I patted my wife's hand gently. She sniffed and leaned sideways into my shoulder. All around us, the sounds of sniffled tears and murmuring voices. I hadn't known my wife's aunt Christina well, but from the turnout at her funeral, it seemed like she'd been well liked.
"Are you holding up alright?" I whispered.
"Yeah," Jane said. "I feel bad for some of her friends that she hadn't seen in a while. This came out of the blue for them." I could understand her sympathy. Christina had been sick for a very long time, and we had all come to terms with her passing long before the actual event. Looking around the room, there were actually very few tears.
Jane got up to circle the room and talk to family she hadn't seen for some time, and I took the opportunity to excuse myself. The visitation was a little uncomfortable for me, knowing so few of the people there.
The funeral home was simply gorgeous. The owners were personal friends of mine (I had managed to call in some favors to get a nicer funeral than my wife's family would otherwise have been able to afford) and had done a lovely job at furnishing the place. It had been done up in a Victorian style that was somber and tasteful, with the gravitas that made people feel like their loved ones' deaths were being taken seriously.
I saw Glenn, my friend, in the hallway as I headed for the bathroom.
"Hey, Jake," he said. "I just got a call from a client. I have to head out."
"Damn," I said. "We don't have to cut it short, do we?" I would hate to have to shoo my wife's family out of a funeral.
"No," he said. "As long as you can stay until I get back." He held out a set of keys. "Here's the spares in case the visitation ends before I get back. Would you mind locking up before you leave if that's the case?" I nodded and thanked him again for the favor he was doing us. It was especially nice because Glenn and his family, a wife and two kids, lived in the funeral home. Squeezing us in like this meant his family had had to be hustled out of the house for the evening. I pushed on down the hallway, sighing at the extra responsibility I'd just agreed to take on.
I stopped at the door to the bathroom. Inside I could hear sniffing. I turned to go, but the door opened, and Jane's sister Violet came out into the hall.
"Sorry," she said, "I'm done."
"Take all the time you need," I said, trying to smile. I'm not real great with grieving people, so I tried to default back to supportive-but-not-smothering.
Violet, Jane's younger sister, had been out of the country on business when Christina had died. She'd had much less advance notice than the rest of the family, and was taking it harder.
"Sorry," she said again, wiping her eyes. I put a hand on her shoulder, and she wilted into me in a pathetic hug. Her face was hot from crying, and pressed into my neck.
I'd always found Violet attractive, and the feeling of her pressed against me was something I'd always imagined but never experienced in any but the most platonic of senses. I forced myself to think about something else.
"Sorry," she said for the third time, pulling away. "I'm just so stressed."
"I can understand," I said. "You're under a lot of stress right now. Moving back to the states, changing jobs, it's a big deal. And all of this on top of it?" I smiled. "Believe me, I get stress."
She nodded and finally smiled. "I bet you do. Arranging a funeral like this for someone you barely knew? That was really great. Everyone's really grateful."
"It's no big deal," I said. "I love this family." I reached out and touched her shoulder reassuringly. I love the feel of a wool sweater on bare skin, and with the smell of her dark red hair still lingering around my face, I felt like I needed to get away quickly. She leaned forward for another hug.
And then her mouth was on mine. It wasn't even a kiss--more intense than that. Her mouth was moving with a hungry intensity that wouldn't be denied. It took me a second to realize through my shock that I was kissing her back. I pressed her frame into mine, trying to pull her into me. All I knew was that I needed that smell, that taste, immediately.
She broke away, and I looked at her. The moment hung on a thread. We could walk away and pretend this had never happened, but there would be no going back if we went any further. Neither of us had the self-control for that.
"Where?" she whispered.
"Upstairs," I said.
We stumbled up the stairs, as quietly as we were able. She turned the second she made it to the top and wrapped her arms around my neck again. Like something out of a movie I backed her into the first door in the upstairs hallway. Fortunately, a bedroom. Some kind of child's bedroom. Rocket ships and dinosaurs on the walls.
Her fingers were fumbling at my belt, even as I was trying to undo the button on her black jeans. If either of us had stopped for a moment to undo our own damn pants we might have been at it in a second, but we were too focused on what we wanted, on our greedy need to get the other's clothes off, to reason our way through the situation.
