The insides and backs of her thighs feel sticky, and she thinks it’s maybe because Ben actually finished, or maybe because she is bleeding. “Everything is going to be totally okay.”
“A-A-Are you shuh-shuh-shuh-hure?”
“Yes,” she says, and links her hands behind his neck, feeling the sweaty mat of his hair. “You just bet.”
“Duh-duh-does ih-ih . . . does ih-ih-ih—”
“Shhh . . .”
It is not as it was with Ben; there is passion, but not the same kind. Being with Bill now is the best conclusion to this that there could be. He is kind; tender; just short of calm. She senses his eagerness, but it is tempered and held back by his anxiety for her, perhaps because only Bill and she herself realize what an enormous act this is, and how it must never be spoken of, not to anyone else, not even to each other.
At the end, she is surprised by that sudden upsurge and she has time to think: Oh! It’s going to happen again, I don’t know if I can stand it—
But her thoughts are swept away by the utter sweetness of it, and she barely hears him whispering, “I love you, Bev, I love you, I’ll always love you” saying it over and over and not stuttering at all.
She hugs him to her and for a moment they stay that way, his smooth cheek against hers.
He withdraws from her without saying anything and for a little while she’s alone, pulling her clothes back together, slowly putting them on, aware of a dull throbbing pain of which they, being male, will never know, aware also of a certain exhausted pleasure and the relief of having it over. There is an emptiness down there now, and although she is glad that her sex is her own again, the emptiness imparts a strange melancholy which she could never express . . . except to think of bare trees under a white winter sky, empty trees, trees waiting for blackbirds to come like ministers at the end of March to preside over the death of snow.
She finds them by groping for their hands.