It's All Red

Vesper

Mari’s Pov

“Tell me about the dress,” he said.

I blinked behind the silk. Whatever I’d expected him to say, it wasn’t that. “How do you know I’m wearing a dress?”

“I can hear it.” The chair creaked as he shifted. “The fabric moves differently when you breathe. Heavier than cotton. Silk, I think. And you smoothed it when I sat down, the way you would with something you cared about.”

My cheeks warmed. “I made it.”

“Did you?”

“I make most of what I wear.” I hesitated, then said the thing I almost never said to strangers. “I design lingerie. For women who aren’t usually asked.”

He was quiet for a moment. I braced myself for it, for the polite pause, the oh, how interesting, the tone that meant he’d already filed me under a category.

“Asked what?” he said.

“What they want.”

“And what do they want?”

“To feel like the main character of their own life.” I laughed, embarrassed. “Sorry. That sounded like a slogan.”

“It sounded like a mission.” His voice was warm with something that wasn’t flattery. “I’d like to hear more.”

So I told him. I told him about the first bralette I sewed at nineteen, on my mother’s old machine, because I couldn’t find anything that fit and I was tired of being told it was my fault. I told him about Curve & Co. and the tiny studio and the way the first customer cried when she tried on the sample. He asked questions. Real ones. He wanted to know how I measured, how I chose fabrics, what I’d do if money were no object.

For the first time in months, someone was listening to me without waiting for a turn to talk.

“You haven’t asked me a single thing about my body,” I said at last, surprised by my own boldness.

“Do you want me to?”

“I want to know why you haven’t.”

“Because you’re a person first.” He said it simply. “I didn’t come here to take anything from you. I came because your terms said you wanted to be in charge. I thought I’d earn the right to be in the room.”

My throat tightened. I reached out, blindly, and found the air between us. “Can I touch your hand?”

“Yes.”

His hand met mine halfway. It was large and warm, a little rough, and across the back of it ran a thin raised line, a scar that traveled from his knuckle to his wrist. I traced it with my thumb.

“What happened here?”

“A long time ago, I was careless with a piece of glass.” There was a smile in his voice. “I was trying to impress someone.”

“Did it work?”

“She married me anyway.”

Married. My thumb stilled. “Is that, are you...”

“A widower. Seven years.” The words were quiet, almost like they were never spoken. His grief was evident, a grief that had settled into the shape of the person carrying it. “I don’t say that to burden you. I say it because you should know who’s in the room.”

I wanted to lean into the sorrow in his voice and tell him I was sorry, but I knew better. Instead, I turned his hand over and laced my fingers through his.

“Dum spiro, spero,” he murmured, almost to himself.

“What’s that?”

“Latin. ‘While I breathe, I hope.’ It was my wife’s favorite phrase.” He cleared his throat. “Forgive me. I don’t know why I said it.”

I do, I thought. You said it because you needed to say it to someone who wouldn’t laugh. “That’s okay, I appreciate your honesty, I’m sure she was a lucky woman.”

“I would have to contest that.” He smiled. “I was the lucky man.”

Something was happening in my chest, something slow and enormous and frightening. I’d been in a relationship with Grant for ten years, engaged for eleven months, and no one had ever made me feel this way. Not Grant, with his flawless suits and his poker smile, who never asked a question without already knowing the answer he wanted.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“Anything.”

“Would you kiss me?”

A pause, long enough to hear the candle flames breathing. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

His other hand came up, slowly, and cupped my jaw. I felt his thumb brush my cheek beneath the edge of the silk, so gently I almost didn’t register it. Then his mouth found mine.

It wasn’t hungry. It wasn’t practiced. It was the kind of kiss that asked a question and waited, patiently, for the answer.

I leaned into it, my free hand finding the lapel of his jacket, and he made a low sound in his throat that went through me like a struck bell.

When he pulled back, we were both breathing unevenly. “You’re shaking,” he said.

“So are you.”

“Yes.” He laughed, a little unsteadily. “I haven’t done this in a very long time.”

“Neither have I. Not really.”

The words came out before I could stop them, and I felt him go still. “Not really?”

I shouldn’t have said it. I knew I shouldn’t. But the dark made me brave, and he had asked me nothing but kind questions all night, and the truth was there, trembling on my tongue.

“I’m engaged,” I said. “I’ve been with the same man for two years. And he’s never once looked at me the way you’re talking to me right now. Grant says he loves me, but I’ve never felt...”

I stopped, because the hand on my face had gone rigid.

“Grant,” he repeated.

“Yes.” I frowned. “Why?”

For three long seconds, there was no sound in the room at all.