And Also With You (3 page)

In the early hours of dawn I rise. 

Parched, I stumble to the kitchen for water. He's still asleep, sprawled across my bed where he carried me afterward. His outline under the duvet is a reminder that my heart beats. There is blood, and there are cells and brain matter and spinning helixes of DNA floating around inside this body. It hasn’t given up yet. I cannot either.

I shake the bottles on the counter but they are all empty. The water is better. I know this, but I feel so strange. Already naked and looking for a distraction, I climb into the shower. A lot of matted hair goes down the drain and it comes to me that I probably was not the nicest thing to be close to earlier. I want to be clean for him, something to hold near and breathe in.

The water warms me, and I stretch in it, extending my fingers up like the serpent enemy of Ra reaching for a new day. My body is as serpentine as that snake, without curve or warmth. I wish I wasn't so thin but there's no food that isn't canned or spoiled in the house. Of course I'm thin. My mind is both blank and full. I am Hoth, the frozen planet in here. Frozen on the outside, but beneath, my own mind teems with activity and rebellion. Will he leave in the morning? Before then? Should I ask him to go? I can feel him inside me, the rawness where no one has been in ages. It’s an ache from the inside out that for once I don’t want to numb. I don’t know if I can ask him to leave.

The steam and heat of the shower soothes my frayed nerves. The water cools against the tiles before I’m finally forced out, wrapped in a towel. I braid my wet hair, brush my teeth, even pluck a few eyebrow hairs. I’m stalling. My feet carry me across the cold hardwoods she loved when we came here. He sleeps and everywhere there is moonlight from the big windows, and cold and ice in my heart. I ease onto my side of the bed, atop the covers but still wrapped in the towel, and stare at the ceiling.

He startles me when he rolls. I squeak and he laughs, a bit of warmth on a frigid upside down night. Those hands that seemed to memorize me before now tuck into my towel, heating up my skin. His lips are on my neck as he drags me under the covers. He pulls my ass to his front, my back to his chest and whispers against my still wet neck. “You came back.”

My voice has left me. He wears only the suit God gave him, and Glory be, it is finely cut. I manage to nod.

“I want you,” he says, his tongue lapping the shell of my ear. Though I shiver, I am no longer cold. His rough fingers reach around and mold against me, smoothing back and forth so slowly over my heat. My bottom is seeking him on its own, pushing flush against his hardened cock. He plays me, slow and easy, a fine-tuning. His lips lick and slick and bite at my neck and the dual sensations pull me taunt and unwind me in a melody of grace and beauty as old as music itself. He rubs me with his thumb, pumping two fingers deeply inside, and I fall, right into him.

He slides into me from behind, both of us on our sides, and his hands make a cage of heat against my tits as he pumps slowly and then faster and faster until the room is spinning, falling, probably for both of us. “So good,” he says. “So, so good. Oh, Robin. Robin, you’re so good. Can you come? Let me feel you. I want to feel you.”

He fingers my neck, clawing a little forcefully over my mouth, and I bite at his hand and huff and groan and turn back to see his eyes in the dim light. He pushes his tongue in my mouth and his fingers scrape against my nerves where we are joined, and he pushes, thrusts, pushes, thrusts, and I am gone. I am here and I am gone, and he is emptying inside me while I clench him, and the heat will burn us both but we cannot be bothered because we were dying before today anyway.

“Oh, God,” I say. There is light and color behind my closed eyes. “Oh, God, oh God, oh God.”

He draws my towel up between us to catch the leaking, and I can feel the happiness in him as he talks to me, running the pads of his fingers over my plaited hair.

“Shh,” he says. “Sleep now.”

He softens but does not pull out, and so we close our eyes, tangled and joined.

The sun still isn’t out. The light coming through the blinds is milky gray, cold. It’s probably snowing. One of my glasses is on the bedside table. There’s still a finger of whiskey in it. It’s probably a few days old but it’ll do.

I reach for it, trying not to move the bed too much.

“You think you need that? Right now?” His voice is gravel and grit in the morning, and just the timbre of it from somewhere behind me wakes up parts of me that were still sleeping.

I turn to look at him and he’s leaning up on the pillow, the covers about midway up his chest, his big right bicep a hard outline against the white curves of the sheets. His scars are shiny, new veins painted by pain.

“I do need it.” My voice is quivering. “I, um…I get the shakes…and worse. If I don’t…if I don’t have it in the morning.”

His hand closes over my hand, and the warmth is like a hot coal. I can feel it through my fingers and it travels up my arm, right into my chest. “You’ve tried before, to stop drinking, I mean?”

The fact that he wants to know does something to my brain. I can feel this idea taking root and I am so afraid to hope, to believe, that it makes looking at him physically painful.

“Sure.” The sheets clenched in my hands look dirty. I need to wash them or just burn them. “Of course I’ve tried. It’s, um, it’s harder than it seems, you know?  To quit. It kind of feels like the worst flu you’ve ever had. I always just–“ I reach for the glass again. “Give in.”

Warmth and pressure. He squeezes my wrist tightly.

“Leave it. I’ll stay with you. I’m off work a few days because of the holidays. If you want to do it, really want to, I can help get you through it.”

I’m trying to breathe and I’m trying to talk and I am trying, so hard, not to cry. My fingers are already fluttering under his, but he just clenches his hand around mine more tightly, doing his best to quell the tremors.

“Why? Why would you do that? I’m not–” Oh, the gasping. I keep sucking in air like I’m trying to hold back a yawn, desperately trying to keep myself together. When I was lost I prayed to be found. Now that he is trying to open the door, I miss the stretching black comfort of distance. Emptiness is familiar. Loneliness lasts. “I’m not anything.”

He sits up, and his other hand is rubbing down my arm, warming me against the chills that are setting in. I haven’t had a drink since I left O’Reilly’s. I look over at the clock on the wall. It’s nearly midday. It’s been more than eleven hours.

“Listen to me,” he says, and he reaches up to touch my cheek with the pad of his thumb. “My guys saved me. Let me help you. I want to help you.”

“You’re repaying a debt?” I can’t stop the tears that are falling.

“You can owe me.” He wipes my face with the sheets. “Let’s say forever.”

“You’re crazy.”

“So I’ve been told. But you’re one to talk, really.”

“Wow.”

He laughs and nudges me with his ruined shoulder. “Come on, lady. Give me a smile. Come on.” The dimple and the chicken fluff hair and the pretty eyes kind of kill me in a good way.

I huff. “Well, this is gonna suck.”

“
One day at a time, kid.”

I eyeball him. “How old are you anyway? Not that you’re old. It’s just, um, how old?”

He smiles with half his mouth, which makes me want to lie on top of him. “Old enough. What about you? You’re legal, right?”

“Ha. Yes.”

“Then we’re good.”

I want to share his enthusiasm but I’m having trouble keeping my hands in one place. The tremors are starting up my arms, and I can feel it coming on, that awful sensation of my skin twitching of its own volition. I rub my arms and stare at the ceiling.

“Hey,” he says, tweaking my braid till I look at him. “
Don't you ever just want to be happy?”

“I…sometimes.”

“Do you think you could be again?”

Honestly bleeds, but I offer it with a bow as the only present of worth I can give. “Maybe?”

David’s hands are working over my jumpy forearms, an angel brought back from death. For me? “Let's try,” he says.

Try?

I remember Mom imitating Yoda whenever I whined at her. “Do or do not. There is no try.” I'm trying to do my math. I'm trying to practice piano. I'm trying to let you go, Mom, but I love you so damned much.
And from cracked lips and a sunken face she smiled and whispered to me. “Do or do not.”

If I let you go to do this, I will find you there, Mom, when it's time. I promise. You'll always be with me. And I am also with you.

“You really want this?” I need to say what I mean. “You really want me?”

The belief is there in his eyes, and I wish that I could see myself from his side so I could know what it is he sees that makes all this, me, seem worthwhile. I wish I could know me through him. I wish I could know the whole world through him. Maybe one day I will, if we have enough time, if I can stay out of my own damned way.

“Yes.” He wraps me up in his arms and for a few seconds he just holds me against his chest like before at Saints Simon and Jude’s. He speaks into my hair. “Last night…I don’t do one-offs, Robin. I don’t leave people behind. Don’t run, and I won’t either. I promise.”

Life is about choices. The lovely thing is that they are rarely permanent. If we’ve made the wrong ones, we can take our new year, our next day, next hour, next breath, and choose to start again. I knew this before but he’s reminded me in a way I never expected.

I sit there, tears leaking, and when I finally nod he lets out a big breath. “
Okay,” I say. “Okay, David.”

“Hey, baby,” he says, lifting my chin so I look at him, straight on.

“Yeah?”

“Merry Christmas.”