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He tastes like snails.
No one she's ever kissed before had tasted like snails, and she's kissed enough people that she's tasted almost everything on her lovers' lips—champagne—of course—sweet, juicy strawberries when they were in season—caviar or maybe chocolate when they weren't—the odd morning coffee when she couldn't avoid those oh so delicate mornings after—and sharp, smokey whiskey when it felt like that morning might just never come.
Never snails, which was saying something given all the French men she'd kissed in the mad rush before Rene at the end of the war, nevermind the mad rush to escape his hold on her own body after. Rene had never liked escargot—he'd thrown the plate once when she'd ordered them just to try. Perhaps that's why she'd ordered them for Jack—some way to remind herself that she's her own woman now, and she can order snails any time she pleases. Jack hadn't been a fan—buttered rubber—and yet there it was: the plate safe and sound, not one dish thrown, not one slap even considered. It's a low bar, she knows. It's incredible how few have cleared it.
And now here she is, and here's Jack, and he tastes like snails. Earthy—a bit bitter, a bit like fresh wet dirt, a bit…magical. Buttery and strange and real and there in a way no other kiss has been since Rene. Rene kissed like a wildfire to her bonfire—all consuming flame and raging passion, emphasis on the rage. Jack kisses like the soil, like rich earth you just want to sink your roots into, to throw up branches and grow tall, knowing the earth has you—that it would always have you—that somewhere in its mysterious depths is the greatest mystery of all—the mystery of how to hold on without holding back, the mystery of how to go deep without sacrificing the wide blue sky, the mystery of how to love so completely and well that growing together—nurturing each other—might feel like freedom rather than a trap.
Well, for a moment anyway. They are actively trying to trap her ex after all, and in the rush that always seems to come when she's around Rene, she loses track of Jack and the snails and just about everything else. It's only when Jack brings the painting back—when she shows him her most precious work of art that most men have to earn an invitation to her bedroom to see—it's only then that she realizes she's been waiting for days to find out what he'll taste like next.
Of course, it takes years. Years of him pursuing her, of her pursuing him, only never at the same time and rarely at the same pace. There are a lot of kisses in between—wine, brandy, cigarettes—all of them ashes by the end—all cinders of a fire that's just about to burn out.
They're nice kisses—good kisses—hot kisses, even—it's just that, well, none of them taste like snails.
The next time they kiss, he tastes like dust on the wind. The prop on her plane is whirling fit to leave the earth, kicking up dust and blowing it past them—through their lips—and it's gritty and strange, and she's going to be picking grass out of her teeth for half the flight, but it's still the best kiss she's had since the snails, and it still tastes like magic and earth and deep, mysterious possibilities that she still can't quite imagine anywhere else but in his strong, solid, and still somehow surprising arms.
There aren't so many kisses between this one and the next. It's just hard to enjoy kissing anyone else when one man and two kisses that honestly tasted like dirt somehow seem to outweigh all the champagne and caviar kisses she's ever had.
Still, she does manage to marry another man. That's got to count for fifty kisses at least. So what if it's all for show—it's the thought that counts, she's sure of it. And so what if she's saving her kisses for a man, she's not going to marry him. And now she can't, and that's just so much easier. Right?
Right?
Except it turns out maybe even the earth has its limit. Maybe even snails hit steep rocks they can't climb. He'd left her once before when he thought she was dead, and now that he can't mourn her and he can't marry her, he's going to get back on that ship—that ship that must have taken weeks to arrive for a memorial that would have been hours and a return voyage that would have felt twice as long—and he's going to leave her for good this time. He's going to dig up her roots and set her free—finally, completely, and wholly free—and somehow she'd never realized that all her reaching branches could only have grown so big because her roots had been growing just as deep in the opposite direction.
In the end, he doesn't leave her. He never has, and she's beginning to realize that maybe he never will.
"You're not going without me, not after all this," he says, the earth trembling with every word. "What if you don't come back?"
She only has two seats, but suddenly she realizes that she can't leave him either. That he's not holding her back—he never was—but he is holding her down, tying her to the ground, to her roots in the deep, dark, mysterious soil, and she can't live without her whole self anymore—without her roots and her heart and the goddamn snails, which neither of them even really liked, but maybe now they both kind of love, and it's a good thing she's married because otherwise she'd be tempted to settle it all—once and for all—the way men and women have been doing it for millennia.
Is this the point of marriage? she wonders hazily in a flash. Is it just everyone's way of answering these all consuming questions of longing and belonging and love so you can put that bit behind you and do something else with your time? Like maybe finding out if he still tastes like snails? God, she can't wait to find out.
There's one more kiss before she can, though. She's going for the guide's gun and ends up with a mouthful of tongue, instead. Jack's rolling his eyes over the guide's shoulder, like he's not even surprised anymore—not even concerned. Like watching her kiss other men is just part of the job—and just like that, she's done. She's sick of kisses that don't taste like snails. She's sick of using her lips like a weapon. She's sick of kissing men who wouldn't know the first thing about nourishing her roots.
Not that she lets that stop her from pushing Jack's last few buttons. She's pushing him away, again, telling him he should trust her blind, again, that she shouldn't have to explain herself to him, again, and it's an old, worn out argument, and he looks old and worn out by it, and he's walking away, again, and she realizes, out of nowhere, that she's been waiting for him to throw the plate since she ordered the snails all those years ago, and he's never going to. That given the choice between hurting her by staying and hurting himself by leaving, he's always going to leave, and he's never going to hurt her. Never. Ever.
And then—well, then—there's fucking quicksand.
He rescues her from the quicksand—because of course he does—and then he rescues her from the rock slide, and then she makes him rescue her from a fake spider, too, just for kicks, and he goes outside and shoots her pistol and pretends he shot a spider, just for her, and they've been married for years, haven't they? They've been doing this for years.
And he's not going anywhere now, and she's not pushing him away. He has her heart, and she's got his, and this kiss tastes like sand, like the heat of the desert and the grit of ages worn down to tiny pieces that stick in their hair and on their lips, and he's not just the earth, she realizes, he's also the coals that feed the fire—the charcoal that keeps her flames burning bright—the sustenance that lets her sparks spiral upwards, and she never wants to go hungry again.