by Ginger Scott
I move our hands lower as I step closer to him, and the vibration in his hands begins to spread throughout his nervous body. I let go of one hand and move it up the length of his arm, stopping at his bicep, where I bring it to the center between us, laying my fingers flat against the center of his chest. His breath is ragged, and his pulse is wild. His eyes are begging me to fix everything that’s broken, but just as he said—I know what he knows. I don’t have any answers, but my instincts are strong.
My other hand falls away from his hold and I bring it up the length of his body, his stomach and chest warm under my touch, and his trembling almost as strong as the rhythm of his heart. I don’t stop until my other hand is cupping his face, his cheek rough from needing to shave, his breath hot against my arm and hand. His front teeth are closed together tightly, but his lips are parted enough that I can hear him breathe out in tiny, painful bursts. My thumb draws a line along his cheek, and I fall into the blue of his eyes a little more.
“I don’t have the answers either, Wes, but there are two things I am certain of,” I say, bringing my right hand up to match my left, holding his head in my palms. He does the same to me, his timid fingers finding me with a desperate touch as his eyes close. I push up on my left toes, holding the weight of my body as I stretch to match his height. Wes bends his head down, until our foreheads touch.
“I don’t need a hero anymore,” I say, and I feel his face shudder at the rejection, even though it isn’t one. I’m not rejecting him, I’m rejecting the idea that I’m not strong enough to fight in this along his side. “Shhhh,” I say, stepping an inch closer, close enough that my lips graze against his. His mouth opens to catch my top lip, to suck in softly and taste me like I’m a drop of water in the desert, but only for a single breath.
“I don’t need a hero, Wes,” I say again, pressing our foreheads tight again, my thumbs both drawing soft lines along his jaw. “I just need you.”
His eyes open on my words, and I lean back enough to look into them.
“I need you,” I repeat. We stare silently at one another, and I feel how hesitant he is, his fears worn on his face, but his weakness for us just as obvious. “I need you,” I say one more time. “And you are not my villain.”
My teeth grab onto my bottom lip as I shake my head. I raise a shoulder and smile through my nerves, through everything that hurts—through admitting I need Wes, and I see everything inside of me reflected in him.
“I can’t let you feel hurt,” he says, closing the few inches between us, his hands moving to the base of my neck and sweeping into my hair.
“When my dad was at his worst, Wes. When my life was complete and utter shit, do you remember what you said to me?” My hands fall to the middle of his shirt, grabbing the soft gray cotton and holding it in a way I’ve ached to do for months.
“You said you couldn’t let me do it alone,” I say. “You couldn’t watch me carry that burden without helping. Let me help now.”
“But I need to protect you,” he says, and I shake my head and smirk before he’s done speaking.
“No, Wes,” I say. “I need to protect you.”
His eyes close and I follow as his mouth takes over mine, his lips tasting me as his tall frame shadows me from anything else in the world. I hold onto his shirt with my clenched fists, and slowly I begin to feel everything I’ve kept at a distance. I feel his worry for me, his apprehension and apologies, but I also feel the way his heart has steadied in his chest. Whatever he thinks he does for me, it’s the other way around. I give him peace.
“I’m your home,” I say, not realizing at first that the words I uttered against his mouth were out loud.
His mouth draws along mine in slow sweeps, resting with my upper lip caught between both of his again.
“I think maybe you are,” he says in a whisper.
“I was angry,” I say.
“I know,” he says, and his breath tickles my upper lip. I smile against him.
“I was angry because I love you, and I never got to say it.”
“I know,” he says again, his lips nibbling mine softly before he runs his nose along my cheek, the roughness of his chin scratching along my neck and sparking a rush of goosebumps along my arms.
“You know I was angry?” I say through a light laugh.
“I know you love me,” he says, and I bunch my face, parting enough to look him in the eyes again. “Subtlety is not your thing,” he says, pulling me close once more and kissing my forehead.
Reality chimes in without warning, the knock on my front door abrasive and loud. The screen rattles under a heavy hand, and both Wes and I shake from the calm we managed to find amid this storm.
I follow Wes to my front door, and he opens it to let in two officers. We shake their hands, but I know the moment my eyes connect with the silver-haired cop that my story is about to take another twist. I was nine, and the man in front of me was probably forty then. He took notes, and he was the last to leave. The moment I say my name, he’s going to remember why this place—why this house—looks so familiar.
Another car crashed into things here once. We were both here for it when it happened. My dad was probably drunk when it happened, and I…I should have died.
“Let’s see, so can you tell me what happened here? To the best of your knowledge, Miss…Miss…Winters.”
I expect the man’s eyes to widen, for recognition to hit and cut between us like lightning, but it doesn’t. His name is Officer Polk. I memorized it as I stared at it printed on his shirt when I sat cradled in Wes’s arms in my driveway as a child. He flips open a small book and clicks a pen, ready to take another routine report. He doesn’t recognize me. The decade erased my tragedy from his memory bank. My heart thumps wildly, but with each blink of my eyes, the beat slows, and I start to retell my version of what happened tonight. I’m almost calm, relieved that I’m the only one who seems to connect the past, when the second officer holds his ear against the radio strapped to his shoulder, ducking outside away from us. I continue to tell my story, but I’m unaware of the words coming out of my mouth. My attention is focused on the officer, on how long he’s outside before stepping back through my door, interrupting my statement to share something private with his partner. He mumbles something, and they both glance at me, then to Wes.
Digital paper trails will always lead back to my past, and all it took was a few keystrokes to pull up my name and address to resurrect my near-death experience here. Officer Polk remembers me now.
“Are you family?” His eyes are set on Wes. He knows who he is, too. They’ve interviewed him about what happened here before, and Wes always claims he doesn’t remember a thing.
“A friend. She was scared,” Wes answers.
“Can I see your driver’s license or I.D., please?”
Wes smiles and nods with tight lips, pulling out his wallet as Officer Polk steps closer to him. He takes the license in his hand, and I hold my breath as I watch his eyes scan the details.
“Wesley Christopher Stokes,” he reads, glancing sideways to his partner then back to Wes. “Mind if I hang on to this for a minute?”
Wes shrugs. “Sure.”
The officers look at one another again and have a silent conversation.
My eyes meet Wes’s in that brief moment, and with the slight shake of his head, I know exactly what he’s going to do. He’s going to lie, just like he always said he would when my dad’s case came up again for review. He’ll tell them his name is Wesley. He’ll say he knows he was in an accident when he was little, but that he doesn’t remember anything about it. He’ll say he doesn’t remember me, and I’ll have to act surprised, as if I didn’t know it was him all along.
We’ll add to the mountain of lies and hope we don’t die from their weight. The problems lay beyond us, though. They begin when this conversation has to include my dad—who purchased the car in the driveway—and Wes’s parents, who are going to want to know what’s going on. Everyone is going to real
ize the miraculous chain of events that somehow put the two of us back together again, and then life is going to change one way or another.
Thirteen
I’m not sure what’s happening, but I know that Officer Polk is pretending just like us. You can’t fake reactions like he had. But he never brought it up. He asked us questions, filled out a report, and then asked me to call my father.
That’s where things stand now as Wes and I wring out these last few minutes of our beautiful illusion. My father is coming home from his second job. He’s worried, and he’s pissed because my car is totaled. And two officers are parked out front waiting.
“I don’t think there’s a way any of this is going to be okay,” I say, picking a weed from the hardened dirt berm Wes and I are sitting on in my backyard. I hold it up to inspect under the moonlight, admiring how pretty even an ugly weed can be in the right setting.
“This used to be my favorite place on the entire earth,” Wes says, not even acknowledging my worry.
I stretch my legs out and lean back on my elbows, feeling the sharp rocks and dried bits of grass poke into my arms as I look at Wes. He pulls his hat from his head, tossing it on the ground between us, his hair a tangled, brown mess that he weaves his fingers into as he rests an elbow on his knee and looks over the barren space that is my backyard. I follow his gaze around the perimeter of our home, along the patio covered in dirt, a half-filled recycle bin, old bats and gloves that haven’t been touched in years, and the barbecue my dad bought right after my mom left us. She hated meat, and he hauled that thing home in an act of rebellion. He used it once.
“I thought this place was magical,” I say through a sideways grin. Wes’s head twists just enough that his eyes catch mine, and his lip tugs up on the side closest to me.
“Who do you think would have won?”
I stare back into his eyes, hearing nothing but the sounds of crickets and the steady purr of traffic along the highway off in the distance. I sit up and pull my legs in, crossing them and tugging the end of my T-shirt over my chilled knees. Hugging them, I rest my head on the top and give in to the pinch of the smile my lips are dying to make.
“The day of the final race?” I ask.
Wes nods, his mouth hinting at a smile, too.
I let the quiet linger for a few seconds, blinking as I breathe out a short laugh.
“I would have kicked your ass.”
The silence is destroyed by Wes’s thunderous laugh, his head cocked back and his eyes shut.
“I knew that’s what you’d say,” he says as his chin falls back to his chest and he twists to look at me. “I don’t know, though…”
“You don’t know,” I repeat, biting the inside of my cheek, my lips puckering in a smile.
“I mean…you never really got to race me.” Wes shrugs his shoulders and lifts a brow, trying to tempt me.
“You know what I think?” I tease. He responds with a slight lift of his chin, and I move closer to him, my movements slow and smooth. “I think…if speed was your super power, then you’d probably…be able to…”
My mouth ticks up on one side as my eyes haze and concentrate on his, even though my attention is not there at all. It’s on his hat, only inches from his hand, but closer to mine. I position my left foot on the ground, ready to push myself up for my escape. Wes’s head tilts with suspicion, and just as his eyes flash wider, I grab his hat and sprint down the berm.
“You’d be able to save your precious hat from me throwing it out in the alley!”
I giggle as I run, ducking and weaving as Wes tries to capture me. I teasingly pretend to throw his hat over the back wall, never actually doing it, and I use the angle of the hill to push off and gain speed. I know I can’t outrun him completely. That was never my goal. It wasn’t even really about eventually getting caught.
It was about getting back to us.
“I’m pretty sure you’re disqualified,” Wes shouts, finally wrapping me up in one of his arms and swinging me over his shoulder.
“My race, my rules, Wesley Christopher!”
With my head dangling upside down and his hat clutched in my right hand, I tug at the waistband of his jeans and shove his hat in the back of his pants, laughing so hard my voice practically gurgles.
“You think that’s going to save you?” he teases, spinning with me over his shoulder, his hands gripping the back of my thighs as the ground below me forms a dizzying circle as we go around and around.
“You’ve seen me throw up, Stokes. Careful what you wish for,” I say, secretly loving the way my head feels lighter, the way my hair splays out in the wind and my fingers tingle as the blood rushes down my arms. “You know I won’t give in. There’s no way I’m losing!”
Wes circles me through the air one more time while rolling my body back over his shoulder, but catching my thighs until I’m held in front of him, cradled.
“Fine, Josselyn,” he says through a smile that spans his face but slowly slides into something more intimate.
Wes’s eyes paint my face in gentle strokes as he holds me in his arms, his body now still as we stand in the middle of the place where we began. My face starts to tingle from his attention, and for just a moment, I forget everything that waits for us on the other side of the house.
“I was going to let you win,” I say, my eyes set on his. I could look around him and see thousands of stars. It’s the one gift of living in Bakersfield on nights without a moon. But I can’t tear my eyes away from him.
He’s home.
“You swore that there was no way you were losing,” he laughs, the vibration in his chest like hearing my favorite song, the way it feels against my body.
“Not now. Not…not just then,” I say, pulling my lip into my teeth and glancing up at the stars once. I let my lip go and breathe out, feeling the stretch of my mouth as it curves into my cheeks and my eyes move back to his.
“Then,” I swallow. “When we were kids. Before I got worried about everything with my parents, I decided that if you looked sad when you showed up for the race that I was going to let you win.”
Long seconds pass with his gaze on mine, his mouth curved with the hint of a grin, his breathing a slow and steady wave taking me up and down in his arms, soothing me.
“Maybe it wasn’t your race to give to me,” he says, his smile growing crooked.
“I would have won it…for you. I wouldn’t have lost,” I shake my head. “It would have mattered too much to me.”
Wes’s forehead comes to rest on mine, and I breathe in the nearness of him.
“I haven’t gotten drunk or smoked or any of it since the last time you saw me at the bottom,” I say, my eyelashes tickling his cheek as my lids fall shut. I feel his fingers adjust their hold, twitching with nerves. “I knew…I always knew that you were alive, and I wasn’t going to go back to that place.”
His nose grazes along my cheek as his chest rises with a deep breath that he holds this time.
“What place is that?”
“The one where you found me,” I say. “Where it’s dark, and I hurt myself so I can feel something. Where I feel alone.”
It’s quiet between us, but the right kind of silence. It’s peaceful, and I remind myself to remember how this feels. Never will I settle for anything less.
“You are never alone, Joss,” he says, letting my legs slide from his grip until I’m standing in front of him. He runs his thumbs through my hair, pulling it back behind my ears on both sides and pausing when his palms find my cheeks. “There are so many people who love you in this world. I’m merely one of them.”
I tip-toe to kiss him, but the moment my mouth finds the softness of his lips, my father’s throat clears.
“Were you home for this?”
My fingers are woven through Wes’s and I’m squeezing so hard that I may break his bones. Though his bones don’t seem to break, so I’ll probably just break mine. My father is standing a foot into the covered patio, the garage door ope
n behind him. His head keeps swiveling from Wes and me to the damage behind him.
“Did the officers see you come in?” I sidestep his question.
“Yeah, they’re waiting by the car. I told them I wanted to find you first,” he says.
My father’s face is red. He’s always had a tell for his temper, but this…this is different. This is the same way he looked when the bridge collapsed and our bus rolled. It’s fear.
Wes and I follow my dad back through the garage to the driveway, where the officers are both now examining the front of my dad’s car. The bumper is missing, and deep gouges bend the metal at the front of the hood.
Officer Polk has quit pretending, and the moment his partner pulls Wes aside toward the house to “ask him a few questions,” I know that the blissful moment I had minutes ago in my backyard is the last I might have for a very long time.
“Mr. Winters, can you tell me where you were this evening?” Officer Polk asks.
My dad’s head tilts and the wrinkle on his forehead deepens.
“I’m sorry?”
“Sir, please just answer the question,” the officer says.
My dad’s lips part and his eyes begin to blink rapidly as he looks from the destroyed gift he gave me to his own banged up vehicle. I can see his chest shudder with panic, and I instinctually move to stand closer to him. His wide eyes move to me, though, and he holds up his hand, his fingers stiff and spread.
“No, no…it’s fine. Yeah, sure…I…I have a night job. I’ve been working at Crane’s Tack and Feed, stocking and inventory. And I know,” my dad pauses to let out a nervous laugh as he gestures to his crinkled hood. “This looks weird, but I did this on my way to work tonight. Some guy backed his trailer into me and it hooked under the front…ripped the bumper right off. He offered to pay for it, so…”
“So you were at Crane’s…tonight,” Officer Polk says, not bothering to look up from his notepad.
“I was,” my dad answers, clearing his throat lightly after he speaks. His hands fidget at his sides as he rocks from foot to foot.