I’m aware of movement under the covers, Shane slipping away. Underneath my layer of sleep I sense her near, in the next room, or just downstairs. I can hear her footsteps, and it sounds like she’s pacing. Then I fall asleep again, and when I wake, I’m aware of being watched. That foreign buzz, a gentle awareness that begins, and intensifies as it hovers in my mind.
I open my eyes and see her, hand resting on the pillow, skin of her bare shoulders pale below the dark sheets. She has been watching me sleep. Her eyes are wild and it reminds me of the time I tied her up against her will. It’s that kind of chaos.
She doesn’t look a way, doesn’t try to hide the fact that she’s been watching me. She smiles, a twitch of facial muscles, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
I lift my head off the pillow. “What’s wrong?”
She stares at me with those eyes, so big and imponderable. “Where’d you go the other night?”
It takes me a minute to figure out what she’s talking about. “Melanie’s.”
“Oh.” She glances away. “I thought you hooked up.”
“No.”
Oh my god, she’s jealous. I was right. She doesn’t want to share me…
“I’m sorry. I know I of all people have no right to ask you that. I’m just…” she stops and stares into space.
Then she’s gone. It’s actually a little eerie, as if she’s not there.
“What?”
Her eyes focus again, and look at me. Some tiny muscle in her cheek twitches, causing a momentary ripple in her skin. I think for a moment that she will close up, and not say a word.
I’m not prepared for what she blurts out in a rush.
“I am so fucked up. It was so easy to bring Carmen back here to hurt you. And I know I’m hurting you but I think if I gave you what you wanted I’d hurt you more. I feel like I’m trapped. I can’t hold back but I’m so afraid I’ll hurt you, D.”
“What?” My sleep-muddled mind isn’t computing. I lost her at the mention of Carmen’s name. What does she mean by “giving me what I wanted?”
She just stares at me. It’s unnerving for a second, but then I force myself to breathe.
Rapid-fire emotions cross her face so quickly they make me a little dizzy, so many things showing on her face, it is as if a great fortified wall tumbled without a sound behind her eyes. There is hurt, fear, love, a certain pained dreaminess in her eyes that is startling.
“The worst part of it is,” she says, with a soft and intense look I’ve never before seen, gesturing slackly with one hand, her voice soft and strange, “that you really don’t seem to have any idea how much I love you.”
I think I hear the whooshing of air, space and time, in my ears. Am I awake? This adrenal bliss rockets through me. So intense it’s almost like pain.
“You… Shane?” My mouth feels full of spiderwebs, and sounds the same. “What?”
She closes her eyes. She looks afraid. But resigned. And weary, so weary.
She opens her eyes and looks at me and I know the answer before she speaks. “I love you, D. So ***** much.” She means it. It’s in her voice, which catches, and in the tears that sparkle in her eyes.
I sit up in bed, and pull her up so she is sitting beside me. And I pull her into my arms. She’s shaking. Or I am. Or both. I cradle her head to my shoulder like a child, hold her so close.
“Give me a minute to recover, here.” I say and she strokes my hair, suddenly the giving, nurturing one.
We pull apart and I see that her tears have made her face wet, but she’s not crying. She’s still so afraid. I have to make her not be afraid.
I bite my bottom lip and take her hands in mine, raise them both to kiss, one and then the other.
“You really mean it,” I murmur dumbly.
“I really mean it, D.” It’s a whisper and the way she says it leaves me doubtless.
I press my face into the hollow of her neck and try to breathe. I’m shaking, need to stop shaking. “Shane?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve been trying to not be in love with you for so long. It doesn’t work.”
We stare at each other for what seems like minutes, and the minutes seem heavy, and the air seems thick and unbreathable. I don’t have to stop myself anymore. I can look at her. I can touch her, and I do, caress her face and my hands are trembling, and it’s okay.
I look into her eyes and wonder if it was only last night that her gaze seemed impenetrable, because now her every thought, every emotion, seems to swim close to the surface of her beautiful face.
“I love you,” I murmur, and lean close to her. She hovers close to me, and time hangs in that weird subjective suspension. I see the effect of my words in her eyes, the reception, and the warmth that spreads out softly like ripples on water.
They are the words I’ve been terrified to speak and yet the effect of speaking them warms me like nothing I’ve ever experienced. Because something changes in her eyes when I say it, something that was cold warms, and something that was broken fuses. I was afraid of this?
She lifts her hand up to touch my hair, so gently. She kisses me gingerly, with a delicate trepidation that is totally new and raw. She’s making love to me, I think, and the blood in my gut turns to ice.
I open my mouth in declaration but there’s nothing left to say; instead of speaking I kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her more. Her thumb skims through the wetness on my cheek, frames my face.
She pulls away just enough so I can hear her draw breath and she kisses me again, so gentle it’s like kissing a different woman. I’d forgotten that bliss could be like this. I put my hand on hers, and with barely existent pressure she pushes me down to the bed.
I lie there, smiling, happy to go where she wills me. She smiles, then her face is serious, almost pained. She presses her mouth to my chest, to the place above my breast where my heart is thrumming, her fingers splaying on my torso as if I were a completely foreign and fragile object. She meets my eyes again, and I can’t bear it.
I crush her to me violently, by a fistful of hair. Kiss her so hard. For a second she is lost, grappling and dragged along for the ride. But then she regains her senses, and she’s right there in it with me, losing herself in me, and though we’ve kissed roughly before this is different, this is the stuff of life, the thing that’s driven us all along, the force unbound and given free reign to take us.
“You scare me so much,” she whispers into my ear.
“I’m not gonna hurt you.”
“I know.” She kisses me again.
I get it now. She’s not afraid I’ll hurt her. She’s afraid she’ll hurt me.
I lay there beside her, stroking her face in the morning light. “If we work at it, it’ll be okay.”
“I hope so,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I want to.”
She nods, barely perceptibly. “Don’t go to work today.” It’s a plea.
Not taking my eyes from her, I reach for the phone, dial the number. “Hello? It’s Darah. I have an emergency and I need to take a personal day.”
After Jeanette says goodbye I press end, and drop the phone to the floor. Shane’s face is impassive, then she smiles, a pure sweet grin. “My turn.”
I lean back, pick the phone up from the carpet. I hand it to her. She dials, and I smile. “Is John there?… Hey, it’s Shane. I think I overdid it yesterday. Right. Thanks, man. I’ll call you.” She meets my eyes and hangs up, dropping the phone on her side of the bed. I laugh, and she laughs too. I can’t stop smiling.
“What now?” she asks, and I fall back and laugh so hard I can feel it in my stomach. The tension is unbearable one moment and lifts the next.
“What would you like to do?” I ask, unable to keep a flirtatious challenge from my voice.
Quiet. The tension rockets back up, pleasantly torturing us.
“Come here,” she says. She pulls me to her so that I’m resting my head on her shoulder. She holds me close, and tangles her legs in mine.
I wait for something more, but this is what she wants now and I relax into her, give it to her. As much as I can relax with my heart pounding doubletime.
“Tell me what else you’re afraid of?” I ask, gently drawing pictures on her stomach with my finger.
“Last time I was in a relationship… It destroyed me.”
“Cherie?”
“No. It was before that. A long time before that.”
“What are you afraid might happen with us?”
“I’m afraid you’ll hate me. I’m afraid I won’t be able to change enough to make this work.”
I’m quiet for a long time, aware that I can hear the beat of her heart. “What matters to me most is that you just tell me what’s going on with you. It’s the not knowing that hurts.”
“It goes against my nature, totally. But I’ll try.”
“Okay. And I’ll try too.”
“Okay,” she whispers. I meet her eyes and almost come, the look there is so intense. Beautiful Shane. This can’t all be real, just a perfect dream. I insinuate my fingers between hers, and she looks at our entwined hands. I lay silent like that for minutes, trying to breathe.
“You know,” I whisper, “I want to round up everyone that ever hurt you and beat their asses.”
I feel her laughter. “You are. You don’t know it but you are.”
I know what she’s saying. “Good. Nobody messes with my girl.”
I sense her smiling. “So I’m your girl?” She sounds amused, but touched.
“You always have been. To me, anyway.”
Silence. *****. Did I go overboard?
“Well if I’m your girl, then tonight you have to let me take you out to the dinner we never got to have, at Sky.”
“Sure, if you can manage not to get capped before then,” I grin. She grins back, and everything’s cool.
“I think if we stay in this bed all day, it’ll significantly decrease my chances of getting shot.”
“Don’t go overboard or anything,” I grin. Suddenly her fingers are digging into my sides, making me giggle and squeal. I push against her, wriggling, and accidentally push her left shoulder.
“Ouch!”
I pull back immediately. “Oh, *****, I’m so sorry, god, that was so stupid.”
“I’m fine.”
“Shane. *****. Here I promise I won’t hurt you and…”
“D. Calm down. It doesn’t hurt anymore.”
I touch the place where part of the bullet exited her skin. It’s pink and tough with scars but she seems to feel my fingertips quite clearly. I lean over and press my lips there. Once, twice, nuzzle with my face, dart my tongue out to lick her clean skin. I hear her breath come heavily.
She moves on top of me quickly, kissing. “I love you,” she murmurs into my ear, the depth of her voice sending vibrations resonating all along the path to my brain and back down my spine.
“I love you too,” and I kiss her.
We make love in the still, brilliant morning, simple naked skin and breath. The well-traveled path is different, transformed.
Everything is new, everything is dreamlike. She kisses me from head to toe, literally, her wide eyes frequently looking up to see me smile as she licks and nuzzles here and there. She goes down on me, gently licking for eons, edging me closer and closer, then letting me come down, until finally she looks up at me and I realize that she’s finally going to give it to me.
I come, crying out nonsense that makes her smile, then burst into overwhelmed tears. I sit up and press my face between my knees, even as I’m quivering inside. She sits up and looks at me, understanding, but concerned. Then she puts her arms around me.
“I’m sorry. I’m such a girl.” I’m kind of disgusted with myself.
“Why are you crying, D?” She asks gently.
“Because I’m happy.”
I feel anxious, so incredibly nakedly anxious, but she smiles, tears in her own eyes. “*****.”
I grin. “You ***** blow my mind.”
And of all things, she blushes. After all these months and ***** and all the posturing, this simplest of phrases makes her turn crimson.
I press my lips to her warm cheek and reach for her. I marvel at the texture of her *****, her navel, her thighs. Her ***** is sopping wet.
“Hottie, what’s this?”
“I totally came. Just from watching you come.”
“Are you serious?” I slide two fingers into her and indeed, there is only silken slickness. I hiss in pleasure at the power of it, then bring my fingers to my mouth to suckle.
She grins. “You’re obscene, you know that?”
And you love me, I think. Shock. Bliss. Wonderment.
.
It’s mid afternoon, and thus far we’ve vacated the bed to pee, for a shower, and Shane got up to answer the door when the Chinese place delivered. Now we’re back in bed, and she’s running her fingers through my hair.
Her whole touch is different, reverent, and the gentle care that she now allows herself to show is surprising to me. And it’s even more surprising how much I love being treated this way.
“What’re you thinking?” She murmurs. I stare at her, dazed. What an incredibly un-Shanelike thing to say.
“I’m thinking that this isn’t real. It’s too good to be real.”
“It’s real, D,” she says, rolling onto me, hands holding my face. The look in her eyes almost makes me whimper; I can’t handle this, it’s too much bliss.
“Shane?”
“Hmm?”
“Why’d you tell me today?”
She looks away. She’s quiet for a long time. I wait, breathing deeply, watching the sky through the window as clouds obscure and uncover the sun.
“Because. Because I’ve been sort of on the brink of saying it for a long time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I almost said it in the hospital. Actually I think I did say it in the hospital.”
“Yeah, you did. You were pretty tranqued out.”
“I totally meant it. And I dunno, I woke up early this morning and thought about all this, and thought about how one day I’d lose you if I never took a chance.”
“I came so close to telling you I love you, so many times.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was sure it would send you running. Would it?”
“No. I’d freak, but I’d never run from you.”
“Freak how?” I wind a strand of her hair around my finger, baby fine and soft.
“Freak about how… I didn’t deserve you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I dunno, D. I have a knack for hurting the people I care about.”
“I won’t take any ***** from you, Hottie. But you won’t be rid of me as easily as you think.”
“I don’t know what to think of that,” she says, sounding genuinely perplexed and touched.
“Why?”
“I’m used to people just throwing me out whenever I do something wrong. And I’ve probably even encouraged it.”
I stare into her eyes, so full, every drop of light in the room shining there, so deeply beautiful.
“The thought of anyone throwing you away makes me want to cry or kill someone or… bang my head against a wall or something.”
Something flickers on her face, and I can only begin to guess what it is.
“Can you tell me about it? I mean, if you want.”
“No. I don’t need the whole pity-Shane thing.”
“I don’t think I’m capable of pitying you. So you can forget that.”
“One of the things I love about you.”
“You keep saying that word and I think my head will explode with happiness.”
She smiles. “That’s gross, D.”
“Shut up.”
I roll over and look at the ceiling. She keeps touching me, idly, lightly. I close my eyes and sigh at the pleasure of it.
“My mom wasn’t around when I was a kid. When I was four my dad died. After that I got shuffled around in the system.”
This smarts. I’d suspected as much but it still hurts. I remember myself at four, going to preschool. I try to imagine losing my mother at that age, and can’t.
“I’m sorry. You’re far to good a person to be treated like that.”
She looks down and doesn’t raise her eyes to look at me.
“What were you like when you were a kid?” I ask. The question is pretty open-ended, so she can answer or as vaguely as specifically as she likes.
“I was a tomboy.”
“Shocking.”
“Shut up.”
“I bet you were cute.”
Her lips twitch into a lopsided smile. “I had pigtails until I was like twelve.”
I giggle, utterly unable to picture that. “That, I’ve gotta see. Do you have pictures?”
“Umm… Yeah, I think so. A couple. Don’t know if they include the pigtail phase.”
“Well, I guess if you’re gonna be running around climbing trees and *****, having your hair up is practical.”
“Exactly.”
I smile. “I bet you were so ***** cute.”
She rolls her eyes. “I don’t think so.”
I just smile, in case she wants to share anything else. She doesn’t. “What about you?”
“Me? What was I like as a kid, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I dunno. I was a pretty boring normal kid I guess. Actually I was kind of a pretentious little fashionista there for a while. I think it was in fifth grade I fancied myself to be a big bohemian type. Jesus.”
“I wonder if we’d have hated each other.”
“Not me. I would have had a mad crush on you.”
“Are you serious? You were a little lipsticker way back then, huh?”
“Totally. Although when I was… let’s see, we’re what, five years apart, so you’d have been in first grade at the time so you’d have been ultra jailbait.”
“Guess so.”
I smile at her. “What was your dad like?”
A wrinkle crosses her features but it’s not pain exactly. “I dunno.” She meets my eyes and I see that she’s being utterly honest. “I don’t remember much.”
“Someone else raised you, til he died?”
“No, he raised me. It was just me and him. He was great. I just don’t remember much.”
This strikes me as odd but I don’t say anything. “I never met my dad.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Nope.”
“Did you ever think about looking for him?”
“I used to, but I’m really not all that interested in it. As weird as it sounds, I always thought it would hurt Navi’s feelings and I didn’t want to do that.”
“How old were you when your mom married Navi?”
“Hmm. Fourteen.”
“Was that weird?”
“Extremely. I was like, mom, why do we need a man?”
“Jeez, you really are a *****.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, you just might be a *****.”
I chuckle softly, trying to capture her big toe between two of mine. “Maybe. Navi’s a great guy. He’s from an extremely misogynist culture and he doesn’t have a trace of that way of thinking. I’d have been honored if he was my father.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, he was pretty cool. So were you born in California?”
She frowns, so quickly I miss it, and I instantly regret asking.
“I was born in… Montana. I came to California when I was five or six.”
“Montana? What was that like?”
“Big. Big and wide open.”
“I’ve never been.”
“It’s pretty, if you like sky.”
I nod. I like sky. I can imagine a big big sky over a little brown-haired girl, but barely.
I sense that she’s at her limit. And between the heavy revelations, Chinese food, and *****, I’m sleepy.
“What do you say we take a nap before going out for dinner?”
“You sleepy?”
“Yeah.”
“I could sleep,” she smiles. She is laying still, moving oh so slightly, and in the span of a breath the light catches her eyes, her beautiful green eyes, and when she looks at me, I’m breathless. “You know what?”
“What?”
“You are so ***** beautiful, it blows my mind,” I whisper.
She kisses me. And tired as I am, I’m afraid to sleep, lest I wake up into a different dream altogether.