It's Only Temporary

Chapter 39: Lashes

Penny sighed and rolled over beneath the covers of the king-sized bed. David lay on his left side, with his knees curled up toward his chest and his lips slightly parted in sleep. Those lips.... They looked a little swollen now, but it only served to make them more inviting. She fought the urge to reach out across the bed and touch them. Instead, she traced her index finger along her own two lips, feeling them curve into a secret smile.

She couldn't even count how many times she'd lain in bed just like this. Late at night, unable to sleep. Imagining David's mouth. Imagining what those lips of his might feel like. Of course, it wasn't all in her imagination now. Not anymore. A memory now - not a fantasy. Not a silly schoolgirl crush. And the reality had been so much better than she'd ever dared to imagine.

He'd been a little tentative at first. That much had surprised her. When he first pulled her down to kiss him, he'd kept his lips closed and hardly even moved, as if he were waiting for something - for some signal. As if he'd never kissed a woman before in his life and had no idea what to do.

She'd had no choice but to take the lead. He kept pulling back, and she kept drawing his face back to her again and again. But he kept hesitating. He kept pausing to ask questions, until she could have screamed with frustration. She'd wanted to shake him. She'd pulled his hair and called him names and punched him in the chest, trying to shake him out of it. But none of it had worked until she said the words - those words she'd been holding back for so long, she felt like she'd already said them a million times before. But he must have been waiting for them. He must have needed to hear them:

"Don't you know I've been in love with you the whole time?"

Something in his face had changed after she said it. Something had clicked into place, like a key turning in a lock. His lips had hovered, just inches from her own, and she'd watched them move without making a sound, forming the shape of her name:

"Penelope."

She hadn't needed to lead him any further. He'd taken it from there.

Was that really all he'd been waiting for? For her to say the words? Had he truly not understood how she felt about him until that moment? It seemed impossible to believe. Impossible. She'd been so obvious - especially this past week in his apartment. She'd acted like a lovesick puppy, moping around his place, rummaging through his things, wearing his old clothes.

But he hadn't wanted her. He'd made it clear enough. He hadn't even hugged her goodbye when she left for the airport this morning. Her presence in his apartment had been nothing more to him than a mild nuisance. At least, that's how it had seemed. That was why his letter had come as such a shock.

"I want her to know that I'm in love with her," he'd written. "I want her to know I never said it because I lacked the courage...."

Was it really possible? David Powers? The same David Powers who could meet a woman in a supermarket checkout aisle and extract her phone number in 30 seconds or less? When it came to women, he could take his pick. And he knew it very well. He had his flaws, but lack of confidence had never been one of them. If he'd never made a move on her these past two years, there was only one reason that made any sense at all: because he didn't want her. He had his rules - his criteria - and she didn't meet a single one of them. That was why he'd never said those words to her before. Or if he had, then only over email. Only when he was too drunk to think better of it.

"I want her to know that I'm in love with her. I've written those words to her before, but she thought I was drunk. Sometimes I was. Sometimes I wasn't. I was too much of a coward to say it to her face...."

That was what stopped him? He was afraid of rejection? David Powers, afraid his 22-year-old, Brooklyn-dwelling temp would shoot him down? How was it possible?