A Different Blue(146)

a minute I couldn't find my breath, and I scrambled to regain my train of thought.

[page]“That's exactly right.” I nodded, my eyes re-focusing on the sculpture in front of me.

“Jimmy taught me that when you carve, it's the negative space that creates line, perspective,

and beauty. Negative space is where the wood is carved away, creating openings that in turn

create shape.” I paused and took a deep breath, knowing this was something I had to say. If I

loved Wilson – and I knew that I did – I would have to make him understand something about me

that wasn't easy to grasp. It would make loving me hard. I had to warn him. I turned to face him

and met his gaze, beseeching him without artifice or apology.

“Sometimes I feel like I have a huge, gaping hole from my chin to my waist, a wide open

negative space that life has just carved away. But it's not beautiful, Wilson. Sometimes it

feels empty and dark . . . and . . . and no amount of sanding or polish will make it into

something it isn't. I'm afraid if I let you love me, your love will be swallowed up in that

hole, and in turn YOU will be swallowed up by it.”

Wilson touched my cheek, intent on what I was saying, his brows lowered in concentration over a

compassionate grey gaze.

“But that's not really up to you, Blue,” he said gently. “You can't control who loves you . .

. you can't let someone love you anymore than you can make someone love you.” He cradled my

face between his palms. I reached up and held onto his wrists, caught between the need to hang

onto him and to push him away, if only to save myself from what he made me feel.

“So you're afraid to let me love you because you fear you have a hole that can't be filled . .

. not by any amount of love. But my question to you is, once again, do you love me?”

I braced myself and nodded, closing my eyes against his gaze, unable to say what I needed to say

with his eyes, so full of hope, trained on my face.

“I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about you,” I confessed in a rush. “I can't

imagine that what I'm feeling isn't love. But 'I love you' doesn't feel adequate to express it.

” I plunged headlong into babbling. “I desperately want you to love me. I need you to love me

– but I don't want to need it, and I'm afraid that I need it too much.”

Wilson's lips danced across mine, and he reassured me between kisses, professing his own need.

His hands smoothed my hair, his lips traced my eyelids and the corners of my lips as he

continued to whisper all the reasons, one after the other, why he loved me. When his words

became poetry, How Do I Love Thee? Let me Count the Ways, I sighed and he captured the sound

with a kiss. When tears swam in my eyes and trickled down my face, he followed them with his

mouth and trapped them between our lips. When I whispered his name, he tasted its flavor and

lapped it up until I was dizzy with his attentions and wrapped around him like a frightened

child.

But I wasn't afraid. I was gloriously ebullient, weightless, and free. Light. And though we

spent the day in my apartment in blissful bouts of kissing and touching, interspersed with

hushed conversation and drowsy silence, entwined like sleepy snakes, by some unspoken

understanding, we didn't make love. And it was all new to me, novel and decadent, kissing for