Sinnerman

Chapter 43 Pasts & Family

It was a lazy few days in the lead up to thanksgiving. Lazy, but very domestic.

There's a lull that's fallen over them. Nothing disastrous of course- not a dull loveless one. Just a cosy, comfortable one. The weather turns foul outside. Spitting rain and bitter cold. Long November days of mushy grey sky after the golden maple rust and bustle of a spooky Halloween. Days come in short bursts followed by spun-out evenings drawing in.

Maybe it's the horrible weather that seems to drive them both home quick to be together. Maybe it is. Maybe it's just an awfully nice end of the day for the pair of them. Something about warm hearty winter food, a log fire, and those long velvet-dark nights drawing stretching reeling on and on.

Sometimes, they curl up and read their respective books. She'll be in her cardigan, and big floppy cotton blue pyjamas and reading glasses by the fire in her armchair. He's just next to her on the sloping, squashy couch, with his laptop in his big hands, and a glass of Cabernet and fixated, with a grumpy growl emerging out his throat, aimed at some lingering work that won't go away. Or wait til tomorrow.

She thinks he's awfully cute when he's all grouchy. He frowns at her over his glasses when she says so.

They have candle lit dinners and tell the other all about their day. They talk a lot about everything. Movies. Music. Work. Bookshops. Architecture. Arts. He listens more than he talks, that's true enough. But she likes the way he broods and mulls things over. She's not trying to change that aspect of him - to make him talk more. Because she's glimpsed at the root of why he's so quiet.

"Don't talk. Can't get hurt."

And she'd never dare push into that old festering wound. She loves him how he is. Doesn't see him as a man she can improve and shape into performing as someone else. She'll love all she's got here in this big tall muscly package. Nothing more. Nothing less. Though, she'd point out she'd have loved him fiercely still, even if he bussed tables or dug out graves for a living.

That's natural now. Hearing her talk about her day - it feels like it's becoming part of Kylo's daily routine he loves it so much. He talks back too. More succinctly, yes, but warmly. He likes hearing stories about the funny quirky customers she gets in the shop. He asks about the regular ones. She likes that he asks.

They occasionally take a bath together on those dark winter nights - more so at his, than at hers. With the best will in the world in odes to his gigantic beautiful body, he looked like a hippo in a teacup trying to use the cramped little tub at her place. He likes when they're all naked and sudsy with something oily botanical she pours into the bubbles. Doesn't know what. But it smells divine and it somehow softens up his tattoo hardened skin. He melts into it.

Then he's a man in heaven when she kneels over him and scrubs up his hair into lathered black foam. He sighs in content when she massages his scalp with her nails.

They go to the movies in town for some re-run flicks or horrors on a Friday. Share the biggest popcorn and butter kisses. Trying not to make out in the dark like horny teenagers. They go see 'The Fog' one night. It being Fall and all. Another time they go to see 'Singin in the rain' with Flo. She steals all the red vines like the terror she is. Also sneaks in whisky in a flask for her and Kylo to share. That makes Evie roll her eyes. Shake her head in telling them off. Flo never listens. She just grins.

One weekend he takes her to the little pumpkin patch just outside town to go picking. She needed more for the shop. He stands there, in the bitter wind, with his cold gloved leather hands shoved in his Burberry cashmere overcoat pockets, watching her ramble around the field happily, picking out the biggest, plumpest pumpkins she can find.