Okay

He slipped, warily, expectantly, out of the shadows and into the soft light. She didn’t look up.

“Hey,” he said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt.

She took a sip of her wine and put the half-full glass back on the end table. She sat back and looked up at him. She hoped her expression was more noncommittal than she felt. “I wasn’t sure that you’d come home tonight.”

He sighed heavily and nodded. “Me neither.”

She allowed herself a wry, weary grin and stood up. “Oh so now you’re into honesty.”

He curbed the urge to snap off a cutting retort to her naked barb. “I can go if you want…”

She stood up and took three steps towards him. “You can go if you want…”

He winced. The old feints weren’t going to work this time. He held out his hand but she waved it off with casual, wounding grace. Taking a deep breath, he took three steps towards her. He could smell the tart sweetness of her perfume dancing with the intoxicating tartness of her own wondrous feminine aroma, he could almost taste the bouquet of the chardonnay coloring the warmth of her even breaths, he could feel the tension sparking off her aura like tiny pricks of cold lightning.

She looked up at him. He smelled of sweat and soap and scotch and guilt and arrogance and longing that he would never have words for. She loved him. She hated him. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to hold him and remind him…yet again…that no one would ever love him the way she loved him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He meant it. He meant it this time as he had meant it before.

“Yes you are,” she agreed. She stepped into him and even as he stepped into her; he wrapped his arms around her.

“Are we okay?” he asked as she put her head against his chest.

“Not yet.”

It wasn’t the answer he was praying for but he tried desperately to keep his composure. “Are we going to be okay?”

She could feel his heart beating a staccato rhythm underneath his sturdy chest. She fought back the urge to wound him anew. “Yes, we'll be okay,” she said. She meant it. She meant it this time as she had meant it before. She closed her eyes as he, enormously grateful and enormously relieved, gently kissed the top of her head and then lifted her up into his strong, welcoming arms.