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The idea that we could ever be something as simple as friends is laughable, bordering on ridiculous. My jaw clenches, trapping the words I should say and leaving only enough space for the ones I shouldn’t.
With her head tilted back to meet my eyes, she laughs, and it’s a low, husky sound that calls to my baser instincts. They beg me to touch her, to sink my fingers into the softness of her flesh and bring her curves closer to my hard lines. They demand the taste of her skin and the divine power of her scent. They ask me to swallow her whole. They plead for me to savor her.
“Do you want to get into an argument with me on your birthday?” “I’d rather argue with you on every birthday for the rest of my life than endure another moment of your silence.” Disbelief creeps into the corners of her eyes. “No, you wouldn’t.” “Yes, I would. I’d take anything over your silence, princess. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Dates,” I whisper, the movement making my lips graze hers. “Dates?” “Yes.” “You want ten dates?” “Yes.” I pull back a little enough to look into her eyes and try to read her reaction. Then some more, so I can pull her gold-clad wrist to my mouth and rest my lips against her pulse. “Ask me why.” “Why do you want ten dates?” Replacing my lips with the pad of my thumb so I can feel the moment her heart starts to race because of my words, I gaze up at her. “Because I want one for every year we lost. One for every birthday you spent without me. One for every anniversary we didn’t get to celebrate.
For every Christmas where the only gift I wanted was your laughter in my ears and your heart in my hands.”
Desperation is an avalanche that sweeps me away, and the icy tendrils of fear follow close behind it, sending my heart into a free fall.
“I swear.” My heart throbs. “Do we have a deal?”
He shakes his head, his eyes darkening. “I can’t bring myself to rush it.” And he doesn’t. His advance happens in fragments of time and space. Broken inches and shattered breaths passing in microseconds that I count in my head while I wait to taste our future on his lips.
in.” “I could have, but I wanted the first meal you had here to be something warm and familiar, so
you’d associate those feelings with this house. With me.”
“A savior complex,” she repeats, rolling the words around on her tongue, tasting the accuracy.
Resistance is a steel cage around my lungs. I don’t want to confirm that her words are resonating with me, but denying it would be stupid, a slap in the face of all the work we’ve done together over the years.
Every time I see the band Nic added to Sloane’s wedding set, I’m hit with a confusing mixture of joy and jealousy. And after that comes the despair, the regret because in another life, Mallory and I would already have the things
the smile turns into a skeptical twist of her lips. “Are you going to steal this one too?” A sharp pang goes through my chest, and I have to fight to make myself ignore the hurt that wiggles its way into my heart because of her question.
I appreciate that she’s not trying to run off, though. That she’s still standing here, listening to me pour out a portion of my heart, evening myself out a bit before we move on with the rest of our night.
Mallory reaches up to touch the diamond resting in the hollow space at the base of her throat and sighs softly. It’s that sound that pulls me out of my thoughts and back into the present, where nothing about us, except for the feelings she won’t acknowledge and the history we can’t stop talking about, is as solid as the life we have in my waking dreams.
Everything is up in the air, sitting on heavy, burdened clouds that will either douse us in acid that will destroy everything or give us a blessed rain that will wipe our slate clean.
And when he swallows, I swallow too, digesting the burning need for the slickness that’s just gathered between my thighs to be what’s slipping down his throat, for the evidence of my desire to be the thing he’s consuming.
Oh, his voice is so deep, coated in filth and heat that makes me second guess my decision to replace his touch with my own.
His eyes are wild but focused, aware, as always, of my possible triggers. “Are you okay?”
but he’s never looked sexier than he does right now. Fully clothed but naked and undone in all the ways that matter.
“Good. You have everything you need here. Whatever you don’t like, we can get rid of. I just wanted you to have things here so you never felt the need to pack a bag to come home.”
After what we shared last night, I expected things to be up in the air between us for a while. Mallory gets scared whenever I get too close because it means that she let me in. But it still hurts to be standing in it, in the swirl of her uncertainty, in the middle of the storm of mixed emotions I’m afraid she’ll always associate with me.
Her bottom lip quivers and every tremor of her flesh is like the crack of a whip. Lashings that are all the more painful because of their biting accuracy tear my skin open, so I’m bleeding right along with her. “All I’ll have are the things you gave me and the ruined memories. A sad collection of reminders of you.”
Happiness. No, not just happiness. Joy. The kind of joy that’s hard-won, mined out of caves of darkness and caverns of pain. The kind of joy that comes paired with peace, settling in your bones and encouraging other bright, rainbow-colored emotions to come out and play.
And when I walk into the kitchen, I’m ready. To talk instead of run. To choose joy instead of fear. But
He came back here to revive me, to breathe new life into our love, and I told him he couldn’t do it, but he did. He pulled me out of the grave his
father dug for us and used the soil to plant a garden for our future. And now I’m standing here, reaping the benefits of the seeds he sowed, terrified of the harvest.
“He left me in that place, Sloane. Twice.” “And now you want to be the one leaving,” she says it like it’s a fact, and the truth of it resonates deep inside of me, speaking directly to the girl I was ten years ago, to the woman I was four years ago. To all the confused and conflicted versions of me that have spent the months since his return to New Haven running to him and from him all at the same time. To the parts of me that crave his presence and fear it. That love him and hate him. That worship and rebuke him. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
New Haven is a beautiful city, but when you’re alone like this, when you’re living with the severance of physical ties when the emotional ones are very much intact, it’s a bleak place.
My chest aches, the way it has been for weeks now, and I rub at it with fingers that are tired of trying to soothe a phantom pain they’ll never be able to fix. Because I’m bleeding out, hanging on the edge of this life, and only her fingers can heal me.
It’s another benefit of my medical training, being able to compartmentalize, to push the riot happening in your heart and mind down so it’s no longer on the surface.
Maybe, we would have walked into this venue together, fingers laced instead of barely brushing, allowing ourselves to feel everything instead of pretending to feel nothing.
so I could be sure that I was making my decision based on what I want and not on what the traumatized and anxious little boy behind Chris’ eyes was telling me he needs.
I always figured it was too painful for Mama to talk about him, but now I know there’s comfort to be found in the act of sharing your lost loved one with someone who never got to know them like you did. Of passing along their essence through words and stories. Through quiet breaths held quickly and released slowly into the universe, breathing life anew into the memory of a person that once was but is no more.
“I didn’t fall in love with your daddy, Mallory. I sunk into it. Slipped it on like a pair of my favorite jeans, like a threadbare t-shirt that’s softer than anything has ever had a right to be.”
what he became for me, what our love became for us. A place we moved into with intention, that we sought out with purpose even though it surprised us.”
“You keep wanting certainty, baby,” Mama continues. “But certainty is a desire of the brain, not the heart. The only certainty we get in this life is death and the grief that comes with it. Everything else is ours to make, to hold in our hands and shape with our palms. To nurture or let die.”
“Hey.” I step back to create space for him to come in, noting the waves of anxiety still sloughing off him. I soak it up like a sponge, adding my unique take as it floods my veins. Jesus, we’re a mess.
There it is. A bomb launched from his side of the battlefield, right into mine, blowing my soft open to smithereens. I pause, turning around to face him with dishwater and suds dripping from my hands.
His hands turn into fists, and tears shine in his eyes. “Mal, please. Don’t do this. I know I agreed to walk away if it didn’t work, but please don’t do this. I know it’s not enough to fix it.” His voice breaks, and I break a little too. “I know nothing would ever be enough to fix it.”
My lips tremble as he rises from his seat, crossing the kitchen on legs that are shaking from fear that refuses to go unseen. I watch him advance, expecting him to do what he always does and cage me in, trapping me between the counter and his body, but he doesn’t. The moment he reaches me, he sinks to his knees, both of his hands going to my waist, his tear soaked face buried in my stomach. But it’s the sobs that get me. The way he still manages to speak through them while I look down at him in shock, wondering if this is how it feels to fell a giant, to slay a dragon, to conquer a king.
Every apology Chris has given me since his return to New Haven has been real, true, genuine. I’ve always known that, but I’ve never let myself feel them. I’ve never allowed myself to sink into them, to perceive them as evidence of his love for me instead of a reminder of his guilt. But this apology? This is the apology. The one too raw to ignore, the one too guttural to dismiss. The one that sets everything in my world back to rights.
“I love you,” I whisper, so quiet it’s almost like I’m saying it to myself, but Chris hears. His eyes fall shut, relishing in the truth, allowing it to wash over him.
We can’t rush it, can’t skip past the sweetness of rediscovering who we are together just to pick up where we left off so many years ago.
Knowing there’s only one other place he could be if he didn’t come upstairs to stalk me, I head to his study and find him sitting at his desk with a grim look on his face as he hangs up the phone. There will always be a part of me that panics when I see him look that way, a tiny flare of worry that will forever shoot through me, hoping to find purchase in lingering insecurities. I’ve come to accept it, to acknowledge its presence and explore what its trying to tell me before separating fact from feeling.
This is a natural progression of our relationship and a precursor to the question he really wants to ask. The question he’s tucked between the lines of his speech. The question I studiously ignore because it sends panic rushing through my veins.
It’s funny how being known works. How it comforts and distresses you at the same time.
It’s such a simple gesture. The act of listening, really listening, and using what you hear to make thoughtful decisions that ensure the person who communicated their needs to you feels heard.
“I’m not asking you that question yet.” The tension lining her shoulders melts away in an instant, and it’s all I need to see to know that she’s not ready. That we’re not ready. It’s a painful but necessary truth to learn, and I can tell by the way Mallory’s features go from fear to guilt that I’m not doing a good job of hiding the pain part.
