An Ever Fixéd Mark by Jessie Olson

the only one. Meg is perpetually in
grad school, teaching undergrads and writing another thesis. Nora
became a middle school teacher. She’s the most grownup of us. She
actually got a fiancé and moved out.”
    “So Jackie moved in.”
    “Yup.” she saw his gaze and then dropped her
eyes to her wine.
    “Did you study history in college?” Ben
broke another awkward silence.
    “I did,” Lizzie took another sip.
    “You read a lot in high school.”
    “I still do,” she lifted her eyes to him,
curious at the observation. “It keeps life interesting when my job
is so dull.”
    “You think your job is dull?”
    “Dreadful.”
    He lingered his gaze on her eyes for a
second and shifted towards the coffee table where she rested her
feet. “Your ankle is swollen,” he observed. “Do you have an Ace
bandage?”
    “I do,” she muttered into a sip of wine. “On
the shelf over the bathroom sink.”
    She drank the rest of her glass and a sip of
another before he came back with the Ace bandage she abandoned a
week ago. He sat back at her side and turned her legs so they
rested in his lap. She watched him silently as he slowly pressed
his fingers into the bottom of her foot, concentrating his thumb
inside her arch. She felt the wine warm her skin and breathed
deeply as he progressed down to her heel.
    “How did you end up at Mt. Elm?”
    “Money,” she shrugged and took another sip
as he started to wrap the Ace bandage around her relaxed ankle. “I
worked on fundraisers at all the museums. It wasn’t a lot of skill
to switch the concept to hospitals.”
    “But it’s boring.”
    “Hellishly boring.”
    “Why don’t you do something else?”
    “I’ve thought about…” she watched him circle
the bandage around her foot. “I don’t… I don’t think I’m all that
qualified.”
    He fastened the bandage and lifted his eyes
to her. “Qualified for what?”
    Lizzie looked at her wineglass. She didn’t
know how to answer that. It was a relatively simple question. It
was an answer she would have easily found had Andrew not bailed and
stayed home. If Andrew hadn’t stayed home with Davis, she wouldn’t
be sitting with her legs across Ben’s lap on her second glass of
wine. “I…” she muttered, looking at her hands. Suddenly his hands
were unclasping the glass and taking it away from her to put on the
table. He moved his hands to her chin and pulled her against his
lips for a lengthy kiss.
    He pulled back from her and slid her feet
back onto the floor. He moved a dangling strand away from her eyes
and held onto the side of her face. “I keep thinking about you,
Elizabeth,” he whispered. Lizzie kissed him again, unable to think
how to answer the echo of her own feeling. She pressed herself
against him, forcing him towards the sofa. She lifted herself onto
his lap and pulled back from the kiss to look at him and his green
gray eyes.
    She started to unbutton his shirt and leaned
back towards him, kissing his mouth, across his cheek, down to his
neck. She felt him breathe in and out against her own neck. “I
tried not,” he breathed. “I tried not to do this.”
    Lizzie didn’t understand what he was saying.
She figured it was the wine or just the elation of the moment
clouding her head too quickly. She lifted her face and kissed his
mouth again. “I’m glad you changed your mind,” she met his stare
and stopped undoing his buttons. She smoothed along his temples.
“Do you really…” she couldn’t stop her eyes from welling. “Am I
really what you’ve wanted all this time?”
    He took hold of her face gently and kissed
her again. She barely noticed his hands leave her cheeks and slip
under her thighs as he lifted her and carried her up the spiral
staircase.
     
    *****
     
    Lizzie heard the doorbell ring as she
stepped out the shower. She threw on a towel and ran down the
stairs, her wet hair dripping on her shoulders. Nora laughed as she
opened the door. “I always forget traffic is better on