William sat on my couch, champagne in hand. The whole city was going crazy below my windows, but inside we were warm and cozy under our respective blankets. The television was on and we were flipping between channels. One showed Times Square in New York City. Another one showed the Chicago celebration. Still another showed snippets of ringing in the New Year from every city across the world, starting with Sydney.

William hadn’t called me for three days after he left my apartment. When he did, he was filled with apologies, but they weren’t necessary. I understood. He had said that the body heals, but sometimes other kinds of wounds don’t, and I knew those emotional scars had been opened for him just as they had been opened for me. The fact that he called at all said a lot about his strength, and I told him so. 

A few days after that phone call, William showed up on my doorstep. I made dinner this time, and together we went through the files I had collected over the twenty-something years since Bobby had been killed. We ate mostly in silence, flipping through the paperwork that I had all but memorized. William asked a question now and then, and sometimes stopped to laugh wryly at a ridiculous comment in one of the governmental documents, but mostly we were simply pulled back in time. There wasn’t much discussion that night, but there were plenty of nightmares on my part. I’m sure his were worse.

We met for coffee on the morning of Christmas Eve, at the coffee shop where I had found a new job. It turned out that the loss of my old job was a good thing after all; the coffee shop was within walking distance, I didn’t have to take the train, and they paid better wages. I also went home smelling like coffee and milk, not like grease. I told him that he had given me the Christmas gift of a better job, and he laughed heartily at that idea.

“I’ve always wanted to be in Sydney when the year came in,” he said now. 

“I don’t think Sydney is the first place where it actually comes. I think it’s somewhere in Fiji, maybe. Or New Zealand?”

William smiled and took a sip of his champagne. “Leave it to you to research it, Miss Librarian.”

For the first time I wondered if I wanted to hear more about Bobby or if I just wanted to hear more about William. 

He took another sip of champagne, watching the television with interest. Bobby had told him so many things about me, and I knew how men talked, especially when they thought there wasn’t a woman within earshot. Just how detailed did their conversations get? What did William know about me that I had no idea he knew? Were there things he knew that I would never know, secrets that Bobby told him? What had William told Bobby?

He finally caught me looking at him. He abandoned the television and looked at me instead. 

“What did Bobby tell you about me?” I asked.

William smiled and settled more comfortably on the couch. Tonight he wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and jeans, much more casual wear than I had seen him in before. When he shifted on the couch, the shirt showed a small glimpse of a very bad scar on his left arm, just below the line of the cotton.

“Bobby told me everything,” he said with a playful, ominous tone.

I laughed dutifully and then asked him the question again. This time he thought a while before answering.

“He told me you like flowers. Yellow. You always wore yellow sundresses. You wore your hair up in a bun until he got home and then you took it down because he liked to see it that way. You burned pizza every time, no matter how often you made it. You liked long bubble baths. You listened to him even when he thought you weren’t. You took care of your mother when she was sick.”

The words rolled from his lips so easily that I knew he had thought about those things for many years.

            He stared into his champagne glass. “You sang along with the radio. You washed your hair with his beer. That drove him nuts. You had this pretty nightgown that you always wore when you were feeling frisky.” William blushed, but didn’t look up.

I stared at him, not knowing what to say. He shifted again on the couch and for the first time I realized I could feel the heat of his body. The mere inches separating his arm from mine no longer seemed like a chasm.

“William… 

“You kissed him like he was the only man on earth.”

In New York, the crowd was going wild. The gaudy crystal ball was flashing. As I watched, it started to drop. New York revelers were counting down the numbers with increasing frenzy.

William set his champagne glass on the table and turned to me. At the same time, I closed the distance by reaching out and lightly brushing his arm with the back of my hand. Though his left hand didn’t move, his right one did. He reached up and touched my hair, ran his fingertips through it, and moved closer. When I thought he would kiss me, he buried his nose in my hair and took a deep breath. He held very still as the numbers counted down and the crowd on the television screen got louder.

“Happy new year, Marilyn,” he whispered into my ear.

He kissed me just as Dick Clark announced that the New Year had officially arrived in New York. William kissed me shyly, not touching anywhere but my lips. He nibbled with slow kisses at first, delving deeper with every one until his tongue touched mine.

It was like a match to dry tinder. I kissed him back, suddenly ravenous for what he tasted like, and he responded in kind. He kicked away the blankets and pushed me back against the corner of the couch until there was nowhere I could go and nothing I could do but kiss him right back. I was kissing him with every pent-up year of sexual frustration I had in me.