Chapter 15 Drew #2
"Drew."
"Yes."
"That is."
"I know."
I turned toward him.
The back-cot was small. The turning put my face six inches from his and meant I could see the half-Vampyren cool-gold of his eyes catching the starlight through the rear window.
His pupils were the half-clinical wide-and-narrow I had stopped flinching at three months ago.
His mouth was the small calm shape it did when his face was doing nothing.
His face was, tonight, doing nothing. The not-saying that had become the saying.
He put his hand on the side of my face.
The cool of his palm was the temperature I had been thinking about without knowing. The temperature was Drew's. The temperature was now mine to know.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"Ours."
He said: "Ours."
He kissed me.
The kiss was longer than the barn kiss. The barn kiss had been four seconds and had been two people about to walk into a fight, who were not going to make the kiss a thing.
This kiss was two people who had walked through the fight, who had bled for each other, who had said I love you on the back of a truck at sunset, and who had nine nights of three-feet-apart back-cot sleep stored up. The kiss took the time it needed.
I lost the count of the seconds at about thirty.
I lost the count of everything at about ninety.
He pulled back.
He looked at me.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"I have not done this before."
I went still.
I said: "Done what."
"Any of this. The hand. The kiss. The. Cora.
I have not been with anyone. Ellen raised me in a half-collapsed apartment in Phoenix.
There were no other half-Vampyren. There were no humans my body's age.
There has been nobody for eleven years. The body.
Cora, the body knows the shape of the not-having-done.
The body does not know the having-done. I am.
Cora, I am telling you because the count between us has to include this.
The count is the count. You should know. "
I touched his face.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay. You have told me. The count includes it.
The count is the count. The not-having-done is the count we start from.
The having-done is the count we build. The count is going to be.
Drew. The count is going to be ours. The way it goes is the way it goes.
We figure it out. Both. I have done some of this and not other parts of it.
We have what each of us has. We use what we have.
We learn the parts neither of us knows. That is the count. "
He closed his eyes.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"Thank you for the okay."
"You are welcome."
He opened his eyes.
He kissed me again.
The second kiss was different. The second kiss was a body that had decided. The decision was the decision a body made when the decision had been a long time coming. The kiss was the question and the next question both. The mouth asked. The mouth answered.
I answered with mine.
His hand moved. The flat-against-stomach palm slid under the hem of my shirt.
The cool of his palm against the warm of my skin was a sensory shock I had not felt in eight years and had not let myself want for ten.
The shock was a body-shock. The shock registered as I am alive and I am being touched, and that had been the absence I had been counting in stacks of seven for three years without naming the absence as what the counting was for.
I let the shock land.
I shifted toward him.
The back-cot was small. The shifting put us against each other in a way that did not have three feet between us. The blankets came down between us. The bench-side blanket Crystal had packed for me. The cot-side blanket Sylvia had folded. Both came down. The blankets were the blankets.
He undid the small button at the side of my shirt with the careful precision of a man who had not done this and was therefore being twice as careful.
The careful was Drew. The careful was the half-Vampyren-trained-to-be-precise hand.
The same hand that had handed Brecca a bandage two years and four months ago.
The same hand that had moved my fuel-column on the ledger.
The same hand that had set the wooden carving on the dashboard at oh-six-thirty on day one.
The hand had been the hand of giving the whole time.
The hand was now the hand of giving in the way bodies gave.
I caught his wrist.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"Slow."
"Yes."
"Not because I do not want. Slow because we have time. Slow because this is. Drew. This is the count we are building tonight. We do not build the count fast. We build the count by sevens. We build the count by paying attention."
He nodded.
He slowed.
He paid attention.
The blue-black-of-the-Mojave-night light through the rear window came down across our shoulders.
The starlight was the same seven stars. The truck cab was warm because the day had been warm and the metal of the cab held the warm into the night.
Deedee was asleep on the bench. The Polaroid was on her chest. Sylvia was in the third truck.
Renn was at the perimeter. Cruz was at the second truck.
Veron was at the southern roof. The team was holding.
Drew's hand was at my shirt.
Then under my shirt.
Then at the small soft skin of my ribcage where his cool palm registered the small fast-faster-fastest of my heartbeat through the muscle.
He counted.
I felt him count. And under my own palm flat against his chest I felt his single half-Vampyren heart doing the double-pulse, the two-notes-per-beat Sylvia had taught me to recognize against a stethoscope on Auriel three months ago — different from a Vampyren's two-hearts, different from my human one — the rhythm that meant Drew, only Drew, the specific shape of him alive against my hand.
The counting was Drew. The counting was his half-clinical observation overlay registering my heart-rate at this distance, the way Brecca would have registered it with a stethoscope, the way Sylvia would have registered it with a hand on the wrist. The counting was the body-medicine the medical-tent work was already inside him. The counting was.
The counting was the way Drew loved me.
I said: "How fast."
He said: "Ninety-eight."
I said: "That's high."