Chapter 9
Lana
Christian spent his first night here. Downstairs in the guest room. After...
After all that.
I crossed a line, the one I drew. To be fair, it was always a murky line. Was I really ever going to pay attention to it? I’d like to say yes. I was going to try.
It was a blip. A glitch in the system. That’s all. I didn’t think about it when it happened and that was my mistake. That is what happens when I’m around him now. I forget to think!
I need to think around him because I can’t afford loss—losing him and another part of myself when he goes. He already has so much of me and I have more of him than I once thought I did—I realized that last night when I stepped into the guest room.
He has given me the power to make him weak, and he would let me. Maybe he wants me to break him down, strip him apart, and find his very center to check for myself if it’s healed. If he has healed.
I don’t need him to be perfect, I need him to be better.
I’m staring at the ceiling, hoping he’s still downstairs and wishing I could stop being so stubborn. Wishing all of it could go away, be okay, and we could just be happy. But things like happiness don’t come easily for me.
The last thing I got easy that made me happy was Christian.
The only thing that made me immeasurably, incomprehensibly, irrevocably happy.
He was easy to fall in love with. He had this energy about him, even when he was angry at the world and exhausted from the weight of his pain, he could make everyone in any room like him. Everyone loved Christian.
Loving him has been the easiest thing I’ve ever done—will ever do. Like breathing. It just happens, even when you aren’t paying attention. You breathe without thought because your body does it for you automatically, that is loving him.
Easy.
Lana
I have a problem
Isabelle
What?
Natalia
WHAT?!?!
Lana
Something…may have happened
Last night
And it was good. Too good.
Isabelle
Oh god
Natalia
What happened?
Isabelle
I think we can infer what happened
Natalia
Yay you had sex!
Lana
Not sex sex but…
Isabelle
Oh so you sucked his dick
Natalia
Nice
Lana
And he…
Natalia
Even nicer
Isabelle
Was it at least good?
Lana
Yes but I don’t know what to do now
Natalia
Let him buy you a meal and do it again
Lana
It was nothing!
Isabelle
You miss him
Natalia
You looooooooove him
A very unhelpful bunch, them two.
I lock my phone and toss it aside. Groaning, I turn onto my stomach and bury my face into the pillow, and I scream.
I think I have a problem because I can’t decide if I want to make it harder for him by kicking him out again, or allowing him to stay—giving him the chance to prove himself and keep his word.
Christian has already told me, countless times, he isn’t leaving. A part of me believes him. So maybe he can just occupy the guest room for now and I’ll break him down. Chip at his exterior and find his stitched heart.
But in order for me to trust him, he needs to trust me with whatever he hasn’t said. With whatever he’s carrying around in the form of guilt and shame. He needs to talk and it isn’t my job to force him.
I’ll let him stay.
I’ll let us have this—something to fight for. Because there is something to fight for, something I want to fight for and did fight for even after he left. I need him to match my fight, and I think he just might.
Just need to have a little blind faith.
I finally pull my face out of my pillow and get out of bed. Knowing Christian, there are two ways this could go. Either he will be downstairs or at the gym, but all his stuff will still be in his room. Or he’s taken his stuff out and is living in his car again to give me space.
In my sleep shorts and obscenely oversized Led Zeppelin t-shirt that was once Christian’s, I pad barefoot down the stairs.
By the time I reach the bottom, I hear the glass of plates clinking together and the opening and closing of a drawer coming from the kitchen.
“Congratulations” by Mac Miller playing in the back—a song he always sang along to in the car while holding my hand and looking at me with every few lines.
At red lights and stops signs, he’d kiss me and murmur the lyrics against my lips, and I’d smile against his.
Christian is a terrible singer, can’t sing for the life of him, but he sang along anyway—tried to—and we were happy.
And he’s here.
He’s here and he’s listening to that song. I could never bring myself to listen to it.
I feel a shiver deep in my gut and go to the kitchen. He’s wearing navy drawstring pajama pants, the waistband of his Calvin’s showing slightly, and is entirely shirtless.
Christian’s back is toward me—his smooth tan skin protecting the rippling muscles underneath as he moves around. His voice laps over Mac Miller’s, singing along while he’s filling two plates.
I lean against a wall and watch him, smiling to myself.
“‘Baby, you were everything I ever wanted, bought a wedding ring, it's in my pocket. Planned to ask the other day, knew you'd run away, so I guess I just forgot it..’”
“Hey,” I say.
Christian jumps, startled, and drops a slice of bacon on the ground. I snicker and round the island to pick it up. “Hey,” he breathes.
“You’re still here.”
An adorable, boyish grin. “I made breakfast.”
“I see.” I peer down at the stove. Omelets with cheese and ham, bacon, and French toast. “Thank you.”
Christian shrugs and I want to hug him—kiss him. His dad was one fucked up demon who convinced Christian that everything he did was wrong or wasn’t enough. Christian was always an angel of a man, heaven as a person. My heaven and peace as a person.
His hand cups my cheek, his thumb smoothing out the frown tugging my lips. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head slightly, leaning into the touch. “Just thinking.”
Boundaries.
I take a step back and out of his touch, breaking my own heart in the process.
“I’ll make pancakes tomorrow,” he says, putting an omelet on a plate. “If you—”
“You can stay,” I say, snatching the full plate from his hands and sitting at the other side of the island. “But the key comes with conditions.”
Christian finishes filling his plate and joins me at the island. “Anything.”
I have nothing. No conditions. Telling him no alcohol is obvious. He told me to put a little faith and I am. I’m trusting that he already knows that boundary.
“Well…”
“I know the first, what’s the second?”
I blink. “What’s the first?”
“No alcohol,” he says, biting into a slice of bacon. “What’s the second?”
“Um… You clean the dishes.”
“Was going to anyway.”
“Okay,” I drawl, pushing at the omelet with my fork. “Um… You… You have to clean up after yourself…”
“Lana.”
I blink and put down the fork. “What?”
Christian puts down the slice of bacon. “You only have one condition and I already know it. It’s my condition too.”
“That I don’t drink?”
“That I don’t drink,” he says. “Ever.”
I nod. “Right. Yeah.”
Christian resumes eating his breakfast, and I finally take a bite out of my omelet. His specialty was always breakfast. He made pancakes from scratch every week and experimented with different kinds. Blueberry, chocolate chip—all of it.
We eat our breakfast in silence and I wait for this to feel awkward. I wait for my skin to feel too tight around my bones but it never happens. I’m with Christian, the only person in the world that has made me feel perfect as I am.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes, breaking the silence first.
“For what?”
“Last night.”
I shake my head. “It was…both of us.”
“I missed you,” Christian whispers sadly. “I miss you.”
I bite my cheek, keeping the tears at bay while I poke at my food. “I know.”
The song restarts, the same song—our song? Kind of, I guess. I bite at the bacon, pick at the omelet, wondering how often he has listened to the song while he was gone. And if he thought of me—of us.
“Dance with me?”
I put down my fork. “Huh?”
Christian stands from the chair and holds out his right hand. “Dance with me, baby.”
I swallow the food in my mouth and look down at his hand, the lines of his palm waiting to touch mine. I look back up at him, and he’s waiting. I’m waiting for something to shout at me, to shake me around and tell me to let him go.
But nothing does that.
Everything tells me he’s mine, even in death.
Slowly—praying none of what happens after last night is a mistake that leads to an obliterating, disabling heartbreak—I put my hand in his.
He leads us toward the floor space between the island and the couch.
The sun shining through the sliding doors casts a glow against the light washed wooden floors and acts as a spotlight over us.
The rays rest against the side of his face, brightening his coffee colored eyes, making them softer. Lighter. The sun highlights all of his features, and he looks like what an all powerful greek god might have looked like back then.
Christian releases my hand and puts his at the small of my back, holding me to him, and my arms go around his neck. We sway and sway to the lyrics, and his temple is pressed against mine. Then he starts singing along.
I laugh but he keeps going. He’s terrible. Truly horrible at rapping and singing, but I’ve never heard a more beautiful voice in my entire life.
Then his hands are holding my face, his nose is touching my nose, and his lips are against mine. Just like all the times before, he says the lyrics against my lips while I smile against his.
He’s making it really hard for me to make this hard on him.
Christian has all the right tools to pick at the brick walls I’ve built. But it’s my fault I haven’t changed the locks or security defenses, so he knows exactly how to get in. He knows the passcodes, he has copies of the keys, the answers to all the riddles, and he knows me.
He knows me as well as I know him.
“What did you forget about me?” I ask as the song dies out and fades into a softer, indie song.
“What?”