“Why are you showing me this?” He sits on the arm of the couch, staring at the photo.
I pull out another one and unwrap it. I hold this one out for him to see. It’s an old dance picture of us—cheesy pose, background, and everything. “To show you I’m hanging on to some things from that life. Some of it I’m bringing with me.”
I set down the cheesy dance photo and reach into the box to unwrap the next one. When I pull it out, Torrin’s hand reaches for my wrist, and he pulls me to him.
He doesn’t stop tugging me closer until my leg bumps against his. He takes the photo from me and sets it down. “What part of us are you bringing with you? Just the memories? Or is there room for anything else?”
“Torrin, don’t.” I close my eyes and imagine that armor again, but this time, it’s keeping him out.
His hand around my wrist tightens. “Why not?”
Why? The question that I’d give just about anything to have answered.
When I feel his other hand start to move around my side, my eyes snap open. “This? I can’t bring this with me.” I break away and wave a finger between us. “That part’s over between us. It has to be.”
Torrin rises from the couch arm and moves toward me. His light eyes watch me like he knows I’m lying, and in them, I see him calling my bluff. “It’s not over, and you know it.”
“No, I don’t.” I back around the side of the coffee table.
He matches my every step. I step back; he steps forward. I move away; he moves in.
“Yes, you do because you know it will never be over.” When I trip over the chair leg, he grabs my arm to keep me from falling. He lets me keep moving though. He doesn’t stop following. “Time, circumstance, tragedy—nothing can change that. You and me, there isn’t an over for us.”
“There has to be.” This time I catch myself when I trip over a table leg. “This, it’s killing me, Torrin. I can’t keep doing it.”
I don’t notice the picture rocking on the end of the table. I don’t see it teeter to the edge after I knock into it. I don’t miss it crash to the ground and shatter.
It’s the one of us at the beach. My favorite one.
I stare at the broken pieces and feel like I’m looking at myself if I were made of glass. A hundred sharp, broken pieces that will never be right again even if I could glue them back together. It’ll never reflect what’s hiding below the way it used to.
“What do you want from me, Jade?” Torrin kneels beside the broken picture and reaches for the frame. A piece of glass snags his skin, and his thumb starts to bleed. He doesn’t even notice—he just keeps putting the pieces back in place, one at a time. Patiently. Methodically. “One minute I think I know, and the next I don’t have a damn clue. So what exactly do you want from me?”
I keep backing out of the living room. “I don’t know.”
“Well, do you think you can figure it out? It would sure make my life easier.”
When he looks up, he notices how far I’ve gotten from him. He stands and puts the frame and its shattered pieces back on the table.
“Do you think this is easy for me?” I cry, motioning at him because doesn’t he get it? He’s everything—everything—and I’ve just got nothing left to give. “Any of it? Having these feelings, knowing I’m not supposed to?”
“Will you stop with the supposed to?” He powers across the room and stops in front of me when I’m bracing for him to crash into me. His eyes are burning. “What do you want? Not what you think you’re supposed to want. Not what everyone’s trying to tell you you should want. What do you want?”
I look at him and think about that question. What do I want? I keep looking at him. I don’t think of the person I am or the one he is. I don’t think about what happened to me or what he is. I don’t think about the possibility of it or the practicality of it or consequences and repercussions.
I think about his question—what do I want?
It’s a simple question and an easy answer but a complicated reality. I
“You,” I say, followed by a shrug. “Just you.”
His mouth starts to open like he was all prepared to argue back, but then what I said sets in. He doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, seeming to measure the space between us. His knuckles pop as he glances at the door. God, what did I say? What am I doing?
“Just forget it. I don’t know what I’m saying.” I cross my arms and move for the door to open it. Leaving would be easier on him if I act like I’m the one suggesting it. “You should just go.”
When I don’t hear him move, I turn around.
He’s staring at the space between us with an expression that makes it seem like he’s fighting something. “Did you mean that?”
I let go of the breath I’m holding and start to pull the door open. “Yes.”
Torrin powers toward the door, and just when I think he’s about to disappear through it, he slams it shut. His body slides in front of mine, and his chest slowly presses me into the door. “Then I’m not going anywhere.”
My hands splay against the door when I feel the heat of his body mixing with the warmth of mine. “Are you sure?”
His strong hand grips the side of my neck, and he aligns his eyes with mine. “I’ve been sure about you since I was fifteen years old. And I’ll be sure about you for the rest of my life.”
His eyes lower to my mouth, and when he sees the speed of my breath, one corner of his mouth twitches. His other hand slides up my leg and slips just beneath his old shirt. His fingers curl into the skin of my hipbone, then his face moves closer to mine. I stop breathing when his mouth moves toward mine. Before he kisses me, his fingers slide up my neck until two of them press into the space below my jaw.
My pulse beats against the pads of his fingers, and my breath gets away from me again.
When he kisses me, I don’t know what to do at first. It’s been ten years since I kissed Torrin Costigan, but with the way he’s kissing me now, holding me so tight between him and the door that I can’t fall apart, it makes a decade going without seem worth it.
It’s the first kiss of a decade. The kiss of the decade. Maybe the kiss of my life.
It doesn’t take him long to melt my lips, and as I start to kiss him back—my hands winding around his neck to pull him closer—I feel something inside me melting. I’m not sure what it is, but I think it might be resolve.
He tastes like I remember. He feels like I remember. He sounds like I remember. He still makes that low groan in his chest when I tie my fingers into his hair. His hands still dig in deeper when I trace my tongue down his. He’s familiar . . . and he’s different.
I don’t remember the strength he possesses now. The way I feel safe and protected and like nothing could get to me when he’s close. I don’t remember the scrape of his stubble being so sharp against my cheek. I don’t remember the rough growl that vibrates against me when I run my fingers down his chest.
I do remember some of this, and I don’t recall the rest. After tonight, I know I’ll remember it all.
My fingers find the hem of his Henley and tug it up his body. He steps back just enough to let me finish pulling it off, then his mouth is on me again with an urgency that’s new. He hasn’t kissed me in ten years. It’s the kind of urgency of trying to make up for that time.
When I put my hands on his bare chest, I roam his shoulders first, then I take my exploration down the peaks of his chest and end on the planes of his stomach. My fingers skim along the waist of his jeans, slowing where his zipper is. Another rumble vibrates against me. When he fits his hips a little tighter against mine, his fingers still on my pulse curl in a little deeper. I feel his smile even as we kiss.
As he pulls back again, his hands work my shirt up my body. Slowly. Like he’s giving me the chance to stop if I need to. I look at him and lift my arms above my head.
His old shirt flutters in front of my face, and I feel a cool rush of air break across my bare skin, but it only lasts a mo
ment. Before the shirt hits the floor, Torrin’s body is pressing into mine again. His warm body against mine, his chest hard against mine . . . I think I’ve found whatever kind of healing I need if I can just stay like this forever. If we could stay like this, I’d be fine.
But I know we can’t—this moment is fleeting—so I kiss him again.
When he lifts me up and curls my legs around him, he stares at me. His lips are parted from his breath, and his eyes are alive. I see something hanging from his neck I hadn’t noticed at first. Seeing the man wearing the ring I gave the boy ten years ago makes my chest ache.
“You still have it.” I let the gold chain slide through my fingers before I reach the ring resting against his chest. Time hasn’t tarnished it like it tends to do. Age hasn’t worn at the intricate grooves of the design. Wear hasn’t rendered it useless.
It looks the same as it did the night I gave it to him.
His hand curls around the ring and my hand as he carries me into the bedroom. “It’s staying on my neck or going around your finger.”
I NEVER KNEW broken could feel so whole.
That’s the first thing I think as I feel myself starting to wake up. Part of it is the anesthetic of sleep talking, but part of it is me. The shattered me.
Torrin’s arm is caged around me, and his body is tucked beside mine, curled around me from head to toe. His leg is tucked through mine, and his slow breath fogs the side of my neck. I can faintly make out his heart beating against my back, and I can make out other parts pressed up against me below his chest.
I want to fall back asleep and freeze this moment. I don’t want to finish waking up. I want to stay in this world between asleep and awake and feel whole for the rest of my life. But I can’t. I know the moment, like the intact feeling, is ephemeral.
It will pass. It has to. But that doesn’t keep me from enjoying it while it’s happening.
He shifts in his sleep, somehow managing to roll closer. Now I can feel his zipper running against my spine.
We’re still clothed. Mostly. Restraint was something both of us seemed to have a tankful of last night when it came to crossing that final threshold. Torrin knew I wasn’t ready . . . and I knew that while he was definitely ready, it wasn’t the right time. Not yet. My head might have been swimming with the things his body was doing to mine but not so much it drowned out the acknowledgement of what he was.
When he carried me into my room last night, before lowering me onto my bed, he’d stopped. I thought he’d just reminded himself of what he was and given himself a mental cold shower, but he kissed my forehead and whispered something in my ear.
You’re not falling into bed with a priest. You’re climbing into it with me.
I think it was important for me to hear that. I know it was important to him that I believed that. And I did . . . but that didn’t change that he is what he is, just like I am who I am.
In each of our own ways, we’re unavailable.
This still feels right though. So right nothing feels wrong, not even if the Vatican is calling or the media is parading through my apartment.
When his body stirs against mine again, I know he’s waking up. Torrin’s always been a heavy sleeper—he goes through a process before he can wake up. I think sometimes his consciousness thinks he belongs more in the dream world than the real one.
I want to get some breakfast ready for him this morning, and I need to find something to put on because if he wakes up and we’re still like this, getting back to what we spent most of the night doing is inevitable. We wouldn’t be able to stop it, just like a person who rolls a rock to the edge of a cliff can’t stop it from falling. We’ll get trapped on this carousel ride of touching and kissing. I know I’m incapable of stepping off it when I’m with him, and I think he is too. So I need to find a shirt.
Holding my breath, I shimmy down the mattress, kicking the sheets off of me as I move. His arms tighten for a moment—like he can feel me escaping—but when I freeze, they relax. I keep shimmying and sliding. Untucking my head from beneath his arm’s the hardest because I have to lift it a little, and it feels like it weighs fifty pounds.
When my legs are swinging over the side of the mattress, I glance back at him. He’s still asleep. Still wrapped around my phantom shell, hanging on like the nothing around him is all the substance he needs.
I hold my breath and rise so slowly even the mattress doesn’t make a noise. I have lots of practice with this from before, when Torrin would sneak into my room late at night via my roof and we’d make out until my alarm was a few minutes from going off. We both know how to move around a mattress without making a sound.
I pad across my bedroom and tuck behind the half-open door. In the hall, I grab his soccer shirt from the floor and pull it on. The lights are still on. Almost all of them. It’s roughly seven in the morning, and the sun’s streaming through all of the windows, but my whole apartment is glowing from the inside out now too. Thanks to Torrin.
I won’t crawl into bed with the lights out again for a while. I don’t care what adults are “supposed” to do. Most of them don’t know the dark the way I do.
It isn’t just the absence of light—it’s the executioner of it.
The kitchen’s white cupboards are gleaming in the morning light, and I go to the other window in front of the dining table to let in more light. Mom picked up some basic groceries for me yesterday, but I don’t know what she grabbed. Since I still have to remind myself to eat, I didn’t check the fridge or cupboards last night.
What does a girl make for the guy in her bed the next morning?
I lean into the kitchen counter and think about that. If we were still seventeen, I would sneak a can of soda from the fridge and a box of whatever sugary cereal is in the cupboard. But what would twenty-seven-year-old Torrin want? What does he eat for breakfast now? What does he drink?
I don’t know.
Leaning into that kitchen counter, I never would have expected the realization that I don’t know what he eats for breakfast anymore to hit me like it does. I still know him—the man he is at the core of it all—but I don’t know what goes beyond that. At least not much of it.
Like what he eats. What he does in his spare time. What color his toothbrush is. Who his friends are. If he visits his dad’s grave every month. If he still changes his own oil or what candy bar he’d pick from a vending machine. I know the old Torrin answers to those things, but I don’t know the current Torrin’s.
We’ve spent time together since I came back, but it hasn’t been spent going over the details—we’ve been too overwhelmed by the weight of the big things.
I know Torrin, but I don’t know the daily version of him. The seemingly inconsequential details that, when stacked together, are just as significant as the big stuff. Who he is on the surface is just as important as who he is beneath it all.
So I don’t know what he likes for breakfast, but I do know that whatever it is, I probably don’t have it. That isn’t going to stop me from trying to give him what he wants though.
I think about it for another minute. What do my parents have in the morning? What do I remember my parents’ friends having?
I feel a smile when I remember—coffee. It’s an adult staple, right? After throwing open a few cupboards, I find them mostly empty. I throw open the rest, even the ones meant for silverware and dish towels, and don’t see anything that looks like coffee. Not that I could have done anything with it since, I realize, I don’t have a coffeepot. Not that I would know what to do if I had one because—though I probably could have figured it out with a little trial and error—I’ve never made coffee in my whole life.
A pot of coffee. I never would have thought it would feel like some test I need to take to graduate into adulthood.
I grumble and head back toward my room. Maybe if I just stare at him long enough, I can figure it out. Is he still a sugar-for-every-meal guy? Or has he morphed into one of those Seattleites who only eats food that l
ooks like it was grown for unicorns?
I’ve barely been standing there for two seconds when a sleepy smile stretches over his face. “I missed you.” His eyes are closed, and he’s still lying in bed like he’s holding me.
I smile too. Torrin’s bare upper half is a stark contrast to the soft pillow and smooth sheets tangled around his legs. “I was gone for five minutes.”
“Yeah, and you were gone for ten years.” His eyes open. “I’ve done my time when it comes to missing you.”
It’s impossible not to shift when he looks at me like this. When I do, I try to remember why I’m standing here watching him. “Yeah, so, I think someone’s usually supposed to make coffee in the morning, but I don’t have coffee because I’m still a child who thinks it tastes like ass.” I pluck at the hem of my shirt as I look at him. In my bed. Half naked and staring at me the way every person wants to be looked at by another person at least once in their lifetime. It’s like a dream, but it doesn’t quite feel like one, because in my dreams, I feel more intact than crumbling. “But I think I’ve got milk and cereal, so how about a bowl of Cheerios to wake you up?”
Torrin flashes me a thumbs-up. “Cheerios sound awesome.”
“Coming right up.”
I smile as I wander back down the hall. Cheerios. I don’t know if this is what he has some, most, or all mornings, but at least for this morning, it’s what he wants. It’s awesome. That’s a start.
I’m just reaching for the yellow box on top of the fridge when I hear something. It isn’t my neighbors moving around upstairs or someone dropping off their recycling. It’s a familiar sound—though not in this context.
I move toward the window, clutching the unopened box of cereal to my chest. I don’t make it far before it falls out of my arms and hits the floor. I shouldn’t have opened the curtains. I should have kept these ones closed.