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For the first 24 hours of their week in Hawaii, Josh can’t do anything much more than sleep. He wakes briefly for a couple of meals and sleepy, lazy sex, then gets dragged down into the depths of sleep again before his brain can register anything else. He finally emerges on their second morning, hair rumpled and rubbing his eyes, which feel clearer than they have in months, maybe years. He wanders outside the bedroom to their deck and sees Donna sitting out there, a book resting on her lap as she surveys the sparkling ocean. She takes a sip of pineapple juice before she senses his presence and smiles up at him.
“Hey, sleepy head,” she greets him, moving over so he can sink down next to her on the loveseat. He leans into her and turns his head so it’s pressed into her shoulder, inhaling deeply with his eyes closed. She feels him rub his nose into her upper arm and give her a little kiss through her shirt.
“I feel like a new man,” he tells her, raising his head up again. “It’s crazy what sleeping more than three or four hours consecutively can do for you.”
“Who would have known, huh? I hope this new Josh has a less sensitive system than that other guy, because I think in a few hours this juice might have to become cocktails on the beach.”
Josh raises an eyebrow at her. “Wow, looks like Hawaii Donna is ready to let loose. Someone warn the locals, things are about to get wild out here.”
“Hawaii Donna needs some breakfast first,” she answers, lightly patting her empty stomach. “You want to order room service? There’s a menu around here somewhere,” she moves to get up, but Josh gently tugs her arm back down and kisses her languidly on the lips, his fingers curling around the edges of her face.
“Sounds perfect,” he tells her as he finishes the kiss, and feels his heart flip a little at the look of happiness that’s like a beacon shining back at him. She always has been his lighthouse, bright and true. The strength of her floods through him and it’s all he can do not to laugh with glee. He settles for another kiss, and a playful nibble on her bottom lip.
They order some pancakes with tropical fruits and Donna tells Josh about the walk she took along the beach yesterday afternoon. It’s quiet here: just the two of them talking, the waves lapping gently at the sand, and the birds in the trees around them. Josh realises he’d be able to hear himself think if he was thinking anything in particular, but, gloriously, he is not. He is just sitting next to Donna, eating breakfast, and feeling a sense of absolute calm.
“It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?” she comments as she watches him stare out towards the water. “I’ve never been here before. Hawaii, I mean. I’ve never actually taken a proper vacation as an adult, when I think about it. I started college, began dating – well, you know – then I joined the campaign and before I knew it, eight years had passed and here we are. The last vacation I took was Niagara Falls with my family when I was 15 years old. I remember sulking through our photos in those waterproof ponchos, sullenly getting hit by all that spray and resenting the entire thing.”
“Sulky teenage Donna, huh?” he grins at her salaciously. “Sounds hot.”
“Pervert.”
“Temptress.”
“I do my best,” she answers, flipping her hair over her shoulder and smirking at him. The mid-morning sun is making her hair glitter and there’s something about her open, generous face that catches him off guard. He is alive with love for her and he hopes she knows. How could she not? He places a hand on her knee and gives it a squeeze, trying to convey a little something of how he feels. She puts her hand on top of his and squeezes it back. I do know, of course I know, she seems to say.
Josh never wants to stop talking to her, to finish this moment, to not be as they are now. He is reminded of a conversation he had with a journalist from Iran he’d met at some White House event or another, somewhere in amongst the thousands of conversations with the thousands of strangers over the years. ‘Del be del rah dare’, she’d explained, was a Persian phrase that literally meant ‘from heart to heart, there is a way’. Figuratively, it could be understood as ‘there is telepathy between our hearts’. He remembered instantly knowing, in that uncomfortable, exquisite way he’d spent so long denying, that this was what was between him and Donna. That there had always been a unique telepathy between their hearts, as much as he’d tried to ignore what that meant. He feels a rush of absolute freedom knowing he no longer has to pretend this doesn’t exist. He squeezes her leg again and once more is rewarded by a look of pure happiness.
“Hey, Donna,” Josh says, putting his fork down and taking a big swig of juice. “Tell me something about you I don’t know.”
“Like what?” she asks.
He grins, “Anything you want. Just something that has never come up before in all our little chats.”
Donna cocks her head, a sceptical expression on her face. “Our “little chats”? All these years of constant conversation can be condensed into “little chats”?”
He rolls his eyes. “Sure, fine, something that hasn’t come up before in our extensive autobiographical discussions, then. Something to surprise me, like the image of adolescent Donna glowering in front of one of the Wonders of the World, only better.”
“Not to be pedantic but I don’t think Niagara Falls is technically one of the Wonders of the World.”
“Come on, Donna! Give me something here,” he taps her leg mock impatiently. “Just as long as you’ve never told me before.”
Donna furrows her brow, stares into the cloudy, tropical sky, and ponders his request. Her nose wrinkles adorably in concentration before she turns back to him. “Okay…” she begins, “my parents sleep top and tail in bed together every night.”
Josh blinks. This was absolutely not what he was expecting. “Come again?”
“My parents sleep top and tail,” she repeats. “They sleep in the same bed, but my mom sleeps with her head down one end, and my dad sleeps with his head down the other end.”
Josh is perplexed. “Sniffing each other’s toes?”
Donna grimaces. “I don’t think there’s any toe sniffing involved, no, but –“
He’s having fun now. “You can’t rule it out?”
“I’d prefer not to think about my parents’ feet in too much detail, thank you, Josh,” she pushes the image away with a shake of her head. “No, you see, my dad snores excessively loudly and it disturbs my mom, but she still wants to be close to him at night, so she figures that sleeping down the other end of the bed will take her ears a little further away from the action, but not so far that she can’t still be near him.”
Josh is touched by this picture of Mr. and Mrs. Moss, though it is tinged with sadness at the thought of his own mother in her empty bed, night after night. “That’s pretty sweet, actually. Weird, obviously, but sweet.”
Donna smirks at him. “Much like you, some might say.”
“I knew you weren’t immune to my many charms.”
“Is that what we’re calling them?”
He pats her on the cheek, mock condescendingly. “Thank you for artfully weaving in another thread of the tapestry that is your beautiful, odd life story, but actually, sweet cheeks, that was about your folks, not about you: the one and only Donnatella Moss, light of my life, thorn in my side, spring in my step –“
She rolls her eyes, a move as familiar to him as the grass beneath his feet and the sun in the sky. “Okay, okay, tone it down. What do you want to know - the answers to my security questions? First concert? Name of my first pet? Father’s middle name?”
Josh rattles off the information, counting to three on his fingers. “Bruce Springsteen, Detroit, 1988, you went with your cousin Debbie who got sick halfway through so you had to leave before you got to hear Thunder Road. You’re still mad at her. Your first pet was, uh, you had that cat, Geraldine, who tried to sit on you when you were baby and had to be rehomed to the crazy cat lady down the road, and then your dad’s middle name is… wait, I know it… it’s Francis.” His satisfied grin is of the cat getting the cream variety and Donna wants to push her fingers right into his dimples.
“You’re a freak, you know that, right?”
If possible, Josh’s smile gets even wider. “Is that what you’re into, freakish stuff? There’s more where that came from.” He licks her left ear lobe and she shivers, batting him away playfully. Donna looks right at Josh, piercing him with her lovely eyes.
“You remember all of that?”
“Donna. Of course I do. I think I probably remember everything you’ve ever told me.”
“Even my dad’s middle name?”
He smiles sheepishly and admits, “Okay, that was a lucky guess. Irish, born in the 30s in Wisconsin, first name Michael – I took a punt on Francis. Michal Francis Moss, toe sniffer extraordinaire.”
Donna hits him on the arm, eyes widening in dramatic disgust. “Josh! Can you stop it with the toes already?” But he’s hit his stride now and he’s loving that their teasing can reach new levels of intimacy that ordinarily they would have shied away from.
“Do you want me to sniff your toes? Suck them, maybe?” he grabs her left foot, bare and smooth and warm, and pulls it up towards his mouth as she does her best to slither out of his grasp, giggling.
“Okay, Josh, you just said something lovely, and then you had to spoil it by being… well… you: a degenerate with a fixation on my father’s toes.”
Josh’s grasp on her foot is firm and he relishes its heavy weight in his hands. “No no no no, I’ve moved on to your toes now,” he slides a hand up her calf, watching, delighted, as reacts to his touch “Unless there’s something else you’d like me to suck? I’m open to suggestions…” He pulls her other leg up so now he has both of them in his lap and she leans back, head on the soft arm of the loveseat.
“Did you mean it?” Donna asks from her reclined position.
“What, about the sucking? Just tell me where to start.”
“Do you really remember everything?”
He’s running his hands up and down her legs, light as a feather, enjoying her squirms. “Pretty much,” he replies breezily, focusing on the feel of her skin and what he’s doing to her with these simple movements.
“Okay, you tell me something I don’t know about you then.”
Josh kisses her big toe and grins at her with mischief and desire in his eyes. “Uh, I think I’m into your toes?”
Donna ignores him. “I know your dad’s middle name was David. I know your first concert was Joni Mitchell, New Haven, 1976. I know you never had any pets until after your – after the fire and your parents got you a dog, Bud, named after Bud Harrelson of the Mets. So tell me something new.”
Josh’s heart swells at the way she’s taken in him, everything about him, always. “I’ve had a thing for you since 1998. Did you know that?” He keeps his tone light, but his body starts prickling as he knows he’s approaching that thing – that thing between them they’ve never acknowledged with words, never yet grappled with in a tangible, irrevocable way.
“Kinda. Maybe. Not exactly.” Donna takes a small breath, not sure if she believes they’re going to be talking about this. At last. “But also… you have?”
Josh shakes his head slightly and the corners of his lips turn up on their accord. “God, Donna, how could I not? Look at you.”
Donna breaks eye contact for a second, glancing out at the expanse of sea and then back to Josh again. “It’s just… that’s eight years, Josh. Two terms. A lifetime. You didn’t want to say something earlier?” there’s an admonition in her tone, but it is couched in such fondness it doesn’t sting.
“Like what? ‘Donna, thanks for grabbing those files, oh, by the way, you’re gorgeous and I can’t live without you?’”
She’s smiling again, but a tinge of regret lingers in her eyes. “Never hurts a girl to hear that kind of thing, as a matter of fact.”
He stares down at her right foot, still in his hand, then raises his eyes to her face. “It’s true you know.”
“What?”
“I can’t live with out you,” he tells her simply, his eyes unblinking.
Donna’s brow furrows and she sits up straight, starting to say “Oh, Josh –“
“I can’t. You saw what happened to me when you left – when you quit the job. I was a mess. It hurt so damn much everywhere, all through me, like nothing before. Worse than being shot in the chest. I – you – it broke my heart.” He looks away and repeats again, more softly, “It broke my heart.”
Donna’s sitting upright now, having swung her legs off Josh’s lap and she’s looking at him with pain all over her face. “Josh, I’m –“ she tries again before he interrupts her.
“I was underselling it before, Donna. I didn’t – I don’t have a thing for you.” His whole body is vibrating and he doesn’t think his heart has ever been this alive with the perfect agony of her before. “I’ve been in love with you for eight years. I may not have always known it here,” he presses a finger into his temple, “but my heart…” he moves the hand down to the left side of his chest and pats it for emphasis. “I’ve always known it here. Always.”
Donna places her hand on top of the one on his heart and feels the heat of him. “My God, you beautiful idiot, do you know how much I love you? How much I’ve always loved you?”
He’s jittery and fluttery and smiling now, and he knows – of course he knows – but he still needs to hear it from her. “You have?”
“Josh, of course I have. How could I not? From Nashua to Hawaii and everywhere in between, I have loved you, even when I haven’t always liked you that much, even when you haven’t liked me, even when it seemed like we would never find our way back. My heart has always been with your heart.”
“Del be del rah dare,” he says, almost without realising it.
“Sorry?” she asks, confused.
“Nothing, nothing,” he shakes his head, but then tries to explain. “It’s just – it’s just something in Persian I heard a long time ago. ‘From heart to heart there is a path’. That’s us. A path. A tunnel through the snow from my window to yours, snowballs and all.”
Donna kisses him hard on the lips, understanding enough, getting him, as usual. “Beautiful damn idiots, that’s us.”
The golden sun is behind her, poking its way out from behind some clouds, finally, making a halo around her head, and she is more stunning than she ever has been, and his rebel heart is about to just jump out of his chest and into hers (where it belongs) and in his whole life, Josh has never felt this happy. He wraps his arms around Donna – his Donna, his heart – and pulls her close. She melts into him and he knows she’s here to stay, always, just as he is.