Carpenter's Embrace

The smell of sawdust and sweat hit me before I even opened the door. Ghayas had been working on a new set of chairs for the Ahmeds down the street, and when he got deep into a project, the whole house absorbed him. The dust settled in the curtains. The rhythm of his hammer became the pulse of our afternoons.

I set my grocery bags on the kitchen counter and listened. No hammering. Just the low hum of the ceiling fan and something else. Water running in the bathroom.

He was home early.

I untied my dupatta and draped it over the back of a chair, then walked down the narrow hallway of our small Lahore flat. The door to the bathroom was cracked open. Steam curled out into the corridor, carrying the scent of the cheap sandalwood soap he liked, the one I kept telling him to stop buying because it dried out his skin.

"Ghayas?"

The water stopped. "Andar aa jao."

I pushed the door open. He stood at the sink with a towel around his waist, his hair dripping onto his shoulders. The mirror was fogged. He'd wiped a small circle clear with his palm, and his reflection stared back at me through it, tired but smiling.

"You're home early," I said.

"Finished the chairs." He reached for his shirt on the hook. "Ahmed sahab paid extra. Said his wife loved the design."

"Which means you skipped lunch again."

He pulled the shirt over his head, and it stuck to his damp skin. "I ate. Some biscuits."

"Biscuits aren't lunch."

He stepped toward me and put his hands on my waist. His palms were rough from the sandpaper, calloused in a way that used to surprise me when we first married. Now I knew exactly how they felt against my skin, the slight scratch of them, the warmth underneath.

"Stop worrying," he said.

"I'm not worrying. I'm stating a fact."

He laughed. It was a low sound, the kind that started somewhere in his chest and barely made it past his throat. I'd heard that laugh a thousand times, and it still did something to the back of my neck.

"Come here," he said.

I was already there.

He kissed my forehead first, which was typical Ghayas. Always starting soft. Then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth, and I could feel him smiling against my skin. I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer, and he stopped smiling.

The kiss changed. His mouth found mine properly, and his hands moved up from my waist to my back, pressing me against him. I could feel the dampness of his shirt soaking through my kameez, the heat of his body underneath. He tasted like chai and the mint he chewed after every meal, a habit I'd teased him about for years.

We'd been married for six years. You'd think the urgency would fade. It didn't. It just got quieter, buried under bills and family obligations and the thousand small compromises that make up a marriage. But it was still there, and when it surfaced, it surfaced fast.

He walked me backward until my shoulders hit the doorframe. His lips moved to my jaw, then my neck, and I tilted my head back and let him. The ceiling fan clicked above us in the other room. Somewhere outside, a fruit vendor was calling out his prices in that singsong voice all the vendors had.

"Ghayas," I said.

"Hmm."

"The door."

He reached behind me without looking and pushed it shut. The latch clicked. Then his hands were on my face, cupping my jaw, and he was kissing me like he had something to prove.

I let him. I kissed him back just as hard, my fingers finding the wet ends of his hair and pulling. He made a sound, low in his throat, and I felt it in my own chest. His hands slid down to my waist again, then lower, gripping my hips through the thin cotton of my kameez. He pulled me away from the door and turned me around, so my back was against his chest, his mouth at my ear.

"Six years," he said, his voice rough. "And you still make me nervous."

I laughed. "You're not nervous."

"I am." He kissed the spot behind my ear. "Every time."

The thing about Ghayas was that he meant it. He wasn't a man who said things to get what he wanted. He said them because they were true, and that honesty was the most attractive thing about him. More than his hands, more than his shoulders, more than the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.

I turned around and unbuttoned his shirt. My fingers were steady. His weren't. He caught my wrists and held them.

"Slow down," he said.

"I don't want to slow down."

"I know." He kissed my knuckles, one hand at a time. "But I do."

He led me to our bedroom, which was really just the other half of the same small flat, separated by a curtain we'd hung three years ago and never replaced. The bed was unmade. I'd left it that morning in a rush, and the sheets were tangled at the foot. Ghayas didn't care. He never did.

He sat on the edge of the bed and pulled me onto his lap, and I straddled him, my knees sinking into the mattress on either side. His hands found the hem of my kameez and pushed it up, slowly, his thumbs tracing circles on my stomach as he went. I shivered. The fan in the other room wasn't reaching us, and the air was warm and thick, but I shivered anyway.

"Cold?" he asked.

"No."

He smiled and kissed the hollow of my throat. I felt his teeth graze my collarbone, just barely, and my breath caught. He noticed. He always noticed.

"You like that," he said.

"Shut up."

He laughed against my skin, and the vibration of it traveled down my spine. I pulled his shirt off his shoulders and let it fall. His chest was broad and solid, with a smattering of dark hair that had a few gray strands now. I pressed my palm flat against his sternum and felt his heart. Fast. Faster than it should have been for a man who claimed to be calm.

"Your heart's racing," I said.

"That's your fault."

I leaned down and kissed him, and this time I was the one in control. I bit his lower lip, gently, and he groaned. His hands tightened on my hips. I could feel him hard beneath me, pressing up through the towel, and I shifted my weight deliberately, just to hear him make that sound again.

He did.

"Bach ke raho," he muttered. "You're playing with fire."

"Maybe I want to get burned."

He flipped us over. It happened fast, his hands on my shoulders, my back hitting the mattress, the springs creaking under our combined weight. He hovered over me, his hair still damp and falling into his eyes, and for a moment he just looked at me. That look. The one from the beginning.

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing." He kissed my forehead. "Just remembering."

"Remembering what?"

"The first time. You were wearing that green thing. With the little mirrors."

"My mother's shalwar kameez. I hated it."

"I loved it." He traced the outline of my collarbone with one finger. "I remember thinking, if I don't marry this woman, I'll regret it for the rest of my life."

"You proposed the next week."

"I was scared someone else would."

I reached up and touched his face. His beard was soft, trimmed close. His eyes were tired, but they were kind, and they were mine. They'd been mine for six years, and I still didn't take them for granted.

"I love you," I said.

He didn't say it back. He didn't have to. He showed me instead, with his mouth and his hands and the weight of his body pressing me into the mattress, with the way he whispered my name like a prayer, with the way he moved against me, slow and deliberate, until I couldn't think about anything except him.

The fruit vendor's voice faded. The fan stopped clicking. The world outside our curtained room disappeared, and there was only this, only us, only the heat and the sweat and the quiet sounds we made together.

When it was over, he collapsed beside me, one arm thrown across my stomach, his breath warm on my shoulder. I stared at the ceiling and tried to remember how to form words.

"Biscuits," I said finally.

"What?"

"You're still eating biscuits for lunch. Don't think I forgot."

He laughed, and the bed shook, and I felt it in every tired muscle of my body. He pulled me closer and kissed my temple.

"I'll eat properly tomorrow," he said.

"You said that last week."

"I mean it this time."

I turned my head to look at him. His eyes were closed, his face relaxed, and he was already half asleep. I could have argued. I could have pushed. But the afternoon light was slanting through the window, turning the dust motes gold, and his arm was heavy and warm across my body, and I decided to let it go.

For now.

I closed my eyes and listened to him breathe, and somewhere in the distance, the fruit vendor started calling out his prices again.