The Law of Loving Others by Kate Axelrod Page A

I was staying at school for the weekend. I felt almost dizzy with excitement at the thought of us alone in the country house together—I would’ve driven twenty-four hours just to be there with him for a single night.
    We left school after class on Friday afternoon and drove through much of the night. The roads were so empty it seemed we could go hours without seeing a car in the other direction, just the blank, dark sky, the horizon low around us. It was unseasonably cold and even in the car I wore a big knit sweater and plaid scarf beneath my coat. I loved fall, loved it even though it was chillier than expected. I loved the burnt and fiery smell in the air, the trees shedding their skin and piles of leaves ornamenting the street corners. That time of year always made me feel wistful, and there was something especially romantic about spending it with Daniel.
    It was a big, old house with green-trimmed windows, set on two acres of land. Inside was all exposed wooden beams, and it had a sort of rugged but polished feel. The downstairs was a large open space; up above was a balcony that held all of the bedrooms. The furniture was spare, and there was no TV (this was on principle, Daniel had said—his parents were adamant about it), but there were lots of bookshelves, a long oak table, and a wide island in the center of the kitchen. In the living room was a mahogany baby grand piano, and I felt a pang of jealousy on my mother’s behalf, knowing just how much she would have wanted this for herself.
    Daniel brought me upstairs to the attic, which his parents had turned into a library. The walls were lined with built-in shelves, filled with medical books and journals, and some old fiction as well, lots of dusty brown spines and yellowed paperbacks. I thought of my parents’ house, which was filled with books too, though I couldn’t ever imagine my parents being able to refer—with a straight face—to a room in their house as a library. But in a way my mother’s books
were
a library to me. I loved combing through them—all the old Russian fiction, and whole collections of contemporary writers: John Updike, Philip Roth, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro. Sometimes I would take books down from the shelves, not always for the sake of reading, but to skim through my mother’s penciled marginalia, which were always there. I just loved the idea of it—being able to trace back her thoughts, her little comments—some as simple and benign as “
oh!
” or an underlined sentence here or there.

    THE pantry had been stocked with lots of basic, non-perishable food, so we mostly cooked soups and pasta (lots of mac and cheese), and made sandwiches with peanut butter and a loaf of sourdough bread that had been packed into the freezer. We shared a bottle of red wine and sat on the living room floor and played cards: rounds of spit and bullshit and gin and rummy. By the end of the night, we were drunk and my fingertips were pink and numb.
    We slept together in Daniel’s old twin bed, beneath a bright orange-and-blue Mets comforter. We were still learning about each other’s bodies, what worked and what didn’t, but that night I felt aglow with pleasure each time Daniel moved his hands or his mouth; every subtle gesture brought me closer to coming. And eventually, we both did, just at the same time, and once that rush of feeling subsided, I’d wanted so badly to tell him that I loved him. The urge snuck up on me so unexpectedly I literally had to cover my mouth in fear that the words would slip out. Over the next few days, I’d been waiting for one of us to say it; even though I knew we hadn’t been together long—just over a month—it seemed as though we might be ready.
    But that morning, at the diner, as my hands rested on the table sticky with syrup, all of that waiting somehow felt like forever ago. When Daniel said that he loved me for the first time, I