Falling Away

by Jasinda Wilder

  He shrugs. "Sure. Let me change, then." He points to the other side of the bed. "Your dress and bra are over there." He flushes again as he mentions my bra. How cute is that? Why is he so easily embarrassed by such simple things?

  I don't really relish the thought of going to breakfast in my funeral dress, but my bag with my things is at my grandparents' house, which is a good hour away. I should probably call them, just to let them know I'm okay; after breakfast, I decide. Maybe I can stop at a Kohl's or something and buy a new outfit.

  Ben slides off the bed and rummages in his bureau, withdraws a pair of khaki cargo shorts and a blue-and-white striped polo shirt. "I'll change in the bathroom real quick. You can take a shower, if you want. I don't have any girly shower stuff, but you could rinse off if you want."

  "Girly shower stuff?" I laugh.

  He shrugs, grinning. "Yeah, you know, all that shit girls have in their bathrooms."

  "Like...shampoo and conditioner?" I tease.

  "Well, how the hell am I supposed to know? I'm not a girl. I use two-in-one shampoo and conditioner and a bar of soap. What else would I need?"

  Now why the hell does my mind bring up a visual of Ben taking a shower? I can almost see him running a bar of soap over his tan skin...I force the errant thought away.

  "I could stand to rinse off, I guess. Thanks."

  Seconds later, Ben tosses his old clothes on a pile in the corner. "Bathroom is all yours. I put a clean towel on the sink."

  "Thanks."

  I fish a hair tie out of my purse and knot my hair on top of my head, and then take a quick shower. He wasn't kidding. The shower literally has a single bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap, and a washcloth. My bathroom at home has easily a dozen different bottles, since my roommates and I each have our own shower supplies. I leave my hair and wash off, and then get out, tying the towel around my torso.

  Ben is in the kitchen, and I glance at him as I move back into his room. His eyes go to mine, to the towel and my cleavage, and then away. I can't help a little smile from crossing my lips at the way he quickly looks away, as if embarrassed to be caught looking at me. I close his door behind me and put on my bra and the dress, not bothering with underwear, which I stuff into my purse; I'd rather go commando than put on dirty underwear after a shower.

  I slip my feet into my heels and join Ben in the kitchen, where he waits with his phone and wallet in his hand. "So. I'm ready," I say.

  He smiles at me. "I can call a cab."

  I frown. "Don't you have a car?"

  He nods. "Yeah, but I still can't drive yet, not with my knee. Shouldn't be too much longer, but..."

  "Well, then, I can drive your car, if you don't mind."

  He grabs a pair of keys from off the microwave and hands them to me. "Not at all. Let's go."

  Ben drives a massive black truck, a three-or four-year-old Silverado with huge, knobby, off-road tires and a lift-kit. I glance at him, and the step up. "You gonna be able to get in okay?" I ask. He pulls open the passenger door, tosses his cane in, grabs the oh-shit bar with both hands and pulls himself up and in. "All right, then. Guess that's a yes," I say with a grin, climbing up.

  "You gonna be able to drive this big ol' monster of a truck?"

  I snort at him. "I'm from Texas, Ben. What do you think?"

  "All right, then," he says, grinning. "Guess that's a yes."

  Once again, I'm struck by how oddly comfortable I am, being around Ben. We don't need to talk much as we drive to the nearest department store, and it's easy to browse the aisles with him, picking out a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, a new bra and underwear, and a pair of sandals. The funniest part is when he opts to wait in the main aisle rather than going into the lingerie department with me. I pay for the items and change in the bathroom, call grandpa real quick and let him know I'm fine and not to worry about me, and then we're off again, heading across town to a greasy spoon my high school friends and I used to go to all the time.

  And it was just that easy. We sit and drink cup after cup of deliciously shitty coffee while we wait for our food, talking about movies and music and anything and everything. I can almost forget why I'm back in San Antonio.

  Eventually, there's nothing left to do but pay the bill, and Ben insists on paying for it. Which is cool. The last date I went on, the guy not only didn't offer to pay for mine, but he didn't even pay for his half, so I picked up the tab and blocked his number in my phone when I got home. I don't expect chivalry or whatever, but it sure is nice when it happens.

  "So, you got anything to do?" I ask. "After this, I mean?"

  He shrugs. "Not really. I need to find a gym at some point, because I've still gotta work out my knee."

  It takes a lot for me to sound casual. "Mom was your therapist. I'd almost forgotten." I tap at the table with a spoon. "There's a good clinic near the hospital, Mom knows--knew, I mean--a couple of the therapists there. I can take you, if you want."

  "Fuck. I'm sorry, Echo." He closes his eyes and rubs at the bridge of his nose with the knuckle of his forefinger. "I should've just kept my mouth shut."

  "It's fine." My voice catches, though, and I'm dangerously close to coming apart right here in the diner. "I need to--I need some air."

  I slide out of the booth and hurry outside, around the corner of the building. I breathe deeply and try to keep the tears at bay, try to keep it in, keep it down. But I can't. My knees give out, and I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the concrete. Ben finds me there, face in my hands, tears wetting my cheeks. He lowers himself to the ground, extending his leg out straight. His arm extends behind me, and it's the most natural thing in the world for me to lean into him.

  "I'm fine for a few minutes, an hour or two, and then it hits me all over again," I tell him, when I can breathe and speak again. "It's like...I forget, and then I remember. And...part of me likes it when I forget, because it doesn't hurt as bad. But then I hate myself for wanting to forget, you know? Because she...she's my mom. And she's--she's gone."

  Ben's arms tighten around me. He doesn't say anything, doesn't try to tell me it's okay or offer any meaningless explanations. After a few minutes, I stand up and wipe at my eyes, then breathe and try push down the emotions.

  "I have an idea," Ben says.

  "What's that?"

  "Let's go to a movie." He stands up too, near me but not too close. "We can just stay there all day, watch movie after movie. Eat too much popcorn and drink too much Coke."

  "Sounds perfect," I say, grateful that he's not ready to part ways just yet.

  "That's how I used to spend the long summer days when there wasn't much to do. Me and...a friend. We'd just stay in the theater all day. Eventually our parents discovered what we were doing and they made us start buying tickets for every movie we saw."

  Something in the way he hesitated a bit tells a story, but I'm not sure I know him well enough to ask about it.

  So that's what we do. We buy a ticket to an action movie, and when it's over we slip into the next theater and watch a romantic comedy. The hours pass, and it's easy to spend them all sitting next to Ben. He's laid back, he doesn't treat me like I'm as fragile as I really am, but he's always mindful of what he says, careful not to say anything that would break the spell.

  Eventually it's evening, and we're both hungry, so I drive us to a bar-and-grill near the cinema. We drink beer and eat burgers, and the conversation stays light and easy. There are as many comfortable silences between us as there are conversations.

  And then it's night, the clock inching closer and closer to midnight, and we're parked at his apartment building, just sitting outside on a bench in a courtyard behind his building, drinking a beer from his fridge and talking about the movies we watched, which ones we liked and which ones we didn't.

  Silence floats between us, and I know that he's thinking about something...or someone. I want to ask but I don't intrude.

  "Thanks for today, Ben," I say.

  "It's been one of the best days I've e
ver had," he says. "I just wish we'd met under better circumstances."

  "Me, too," I tell him, trying not to notice how, over the course of the minutes we've spent on this bench, we've somehow inched closer to each other, until our thighs and knees and hips touch, and how I tingle all over at his proximity. And then I feel guilty for feeling something good so soon. "You don't know what it's meant to me, though. You really don't. I don't know how I'd have dealt with this, if I'd been alone today."

  "You don't have to be alone."

  "I would be, though. My grandparents...I love them, but being around them right now would be impossible. We'd all be crying and crying, and I just...I just can't handle that. I can't let myself start crying. I mean, sometimes I just can't help it, but..." I lean forward, elbows on my knees, head hanging. "And at school, my friends wouldn't know what to say. It'd be awkward, and I'd just want to be alone, but the thing is, I don't want to be alone. I don't know how else to explain it."

  "You don't have to explain it. I get it." He lets out a breath. "And you know, if you need to--talk about it. Or just...let go, you know? You can. If you need to cry, I mean. I don't know what I'm saying, just...I'm here, if you need to--talk, I guess."

  "I just...I don't get it." I stare at the crescent moon rising over the roof of the building. "The officer who called me, he said she'd...the accident happened in the middle of the night. And, I mean, I don't know what she was doing then, you know? Like, she had a very orderly life. She had clients throughout the day, but her last one was always at seven in the evening. She'd have dinner, she'd either pick it up or she'd make something easy. And then she'd watch some TV, and she'd go to bed. I don't think she was ever out past midnight in all the years I lived at home. At least, not once she quit working the ER, I mean. So what the hell was she doing out at three in the morning?"

  Ben is strangely silent. He doesn't answer, doesn't look at me. He just digs the end of his cane in the grass and spins it back and forth. Tension bleeds off him, and I'm not sure where it's coming from. I want to ask, but I don't.

  This time, the silence is thick and tense. After a moment, Ben drains his beer and stands up. "Want another?"

  I shrug. "Sure."

  His abrupt silence and tension is odd and thick and unexpected.

  So we go into his apartment through the sliding glass door off his back porch. He hands me a beer, and moves toward the back door, but I decide to sit on the couch and flip on the TV. He watches me click through channels until I find AMC and a rerun of last season's The Walking Dead, airing in preparation for the new season starting in a couple months. He watches me for a few moments, and then sits beside me, leaving a space between us.

  It's clear, after half an hour or so, that something is eating at him. I know it was something I said, but I don't know how to address it, how to ask, what to say. I slide a glance at him, eyeing him sideways, as if I can decipher what's bothering him just by looking at him. His brows are drawn, and I get the sense he's not really watching the show. He's staring at the TV, but he's obviously a million miles away.

  It's awkward, now. I'm here, he's here, but there's nothing between us. It's like he just shut down, like walls went up and any connection we might have made throughout the day has been erased. And I don't even know why. Worse yet, I can't figure out why that bothers me so much. Why I so badly want him to open up again, why I want so much for him to inch closer. I shouldn't want his heat near me, shouldn't want his proximity. But I do.

  And why shouldn't I, though? Am I not allowed to feel anything but the grief? He's here and, in this moment, I can't remember a single reason why I shouldn't let myself explore whatever there might be between Ben and me. It won't lessen my pain over losing Mom. It won't soothe the hurt. But it might make me less lonely. It might ease the ache a little. And, right now, anything is better than the pulsing pressure of pain inside, grief buried deep and pushed down and not dealt with. It's down there, and it wants out, but I can't let it out. If I do it'll never stop. At some point I'll have to let myself truly feel it, but not now. It's too fresh, right now. And, in some way, I still don't even really believe Mom's gone. It's almost as if I'll get a text from her tomorrow morning, asking how classes are going. Like I could swing by her apartment and pretend I just came down to Texas to visit her. The reality of her death hasn't sunk in yet. Not totally.

  And, in the meantime, I've got a hot, mysterious guy sitting beside me, one with honor enough to not only take care of my drunk ass, but tactfully and respectfully handle me throwing myself at him all but naked.

  I don't know any other guy that would have done that. Maybe I just know assholes, but I can't think of one guy that would have been able to resist me literally throwing my naked ass at him.

  Especially when I've seen and felt Ben's eyes on me, seen the flash of desire.

  I glance at him again, and this time his eyes catch mine. His expression darkens, and I see that glimmer of attraction, see his eyes go to my lips, and then back to my eyes.

  Fuck it.

  I twist on the couch and lean in before I can second-guess myself. His lips are soft and strong and eager. I curl my hand around the back of his neck and slide my other palm against his ribs and lean closer, press tighter against him, and I taste the beer on his breath and feel his tongue slide against my teeth. His hands cross the space between us, one running slowly up from my knee to my thigh, the other going to my cheek, a roughened palm scraping across my cheekbone, fingers threading in the fine hair just above my ear. His hand is big, his pinky finger beneath my earlobe, his thumb tracing across my eyebrow.

  His mouth moves against mine slowly and surely, and with each slide of lips against lips, our bodies glide closer and closer. I pull him against my mouth, deepen the kiss, breathe his breath and caress the hair at the back of his neck and slide my palm over the hard ridges of his ribs and the furrows of his abdominal muscles.

  I gather the soft material of his T-shirt in my hand, bunch it and lift it and then I'm skittering my fingers over his flesh, rubbing my palm against his skin, roaming around to his back and up his spine, back down to his stomach and up the broad expanse of his chest. He mirrors my action, slipping his hand under my shirt and exploring up my back to just beneath my bra strap, and his hand is strong and gentle.

  It's a kiss I don't want to break away from. Usually, a kiss is nothing more than a gateway to sex, a way to ease into nudity and penetration. But this is different. He's in no rush, kissing me slowly, thoroughly. His mouth explores mine, learns my kiss and my response. His tongue teases mine, flicking out against my teeth and tongue and then retreating until I'm hungry for his tongue inside my mouth, eager for it, demanding it, tasting the inside of his mouth and exploring his hard body and thick muscles and taut flesh.

  His hands skim over my belly and roam the centimeters beneath my bra, sliding closer but not daring to touch. I don't want this to stop. I need this. I'm sober and doing this with my eyes wide open. I know this won't solve anything, and I'm not trying to use him as a salve or a rebound. I'm doing this because I want his body, because in the few short hours I've known him, I've grown to enjoy his presence and his personality. I don't know where this will go, after tonight, and I don't care. I just want now. I want his hands and his mouth and all of him, for as long as I can have him.

  I push his shirt up and rip it off, toss it aside, and let my hands explore his body. God, he's ripped. He's not heavily muscled in a beefcake sort of way, he's more cut and toned and defined. He's big, though. Over six feet tall, easily, and probably weighs a good two hundred pounds of solid muscle.

  I try to slow myself down, to delve back down into the kiss, to let my hands learn his torso, explore the mountain-ridge of his shoulders and the valleys of his abs and the thick iron of his arms. My hand slides from his shoulder to his bicep, clutches the bulging muscle, and then down his forearm, and then our hands are palm-to-palm, and then his fingers are curling between mine.

  And the rightness of my han
d tangled in his changes everything. It's simple, natural, and scary. It takes my breath away, and I have to break the kiss, touch my forehead to his and gasp for oxygen, and I realize we're both staring at our joined hands.

  I pull away to look into his eyes, and I see the familiar weltering turmoil in his liquid brown gaze.

  My free hand, resting on his shoulder, lifts seemingly of its own accord to touch the stubble on his cheek, and my thumb traces the shell of his ear. His gaze is intense and unwavering and indecipherable.

  And then I'm attacking him, mouth hungry against his and we're twisting and he's falling backward onto the couch cushions, bringing me with him as we go horizontal. He's a hard presence beneath me, and I can feel his erection thick at my stomach. His hands curl over my shoulders, hesitate, and then slide down my back, over my spine until they pause again at the swell of my ass, and I can only wonder why he's hesitating, why he doesn't take what I'm so obviously offering.

  He breaks the kiss, his fingers digging into my skin. "Echo...wait." There's pain in his voice alongside the heaviness of need. He doesn't want to wait any more than I do, but something is holding him back.

  I move off him, and since he's taking up the entire couch all I can do is slide to the floor beside him. But I can't bring myself to break contact entirely, so I leave my hand on his chest and examine his face, hunting for clues.

  "What, Ben? Did I misread the situation or something?"

  He shakes his head. "No...yes." He sits up abruptly, one foot going to the floor near me, the other, his hurt leg, extended out in front of him. He runs his hands over his scalp, through his hair. "I just...I can't."

  "Why?" I ask.

  He only shakes his head, as if he can't or won't explain.

  I grab his hand. "Ben. Talk to me. What's wrong?"

  "Don't ask, Echo. Just...don't. Please. I need...I need a minute." He scoots forward and swings his other foot to the floor, struggles forward and to his feet, hopping to keep his weight off his injured knee.

  I watch him leave through the back door, one hand on his cane, the other rubbing the back of his neck and scrubbing through his hair over and over. He's out in the long deep shadows cast by the moon and the lights from apartments and the lone orange lamp suspended from a power line over the courtyard.