38. Beckett
Beckett
There are a lot of places to take a break, or to play pretend, because that’s really what this feels like.
Just a little kid playing make believe but instead of Dungeons and Dragons—not that I spent much time on that as a kid anyway, I was probably dreaming about a whole healthy and healed family—it’s me, watching her walk through the door of my cottage, arms crossed and eyes assessing, taking in the swirls of burnt-orange, yellow, and red covering the trees through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, pretending that she loves me back.
She didn’t say anything, but I think she traded a shift or took an extra home call later in the month to come with me.
She held up her pinky, eyes soft, droplets of water tracking across the lines of her shoulders, over the curve of her chest just visible above the bath, and bubbles dotting her clavicle—and I don’t think I noticed much after that.
Greer turns, looking back over her shoulder and the early-morning sunlight hits the planes of her face in a way that’s like another football to the stomach, but one I won’t recover from. Her voice rings out, rasps filling this place up, too. She sounds good here. “What made you buy a place in the Kawarthas? The Muskokas are right there.”
I shrug, dropping the bags and kicking the door shut behind me. “This place is converted shipping containers.” I gesture across the open kitchen, where an island not unlike the one in my apartment spans the room in front of slate-grey cupboards and one of those designer fridges that cost way too much, to the sectional taking up residence in the living room in front of a gas fireplace in the wall, and the wooden slats hiding the stairs to the bedrooms. “I thought it was cool, and you know me. Thought maybe I’d find out they were containers with historical significance. Maybe they carried something important across the Channel during the rise of the British Empire.”
Her eyes glimmer. “And?”
I grin, grabbing the bags of groceries and bringing them into the kitchen. “Turns out they’re just metal.”
She tips her head back, hair tumbling off her shoulders and revealing the jut of her collarbone where her sweater slouches down.
She laughs, standing there in the sunlight, taking up all this space in another place I used to come to be alone, and I can’t breathe again.
Scrubbing my jaw, I tip my chin towards the chairs lining the island. My sister picked those out—she said they were something called boucle, and they’d match the couch.
She also said they’d be a hit with any girl I brought here.
The first one to ever cross the threshold doesn’t really seem to care much about them as she folds herself into one, brings a knee to her chest, dropping her chin to it.
I clear my throat. “Coffee? I can make you a latte?”
Greer nods, and she gives me this look I haven’t quite figured out—mouth soft, eyes even more so, her head tipping from side to side like she’s assessing.
I’m never quite sure what, but she doesn’t look disappointed in her findings.
I give my head a shake and force myself to turn around—I’d probably spend all morning staring at her sitting there in the sunlight if she let me—and look at the espresso machine taking up a stretch of counter. It’s another Sarah touch, and she spent hours teaching me how to use it properly.
“I know you told me that lattes weren’t friendly, but we’re not friends these next two nights, right?” I swallow, staring at the chrome adornments, hoping I didn’t imagine the whole fucking thing.
She doesn’t answer right away, and I imagine she’s doing that same thing—eyes curious, head angled to the side as she studies for answers in the set of my shoulders. When she does speak, her voice is soft, but her words are firm. “I don’t think so.”
I nod, and I debate abandoning the coffee in favour of grabbing her off that chair, laying her down on the nearest surface, and fucking her until neither of us knows our own name.
But it’s not just sex and I don’t think it ever was.
The latte takes too long. I drop my head to the cupboard, hand flexed against the counter, thumb tapping out in impatience for the stupid thing to stop brewing.
It’s just these hours and I don’t want to spend a single second on something other than her.
I could probably kick a ball the entire length of the field when I see the screen flash to tell me it’s done.
She lifts her chin and offers me a rare smile when I hand it to her. She takes a sip, looking out to the windows revealing the slope of lawn, a copse of trees, and the lake, winking at us under the early-morning sunlight. Looking back to me, she shrugs the shoulder on display. “Should we make something up then? A historical event we can attach to your shipping containers?”
I grin, taking the mug from her hands and setting it down on the island. “Sure. To be known forevermore as the site where Greer Roberts let Beckett Davis in, and he didn’t waste a second of it.”
Her lips open just so, eyes sweep across my face, and before she can say anything, I’ve got my hands around the back of her neck, and my mouth on hers.
We’ve kissed before, but always as friends.
Never like this.
No rules. And she does open for me, I think. I can tell by the angle of her head, the way one hand tangles in the back of my hair, her fingers pulling taut, and her other hand snakes across my chest, down my stomach until it finds the edge of my shirt, and her fingers dig a line into my skin when she grabs it, tugging me closer.
Her full lips part, and I meet her tongue with mine, and it’s just this endless thing.
Two real people in a kitchen under the morning sun, an abandoned mug of coffee, hands scrambling, trying to get closer, and mouths moving together in this way that I hope tells her my heart is hers—it always has been.
And I think I might have hers, at least for now.
“Checkmate.”
“No shit.” My eyes cut up from the chessboard, propped up on a stump that’s supposed to be aesthetic, between our two Muskoka chairs at the end of the dock.
Greer shrugs, barely visible under my sweater. It’s huge on her—an old practice sweater I wear sometimes at the stadium, with the team logo stitched across the chest and my number along the hood. Her earmuffs hang around her neck, and she takes a sip of the mimosa sitting on the arm of her chair, the crystal flute glinting. “I tried to warn you.”
A muscle ticks in my cheek, and I feel like upturning the chessboard. I point at her. “We’re playing scrabble next time.”
“I’ll probably win at that, too.” She blinks at me from behind the glass. “I know a lot of words.”
“Yahtzee, then?” I ask, voice dry. “That’s all chance, and I’m too competitive to keep losing to you all afternoon. It’s going to give me more of a complex than I already have.”
Greer frowns, shaking her head, but her eyes shine. “Unfortunately for you, that’s not true. The roll of dice is by chance, but the rest of the game can be broken down strategically to maximize your score.”
I hold my arms open, like I can’t quite believe that, even though there’s nothing about the endless capability of her brain that could surprise me.
She tips her head back in laughter, and it’s this beautiful, throaty thing that echoes through me and out across the lake.
Lucky fucking trees, getting to hear that sound.
I grin, watching her as she keeps her head back, studying the clouds tumbling across the sky.
It’s a beautiful fall day—crisp, clear air that nips at your skin, shining sun and the smell of leaves hanging all around.
But it’s a more beautiful girl.
Her eyelids flutter closed, and she sighs, chin still tipped up at the clouds. Even the usually sharp lines of her face seem softer, like she’s relaxing and breathing out here without the expectations, and maybe she likes being with me like this.
“Will you”—I reach out my hand—“come over here?”
Greer blinks, looking back down to the earth, over at me, and nods softly.
I watch as she stands, one hand flattening against the arm of the chair, the other wrapping around the crystal stem, the length of my sweater falling to her mid-thigh, brushing against her leggings. The way her dark hair swings around her shoulders when she takes the few steps to reach her hand to mine. How her fingers fit mine, like each of our hands were actually sculpted for the other.
I watch it all, try to commit it to memory in case these forty-eight hours are all we get. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me if I go back on Wednesday and I don’t perform this weekend.
But she folds herself down into my lap, leans against my chest, and I don’t care.
She doesn’t realize—but there’s always this faint smell of eucalyptus clinging to her, like those branches her sister hung for her that she thinks are stupid actually did something. Wrapped around her and tried to protect her as best they could.
I tuck my chin in the crook of her neck and inhale, circling my arms around her.
Her hand trails up the side of my face, tracing patterns in the stubble across my jaw before she cups my cheek. “Do you feel better?”
I nod and press my mouth to the side of her neck because I can. “Head’s a bit clearer.”
So is my heart because I’m here with you and you’re letting me pretend you’re really mine.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Her fingers twist in the hair around my ears.
A groan rises in my throat and my eyes close. “That feels nice.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
I can tell she’s smiling by the way the inflection of her voice changes, how I can feel her shoulders roll back through my sweater. She does that when she’s happy—gives away these little tells that she’s feeling momentarily unburdened.
Shaking my head, I inhale one more time before opening my eyes and resting my chin on her shoulder. “Nah. It’s okay. I don’t think there’s really anyone else I’d want to talk about it with.”
Her fingers come down across my jaw again. “What happens if you miss on Sunday?”
I exhale. “I doubt Coach Taylor was joking, so I’d guess he trades me, or he drops me for a consistent college kid at a fraction of the cost.”
Greer pulls away, shifting in my lap and turning so she can face me. She taps the champagne flute against her lips before emptying it and setting it down beside the chair. That hand finds the other side of my face. “Have you ever thought about that? Whether it would be good for you to move, start over in a new city with a new team?”
“I’ve never thought about it. I was happy to come back here from Cincinnati. Thought it’d be nice to be closer so I could make sure everything was alright.” I usually can’t breathe when she’s this close to me, but I take a deep, measured inhale. It feels a bit more like I can right now. I give her a wry smile. “It wasn’t until recently it occurred to me that I’m not responsible for giving them everything they need and I never was.”
“Do you think you resent them?” she asks plainly, like that’s a normal thing to ask someone about their parents.
But maybe it is.
I consider it, nodding a bit before I shrug. “Probably. Probably my whole life and didn’t even realize it. Do you think it’ll always be like that?”
Her shoulders rise under my sweater, and she looks so fucking beautiful. Earmuffs around her neck, dark hair falling every which way, and those eyes that see right through me. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’ll come in waves. Or maybe one day you’ll wake up and it’ll just be gone.” Each of her thumbs brush over my jaw. “My sister said something to me recently about grief and healing. That it’s not a formula that just clicks together one day. That they’re part of the human experience, and I’ve been wondering if maybe you just learn to live through them.”
“I wouldn’t mind learning to live through it all with you.” My voice is rough when I say it, kind of like the seas of whatever storm she thinks she lives in.
It’s not much of an answer, but she leans forward, hands still framing my face when her lips find mine.
She moves them—gently, like she’s testing something out. Trying it on for size.
I hope she likes the way it fits.
I tighten my grip around her, tongue sweeping against the seam of her lips, and she meets it with hers. I’m not sure how long we kiss for; I get a bit lost up in my head trying to make the whole thing count, imagining a world where I can tell her she’s the love of my life and that I don’t think I really care what happens on Sunday as long as I have her.
Eventually she pulls back, head tipped to the side, full lips swollen, and looks at me like she’s thinking about something.
“Thank you,” she starts, but she pauses, a tiny shake of her head. “I don’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for me. You say I made you real, and maybe that’s true, but you know me. And there’s something very special and rare in knowing. Not something your average, run-of-the-mill reliable and likeable person would be able to achieve.”
My chest tightens, and I start to shake my head, swallowing, not sure how to answer that because I did get to know her, and I fell in love with her.
But she keeps talking. “It was just a pinky promise. Inconsequential to some people. But you made me promise to only do what was right for me. I don’t think anyone has ever given me permission to do that before, and maybe permission was all I needed.”
“You told your sister the whole truth then?”
She nods, fingers feathering against my jaw. “I did. Because of you. She had a lot of thoughts about it. Nice thoughts. Kind thoughts. She had thoughts about other things, too.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, voice heavy. “What were those?”
Greer blinks at me, thumbs swiping up the line of stubble cutting across my cheek before she turns and settles against my chest, murmuring, “Things I’m not sure what to do with yet.”
“Thank you.” I swallow, pressing my mouth to the crown of her head. “For seeing me. For whatever you said to make my brother and sister tell me they see me, too. It was nice, to be with them like that. Another thing I owe you for. One day I’ll work up the courage to draw a line in the sand with my parents, but—”
“One day,” she finishes.
I clear my throat, jerking my head towards her empty glass. “Do you want another? I’ll go get you one.”
“No,” she says simply, dropping the back of her head to my shoulder. “I want you to stay here.”
I want to stay here, too , I think.
And I wish we could forever.