Punk and Zen (27 page)

“I can’t believe I’m holding you,” she said, her voice
a whisper against my throat. “I’d always thought we’d get a chance…I called
you, I swear I did. Nina…” Her words seemed to catch in her throat. “I spoke
with your father.” Her voice rose slightly in pitch. “And he told me…he told me
you had died, and then, he asked,” she swallowed, “he asked that I please
respect the family’s privacy by not calling or sending anything.”

I didn’t know what to say. The anger that I’d thought
long gone at my father threatened to roar through me, but he wasn’t in the
room. Fran was, though—real, solid, crying in my arms, and that was more
important than anything else. I did the only thing I could think of—I dropped
the blanket so I could hold her tighter and rocked her against me.

“It’s my fault, you know,” she said. “I told Samantha,
I told her not to call, and she did anyway. She didn’t believe me, she couldn’t
believe me.”

“Shh…it’s okay…it’s okay,” I soothed gently. I raised
her tear-stained face to mine. “I’m so sorry,” I told her and kissed her
forehead, “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.” I meant it, too, really
meant it.

I quickly realized that even though my dad had lied,
the pain she had felt had been very real, and I had better get my head out of
my ass pretty darn soon and be a lot more sensitive. This was definitely, no,
Fran
was definitely not all about the fuck.

“Stay with me,” she asked. “I don’t want to let you
go. I’m afraid you’ll disappear.” She placed a gentle kiss against my
collarbone.

God. If I got into that bed with her…I didn’t want to
fuck
her, but I did want to soothe her, to comfort her, to let her know I cared,
that her pain touched me, deeply, and that I found her beautiful. But if I did
that—if that happened—well, I just didn’t know what else to do.

“Sleep, I promise, just sleep,” Fran said, looking up
at me again. I laughed lightly under my breath. Either we were on the same
page, she was reading my mind, or I had been that readable. Since I prided
myself on being rather inscrutable, maybe it was the first option.

“Ah, Fran,” I sighed. “I can’t promise that.”

“Really?” she drawled, her eyes still managing to
convey a layer of sensuality even through her tears and something else
too—something like genuine affection. “And why’s that? You don’t like my bed?
Too firm? Too soft?”

I shook my head no at each of those options and
smiled. “No, no, nothing like that.” I let my hands slide down her arms.

“Well, what then?” she asked, an amused if slightly
exasperated expression crossing her cheeks.

It was time to come clean and just tell her. I mean,
any more of this, and Fran might begin to think it was her personally, and I
didn’t want that.

“Uh, well…” I stalled, playing for time. It was
amazing how quickly my cheeks and ears could burn. One second, normal skin,
normal temperature, and the next, I was an overheated Christmas tree. I think
she may have noticed.

“I’veneversleptinthatbed,” I told her in a rush.

Fran shook her head in disagreement. “Nina, I know you
were here before—with Candace. She told me all about you, well, except for your
name, or ABC I might have known it was you. It’s totally okay, you
know?” She gave me a bemused smile.

“No,” I said, and took a deep breath. “I’ve never
slept
in that bed.” I widened my eyes a bit, hoping she’d understand.

“Oh.” Suddenly, she got it. “Oh! Okay, so you don’t
know if it’s comfortable or not.” She laughed and threw her arms around me, and
after my eyebrows simmered down a bit, I laughed too.

I bent and picked up the blanket and what was left of
my dignity. “So…where’s the couch?”

“What, you’ve never been in the living room?” she
teased.

“Nope, not once. I’ve never even been here while it
was this light out.”

Fran laughed again and rolled her eyes at me. “What
are we gonna do with you?” She grabbed my hand. “This way.”

I followed her down the hallway. It was true—kitchen,
bed, bath? Been there. Living room? I knew where it was because I’d passed its
entrance on the way in, but I’d never been through that portal, and frankly,
the only light Candace ever had on was the light by the bed.

Fran didn’t need to flip the light switch because, as
bad as the weather was, it was still daylight. Murky, gloomy, snowy daylight,
but still, somewhere above those clouds, the sun was shining and we were
getting what was left.

“Here you go.” She indicated with a sweep of an arm to
indicate her sofa—and damn if it wasn’t the required East Village futon with a
very cool Chinese symbol printed on its fabric: the “double happiness” one, if
I had it right.

After taking the blanket from her hands, I bent to
pull the futon out into its sleeping position.

“Hey, let me help you with that.”

“Sure,” I agreed, and it was done in seconds.

She straightened, and we faced each other awkwardly.

“Sleep well,” Fran told me softly, and bit her lip.

I half smiled back at her, fiddling with the blanket
in my hands, running over a seam with my fingers. “Yeah, you too.” We stared at
each other, the silence growing even more awkward.

Finally, she gave me a little wave ABC and
began to ease away, but I couldn’t, I just couldn’t, after that whole emotional
scene not five minutes ago, just let her go like that. Yeah, yeah, I know, I
know, I was tuff and I was cool, but I couldn’t be cold—not to anyone really,
and especially not to Fran, not after what we’d just shared, never mind the
fact that we’d been friends and teammates in the past.

I made a quick decision. “Hey, Fran?” I called to her
retreating back. “Stay out here with me?”

“Yeah?” she asked, sounding uncertain and shy.

“Yeah,” I affirmed with a smile and tossed the blanket
on the sleeping platform. I sat on the edge and patted the spot next to me.
“C’mon over.”

Fran gave me one of those amazing smiles, and I swear
I could feel my heart lift up with it. I’d missed her. It might have been my
father’s fault for telling everyone that stupid lie, but it was also mine for
hiding and not trying to find her—or anyone else. The blame for that lay with
me and me alone.

“I get the outside,” I told her with a grin.

“
No problemo
,” she agreed, climbing over to the
wall side.

We got under the blanket, and I shifted to face her so
I could say good night, only to find her already watching me.

“I’ve missed you,” she said softly, tears threatening
to fall from the corner of her eye. She patted my shoulder awkwardly.

I couldn’t believe I was lying next to her, Fran, the
ultimate scholar-athlete—and so fucking pretty—she’d been my friend, and I’d
let time and distance come between us. I shouldn’t have allowed that to
happen—I’d been wrong, very wrong.

I reached out and gently stroked her errant locks back
over her forehead. “I missed you, too,” I told her sincerely. “I’m so sorry.”

Her hand came off my shoulder, and her fingers carefully
circled my wrist. She kissed my palm and the touch was so sweet, I couldn’t
help myself—I wrapped my arms around her and rubbed my cheek lightly against
hers.

“It’s my fault, you know,” she whispered into my ear,
“all of it.”

“What’s your fault, huh?” I asked gently. “You didn’t
do anything wrong.”

Fran shifted against me. “It’s my fault about Samantha
that she changed her name and stayed in England.”

“Now how could that be possible?” I ABC asked.
“I’m sure Sammy Blade’s a big girl now, making big-girl decisions.”

“You don’t understand,” she said, and pulled slightly
away, “I’m the one who told Sammy—”

“That doesn’t make anything your fault,” I interrupted
quietly and kissed her forehead.

“But it does,” she insisted. “She wanted to hear it
for herself when, before, she was just going to come back and surprise you.
Instead, she made that call and,” she sighed, “she never came home.”

I simply held her and listened as she nestled back
into me.

“When we finally spoke?” she continued, “she asked me
not to call her Samantha, Sam, or Sammy—because the two people she missed most
had called her that. She said she’d be called Ann or Annie from then on.”

Fran’s tears soaked my shirt and traveled down my
neck. All I could do was hold her and do my best to soothe her as I absorbed
her words and took careful note. Candace hadn’t lied; her sometime-girlfriend’s
name
was
Annie. That made me feel better, because I really would have
hated to think that Candace had lied to me. I also knew who both people were
that Samantha, Ann, had referred to. One was me, and the other was her father,
a fireman who had been killed “in the line of duty” as they say, during her
junior year of high school.

“I think…I think she’d have found you that summer, if
she’d been left alone, surprised you like she’d wanted,” Fran said. “She’d have
found you. She wouldn’t have fallen apart the way she did.”

She buried her face into my shoulder and shook. “And
now you’re here…and I still can’t believe it.”

Her tears tore through me, breaking me, pushing me
against a wall I didn’t want to hide behind anymore.

“Fran,” I sighed and gathered her into my arms. I
kissed the top of her head as she sobbed into my collarbone, then kissed her
brow. “I’m right here,” I assured her, and brushed the hair out of her eyes,
then kissed them too. I was frantic with her pain, the need to erase it. She
shifted against me again, sliding her legs against mine, and I was half on top
of her when she raised tentative hands to my face. Her fingertips stroked my
cheeks as I balanced myself on my forearms and gazed into her tear-starred
eyes, eyes that wouldn’t let me go.

“You’re not going away?”

Oh, she was breaking my heart, breaking my mind, and
I’d never before felt my whole body ache with the need to prove my words.

“I’m not going away. I promise.” Every other thought,
every promise I’d made to myself, flew out of my head in the face of that ABC
need. I brought my lips to hers.

Her kiss sent a line of fiery ice straight to my
belly, and when her tongue played softly against my lips I could only invite
her in: her mouth was everything I’d discovered before and more. It spoke to
me, spoke to me of loss and longing, and when I lightly bit her lower lip I
tasted something different—not the usual desire and need, though that was there
too. I tasted her pain, I tasted her tears, and I felt driven to soothe her, to
prove my intent beyond the force of words. Actions, not words, were what
counted. I had to get under her skin and erase that hurt—hurt that I’d
caused—forever.

Fran surged against me, her hips pressing against
mine, and the cold fire in my belly lurched, then spread to my thighs. I leaned
over her just the slightest bit and took hold of the edge of her sweatshirt,
letting the back of my fingers trail against her warm skin as I lifted it off
her.

Fran lay for a moment with her arms above her head,
and her eyes were like molten gold. I trailed the back of my hand between her
graceful breasts, down her taut stomach.

“You’re very beautiful,” I told her, because it was undeniably,
incredibly true.

She smiled at me as I leaned over again to lay a kiss
between my spread fingers over her navel.

I reached up again to kiss her, and as her lips
pressed, gently insistent against mine, she rose up to sit with me. I couldn’t
stop running my fingers through her hair and over the high planes of her
cheeks, simply in awe of her.

Her fingertips sketched my face, then my neck, and her
lips followed—short, sharp little nibbles followed by languorous strokes along
my throat. Her hands trailed down to my waist where they grabbed a gentle hold
of the sweatshirt she had lent me earlier. “May I?” she asked, her thumbs
sliding softly along my skin.

While I shuddered lightly in response to her touch, my
heart warmed. No one had ever asked me before.

“Yes,” I told her simply, and in less than a second,
it was done. I shivered in the sudden cold, and Fran wrapped herself around me.

“Come here,” she murmured into my ear before she
nibbled along my earlobe, “let me keep you warm.” The kisses she gave me were
tender as she laid them along my shoulder and throat. The sudden heat and press
of her breasts against mine sent a thrill of electric shock right through me,
and the feel of the beat of her heart against mine made me want to weep. How
could I have let her go? I could have called, I could have asked her parents;
there was any one of a dozen different things I could have done, and didn’t.

“God, I’ve missed you,” I gasped, and pulled her even
closer, kissing her softly, deeply, my hands first lightly tracing, then
molding against her. Arms. Ribs. A shoulder blade as defined as an angel’s
wing. Fran.

I wanted, I needed to show her in a definite way that
I had admired and loved her as a girl, that I was so sorry, sorry for the
passage of time, for the loss and the pain. I needed her to know how I wouldn’t
let that happen again, and as I planted soft kisses on her neck, down the
hollow of her throat, and right over her heart, I slid my fingertips beneath
her waistband and looked up into her eyes to see if this was okay, if it was
what she wanted. That was all that mattered.