The Girl Who Fell

by S. M. Parker

  Alec turns onto a wooded dirt road, his lights catch on a giant white sign: FUTURE HOME OF APPLE BLOSSOM LUXURY VILLAGE. He drives carefully over the rutted road. “I’m not buying a condo, in case you’re wondering.”

  I chuckle. “Good to know.”

  He leans closer to his windshield, peers out. “Construction stopped out here a while ago. My mother’s the developer and she put things on hold because of the economy.”

  “You come here a lot?”

  “It was my secret place before I met you.”

  “What’s your secret place now?”

  His eyes flicker. “Don’t laugh?”

  “What?” I say, too much laughter in the word.

  “Nice,” he mocks.

  I straighten my face, my posture. “Okay, try again. I’ll be good.”

  “You,” he says.

  “Me what?”

  “You’re kind of my secret place now.”

  I stare at him. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  We drive in silence down the narrowing dirt path until we are face-to-face with an abandoned front loader. It waits against the tree line, its headlights and front bucket looking like a giant yellow smile. But when Alec cuts the engine, the machine disappears and darkness drapes over us like a villain’s cloak.

  “We’re here.”

  “We are?” There is no here here.

  Alec rotates to face me, raises his hand to my cheek, caresses my jaw line. I feel his calluses, rough and bumpy against my smooth skin. He turns on the cabin light, casting away the darkness of this secluded place. “I’m glad it’s just you and me tonight. No more drama. Everyone’s going to be okay and we can just be. Here together.”

  “I’m glad too.”

  “Good. Because I hate sharing you.”

  “I know what you mean.” My voice is low now, the tone made for Alec. It’s my voice, but filled with steam, a low, bubbling heat that syrup-coats my words.

  Alec smoothes the run of my collarbone with his thumb, rubs the length of it, his eyes fixed on its confident rise. “Even though I see you every day it’s not enough.”

  “It’s the same for me.” The night ticks soft around us. There are no people. No cars. No emergencies. No sounds. Just me and Alec in this tucked away space.

  Alec’s lips move closer to my ear, his breath hot and quick. My neck warms, my insides twist in a spiral. “You’re pretty much all I think about.”

  There is a rush of something like gratefulness for my love protected in his safe hands.

  “Wait here,” he says.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just outside for a second. Promise.”

  A short, nervous laugh arrives. “Isn’t this how, like, every horror movie starts?”

  He cracks his door open. “Trust me,” he says before exiting the car. He wrestles with something. A coat? A blanket? He pops the hood and I can’t see in front of us. My mind races until I see Alec at the tree line, the dark too dark to make out his movements. Then Alec opens my door, his beautiful face smiling for me. “Come outside.” He ushers me toward him with the sweep of his arm.

  Relief waterfalls through me as I take his hand. But then, a shiver ripples. “It’s freezing out here.”

  “Not for long.” Alec walks me to the edge of the forest and that’s when I see he’s spread a quilt onto the dropped pine needles. Two pillows rest at the top of the blanket. A bed in the woods. Alec lifts the quilt and invites me to tuck in. I’m surprised when my hands find heat.

  “Is this . . . ?”

  “An electric blanket.” I hear the grin stretch across his face.

  “How do you have an electric blanket out in the middle of nowhere?”

  “It’s a nerd trick I learned in shop. I jimmied the extension cord to run off the car battery. Get warm. I’ll be right back.” I watch him go to the trunk, drape another blanket over his arm. When he returns, he layers it over me and the weight is a luxury. He sets down the familiar picnic basket, takes off his coat and burrows in beside me.

  “Ever moon-gazed before?”

  “Not like this.”

  “Good. I’d hate to be redundant.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible.”

  “It’s full, you know. The moon.”

  I look above the trees, find the white round, its paper skin. It sprays its light over us, as romantic as candlelight. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Like you.” I pull his hand up, press it to my chest. He leans against the place of my heartbeat and studies my features, memorizing me. “I’m really glad I could be there for you. You know, with Finn and Gregg.”

  “Me too. I can’t even tell you how much.” I smile under his stare and a new kind of warmth fills me. I hear a horn beep somewhere out on the road but it’s as if the sound comes from a different dimension. Like Alec and I are hidden in a pocket of forest made especially for us. “I couldn’t have gotten through it without you.” I trace the soft swell of his cheek.

  He pushes into my touch. “I want it to be like that always. I want you to come to Michigan with me.”

  My heart trips. “What?”

  “I don’t want to be without you.”

  I can’t stay here without him, but go to Michigan? “I can’t go to Michigan.”

  “You haven’t been accepted to Boston College yet, right?”

  A twist in my core. “No.”

  “Promise me you’ll think about it then. You know, as a back-up plan or whatever. All I know is that the next four years will suck without you.”

  Four years. It’s a lifetime.

  “We’re good together, Zephyr. Maybe we shouldn’t leave that behind.”

  But I’d be leaving other stuff behind. “I’ve never even considered going to college anywhere else. I visited the campus when I was a freshman and it was like I knew I belonged there. That it was my future. Have you ever felt that way?” I don’t tell him that shortly after Dad left, I toured the campus and had a panic attack walking into the library. How since then I haven’t felt totally big enough, strong enough, to claim my future. Until I met Alec.

  He flattens his hand over my heart. “That’s kinda how I feel when I’m with you. Like, I don’t know . . . like it’s where I belong.”

  “Yeah?”

  A laugh tickles at his words. “I guess you could say you’re my Boston College.”

  “Careful. That’s a bold statement.”

  He smiles. “I know.”

  Oh.

  Alec moves on top of me, his body slicking with the precise grace of water.

  His chest hovers over mine, our hearts building a staccato rhythm. And when he fills my mouth with his kiss, I want our heartbeats to sync. I want to forever be connected to this person. All at once he feels like my now, my future, my everything.

  He unbuttons my coat and I wriggle free of it. He raises my shirt, his callouses skating across my flesh. He cups my breast and I arch closer to his touch, his warmth. He presses his kiss deeper into my mouth and I move my tongue against his.

  He fumbles for the lip of his shirt and I tighten. Is this it? The It? I tense.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know.”

  He kisses me softly. “It’s all going to be okay. I promise.”

  The blanket slips to his waist as he draws his shirt over his head, lifts off his T-shirt. His torso flashes naked to the night, his flesh almost golden in the moonlight. “Man, it’s cold!” A shiver shakes along the length of his body.

  “I kind of like it,” I say, even as a bolt of cold convulses my spine.

  “Do you? Hmm.” He disappears under the blanket and pulls off one of my boots, cradling my heel. Then, the other. He tosses my boots behind him with a playful gesture that helps cut through my anxieties.

  Alec pulls off my socks and my toes wriggle. He massages the arches, and I’m shocked by how good it feels. Then he slides his hands along the length of my legs until he reaches my waist. He po
ps the button on my jeans with an impossibly smooth motion. My hand flies to my stomach.

  “It’s okay, Zephyr. We’ll go as slow as you need.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Surer than sure.”

  I lift my bottom and he slides off my jeans, abandoning them somewhere in the vicinity of my socks. The freezing December air rushes into our makeshift bed and shocks me with its intensity. I have never felt so alive. I wear my skin in a way that is truly mine for the first time. All because of Alec.

  He undresses down to his boxer shorts. My breath quickens. His shoulders rise, a white crest against a dark wave. He crawls into our sleeping bag and folds me in his arms. He kisses my mouth, my neck, my jaw.

  Then he stops. I hear the hollow snap of the elastic waist of his boxer shorts. “Would it be all right if I took these off? They can be quite cumbersome, you know.”

  “Is that so?” A nervous laugh tickles the corners of my words.

  “Seriously, Zephyr, it’s your call. I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

  He locks eyes with mine for moments that suspend time. I think we will freeze out here, that they’ll find our frozen bodies in the spring thaw. But there is a current of heat, too. Just between us. Keeping us warm.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Positive?”

  I nod softly. The gesture is fear and want coiled into one rope of movement.

  Alec maneuvers out of his boxers, freeing one hip, and the next. I catch glimpses of the cut of his chest, the column of his hips, the flesh of his thighs.

  “Now you. Sit up.”

  I do and Alec reaches around me to find the clasp of my bra. Alec watches me, his eyes steady and transfixed. Slowly, he twists the clasp and the fabric releases. I move to hold my bra in place.

  “It’s just us, Zephyr.”

  I look around and he’s right, there is no one else with us. Only something. This thing between us that might happen tonight. That we talked about happening tonight. It crowds the space between us, this huge thing. But it also promises to erase any space between us.

  I bite my lip as I peel aside the blue lace cups. I’m still self-conscious about my body, this new bra, the way he watches me like an eagle hunting prey. The way my flesh rises to the cold. But he accepts me with his eyes, the way his gaze lingers.

  Alec leans back, his breath catching. “You”—he swallows hard—“look amazing.”

  My breath buckles. I want to be beautiful, sexy, all the things he wants. But I need him in order to be any of these things.

  He strokes my face and then my chest. I could stay like this for years. My breath trembles. Above me, a maze of early stars blaze white and I am alive.

  “Tell me.” He nuzzles his face into the nape of my neck. “Tell me how much you like being here with me.”

  “I don’t want to be anywhere else.” And it is the truth, even if I am petrified of all that could happen between us out here, under this blanket of moonlight.

  He kisses me and I fold into him. His strong arm tucks me under the covers where we become heated, together. Outside our blanket, the world is another place, not our place, something separate from our two entwined bodies.

  He raises my arms. One by one, he pins them onto the cold pillow. He kisses me deeply, warmly, his entire body coiled, inseparable from mine. My body becomes liquid beneath him, melting into his touch. I disappear in his breath, his heat, his fingers tracing my every inch. And then there is the quick rustle of plastic and then . . . an unexpected pinch on the inside of my flesh.

  My body stiffens. My brain fires with fear. I can’t do this. I don’t know how to do this. Am I ready to do this?

  He breathes calm into my ear. “Shh, it’s okay, Zephyr. You can trust me.”

  But I can’t. Not now that this is the moment. My mind swirls with every sex conversation I’ve ever had with Lizzie, every Cosmopolitan article I blushed over. And I don’t feel prepared for what is happening right now. My hips speak instinctively, twisting away from his. I close my legs.

  He pulls back, strokes my hair away from my face. “I love you, Zephyr.”

  He kisses my forehead. “I want . . .”

  He kisses my nose . . . “to feel . . .”

  He kisses my lips . . . “all of you.”

  My heart catapults.

  “Don’t you love me?”

  A rasp. “Of course.” I force my body to relax.

  “Then be with me, Zephyr Doyle.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” Alec kisses me and my pulse quickens. “You know I’d never hurt you, right?”

  “I do. Of course.”

  Alec moves slowly on top of me and I trace my fingers along the hard ridges of his back. I watch and listen, trying to capture every sound and smell. The way a few defiant leaves rustle on the limbs above us. Alec’s mouth hot and cavernous. The wink of starlight above. The pressure inside me building.

  Alec kisses the cove of my neck. I shake off the fear that’s rising in my brain and listen to what my body wants, what my brain trusts. The way my heart beats: Al. Ec. Al. Ec. Al. Ec.

  His eyes meet mine. “Are you okay?” His words are whisper soft, a private language.

  Am I? It’s hard to know in this cyclone of nerves and fear and love. My tongue answers when my brain can’t. “I am.” I wrap my arms tightly around him, my thighs pulling his hips closer. Slowly. Slowly. Slowly. He watches my face as he fumbles under the covers. For an instant, I think he will change his mind, tell me he can’t, that he doesn’t really love me. That none of this is real.

  Until I feel that pinch, stronger this time. My entire body clenches and I gasp.

  The pain grows. Becomes excruciating. A knife of lightning across a still, dark sky.

  “You are perfect.” Alec’s gaze hangs distant and fogged under his flopping bangs. Then he moves gently. Joins me. Fills me. As if disparate parts of me connect as one whole for the first time. Alec kisses my lips. We lie interconnected like that for a minute, an eternity.

  He and I moving together, in a new kind of forever.

  “I need you, Zephyr. I want you at Michigan. With me always.”

  I need you too, I want to say, but words are beyond reach as I fall into his need . . .

  the motion of his body . . .

  the promise of us. . . .

  • • •

  Later that night, I lie in bed not moving. From the record player, Joan Armatrading’s honey-slick voice bleeds love into the very air around me.

  Oh the feeling, when you’re reeling.

  There’s more beauty in you than anyone.

  The memory of Alec cocoons me. Protected. Secret. Mine.

  I don’t call Lizzie. Trying to put tonight into words would erase its magic.

  I hold tight to Finn, tell him the way my heart has found wings.

  Before I close my eyes, I get a text from Alec: In ur dreams tonight, imagine me with u.

  Me: As if I have a choice.

  My eyes draw heavy while staring at the ceiling, trying to press every minute of tonight into a sacred scrapbook of memory.

  Just before I fall asleep the air shifts slightly, as if it also knows that everything has changed.

  Chapter 22

  I wake in someone else’s skin. Or mine, but different.

  Finn lies spooned into me, his breath steady and so beautifully normal sounding. He stirs when I sit up. I watch him jump down to wait at my door like he’d never been sick at all. I let him out and he pads happily down the hall as I make my way to the bathroom.

  In the shower, the spray hits me like Alec’s touch, awakening me everywhere. I swab my neck gently with my loofah sponge because I don’t want to fully wash him from my skin.

  When I make it to the kitchen, Mom’s hunched over a cup of coffee at the island. I register her spacey stare, how it’s not even slightly focused on the newspaper opened before her. Then I panic. I hadn’t thoug
ht about Mom. Can she smell the sex on me? Does it linger on your skin like scented body wash? Just as I’m about to pivot on my heels and bolt back to my room, Mom looks up.

  “Good morning, Sunshine.”

  “Morning.” I wonder if my voice is different now too, if she can hear some indication of sex.

  She picks at the edge of the newspaper.

  “You okay?” She doesn’t look so okay.

  “I just got off the phone with Rachel.”

  The room stills around us. The windows are shut tight against the winter so there is no breeze, no rustle of leaves, no birdsong. I am trapped in the airless space of my selfishness. I’ve barely even thought about Gregg. “Is Gregg all right?”

  “Rachel called to say that he’s home, resting. I was hoping you and I could go visit him later today.” Mom’s worry flinches her shoulders.

  “Did she tell you he’s going to be fine?”

  “She did. It just hit too close to home. I couldn’t help thinking what if it had been you.”

  “It wasn’t. I’m fine. Gregg’s fine. Rachel will be fine once Gregg’s back at school.” I’m not certain if my words are aimed at reassuring her or appeasing my guilt.

  “When do you want to go?” I fill a bowl with Cheerios. “If we head over around lunch we could grab him a Slice Special from Fernalds. It’s named after him. Because it’s his favorite.”

  She closes the newspaper. “I’d like that. And we can pick up some penny candy for the little ones.”

  “Sure. Give them all a sugar high. Rachel will love you for that.”

  Mom winks. “What kind of aunt would I be if I didn’t spoil the girls?”

  I open the fridge, grab some milk. “A lame one.”

  “Exactly. I can’t have that.”

  I bring the milk to the table but don’t pour it. “So, does Dad know about Gregg?”

  Mom tries to hide her surprise, but I can tell I’ve caught her off guard. “He does. I told him last night. Why?”

  I’m relieved. This feels like something Dad should know about, even if I couldn’t make the call. “I guess I’m just wondering how much you and he talk or whatever.”

  “We talk a lot, Zephyr. Really talk. In a way we didn’t for a long, long time.”