Retracing steps, my feet remember and my heart regrets. I turn right at the top of the stairs.
It’s simple with Valarie—thoughtless. We’re the same inside and out. I’m as hopeless and she’s as ruthless, both of us every bit as self-seeking and capable of destroying lives.
Our own.
Each other’s.
Leigh’s.
I don’t think Val would fuck with my phone, but she could if she wanted to fuck with me—she could ruin more than she knows, and the thought makes panic grip my chest.
When I get to the room we were in, bad decisions linger in the air, making it burn to breathe as I throw the pillows from the bed. I tear its sheets off. Dropping to my knees, I look under its frame, and when my phone’s not there, I push the mattress off the rails.
I rip the room apart, opening drawers, knocking things over, pushing my hood back, racking my memory. I look everywhere. Twice.
Panic grips from tight to dangerous, and I’m caught up in looking that I don’t hear Casper walk by.
“What are you doing?” He laughs, strolling through the open door when I turn to look.
“Hey,” I say, distracted. I look behind the headboard. I kick the pile of blankets.
Cas sits in a wicker chair across the room and starts talking, but I’m absent. Wading inside through puddles of alcohol and clouds of smoke, I separate blankets from sheets.
If Val has—
I drag my hands down my face, angry. I’m nervous, fearful of how fucked everything good to me can be.
“So, Mix doesn’t care,” Casper’s still talking, but he sounds sidetracked. “She looks right at the guard and tells him to get fucked. She’s fucking wild, D.”
I exhale into my hand, surveying the room and turning to face him.
“Hey.” Cas has cut up two white lines on the glass of a picture frame. He angles them toward me in offering. “You want in on this?”
My strung out pulse crowds my ears, and my nerves keep twitching, flipping, demanding I do something.
“It’ll take the edge off,” he says.
Pulling my hood back over my hat as I walk over, I nod. “Call my phone?”
“Yeah, sure.” He smiles as he hands me the rolled up Ben Franklin and reaches into his back pocket.
While he makes the call, I crouch down over the cedar chest that the frame sits on. The picture is obscured by the lack of light in the room and my own darker shadow. I press my left nostril closed like I’ve seen Val do, and I bring the bill to my right. I don’t breathe. I don’t fucking blink. I don’t think.
Starting at the end of the first line, I inhale with zero indecision.
And it’s swift.
My blood rushes like a fast-burning fuse toward black powder.
I switch nostrils and do it again, and my chest detonates like the sky on the Fourth of July.
My head’s tilted back and I’ve got the tips of my fingers to my nostrils. There’s a burning that hurts and consumes, and it’s terrifying, but it’s not physical. It’s devouring from behind my eyes and down the back of my throat, and when I stand up, it’s like the whole world comes up with me.
I feel like a heart attack.
I feel sky high like God and measureless.
I feel like living, breathing, beating, white-hot fire.
I expected the drug to burn, but it didn’t. It doesn’t. It rushes. I feel it behind my heartbeat, slowing it deeper than ever, and then it’s beating everywhere, faster than ever. My lungs expand and my ribs make room while all my muscles flex and my spine straightens. I’m blind and deaf to everything but the feeling of absolute, uncultivated energy.
Easily ten times higher than I’ve ever been or thought I could be, high like the fucking summer sun at noon, I feel invincible. Like giving a fuck was some rumor I heard one time.
Casper looks up at me with a slick grin, lids low over eyes that look black.
I wonder if mine are.
“Hey, shh, shut up, hey,” he tells me, holding his finger over his lips.
And I hear it too.
My phone’s ringing, and I actually feel my heart fall from my throat and open wide in my chest.
I follow the ringing to the bathroom, but my focus is on my pulse. Beating richly without any trace of regret or resentment, it’s never felt this smooth or deep. It feels made of freedom, and as perfectly steady steps and unclouded eyes lead me to the towel rack, I find my phone. It’s right where I left it when Bliss sent me to voicemail.
Bliss.
My unhindered heart sends her name singing through my veins.
I need her. I’m going to her.
Grabbing my phone, I head out of the bathroom. Casper tugs my arm as I pass.
“For later,” he says, handing me a folded and burned closed corner of cigarette cellophane. There’s a rock in it about the size of my pinkie fingernail.
In my head, I tell him I’m good and keep moving, but in this moment, in real life, I say, “Thanks, man,” and bury the drug in the bottom of my front right pocket. Then I keep moving, and I sense it with every step—I’m aware. I’m more conscious than I’ve ever been before.
Outside is every bit as different from inside as downstairs was to upstairs. I’m thermal with heat to spare, but the nighttime breeze is cool on my face and arms.
I want to step out of my shoes and run. I feel like I could run all the way to the sun and it’s not up yet.
Alone in the Lincoln, my pulse beats harder and harder in the enclosed space. I take my hood off, then my hat, then ditch my sweater altogether. As I drive, anxiousness creeps back in, burning with the capability radiating through my limbs. I’m breathing too quickly. There’s this gross, crushed aspirin and Lysol taste on the back of my tongue, and my chest feels clenched up, too full of beats.
Driving with one hand on the wheel and the other over my heart, I consider calling 9-1-1 more than once.
All the while, the same muscle that’s pulsing too hard is thrashing love’s name.
I want my girl.
Nothing else matters.
My hands and feet have brought me to her street without consulting my mind. When I put the car in park at the end of her block, my conscience doesn’t argue. It wants Bliss as severely as every other part of me.
Late night air takes some of my heart-thunder from my ears as I get out and walk. My pulse goes from storming to steady with every step that’s led by pure purpose and total determination. I keep to the shadows and cut through dark yards, making the simplest, straightest, shortest line to where love is.
As I approach her home, my sorest and hardest working muscle goes from beat-pulsing love’s name to demanding it. The closer I get, the stronger it becomes. There are windows and walls between us now, but it won’t settle for anything less than Bliss.
I can feel her force the second I step into her mother’s yard. I’ve never been allowed into my little sister’s best friend’s room, but I know which window is hers. I know where I need to be.
Love is intuition, and it’s heartbeat-buzzing in my hands and vibrating through my veins.
Love is following meaning to find significance.
Love brought me here, and love is worth every risk and all the laws I’m about to break.
Thad and Teri McCloy’s front porch is too well lit, so I walk around the house. Covered in darkness, there’s a side door that opens to the kitchen, and I have to be silent. There’s not a doubt in my mind that the good judge keeps a loaded gun close to where he sleeps.
I know he does, because my dad does.
I know, because if Bliss was mine to protect, I would too.
Glancing around the slumbering neighborhood and back to the barrier in front of me, I think about picking the lock. But when I touch the handle, concentrated capability rushes with my pulse. The whole door feels like it’d be easy to break with one hard push.
So, I do.
And it does.
With one step, I’ve broken and entered
, and there’s no going back.
Carefully closing the kitchen door behind me, I look around, letting my eyes adjust to darker-dark. I listen for movement, but the McCloy house is fast asleep. There’s not a sound save for air-conditioning blowing from the vents, the humming refrigerator, and my own heart pounding beats so fast they sound like electric echoes in my ears.
Moon and street light filter in through ivory curtains in the living room, barely lighting my way as I head toward the stairs. At the bottom of them, I pause, listening with all my senses. I concentrate on a breath and return my hands to my pockets, gripping my keys to keep them quiet. Lifting my foot for the first step, I hope to God none of them creak.
When the first one doesn’t, I take the next, and the next.
Beyond alert, I feel wide awake as I move, like potential and intensity personified. My hands curve into fists as I climb closer to her. My shoulders tense and my jaw flexes as I clench my top teeth against my bottom ones. My dick hardens, aching and straining with each step, half with pure adrenaline and half in anticipation of love, and I straighten my spine like a razor as I reach the top.
My lungs swell and clench around my heart in a pattern that makes breathing hurt. They’re commanding what my whole body wants: quickness, comfort, relief—Leigh.
I take the top step and know right away which door is hers.
Love knows.
Love feels the pull that’s impossible to defy.
Love is the pull.
Head down, eyes up, I pass the bathroom and then right by her sleeping parents’ open door, straight to my girl’s closed one.
My heart burns a riot against my ribcage.
Under my fingers, Leigh’s door handle is cool. It turns easily and opens as silently as I need it to. Once I’ve closed it behind me and I’m in her room, finally and for the first time, I exhale.
Even her air is consoling.
Leigh’s space is all girl. The little lamp on her nightstand casts a subtle golden glow across everything that’s cloaked in dark. Her desk and dressing table, her dresser and her bookshelf, it’s all neat and clean, uncluttered, and hers. Middle-of-the-night subdued and cut out of soft light, everything is pristine looking, innocent, unsuspecting, and susceptible. Including her.
Fast asleep on her side, baby’s bent knees are pulled to her stomach. She has light purple blankets resting below her waist, and she’s wearing my baseball hoodie.
My smile is unrestrainable.
Soft strawberry blonde locks have slipped out from under the hood she has pulled over her head, and with one arm tucked under her pillow, she has her other folded along her chest. Her hand’s tucked under her chin and covered almost completely by my too-long-for-her sleeve; little girl knuckles peek out.
I take hold of her fingers, gripping them in my own as I curve my free arm under her in one quick movement.
Leigh sucks in a deep breath, startled from her sleep, and I sink against her, shifting and angling so our whole bodies touch. My neck and shoulder are above her face, there for her to gasp and panic into. Her heart thumps like crazy in her chest, right under mine, and I feel her breathing hard against my skin.
“You have to be quiet,” I tell her, pushing her blankets out of the way. Gripping my sides through my tee, she nods, but I can’t make it clear enough. “You can’t make a sound, baby.”
I’m dizzy in love, swallowed up, and consumed entirely. “Baby, baby, baby …”
Nodding more, faster, she twists and turns her head to look at me with sleepy greens as she lets me fit between her legs. Her mouth falls open as I push against her, and she grips fistfuls of my shirt. Surprised eyes close tightly, and she presses her lips together, struggling to keep silent.
I kiss along her cheek and creep my hands under the bottom edge of my hoodie and her sleep tank. Warm like summer sunsets and soft like melting together between dreams, this girl is perfect. She’s safe and soft and mine.
Sliding my left hand under her pajamas and along her naked back, I tilt her head with my right hand and press my thumb into the corner of her secret-keeping mouth. She opens, and I kiss her made-for-kissing lips.
Breaking apart only to tug my hoodie and her sleep shirt away, I lay her back down and kiss from the corner of her smile to the top of her chest. Small and soft, her breasts rise and fall with breaths she can’t steady under my touch, and she whimpers behind sealed shut lips when I circle her nipples and cover her with my palms.
“You have to be quiet,” I whisper.
Pulling her right hand from my shoulder, she presses the back of it to her mouth while she brushes left fingers through hair at the back of my neck, gripping me closer. I shift between her legs, pressing against her and kissing between her breasts. With my mouth on the center of her chest, I can feel her pulse and I follow it with open lips, a little higher, more to the left. When I’m where it beats hardest, I press my teeth and tongue right to the best sound in the world.
Baby arches up and restrains a cry while skin only I’ve ever touched becomes tender under my kiss, like it’s going to give.
Deep in my own chest, lost between hard and soft drugs, my pulse throbs. It inundates me with beats that sear and overwhelm. My ribs feel like thin paper, and I’m burning. I can’t get a grip. I feel too strong, too big for my body, and panic is back, tightening its hold.
Leigh shifts, delicate and vulnerable under me. She brings her hand to my face like she wants me to look her in the eye, but I can’t. I don’t know how to contain this, and her precious heart keeps pounding—harder, fastening me more completely to her with every beat.
My eyelids squeeze closed.
“I need you, Bliss,” I hear myself tell her. “I need you bad. I can’t …”
Everything spins, but her heartbeat remains.
My blood courses, too loud, too fast. Too hard. Too much.
Opening my eyes, I see love clearly, but this can’t be real. Today. Tonight. Right now. This kind of total consumption can’t happen, but it’s inside and underneath and all over me. It’s why I exist, and I can’t handle it.
Beloved life palpitates right under my lips, and in one quick shift, I cover this girl’s mouth with my hand and dig my teeth into her chest.
Under my palm, Leigh cries out and grips onto me with both hands. Wanting to break through skin and bone, and mark the small muscle I cherish more than my own, I bite until I feel thin skin surrender. I drag and deepen my teeth, making her bruise and open, and I press my tongue to the coppery taste of life, helpless in the harmony of uncontainable beats.
When her fingernails break my skin, I loosen up, but keep the mouth I love covered because meaning and significance is far from quiet. She shudders underneath me, pushing my shoulders for mercy, but her fingers are curled tightly, and the little sounds she’s making are born-for-love wrapped.
“I love you,” I whisper, kissing softly over my mark, talking right to her heart.
L turns her head for me to uncover her mouth. I slide my hand into sleep-tangled curls that are just the right color, and when she can breathe again, she pants that she loves me, too.
We turn and tangle together, apologizing with shared breaths and forgiving with brush-touches. We don’t ask questions or trade faults, and this is how we work.
Leigh pulls my shirt off, and I bring her to my lap so we’re skin to skin. I wrap her in my arms and press my hands down her back, over her dimpled tailbone and lower. Curving both hands around both her cheeks, I bring her all the way to myself, and she smiles against the side of my mouth.
I could have her right now, like this. Right here in her room with her parents’ door open right down the hall.
“Thomas …” She moves her small hips with my hands.
Laying her back down, holding her dilated-from-the-dark and secret-lit eyes, I cover the only thing that makes everything okay, and roll my hips against hers like I would if I was inside.
Love’s beautiful like this, with lashes closed and parted lip
s curved up, holding on while I move.
Watching her cheeks turn pink and smile-shaped lips open further, listening to her draw smaller, quicker breaths deeper into her lungs, I slow our rhythm and lean down. With my lips over hers, I whisper, “I wish I was inside you, Bliss.”
Baby’s hips lift and her sun-freckled cheeks burn pink, and I know I have to stop. Tonight isn’t that night, but as I watch her riding what’s between us, I think about the torture that stopping sends through her. Instinct to give what I’ve made her wait so long for is all consuming suddenly, and I want to make her feel good.
“Girl.” I brush my fingers from her hip to the front of her stomach, tracing thin cotton. She’s caught up, and little lashes don’t flutter open until I lift my hips from hers. With her need-heavy green eyes on mine, I brush the backs of my fingers between Leighlee’s legs for the first time.
She’s soaked-hot underneath delicate pink cotton, and she makes a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sigh. Baby holds my look as my lids start to fall, heavy under how ready she feels, but I can’t bear not looking at her. With my knuckles and the backs of my fingers brushing along her softest place, I stroke and Bliss hums.
Turning my hand over, I slide with more pressure and lean down.
“I’m going to touch you right here,” I whisper, close to her ear and pressing a circle shape around where she’s open and warmest.
Leigh watches me, and I see all that she is. Strength and sweetness and difficulty, intuition and absolution, heart and home, the reason I think and feel and fuck up and fight and love–she’s everything.
“Tell me I can,” I whisper, stroking carefully and insistently.
Nodding her head, L reaches down and presses my hand harder with her own.
I take my time, giving her pressure that makes her bend before I shift. Pulling pink cotton down her legs, my eyes find her and Bliss is completely bare.
Love isn’t timid, but I want more.
I open Leigh’s knees further apart. She chases breaths she can’t catch. I glide my hands from her knees and up her thighs, and when I touch prettiest pink, baby lets go of my wrists to cover her mouth with both hands.
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