Erik kissed me then. It was a kiss that begun with my name on his lips, like a sigh so soft, awakening that which had retreated within the darkness for so long and coaxing it back into the light. It felt so right, feeling his arms enfolding me, each kiss more revealing than the one before it. It was as if I was watching - no, feeling - a rose in bloom, one petal blossoming after another. It took my breath away.

I'd waited for this for so long, a realization that would have left me ashamed were it someone else. But this was Erik, and somehow everything felt so right, each moment between us flowing so effortlessly, like the ocean breeze making its way over sand, carving itself, molding everything in its path into something beautiful. I don't know how long we kissed, but it was as if time stood still. All that mattered was the feel of our lips brushing, coaxing, teasing each other, tongues tasting that which we'd waited so long to savor, hands and mouths exploring.

He held my face in his hand, his fingers curling behind my neck, tangled in my hair. His stubble scratched my skin, but I loved the feel of it, and I brought my hand up to his face to caress his jaw as we kissed. His other hand maneuvered me beneath him on the couch, gripping my waist as he did so. I wanted Erik even though my mind was screaming for me stop, something about boundaries and roles and whatever else I could think of to convince myself that this was a mistake.

The sound of an island ring tone interrupted us. I cursed under my breath, pushing my hair away from my face as Erik helped me sit up. I began searching for my phone in a panic. It could only be David, I thought. What did he want now?

"Sorry," Erik said as he pulled out his phone from his back pocket and glanced at it before answering. He cleared his throat and listened to Olivia on the other end of the line.

We had the same ring tone, I thought, as I waited for my heart to settle down and felt awkward at the same time.

"Are they driving you crazy already?" He asked Olivia, watching me with a playful expression on his face. His fingers traced the outline of my cheekbone before pushing a strand of hair behind my ear. "I'm at Sam's right now. Can we talk tomorrow?"

He said a few more words before hanging up, apologizing for having to answer his phone. Olivia had grown worried that he hadn't checked in with her since arriving home. I looked at the clock. It was almost midnight. Had we been kissing that long?

"You didn't tell her you were already home?" I asked, surprised.

He shrugged sheepishly. "I was in a rush to catch you before you left," he said. "If the in-laws had seen me before I got to you, I'd probably still be there now, singing arias."

"If you need to leave-" I began, pretending to brush something from on my shirt.

"Would you like me to?"

I didn't answer him. My face was burning. I wanted him to kiss me again, but the phone call had snapped me back to reality, and I knew that if we had kept going, it would certainly change everything between us even more than the first kiss already had.

"You do know that I like you, Sam," Erik said. "And if you haven't noticed yet, I like you - a lot."

I looked down at my hands. Erik had linked his fingers with mine. He had long beautiful fingers, I thought. Piano fingers.

"Me, too," I whispered. "But-"

"But what?"

I shook my head. How could I tell him that I was afraid of what would have happened next had Olivia not called him? That what I really wanted was to get him into my bed and have him make love to me all night long? That I wouldn't want to know what to do now that I'd felt his kiss and wanted so much more than just that kiss? I was suddenly restless. I needed to occupy myself with something that wouldn't lead us both back to that thing I dreaded yet yearned so much to happen between us. I just wanted it too much.

He leaned towards me and kissed me lightly, a brush on the lips. I kissed him back, the temptation too great for me to ignore. I didn't want Erik to leave, but at the same time, as much as I wanted us to end up naked on my bed that night, I no longer felt it was right. I liked him too much.

Besides, it was too soon.

"Can I sketch you?" I asked as I pulled away from him. "Just sketch, no paints. Well, maybe oil pastels...but you don't have to do anything."

Without waiting for him to say anything though Erik looked amused, I headed to my bedroom. I was all nervous energy as I got down on my hands and knees by the side of the bed and reached for something underneath. Erik followed me, watching as I pulled out a bin from under the bed. This was where I stored my art supplies, as well as my finished sketches.

Erik sat on the bed, watching me take a sketch pad and flip to a blank page. A pile of finished pastel and graphite sketches caught his eye and picked them up.

"These are amazing," he said, staring at each sketch carefully. "You should frame these."

"David will only sell them if he finds them," I said wryly, reaching towards him to take the sketches, but Erik held them away from me.

"May I see them?"

I relented and nodded. For a few minutes, he looked at each sketch. They were mostly of Michael and a few of Rosie, drawn from memory. "Has Chuck seen these?"

I shook my head. "He moved out of California because everything reminded him of Rosie. These are just for me, my memory of her, always laughing and smiling. She has a few of my paintings of her already. I mean, Chuck and the kids have it now - now that she's dead."

"Will David really sell these sketches if he saw them?"

I shrugged. "He sold all of them. And he's always looking to sell more."

Erik sighed, now holding a sketch of Olivia in profile. I'd drawn it from memory, remembering the way she looked as she was looking out the window one day. "I wish you didn't have to hide your art, Sam. Have you thought of changing the locks to your whole house?"

"Would you want me to sketch you?" I asked, not exactly wanting to talk about David.

Erik nodded. He returned the drawings into the bin. "How do you want me? I've never sat for anyone before."

"You can be naked if you want, then I can say I'm doing a study of the human form," I grinned and was surprised to see Erik blush as he began to pull off his shirt. "Stop! I'm only joking, Erik. I wouldn't survive it."

He threw me an offended look.

"No, I meant, I wouldn't survive just sketching you - and nothing else. I'd want to do more, but I want to be a good girl. So keep your knickers on, big boy," I laughed. "You can get comfortable here or in the living room. I just want to draw something quick and simple."

"I hope you don't think I'm quick and simple, Sam," he teased. "Can I lie down at least? You know, then you can paint me like one of your French girls."

I giggled, any romantic mood completely gone now, replaced by a playfulness between us. "Oui," I said as he lay down on top of the covers, his head upon one of my pillows.

"How do you want my arms?"

"Just lie there like we're talking and hanging out," I said. "Nothing too posed. I like it natural."

"I like it natural, too." He said, winking at me.

"Erik!" He was making me blush again.

Erik settled himself in a comfortable position. "But what if I fall asleep?"

"Then you fall asleep," I said. "I'll still sketch you, and I promise I won't undress you or do anything you wouldn't want me to do."

"But what if I do want you to undress me and do the things I want you to do?" He grinned.

"Get your mind out of the gutter, Erik," I smiled. "You ready?"

He yawned. "Ready when you are. I'm turning out to be such a cheap date."

"That's because you are," I laughed, though there was nothing cheap about Erik.

"So can we still talk while you do your thing? Or do I need to lie still, because if I do, I'll probably fall asleep. In case I do, just wake me up."

"You can talk," I said. "I just want you to be comfortable. I can even ask you questions if you like."

"That works," he said. "Why do I feel like you're the doctor and I'm the patient?"

"Because right now you're the Mona Lisa to my Da Vinci."

He gave me a mock frown. "Now that's quite intimidating, Sam. Do you want to see my Mona Lisa smile?"

"I want to see the Erik smile," I said, sketching the guides for his face as I spoke, a bit serious now although I needed him to be relaxed. At the very least, this was relaxing to me. "Tell me about your trip to Europe. Olivia told me you took a gap year before entering med school."

He nodded. "I did. I backpacked all over."

"Were you alone?"

"I was, for a time." He settled in, bringing his arm behind his head, gazing at the ceiling as he spoke, though he occasionally looked at me, only to become self-conscious and look away again. "My grandparents settled back in Ireland, up in Killarney, which is where my granddad is from. It was fun, meeting everybody, getting acquainted with my heritage. Then after they plumped me up quite nicely, I backpacked throughout Europe and then Asia."

"When did you go to Thailand?"

"Afterwards. I met up with this girl from college and we traveled together throughout Southeast Asia."

"You mean Serena?"

He arched an eyebrow. "You've been talking to Livy," he said.

"She just spoke about her once," I said, my hands busy on the sketchpad. "Olivia said you've been dating since med school."

"It was someone else. I didn't meet Serena till two years later, and we're not dating anymore, just so you know - Serena, I mean," he said. "And as much as Liv would like to believe that she knows everything about her twin brother, I don't think she knows about Chelsea."

I remembered how Olivia and Julie mentioned Chelsea's name, and how they had no idea what happened to her after college.

"Is it okay for me to know about Chelsea? I don't want to get involved in any drama. I have enough in my life as it is."

He chuckled. "There's no drama in this story, Sam."

"If there wasn't any drama, then why doesn't Olivia know about her? Was she married or something? Was she running away?"

Erik shook his head. His face grew serious, almost distant, as if he was remembering. "She's dead."

"Oh my God, Erik. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to-"

I had dropped my crayons and touched his arm, leaving a pinkish mark before resuming drawing again, suddenly feeling the need to be busy.

"It's alright. I haven't spoken about this with anyone outside of her family, but I think it's time," he said, reaching towards me to touch my knee, which was closest to him, before lying back down on the pillows. "Really, it's okay. She'd been diagnosed with a brain tumor right before graduation. We used to hang out and study kinesiology together in college, and she was always this wild girl, introducing me to a lot of things - rock climbing, hang-gliding. After college, we all went our separate ways. When she got the diagnosis, the doctor gave her about six months. That's when she called me. She caught up with me in Rome, and from there, she asked me to take her places - her bucket list."

"Why you? Didn't she have family?"

He nodded. "She did. But they didn't get along for some reason. She didn't tell me why. She and her mother didn't talk and she didn't want to spend the time she had left trying to mend fences. She was afraid it was going to be a waste of time - and she was running out of time."

"Wasn't that a burden for you? To be asked to be with someone who is dying?"

He shook his head. "Not as long as I didn't know she was dying then, which I honestly didn't. I mean I liked hanging out with her and that was enough. She asked me if I wanted to go with her to India at first, and stay at a monastery for a month. I was intrigued so I said yes. Then we went to Cambodia and then to Thailand, and then to Singapore. That's when I knew something was wrong with her. We'd been traveling for four months by then, and I finally forced her to tell me when she could barely stand up at the hotel. I threatened to leave her in Singapore if she didn't tell me the truth."

"Were you really going to leave her?"

"She knew I'd never leave her," he replied. "She'd been fine up to that point. I had the best time of my life with her, just traveling and discovering the world together with her. She had nothing to lose."

"And when she finally told you that she was sick, what happened?" I wanted to stop sketching, and just hold Erik's hand as he spoke, but I couldn't. He had a look on his face that seemed to tell me that he did not want my pity, not then.

"She'd been carrying the doctor's report with her all that time we were traveling, and every night, before she'd sleep, I'd hear her say to that paper, 'not today.' In Singapore, she gave me that paper and told me to keep it. She told me then that it was time for her to go home. Keep sketching, Sam, please," he said, his voice cracking. "I realized then that I'd just been given this huge honor of being with her those last months of her life."

I kept sketching as he spoke, fighting the tears and focusing myself to gaze at his eyes as they grew distant, my fingers capturing what I saw.

"That's when I told her that I was going to be a doctor," he said, smiling. "Chel told me that I'd been her doctor all that time, only I didn't know it then. I went home with her to Washington state - that's where her mother lived - and I was with her when she went to see if they could mend whatever was broken between them. Two weeks later, she died in hospice. It was quick, but it was the way she wanted it. On her own terms."

"How old was she?"

"I think 23," he said. "Same age I was. You remind me of her sometimes."

I frowned. "In what way?"

"She was too stubborn for her own good. Just like you," he chuckled, before turning serious. "It was also difficult for her to accept love."

"You mean, like me?" I whispered.

Erik shrugged his shoulders and sighed. "I didn't mean to be a downer, Sam. I'm sorry. I don't even remember how we got started talking about Chel."

"Don't be sorry," I said. "Just be yourself and relax. I'm not done sketching you yet."

"Will you wake me if I fall asleep?" He asked, yawning.

"No," I said as he closed his eyes. "I'll wake you in the morning."

For the next two hours as Erik slept, I sketched and colored, my hands smeared in oil, pigments caking into my cuticles, till my eyes began to water from exhaustion. When I could barely keep my eyes open, I closed my sketch pad and tucked everything into the plastic bin, sliding it back under the bed before washing up.

Then I brushed my teeth and set out a brand new toothbrush for Erik, just in case he wanted to use it, and searched through my cabinets for a set of pajamas. I never wore them, choosing instead to wear an oversized shirt and just my underwear, usually boy shorts. When I couldn't find a set - probably because I didn't own one - I wore an oversized NYC shirt and a pair of shorts before crawling into bed, making sure there was ample space between us. It wasn't that I didn't want to be near him - I did - I just didn't want it to look too obvious. Besides, I was afraid I'd start to snore and two hours into his sleep, Erik did not snore, not even once.

I felt the bed shift as Erik to his side, facing me. Then he half-opened his eyes.

"What are you doing over there? Come here," he mumbled, reaching over towards me and bringing me to him so that now we were spooning.

Great, I thought, as Erik placed his arm over me and trapped my ankles with his leg. He was an expert snuggler and spooner, I decided. I felt his warm breath over my shoulder, fanning the hair by my ear, his arm tightening around me. There was something about the way he held me that seemed to calm me.

"Go to sleep, Sam," he said. "Doctor's orders."

And just as the doctor ordered, I did as I was told.