Where We Fell

by Amber L. Johnson

  “Never said what?” she asks and it’s muffled against my shirt. She’s clinging to my back so tightly I can feel her hands when they begin to shake.

  I take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and tightening my arms around her to brace myself before I confess. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I loved you before I messed everything up.”

  When she twists her head up to look at me, I can’t stop the momentum of my feelings. I cradle her chin between both hands and kiss her with everything inside me. I kiss her like I mean it. Like if I don’t, she won’t know. And I need her to know.

  I’ve loved her since she bought me a piece of pie I never ate. It’s obvious now that I wasn’t protecting her heart by not telling her. I was shielding my own.

  Hannah kisses me back until I can taste the salt of her tears gathering along our lips where they meet. She holds tightly to my hands as I tilt her face towards mine. But her eyes are screwed up tight and her body is too stiff, so I stop and pull away to look at her questioningly.

  She breathes in quickly and takes a step back to wipe the tears from her eyes. “I can’t,” she whispers and turns her head away, so I can’t see her face. But I can.

  “You can’t what?”

  “I just—” She finally looks at me and her chin quivers before she lets out a sob that cuts me in half. “I realized I don’t really even know you. I fell for Sick Oliver. Even though I said it didn’t have anything to do with it—and it didn’t—you weren’t the guy who said the things he said last night. You weren’t this Oliver. And I don’t know this Oliver. So I can’t say it back because I . . .” She wipes her eyes again and her hands tremble. “I think maybe I loved who I thought you were. And honestly, it feels worse. You got well and I lost you all in one day. It’s like you died.”

  In that moment, with less than a foot between us, I think that maybe she’s right.

  15.

  IT TAKES ME A SECOND TO PROCESS exactly what just happened. To understand her words.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I ask, the sound of my voice hollow in my own ears.

  She doesn’t speak, but just nods her head and turns away from me, her arms wrapped around her torso like she’s about to fall apart. I’m faced with two options: stay and make it worse, or leave like she’s asked. Feeling bruised and deflated, I choose the latter option because, really, what choice do I have?

  Coco is nowhere to be seen, and a quick glance at the parking lot confirms that she’s left the apartment. When the door clicks shut behind me, I lean against it and close my eyes, fighting the urge to push it open and go back inside.

  I count to ten and wait, wondering if she’ll come after me, but she doesn’t.

  Yet I can’t make myself get in the car and leave. Instead, I go to my trunk and retrieve my old track bag. The parking lot is empty, and I’m feeling numb, so I don’t bother with modesty in the back seat of my car while I change clothes. The entire world could see my ass cheeks, and I wouldn’t even care. Emerging from the car, I take a moment to survey the area before deciding on the direction of west. With the decision made, I tighten my laces and roll my ankles, stretching just the slightest bit before taking the first step.

  And so I run. I run until I’m so thirsty I feel like I might die – which is probably only a mile, given how little I’ve been able to run like this recently. But I am stronger than I gave myself credit for. All of that doctor recommended exercise is proving just how much stamina I had before getting sick in the first place. My mind becomes clear, and so razor focused, that I forget where I am. I’m not even sure of how far I’ve gone before I turn and begin to run in the opposite direction backtracking until I start to see stuff I recognize.

  My car is still at Hannah’s apartment, so I point my feet east this time, sweat dripping into my eyes, and skin flushed hot from exertion. I can barely feel my legs when I finally come to rest beside my ride, leaning against it for support, staving off the rolling nausea that is threatening to overtake me. But I know I have to do something, so I push through. Because the idea that formed as I ran is so insane; I’m inclined to think it might work.

  Lifting my shirt to wipe off my face, I take a deep breath and stare at Hannah’s door. I have survived public school. I have survived living under the same roof as a man whose job hindered my social status amongst my peers my entire life. I have survived cancer. And I’m pretty sure it’s all paved the way to get me to this moment.

  With confidence that has lain dormant until now, I approach Hannah’s door and knock three times. After what seems like forever, she opens it a crack and looks up at me with swollen, red eyes. But before she can speak, I do.

  “Hi. I’m really sorry to bother you. But I was just taking a run around the complex, and I forgot I didn’t bring any water with me.” She’s confused, so I press on. Extending my hand like a gentleman, I introduce myself. “I’m Oliver. Oliver Bishop. I live in Perry and graduated last spring. I’ll be starting school here next semester.” She takes my hand and I have to stop from pulling her in for a familiar kiss. “What’s your name?” I ask, hoping she is beginning to understand.

  “Hannah,” she says with narrowed eyes, opening the door wider.

  “Nice to meet you, Hannah.” I wait as she stares. “I’m sorry. I know this is awkward, but I really am thirsty.”

  Leaving me at the door she grabs a bottle of water from the refrigerator and hands it to me, still staring me down. “What are you doing?”

  “Rehydrating. It’s essential when you run. Are you a runner?”

  “No.” She folds her arms and steps out of the door onto her stoop.

  After taking a long drink from the water she’s handed me, I thank her. “You might have saved my life,” I say, looking her in the eye. “Dehydration is a serious thing. Especially around here.” Looking towards my car, I nod my head. “I should get going.”

  “Okaaaaaay.”

  “Oh, before I go, do you know of any good vegetarian restaurants in the area?”

  “You’re a vegetarian?”

  I shrug and toss the water bottle in the air, catching it and pointing it toward her. “A plant based diet can cure a lot of illnesses. It’s good for you.”

  “Oh, yeah? Who told you that?”

  “My doctor.” I lie to get a reaction.

  “Is that so?” She tilts her head and looks me over like she’s seeing me for the very first time. “Your doctor told you that. Are you sick or something?”

  I smile and shake my head slowly. “Nope. Not anymore.” The heat of her stare on my back could cause a burn by the time I make it to my car. After opening the driver’s door, I turn to regard her one last time. “It was nice to meet you, Hannah. Maybe we’ll run into each other again when I start school.”

  I’m almost behind the wheel when I hear her yell my name. Leaning out of the car, I call back to her. “Yeah?”

  “There’s a good restaurant on The Square that makes veggie dishes that are to die for.”

  “Thanks. I’ll look into it.”

  She’s so pretty when she smiles, and I feel like it’s been a lifetime since I’ve seen it. It’s brief, but she does. “Well, let me know how you like it.”

  “Sure thing. But, Hannah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How will I get in touch with you?”

  She shrugs a little and lifts her hands in the air. “You seem to be a really resourceful guy. I think you’ll figure something out.”

  Her back is fully to me when I sprint from the car and stop her from closing the door. “Go to dinner with me.”

  Hannah, her eyes shining with the faintest glimmer of hope, presses her fingers to her mouth and looks away. “I don’t know. I just got out of a weird relationship and—”

  “Sounds awful. You should eat some quinoa to get over it.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “What?”

  “You said quinoa right.”

  “I know my grains.”

&
nbsp; Her smile falters and she leans against the front door. “What are we doing, Oliver?”

  I run the back of my fingers across her now dry cheek. “You think you don’t know me, but you should have figured out by now that I know everything about you. I know your favorite band and your favorite song, and that they aren’t from the same musicians. I know about your family. Your favorite foods. I know that your heart is made of gold and I was such an asshole to hurt it in any way. But I know you, Hannah.”

  She’s shaking again, but she reaches for me and presses her face to my neck as I continue.

  “I know that I fell for you the second you bought me pie, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself until my birthday. You are my favorite part of every single day. No matter how big or small. You helped me get here. I couldn’t get through these past six months without you. And I don’t want to go through the next six if you’re not with me. I think I would rather have died than imagine being here, so close to you, and not—”

  She doesn’t allow me to finish my sentence; she silences me with her mouth.

  And then Hannah lets me in.

  16.

  THE FIRST TIME I SEE HER, we’re in her bathroom, stripping down to get into the shower. She’s not shy. She lets me look. Then she lets me touch.

  And I do. I touch her like I’ve never done before. Water drenched and soft beneath my fingertips, she lets me love her. Hannah allows me to kiss her from forehead to toes, and I refuse to waste one inch of skin. Even when the water runs cold and I can’t feel my lips against hers anymore, I continue to touch her.

  She’s shivering against me, but laughing between gasps of pleasure. I want her and she knows it, because she’s touching me too. There are certain effects that chilly water can have on a guy, so I let her lead us out of the shower to dry off and start from scratch in her room, on her bed, across those paisley sheets I’ve only just now become so damn fond of.

  We kiss more. Long and slow, as she stretches up against me, her toes pressing into my ankles while we balance on our sides. We search with our hands, with our eyes; and it occurs to me that I must have survived for this one single moment here in this bed.

  “I love you,” I whisper, pressing an open palm to her cheek while the other is busy between us. She doesn’t have to say it back. The spreading blush across her neck and chest is enough for me now. It’s just so compulsive to say the words aloud.

  When she rolls to her back and scoots up far enough to reach her bedside drawer, I follow. There isn’t a part of her that I don’t want to know. There isn’t an inch of skin that should be left undiscovered.

  She laughs when I pull her too tightly to my chest, righting herself in my embrace to settle back onto the mattress. “I was trying to get something,” she sighs against my cheek. There’s an unopened box between our chests, causing my gaze to shift upwards, meeting hers. Lids at half-mast, she licks her lips and nods - just once - that this is what she wants. It’s awkward, working around the box and the packet, my attention continuously bouncing back and forth from what I’m doing to what I’m about to be doing. But she lies in wait, her hands roaming a circuit over my side and thigh until I’ve accomplished the task at hand . . . and then . . .

  “I love you,” she whispers, softer than before. The first time she says it, I not only hear it, but feel it from the inside out.

  ***

  By the time Coco comes home, the sky outside is dark and half of the box has been discarded into Hannah’s bathroom trash can. After the run and finally getting to be with Hannah, I needed a nap.

  She did, too, not to brag.

  A few hours later and we’re on the couch in the living room, eating dry cereal right out of the box and watching something that I can’t focus any attention on at all. Hannah’s head is in my lap and I’m not hiding the fact that I’m a nineteen year old guy who hasn’t had his fill for the day. She doesn’t acknowledge it, yet her cheek nuzzles lower every once in a while just to assure me that she knows. I’m just about to make a move when Coco shows up with a couple of bags in her hand, banging loudly to let us know that she’s home.

  “There’s a party two over,” Coco says while filling the fridge with groceries she got from the store. “It’s a costume party, obviously.” She peers around the kitchen wall and eyes the two of us like she knows. “I guess you two made up. Are you gonna stay the night, Dickup?”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that it was an option today, so I look down at my lap as Hannah glances up, a four leaf clover marshmallow dangling between her lips. “Would Stella mind?”

  I steal the clover and pop it into my mouth, smiling as I chew. “Not much longer and I won’t have to ask to do anything.”

  We end up two apartments over, crushed between strangers, dressed in the couple’s costume that had nearly ruined it all. Except tonight I’m wearing the doctor’s coat. And Hannah isn’t wearing the wig. Coco pulled out some thigh highs and a corset, fashioned a pair of wings, and is towering above both of us as the tooth fairy.

  “I guess I could be a dentist,” I had laughed when she cleared the door.

  Hannah had taken my hand in hers to lead us into the night. “I don’t care what you are, Oliver. You’re alive.”

  Living is a tricky thing. Because there’s a difference in living and just being alive. Standing in this apartment, holding onto Hannah’s waist, I feel completely and effortlessly alive. The music is loud, and the people are rowdy; drinks are being passed around us and above us, in one long pulse of movement. It fills me with something new: excitement for the future. Hope for something previously thought unattainable.

  She kisses me without thinking about it, and we’re free to do so. Nothing holds us back. Not even her ex when she points him out across the room. He’s smaller and less threatening than I’d imagined. And for one stuttering heartbeat, I feel sorry for him. Because he’d been so, so stupid to have let her go. And I had been smart enough to fight.

  We dance and we laugh. And I don’t stop touching her the entire night as she introduces me to everyone that she knows. There isn’t a trace of embarrassment in her eyes as she explains that I’ll be moving up in a few months. It’s no one’s business why I didn’t start in the fall. No one knows what has shaped me and brought us to this place. They simply know that Hannah is with me, sitting on my lap, dancing in my arms, kissing my lips.

  And frankly it’s all they need to know.

  ***

  Just before sunrise, we find ourselves lying in the dewy grass behind her apartment, a blanket haphazardly thrown across our feet as I hold her against my chest and we stare up at the ever brightening sky.

  It’s a gorgeous blend of gray and orange, and I lean up to speak, but Hannah places a cold tipped finger to my lips to quiet my thoughts.

  “Wait for it,” she says softly, her lips turned up into an anxious smile. When the sunrise is in full bloom, I can only see it reflected in her dark eyes.

  Leaning down to kiss her, I hold her as close as possible, grasping the moment before it slips away. Before I’m too exhausted to keep my eyes open a second longer. “What do we do now?” I ask into her ear.

  She shivers against my chest and holds me just as tightly.

  “Whatever the hell we want.”

  EPILOGUE

  MY MOM’S FACE IS PINCHED, tight, and on the verge of being dangerously red.

  “You can cry,” I tell her, pulling her to my side for a squeeze.

  “I’m not. Nope. I’m not going to.” Her voice cracks and I have to make a very concerted effort not to smile.

  “I’ll be thirty minutes up the road. Eighteen, tops, if Dad turns on the siren.”

  My dad rolls his eyes and puts the last of my things in the back of the car. He motions me over, hands me a twenty, and looks away before I can see that his eyes are red, too. “For gas,” he says, letting his gaze rest somewhere toward our roof. “Don’t speed.”

  “Thanks.” I wait for him to gather his composure, pushing my fis
ts into the front pockets of my jeans as the seconds pass. “I’m gonna be fine.”

  “Yeah, I know that, son.” He finally turns toward me and roughly pulls me to his chest. My hands are stuck in my pockets so it’s a little more awkward than it should be, but I let it happen. Before he can break the embrace, another set of arms surrounds us both.

  “I love group hugs,” Hannah squeaks under my shoulder as my dad moves to let her in. And then my mom has gotten into the mix and I wonder if the neighbors are as amused by this public display of affection as I suddenly am.

  “Okay, okay. Enough.” I’m released from my parents’ hold, but Hannah slips in against my side, and I hold her close as we both stare back at their feeble attempts to keep themselves intact.

  I’ve had every conversation imaginable with the girl safely tucked beneath my arm.

  “What if your cancer comes back?”

  “What if you get it? It seems to run in your family . . .”

  “Then I’ll kick its ass. Just like you did.”

  “Ditto.”

  Or:

  “Stella has me on speed dial. She’s already told me to limit your bacon intake to one meal a week.”

  “I’m pretty sure my mom can’t tell me what to do at college.”

  “She can if she’s blowing up my phone every day.”

  “Get used to it. Stella’s going to be calling you for a very long time.”

  Lastly:

  “Do you think Coco is going to be irritated with the amount of time I’ll be spending at your place?”

  “Do you think Kayleigh is ever going to make eye contact with me when we go on double dates?”