by Lindy Zart
“I watched you dance, that day in the trophy room,” he admitted. Harrison hesitated. “I’d like to watch you dance again.”
Beth smiled. “And you shall.” She offered a hand. Shook it when he stared at it. “Take my hand and let me dance for you.”
The empty room with its bare walls and lack of life pulsed with Harrison’s. He turned the lights and the walls and all the nothingness around them into a stage, and he was the performer. And who was Beth? Beth was the one Harrison let take his hand. It was warm and steady, and her fingers curved, never wanting to break contact. Just the feel of his hand on hers made her head dizzy, her mouth dry. Her core ache. Harrison’s fingers electrocuted her, stung her skin with the sweetest shock.
They stepped into the soundproof room with its lonely chair. It didn’t seem lonely anymore. It was a throne, and Harrison reigned there. Beth waited for him to sit, twisting her hair into a bun on the top of her head and holding it in place with the rubber band she removed from her wrist. She found the version of ‘The Sound of Silence’ by Disturbed on her phone and pushed play.
She focused on his dark eyes from across the room, his energy palpable around his form and in the air. His eyes narrowed a fraction as the music started, as she remained unmoving. The music reverberated through the room, echoed with beauty and sorrow. His index finger framed his jaw as he set his chin on his fist, his attention never leaving her.
And then Beth moved, sliding one leg back, arching her back and head as her arms swept overhead. She twisted in a low spin, contracting and releasing her body, flying. Soaring. Gliding. She dipped and turned, her neck loose, her face up. Faster and faster, until she was no longer a person and instead a piece of the music. Skin damp with perspiration, pulse speeding like it had a race to win, Beth danced. Her muscles cried, her heart sang, and Beth laughed, breathless and free.
She danced for herself; she danced for Harrison. The song changed to ‘Save My Soul’ by Rivvrs. Like a wave of motion, she swayed with the pull of the music. Beth turned and looked down at Harrison, needing him to dance with her. Needing that physical connection he continually denied. Her chest was in spasms with the force of her breathing, and as she gazed into dark eyes, she didn’t recognize the man.
Eyes of desire, lips of passion; a face set with want and need.
He shot to his feet, and his hand shook as he covered his mouth with it. The hand she wanted on her bare skin. She imagined his fingers, long and strong, undulating over her like a waterfall, and her breaths came faster. Harrison would say he could never be hers, and she could never be his, but it was already so. She felt him upon her heart, a brand that would not fade. She saw her mark in his eyes, a glint that made them shine for her. The light that only recently came to his eyes.
Beth offered her hands, need sparking through her eyes to him and back like a live wire. Touch me, her skin whispered. Love me, her heart added. Live for me, her soul asked.
He tilted his head, his eyes moving from her hands to her face. She didn’t imagine the crack in his voice as he asked, “What are you doing, Beth?”
“Dancing,” she said breathlessly.
“You don’t dance like anyone I’ve seen.”
She smiled, and it was tipped in secrets. “Good.”
Standing face to face, hands up, she pressed her palms to his and applied the smallest pressure. Beth kept their fingers unlocked. She stared into her own eyes through his, saw the building fire, the heat that couldn’t be ignored for much longer. Lines grew around his eyes as Harrison stepped back. Beth nodded once, moving her right arm out in an arc, Harrison moving his arm with her. She turned, and he went with her, and they gradually swayed the length of the room. It was slow, awkward.
Harrison’s smile was faint. Apologetic. “I’m not good at this,” he told her.
“You’re as good as you need to be,” she told him back. Beth paused before telling him words that had nothing to do with their dancing. “You’re as good as I need you to be. Focus on me, Harrison. I’m all that matters.”
He missed a step, his eyes shooting to hers. The harshness was gone from his features, leaving them sweet and soft. He stared into her eyes like he was listening to her, like her words made sense to him. Hope—she saw a glimpse of it in his frame.
She carefully moved her hands to the back of his neck and loosely locked her fingers. His throat moved as he swallowed, and he hesitantly set his hands on her waist. She briefly closed her eyes against the thrill that tingled through her skin, exhaling slowly. Beth chased his gaze until she caught it, and held it, the smile on her lips reaching up to her eyes. His hair tickled her fingers, and she inched closer, her face next to where his heart worked at an astonishingly powerful rate.
Beth heard it, felt it, revered it.
“You smell good, like sunflowers and sunshine,” he whispered as the song ended.
A small laugh left her as they stopped moving. She didn’t want to be the first to pull away, and she wasn’t. It was Harrison. She studied his back as he showed it to her, seeing the hints of muscle and bone. Beth wanted to run her fingers up and down the bumps and crevices of it.
“What’s happening between us?” When she didn’t immediately answer, Harrison turned.
“We’re getting to know each other’s heart. I’m glad I was introduced to yours.” Beth gingerly set her hand on his chest, felt the beat of his life against her palm. “I like your heart, Harrison.” She looked up, her eyes clashing with his.
“I like your heart too,” he told her falteringly.
Beth lightly touched the valley beneath his lower lip and above his chin. Harrison let her, closing his eyes and taking a deep, unstable breath. There was faint stubble that made the pad of her finger tingle. She studied his face as her hand fell away. His expression revealed things his mouth never would. He wanted to dream, like her. Beth’s eyes watered. She wanted him to know it was okay to dream.
“I’ll write you a world where no one ever dies, and there are no diseases, and everyone is good. I’ll make one for you, and you can live there. Every day, every night. You can pick up the papers and live in the words,” she said softly.
His eyes flew open, pain splitting his features. Harrison took a step back, unbalanced on his feet.
Beth made up for the distance he put between them, her legs weak and heavy. Her heart pounded, so hard, so fast, so loudly. How could he not hear it? How was it not resonating through the room? “Or I’ll read them to you, each night, before you fall asleep. You can go to sleep dreaming of your world. Each time you close your eyes, it will be there for you. Waiting. I’ll do that for you. I want to do that for you.”
“You can do anything,” he told her, his voice breathless and uneven. “You can write your worlds, and your stories, your books. You can do that, Beth. Never forget that you can do anything.”
“What if…what if more than all of that, I want to be with you? What then?” As soon as the question was asked, Beth went still, as still as Harrison. She hadn’t meant to ask it, but it had been there, in her thoughts, hovering, needing to be heard. Let me do that for you. For me. Let me write our world and let us live inside it.
All the light drained from his face. “That is impossible. You have to know that.”
“I don’t believe in impossibilities,” she told him, her bravery growing now that she’d said the words she’d been harboring, locked deep inside her. “And you just told me I could do anything. I want to be with you.”
“Beth. You don’t understand what you’re asking, what you would be welcoming into your life.” Harrison’s eyes tightened.
“I do know. I researched it.” She shook her head, a self-deprecating smile tugging at her mouth. “I researched it over and over. I know the risks. I know all I need to know, and I’m telling you, I’ll do it. Whatever I have to, I’ll do it. I’ll take a pill, I’ll get routine checkups. Whatever. I’m all in. All you have to do is say yes.”
A sliver of hope touched his face, raw and real, and it br
oke a piece of her heart. He looked so sad, so unbelievably shattered a lot of the time. He was stiff and dark and silent, holding it all in. Fighting. Pretending. She was telling him he didn’t have to. Beth was holding the invisible key to unlock all he was afraid to. He just had to take it.
“You talk about the bad things that could happen, but what about all the good? You feel it too—what I feel for you.” Beth watched his features tighten. “I know you do. If you tell me you don’t, I’ll know you’re lying.”
“There could never be anything physical between us. I wouldn’t let you risk it.”
“There could, if we were careful.”
“If we were careful.” His lips twisted in a sneer. “What kind of a relationship is that? Every day I would carry fear that I was unintentionally harming you in some way. Nothing could be spontaneous. Everything would have to be planned out, tested. It would be sterile, lacking. I would never know the feel of you wrapped around me. There would always be something between us. Figuratively. Literally.”
The room turned hollow, devoid of life and laughter. It went back to the emptiness she found in the house on her first day in Harrison’s employ. A bitter scent entered the air, and it was that of her heart crushing. She felt the pieces of it crumble. Harrison told her she could dream, as long it didn’t involve him. Harrison told her she could do anything she wanted, as long as she kept him out of it. Harrison was a hypocrite.
Harrison wasn’t done twisting her insides.
“And what if something happened, things got out of hand, and we weren’t careful? What then? You might be okay with putting your health at risk, but I’m not okay with allowing you to do so.”
He put space between them, and he kept putting more, until he was at the door, and then he was in the hallway. He didn’t have to move at all to reconstruct the wall. She felt it fall into place. He turned back once, to utter a single, catastrophic word.
“No.”
ELEVEN
A WEEK PASSED. A week of awkward conversations, prolonged silences, and darted looks that turned into lingering ones when the recipient wasn’t paying attention. She wanted more, and his slanted looks said the same. But Beth was willing to take a chance, a leap—yes, a risk, and Harrison was not. It was making her edgy, short-tempered. All she could think about was time, and how they were wasting it.
What would he say if she told him she’d already met with and discussed her options with a doctor? What would he say when he found out that she’d already gotten and started a regimen of prophylactic pills? Knowing what she’d done made her heart spin inside her chest, and her pulse shot up and down and side to side. Part in anxiety, part in anticipation. He would tell her she was crazy, that she was stepping into unknown territory she was not allowed to walk. Beth would tell him she was removing all the obstacles set before her, before them.
When Beth made up her mind about something, she couldn’t be dissuaded. Her mom found that out when she was thirteen, and one of her friends got in a car accident and had to have their long hair cut off. Beth was adamant that her hair be cut in a similar way to keep Britney Zalinski from feeling bad about her unwanted short hair. When her mom said it wasn’t necessary to cut her hair to let her friend know she was thinking of her, Beth cut it herself. Badly.
“Let’s go for a drive,” she suggested, keeping her eyes trained on the notepad on her lap. She didn’t want to see Harrison’s reaction—feared it, in actuality. He would tell her no, and Beth would feel small. It seemed to be one of his favorite words.
“Where?” Harrison sat in his customary spot, always with a book in hand.
She wondered if he’d already read through his collection of books and was rereading them. She wondered if he was really reading, or if he was staring at the words, like she was. So many letters, shoved together into words, into sentences, into paragraphs that were supposed to mean something. They were in her handwriting, written by her, and Beth looked at them and saw gibberish.
With a frown pinching the skin between her eyebrows, she looked up. It wasn’t a direct no. “I don’t know. Anywhere. I can show you the town.”
“No,” was the immediate answer, and she bristled at the sound of it.
“Have you actually ever been to Crystal Lake?”
“Yes. I had a meeting with Michael Peck, remember?”
Beth swallowed and dropped her eyes. Ozzy. He was suspiciously quiet lately. She didn’t think it was because of Harrison’s talk with him—she thought it was because he was up to something. It wasn’t like him to step back, give up, let go until he said it was time. She didn’t trust him to keep Harrison’s secret. He had no reason to, and more reason to not. Every day she woke up waiting for Ozzy’s next move.
“The fewer people who know who I am, the better,” Harrison continued. “I want peace, and that leaves you once you’re around civilization.”
“Then how about we take a drive around the countryside?”
“No.”
Beth’s face burned, and her lips went into a line. “Why not?” she said through her teeth.
He shrugged one shoulder, looking unruffled by her irritation, even looking like he was glad for it.
She set down the notebook and stood. “You’re always telling me no, and don’t, and stop. Screw you, Harrison.” She swiped the paper and pen from the couch cushion and stormed from the reading room, her feet loud and angry against the hardwood floor.
Yanking her coat from the hook, she shoved her arms through the sleeves and hopped around as she tugged on her boots. Beth grabbed the pen and notepad from where she’d tossed them on the floor and slammed the door after her. She was over halfway through his story. Soon there would be no reason for them to spend time together. Soon she would be gone from his life.
Blinking at the paper and pen like she didn’t know what they were doing in her hand, she chucked them into the Blazer and shut the door.
Beth squinted her eyes against the fierce rays of the sun and turned toward the driveway, pretending her heart didn’t lurch at the thought of no longer seeing Harrison. She shivered, more from her emotions than the chill in the air. Never hearing his voice, or feeling his presence, never seeing the glimpse of a smile he couldn’t help. No. She refused.
They were getting somewhere, day by day. He was seeing possibilities where he’d only allowed himself to see nothing. Now…now he purposely closed off his eyes to her. He looked at her, but he didn’t see her. He said he was going straight ahead, but somehow in recent days he’d bypassed her, taken a different path. One that didn’t make sense, one that went nowhere. Because Beth was right before him, and he abandoned her.
Beth inhaled raggedly, shoving hair from her mouth and eyes as she aimed her feet in the direction of the road that steeply swooped down. She braced herself against the dip in the earth and carefully stepped on the packed snow and ice.
“Beth. Beth!”
Tightness formed in her jaw, and she kept going, not really having a destination in mind. That Harrison went after her meant something, but it was paltry in comparison to what she wanted of him.
“Beth.” He caught up with her, out of breath. Fingers brushed along the back of her jacket, a touch she shouldn’t be able to feel through the fabric. Her nerves were heightened with every aspect of Harrison. “Where are you going?”
She spun around, angry and frustrated. “Time is something you could lose, at any second. Right now, there are so many better things we should be doing than…than nothing. Than this.” Beth gestured to the space separating them. It was invisible, merely air, and it felt like a hundred steel walls. “Time is a gift, and it’s being wasted on us. I don’t want to waste any more.”
Harrison took a step back at the look on her face, his eyebrows slamming together. His cheeks were two patches of color on a pale face. A face she had memorized, a face she saw in her dreams. A face Beth never wanted to stop seeing.
“If you don’t want to be together, then all of this is pointless. I shoul
dn’t even be here. It just makes it harder. I should go. I can write your book from my home. Being here with you, but not really being with you, hurts, Harrison.” Saying that hurt her, and the thought of Harrison agreeing hurt her more. Breathing hurt her, and waiting for him to respond hurt her too. Everything hurt.
Harrison swallowed, the motion seemingly painful to him. Maybe he hurt as much as she did.
“I can deal with your illness. I can deal with the days of hopelessness and sadness and anger. I can deal with it all, if I know you won’t shut me out. I know you want to be with me too. I see it in your eyes.” Beth clasped her hands together, her eyes telling him to believe her. To have faith—if not in him, then in her. “You’re allowed to be happy.”
Shards of pain, like sharp daggers of glass, filled his eyes. Cut the light from them. Deadened them. But he didn’t say anything. Harrison looked at her, and said nothing.
Words spewed forth. Words she hadn’t been aware she thought, until they were leaving her mouth. “You’re not the only one in the world with HIV, you know? And it could stay HIV. You don’t even know that it will progress to AIDS. And you’re just out here, pretending not to exist, and for what? So people talk, and people look at you funny, and people write stupid articles about you. People talk about everyone! People talk about me getting my hair done! People talk about everything. So what?” She threw her arms up over her head.
“You could be doing something good with your knowledge of this disease, and instead you’re doing nothing. You’re a public figure. People listen to public figures. You could be helping people who are struggling to understand what’s going on with their bodies, their lives, their futures. Suicidal people, angry people, depressed people.”
She stood in the driveway, a small figure with a loud voice, and Beth forgot about Harrison’s feelings, and his anger. She forgot about everything except what she needed to say, and he needed to hear. He looked back, a tall, voiceless figure made of granite. He didn’t try to talk, or move, or look away.