Chapter 22 #2
I don't know how long we stood like that. Long enough for my breathing to slow. Long enough for the shaking to stop.
"Sorry," I said finally. My voice sounded like gravel.
"Don't be."
I pulled back, just enough to wipe my face with the back of my hand. Red let me go but stayed close, his hand still resting on my hip.
"That was—" I didn't have a word for what that was. The kind of thing I'd spent my whole life making sure no one ever saw.
"You okay?" Red's voice was careful, and I hated him for it almost as much as I loved him for it.
I wasn't okay. I didn't know if I'd ever been okay. But the panic had passed and Red was still here and he wasn't looking at me like I was broken.
"Yeah," I said. "I think so."
"Good." He pressed a kiss to my temple. "How do you feel about sushi?"
We ordered sushi. Red handled it while I sat on the couch and tried to remember how to be a person.
When the food arrived, we ate it on the living room floor, and Red told me about the time Murphy got banned from a restaurant in Denver for taking "all you can eat" too literally.
I laughed in the right places. By the time we finished, the tight thing in my chest had loosened enough that I could breathe without thinking about it.
Red put on a movie. He was lying between my legs now, his back against my chest, his head tucked under my chin. My arms were wrapped around him, one hand splayed across his stomach, the other resting on his thigh. He fit there like the space had been waiting for him.
I'd never done this. Not really. I'd had sex, and I'd slept in the same bed as other people, but I'd never known the weight of someone settling against me like they trusted me to hold them.
Red's thumb traced slow circles on my forearm, the motion absent and easy, like touching me was something he did without thinking.
"Earlier," I said. "In the kitchen."
Red's thumb paused. He didn't turn around, didn't make a thing of it, just waited.
"That's happened before."
"I figured."
I could stop there. He'd let me. He wouldn't ask questions or demand explanations.
"I was eight the first time." The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them. "I didn't know what it was. I thought I was dying."
Red's hand found mine on his stomach and squeezed.
"My dad found me on the bathroom floor." I pressed my face into his hair and breathed him in. "He told me to get up. That Coffeys didn't do this."
"So you stopped."
"So I learned to stop it before it started." I'd never said this out loud. Not to Natalia, not to the sports psychologist, not to anyone. "Eighteen years. I haven't lost control like that in eighteen years."
"That's a long time to hold something down."
I didn't have an answer for that.
We lay there in the blue light from the television, Red's weight warm against my chest, his hand wrapped around mine. Neither of us was watching the screen.
"Hey." Red shifted against me. "You want to go for a swim?"
"It's dark out."
"So?"
"The pool lights might not work."
"Joel." He twisted to look up at me. "Do you want to go swimming or not?"
I did. I wanted to be in the water, in the dark, somewhere I could move without thinking.
"Yeah," I said. "Let's swim."
The pool lights cast the water in shifting blue and white patterns, rippling across the surface as we moved. Red had stripped down to his boxers and jumped in without testing the temperature, surfacing with a gasp and a laugh that echoed off the fence.
I went in slower, taking the stairs, letting my body adjust. The water came up to my chest, and I stood there for a moment, watching Red swim lazy laps in the deep end.
He moved differently in the water. Looser, less guarded. On ice he was always braced for contact. Here he was just a body cutting through blue light.
He stopped at the far end and turned to face me, his arms resting on the pool edge behind him.
"You coming?"
I pushed off from the stairs and swam toward him. When I reached him, I didn't stop, just kept moving until I was close enough to touch.
Red watched me approach. His eyes were dark in the low light, his hair slicked back from his face, water beading on his shoulders.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
I kissed him because I didn't have words for anything else. His mouth was cool from the water and warm underneath, and his hands came up to cup my face, holding me there while the pool lights rippled around us.
This kiss was different from the ones before. There was no urgency to it, no desperation. Just his mouth against mine, and the water holding us up, and the night sky stretching out overhead.
When we finally pulled apart, Red was smiling.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing." He brushed his thumb across my cheekbone. "I just like you."
It was such a simple thing to say, and yet no one had ever said it to me before.
"I like you too," I said.
Red's smile widened. Then he dunked me under the water and swam away laughing, and I came up sputtering and chased him across the pool, and for a little while we were just two people in the water.