Submit (Songs of Submission #3)(37)

“There’s tea left if you want some.”

He stepped forward until he was standing over me. “How much of that did you hear?”

“I know who it was but not what it was about.”

He paused, then kneeled in front of me between the couch and the table. I put my hand to his cheek and leaned forward. His eyes shone a troubled green, and his mouth set itself in a line.

“Jonathan, what’s wrong?”

“I won’t let anyone come between us. I want you to know that.”

“She won’t if you don’t let her.”

“If she says anything to you, you need to come to me with it right away. Do you understand?”

“What happened, Jonathan?”

“Just say you’ll call me.”

“I don’t understand.” I held his face in my hands, stroking his cheeks with my thumbs.

“Wherever I am in the world, before you think you know anything, you make sure you call me. Say you will.” He wasn’t using his domineering voice, but the voice of a man who needed, desperately to be soothed.

“I will.”

He rubbed his palms along the tops of my thighs and up around my waist. He laid his head on my lap and said nothing as I stroked his hair and hummed a melody that reminded me of the cadences of his voice.

We sat like that, me on the couch, humming, and him on his knees before me, long after my tea became cold and the morning birds silenced themselves for the day.