Yet still, I can hardly believe what happens. I run and run and run and suddenly there is nowhere to run. I break through the trees and take too long to process that there is only air beyond this point. Two inches of solid ground and then just air—and I can’t stop. I’m going too fast down the slope.
For a second I actually kind of pinwheel over a terrible precipice.
And then he just fucking snatches me right off the brink.
Honest to fucking God that’s what happens. If he wasn’t so fast and strong, I am absolutely certain I would have plunged to my death. Any other guy and I’d be a goner—and not just because he’s quite possibly superhuman. There is also one other indisputable fact about him, still clear as day despite that tattoo.
Any other guy wouldn’t have bothered to save me. If I’m completely honest, I’m not even sure if Tommy would have bothered to save me. No one would have done what he did, and if by some miracle they had tried, I know they wouldn’t react the way he does once I’m safe. He holds me like someone sucker punched him in the stomach and the only way to stop it from hurting is to keep me as close as possible.
And the things he says.
Does he know what he’s saying?
I can hardly stand to hear it. The sheer terror and panic in his voice is just too much to bear. Maybe I could accept it if he was more the sort of person to feel something like that, but when it comes out of someone like him…when it rolls out in that gravelly voice…I just can’t take it. “Why did you do that?” he says, over and over and over. But I don’t know how to answer him. The despair in the question alone is enough to overwhelm my vocal cords.
Then he strokes a gentle hand over my hair, and I think I might never speak again.
Does he honestly care this much? It has sometimes seemed as though he might, and yet it’s still a shock to hear it so clearly. He barely knows me—and what he does know must not seem all that impressive. Mostly I just blush and squirm in his presence, and even when I manage words, they’re never very good ones. His words are good ones.
“Please don’t ever do that to me again,” he says, and all I can do is marvel over everything about that sentence. He said please, as though he isn’t the size of a bus and able to command armies with one wave of his hand. And he said me. He put himself in that equation, in a way that suggests he believes my actions have consequences for him.
When did that happen?
Is it okay if I like that it happened?
I guess part of me should be bothered by that—the presumption in it and the hint of ownership underneath—and yet for a moment all I want to do is sink into that feeling right up to my goddamn forehead. In fact, that is exactly what I do. I sort of sag against the bar of his arms and let my eyes drift closed, just so I can revel in everything for a second.
He’s taking these big, ragged breaths, and when I relax I can feel them reverberating through my body. His heat is like a living thing, rubbing against every inch of my skin. So soothing, I think. So soothing and filled with a thing I barely understand. Relief, I suspect, but how can I know for sure?
I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything like this in my life. By the time I remember what I was running from, I’m half asleep. The shimmering mug of the forest and the huge beast behind me simply conspire to knock me out. I have to kind of shake myself, and even then this whole coming-back-to-reality thing is a tough sell.
How am I supposed to explain after this? What can I possibly say? It was hard enough to confront him about being a possible Nazi serial killer before he did this. At least then there was only a chance of being brutally murdered. Now there is the whole mortifying awfulness of telling someone who just saved your life that you suspect they are a garbage nightmare.
I mean, the likelihood of him not being a garbage nightmare has gone up significantly in the last five minutes. He’s still stroking my hair, for God’s sake. He’s been kinder to me than my own family ever has. He gets things about me that I didn’t even fully appreciate until very recently. Plus, after a second he says this:
“You gone very quiet, Bea. That because you’re thinking of something interesting to say, or more to do with the fact that I suddenly and violently grabbed you and now don’t seem to be able to let go? If it’s the latter, blink twice, and I’ll try unlocking my arms.”
I wonder if I could get away with saying I never want him to unlock his arms. All of that, and he’s more worried about what I think of him holding me. He thinks I’m scared, and I am. It’s just that my fear isn’t about the thing he thinks. My fear is that he is this amazing, and I’m still going to have to say I can never see him again.
He has a swastika on his arm.
Why did it have to be a swastika?
“No, I’m okay. I’m okay. The holding is fine.”
“So you want me to continue it?”
He sounds hopeful—but not as hopeful as I am.
I think I would give almost anything to keep doing this. If some random deity I barely believe in named my left arm as his price, I would pay it. But I just can’t pay what that tattoo is asking for. It’s too high—I know it’s too high.
“I think we should probably stop for a second,” I say, and even though I’m settled on the right course, it still feels like pulling teeth. It feels as if I’m sawing that arm off myself and handing it to him. He sets me down and steps back, and I just want to tell him I made a mistake. I really meant Hold me again forever so I never forget what being held is like.
I know that by tomorrow it will start to fade.
It’s starting to fade already.
“But you’re okay though now, right?”
“Yeah, I promise I’m okay now.”
“Not so scared you might want to run off the edge of a cliff?”
I shake my head, though I immediately wish I’d gone with something more insistent—or maybe plunged into my explanation. It would have stopped him saying the thing he does next, at least. It would have stopped him looking the way he does.
“Was that why you did it? ’Cause I scared you? I thought maybe I should have stopped running like I was chasing after you, but I knew the drop was coming, you know.”
I do know. I know that his expression is punching me right in the heart.
He’s so big and scary, and yet one raise of his eyebrows—one flicker of wounded light in those frosted eyes—and suddenly he’s someone else. All the tattoos and the hair and the muscles melt away, leaving behind this gentle, tender creature. He even takes another step back, as though to mitigate his massive size and his scary everything.
It makes me wonder again why he has a tattoo like that. It makes me think there actually might be a reasonable explanation. But the thing is, even if there are reasons, I still have to ask and find out what they could be. I need to negotiate this whole obstacle with calm dignity, clearly asking in a way that neither provokes nor allows room for excuses.
So obviously I go with a bunch of blurted-out nonsense.
“You have something on your arm,” I say, and then I point.
I have to point, because somehow I went with the most nonspecific word in the English language. Why did I have to do that? Now he probably thinks I have a problem with fairly prominent forearm veins—which I absolutely don’t. I love fairly prominent forearm veins. Every time I look at his, I go all weird and gushy inside.
But I can see why he would think I meant that.
I can see because when he turns his arm out…
Oh, God, when he turns his arm out…
“Where do I have something on my arm? You talking about my tattoos?”
Yeah, I’m talking about his tattoos—though naturally I can’t say that now.
Telling someone off for having the awkward block from Tetris inked on their body is just not something normal people do. But then, normal people do not make that mistake in the first place. They take a second to really scrutinize before leaping to terrible conclusions, because they realize that said conclus
ions are probably the result of an insanely controlling father who made them certain everyone in the whole world might be a murderer.
“Which one is bothering you?”
I wish the other ones on that stretch of skin were flaming skulls and knives and maybe a horse fucking a goat. That way I could claim it was one a little farther up. I could say I hate horse-on-goat sex. But alas, everything else in that general area is as inoffensive as Jesus cradling a kitten in a nunnery. I think he has a goddamn smiley face above the block. And to the left are what look like two barcodes, one after the other in a line.
Basically nothing is going to save me from this embarrassment.
“I thought that you…I thought…oh my God, I thought,” I say, and then have to pause and catch my breath. It isn’t just the mortification—it’s the enormous sense of relief. Oh my God, the relief is like a tidal wave. It steals my ability to breathe. I have to put my hands on my knees for a second.
But unfortunately this just increases his concern.
“You know I could probably get a jacket from somewhere if it’s really that bad. I didn’t think you minded them so much, but if—”
“No, no, I don’t mind them. I don’t. I just made a mistake, that’s all. When you turn your arm out like that I can see it properly, but when you don’t, it looks…it looked kind of like a swastika. That was all. And then Tommy called and he wasn’t at the bar and I started thinking that a guy with a swastika would probably make something like that up so he could lure me here and maybe sacrifice me to Hitler and oh, God, I’m so sorry. That’s so terrible.”
My voice gets higher and higher the more I talk, but I can hardly blame myself. As soon as I start speaking, I realize the horrible truth: What if he hates me for thinking something like that? What if he can’t forgive me? He might think I should have known. He might think I should have understood that he could never be that way.
But even that is one level below all the brilliant things he actually is.
He is so brilliant that this is what he says, in response to my apology, “You thought I had a swastika on my arm, and you waited until you got a phone call to run? Girl, you get gone the second you see that shit. Are you serious with this? Look at me, all right, look at me. They could probably put me under neo-Nazi in the goddamn dictionary. Stop beating yourself up for this kind of fucking thing, for fuck’s sake.”
They should put him in the dictionary under best man ever.
Is he even actually a man? I’m starting to doubt.
“I would, but you just keep being really awesome in response to my every fear. So the beating-myself-up part is just going to happen whether you like it or not. You don’t deserve people thinking about you that way. Not just because you have cool hair and loads of tattoos and muscles coming out of your eyeballs.”
He shakes his head after I’m done with this speech, in a way that makes me think I’ve said the wrong thing. And especially when he tilts his head back and makes a sound that could well be a laugh. Quite clearly I shouldn’t have mentioned the muscles. Now I seem muscle-obsessed, I think.
I’ve given the game away.
But then he tells me, “No one never talks to me the way you do, I swear.” And I calm somewhat. There’s something in his tone that suggests good feelings rather than bad ones. It’s there in his accent, so lazy and low I could just slip right into it and sleep forever. I hear that never instead of ever and the way the I slides over the top of the swear and every bone in my body melts for reasons I barely understand.
But still, I have to be sure.
“How do I speak to you?” I ask.
And he answers in the best possible manner I could imagine.
“Like I’m a person. You speak to me like I’m a person.”
“You are a person. I hardly think admitting that much is a big deal.”
“And what about the thank-you after I hauled up at your door?”
“Framing it like you just intruded is not helping your cause. I thanked you because you did something amazing for me—you know you did. So at best, you could call me thanking you the bare minimum of what you actually deserved.”
“Then there was the trust you put in me coming here.”
“You mean the trust that I just discarded in a total and ridiculous panic?” I ask, but he just barrels on. He barrels on really, really convincingly.
“Not to mention the trust you’re still putting in me, despite the fact that I could have all kinds of secrets. You still don’t know why I brought you here.”
“I was thinking Tommy probably was here at some point.”
“Well, all right. All right, that happens to be the case. But even so—I could be the worst in other ways. I mean, just ’cause there’s no bad tattoo on my arm don’t mean I got none of them elsewhere.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you have Hitler’s likeness right between your shoulder blades. Come on—anyone would know by now that this is not going to be the case.”
Even someone as worn down and riddled with weird rules as me, I add mentally, but of course I don’t say. I will never, ever say anything like that to him. Or anyone. That is my secret alone.
“How do you know, without seeing for sure? Might be best to check,” he says, and I know with all the certainty in the world that he is kind of teasing me now. The corner of his mouth is curled up, and his eyes spark with new light, but more than that is the feeling I get when he does things like this. It was there when he ran a hand over his hair, and during the whole bike incident it somehow swelled, and now it is practically taking over my soul.
He puts a hand on the zipper that keeps the whole jumpsuit thing he’s wearing together, and my response is this wild and completely inappropriate thing. A great and giddy beast seems to leap inside me, just at the idea of what he might be suggesting. And I try to say no and explain that it’s just not necessary and apologize again for being a fool, but somehow the words are not coming out. My tongue is trapped between my will and what he is clearly willing to do. In fact, I think he might want to do it.
You know, just to see how far things could go.
He has no idea what the answer is. He probably thinks I don’t really feel anything at the thought of him doing that. He probably thinks I’m secretly repulsed and only hiding it well beneath layers of pretend acceptance. Maybe he even believes that this is the right way for me to be. There is certainly a streak of sincerity beneath the offer—as though I should really verify before going any further.
But if so, then he should know—there is absolutely nothing verificationlike about the way I react when he starts to draw that zipper down. Again I want to tell him no, no, no, and instead I simply stand there and watch. My eyes follow that growing split in the suit and drink in almost everything it reveals.
How can I possibly stop myself?
His abdominal muscles actually make those tight rows, in a way that almost never seems to happen in real life. The guy in the magazine came close, but not like this. No, not like this. If I stroked him there, I’d probably lose a finger. He stretches to peel the top half of the jumpsuit off, and they leap and twist in all kinds of incredible ways.
Every part of him leaps and twists in all kinds of incredible ways. I watch him stretch to get his right arm out of his nonexistent sleeve, and suddenly there are the enormous planes of his pectoral muscles, pulled so taut I briefly worry something is going to snap. His arms are long lengths of thick rope, and each time he moves, they bunch and coil and oh, Christ.
I know I’m looking at him too much.
I know, but I have absolutely no way of stopping. I’m just not used to men taking their clothes off like this—and certainly not ones that look the way he does and make me feel the way he makes me feel. Simply experiencing an absence of fear in a situation like this is some kind of marvel. Just knowing that I can trust him, that I was wrong to doubt him, that in all likelihood he will not let me down…
It excites me and compels me like no other thing. When he
says, “Come on, then. Come see,” I almost have to take a step forward. The way he beckons me alone—all slow-like with the whole of one enormous hand—is enough to make it happen.
The look on his face simply seals the deal. It isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before on any other person, all soft and warm and near reaching for me. Come on, trust me this much, that expression says. In fact, now that I look back, I can see that nearly everything he does is based on this idea. The way he pushes me to say No, you’re too much, you’re too weird. The slight challenge in his voice when he asked me to check his other tattoos.
He wants me to turn away from him, I can tell.
He thinks he deserves to be turned away from.
And then he practically loses it when I refuse.
I can hear the slight shake in his breathing when I stand mere inches from his half-naked body. I can see how still and indifferent he tries to seem, even as he watches me avidly out of the corner of one eye. And when I step slowly around him, he tenses just about everywhere. His shoulders lock, and his hands make fists—all of which makes me much more daring than I might usually be.
How else to explain what I almost do? I hardly had the nerve to shake his hand before right now. But somehow when I feel how he’s reacting and see the incredible tattoo on his back, the urge just overtakes me. Suddenly my fingers are a millimeter away from the branches of this amazing tree that sits right in the center and sprawls up between his shoulder blades, and I cannot fault them. Mainly because the branches of the tree are not branches at all. They are words; he has words all over him—and not just any old words, either.
Quotes from books and songs and things. I can tell they are, even though most of them I hardly recognize. One of them says something about flying a thousand miles just to be with someone, and another ends on such a poignant note I hover on the brink of stroking over every letter. Then when I realize what I’m actually close to doing, I don’t stop.
I brush the words he thought to ink on himself.
And true, I hardly make contact when I do. In fact, if we’re being technical about it, I mostly ghost the air. But I can tell it doesn’t feel like ghosting the air to him. His head goes back a little at the feel of my nonexistent touch, as though he can sense me even when I’m not really there. My hesitant nothing is someone else’s sock to the gut.
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