at a time. I rushed to the hallway, threw open the closet door, and gathered up as many of my photo albums as I could carry. When I went up for my second trip, Chris helped. Soon we had them all piled at the foot of the table.

He told me the year and season of his move to Park Avenue, and I located the right photo album.

“Oh,” I said, seeing which era of my life it was. I pressed my fingers against a picture of my parents and me in the town square.

“That the Labor Day Barbecue?”

“Memorial Day. Daddy stopped funding it a few years after the factory closed, but it went on without him. Bernard and his band just set up. People brought stuff.”

He put his arm around my shoulder and brushed his thumb along my neck. “This is a special place.”

“It is. It’s a dead end, but it’s home.”

“It’s our home.”

“Yeah.” The album page’s plastic skin crackled when I pulled it back. The photo came right off. I put it on top of the letter it went with.

“Why isn’t Harper in the picture?”

“She was at MIT.”

“Wait, what?”

“She didn’t finish.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a long story.”

His arms snaked around me, turning me toward him, my body tight against his. “Catherine, I need your long stories. I need to live them with you.”

“It’s so much.”

“It is, but we have nothing but time and a really big table.”

Could we bridge the years between us? Could we understand each other? Or would the exercise make it worse? Would we see each other’s bad decisions and get disgusted or ashamed?

“What if you don’t like what you find out?” I said. “What if I don’t live up to your expectations?”

“I have more to worry about than you.” He tipped my chin up so he could look in my eyes. “Whatever we did, that makes us the people we became. And I know I loved the girl you were. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with the woman you grew into.”

For a split second, he looked like the old Chris on the day we were caught in the office, face cut into stripes from the afternoon light coming through the blinders. His skin folded into Ws at the corners of his eyes and his voice had grit in the corners, but he was that same boy with that same raw love.

I wanted him to love me again, because I was sure I loved him.

“Let me make you some tea and I’ll tell you what happened with Harper when Daddy got sick.”