Writing Intimacy with Grace: A Garratyverse Reflection

Writing Intimacy with Grace: A Garratyverse Reflection

In the Garratyverse, intimacy is never just about bodies—it’s about breath, memory, and the quiet courage it takes to be seen. I don’t write sex scenes. I write moments of emotional sanctuary, where characters undress not just physically, but emotionally, in the presence of someone who makes it safe to do so.

These scenes aren’t driven by heat or urgency. They unfold slowly, like rituals of trust. A hand reaching for a button. A breath caught in the chest. A glance that lingers not out of desire, but out of awe. I’m interested in what happens when someone chooses to stay—not because they’re expected to, but because they’re invited. Because they’re met with grace.

In Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen, Kelly and the narrator share one of these moments. It’s not about seduction. It’s about recognition. About the staggering beauty of someone who isn’t afraid to be seen, and the quiet ache of wanting to be worthy of that gaze. What follows isn’t a scene of passion—it’s a scene of presence. Of emotional fluency. Of two people learning, in real time, how to be gentle with each other.

Here’s the full excerpt:

I reached for the buttons on my shirt, fingers fumbling with the first one like it was part of some unfamiliar ritual.

  My hands didn’t feel like mine—too slow, too clumsy. My breath snagged in my throat.

 “Here,” Kelly said softly. Her voice was calm, steady, like a hand smoothing out a crease. “Let me.”

 She stepped close—so close I could smell the faint warmth of sandalwood and citrus on her skin—and her fingers moved with an ease I didn’t have. One button. Then another. Then the one over my heart. My chest rose faster with each undone thread.

  She wasn’t rushing.

  She wasn’t watching me like she expected anything.

  Kelly was just there. Present. Assured. Like she’d already made peace with the pause in my breathing.

  When she slid the shirt gently off my shoulders, I caught the first full glimpse of her—bathed in the soft lamplight, the pale curve of her collarbone drawing a line toward everything I didn’t yet know. I couldn’t look away. Not because she was naked, but because she wasn’t afraid. And maybe that was the most staggering thing. How did she do that—stand there so sure, so composed, as if offering her bare self were the easiest thing in the world?

  Had someone taught her how to be safe, once? Or had she built that grace out of silence and hurt, the way some people do when they’ve had to hold themselves together too long?

 I didn’t know. But I knew I wanted to be worthy of it. I wanted to be braver—wanted to reach for her, close the space between us the way guys in movies did, like it was all instinct and rhythm. But my body didn’t move fast enough, and maybe that was the point.

  Kelly saw it. All of it. The way my shoulders stiffened, how my hand hovered an inch from her waist before retreating.

  She smiled—not teasing, not amused. Just… knowing.

  “It’s okay,” she said gently, her voice quieter than the music still spinning behind her. “Let me.” Her hands rose to the front of my shirt again, her fingers undoing buttons not like she was undressing me, but like she was offering something. Making it easy for me to stay. My breath caught somewhere behind my ribs, and I felt my heart beating too hard in my chest. It felt ridiculous, how fast it was going, how loud everything inside me suddenly seemed.

  But I didn’t stop her.

  I just looked at her face—her eyes calm, her mouth soft with focus—and wondered, not for the first time, how someone like her had found her way to someone like me. And somewhere in the back of my mind, uninvited but strangely welcome, came a memory of reading Summer of ’42 in junior year. I didn’t remember much—just that long, slow ache between a boy who wanted something he didn’t understand and a woman who understood everything too well.

  I hadn’t gotten it then.

  I was starting to, now. The tape kept playing—Joel crooning through the rest of An Innocent Man, track by track—but I couldn’t tell you what came after “This Night.” I know the songs were there. I remember the faint hiss between sides, the click of the auto-reverse.

 But all I really remember… was her.

  The warmth of her skin. The featherlight touch of her fingers moving across me like she already knew what I didn’t have words for. The way her breath caught, not with hesitation, but with grace. That album played on, but in my memory, the rest is quiet.

  Only Kelly remained.