“Yes, sir,” they chimed.
She felt struck by the urge to hug him. She didn’t know where it came from or whether it would stick around. She didn’t even know if a man like this would welcome a hug. So Edy stayed where she sat.
Her grandfather looked around, as if he might fashion more space from the walls or ceiling. “I don’t like two teens in the same room. But Mary says your auras’ are pulsing pink and that we’re fine as long as they stay that way.” He shrugged. “Make sense of her if you can.”
Edy peeked at Hassan and found him peeking right back.
“So you two are all settled then,” her grandfather said. “And while I’m all for trusting until I’m given a reason to distrust, I’ll be back to take off the doorknob so you won’t get any ideas.” He smiled broadly. “I’d rather play it safe this one time.”
Hassan snorted. “My luck,” he muttered once her grandfather left.
First Edy, then Hassan, bathed in a compact, scrubbed down tub complete with the clawed footing. When her grandparents turned out the lights for bed, the darkness combined with nightfall to pitch them into an inky, swallowing blackness.
“There’s a name for this, right? When my voice is all eerie in the darkness?” Edy said.
“Disembodied,” Hassan said. “And ow. I can’t even find my face.”
“Try above your neck. Now hurry up and come over before my granddad peeks through the doorknob hole.”
She rolled onto her side in the hopes of meeting him and extended her arms, swatting, batting, half hoping to clip him while giggling. But this was Hassan and he had luck in droves, so, no. Five fingers circled her wrist and slid up, up, up her arm, discarding every playful thought she’d ever had about him.
His fingers traced the slope of her shoulder, grazed down to her palm, and pressed a kiss in the center just there. Her insides curled like a flower blooming in reverse.
“Has—”
“Shhh.”
Another kiss followed the first, softer still, before her hand felt a drop of moisture. She followed it to the trail on his cheek.
“Hassan?” she whispered, heart constricting.
He sighed. “How much time do we have, Edy? How much time until my mother talks? And you know what happens then.”
Then he leaves. Then he ships off to some distant relative charged with the task of severing Hassan’s connection to her. Some relative who’d see it as their duty.
“There has to be some solution,” Edy said. “Your parents love you so much; I can’t imagine them without you.” She smiled weakly, warming to her own argument; perhaps convincing her and him in the process. “Could you see Ali without your football games to brag about? Or Rani without you to cook and fuss over? They’d lose part of themselves without you.”
It felt true; yet, she heard the uncertainty in her voice.
He’d been brushing kisses at her neck, but now, Hassan drew back. “You’re looking at it wrong,” he said. “You’re looking at it like I’m being thrown away.”
Pushed out then? Disowned?
Hassan sighed, heavier, more labored than the first. Somehow, he expected her to get every part of his world. She shouldn’t ever need explanation.
“It’s discipline,” he said. “Like boot camp. They’d be sending me off for tough love, but in the end, when I’m older and more mature, I’m supposed to understand.”
“‘Tough love,’” Edy echoed and touched his hair with delicate fingers. “Why is it though that all the love around us twists to the point of pain?” His tough love meant to separate them, her mother, Wyatt’s.
“Hmm,” Hassan said and nibbled on her ear. “I don’t think it does.”
Okay, so, he wasn’t the least bit interested in a serious conversation anymore. And maybe she wasn’t either, judging by the way she set off sparks every time his teeth came down on her earlobe.
“You okay?” he said with faint traces of amusement.
Edy unraveled from him and propped up on one elbow. There. Now she could talk sense.
“I should ask if you’re okay since my grandfather said you’re as big as the furniture.” He could probably see her grin in the dark. And had she said ‘grandfather?’ Wow. That felt south of sane.
“Oh c’mon,” Hassan said. “It’s a condition of the sport. You want to build bulk. You need to.” He hesitated. “I thought you liked my size.”
Edy smothered a laugh, then didn’t. Could he really not know how perfect he was? “My grandmother called you a klutz. Or was it a clown?”
“Both.”
She ruptured in a fit of guffaws, before raising an arm, proclamation-style. “Here be South End High’s finest,” she announced. “Foot racing old ladies in the Kentucky mud.”
She’d pay for that. She knew it when she said it.
Fingers invaded the crannies and flesh of her ribcage, digging and working into all the secret, pee-inducing places. Yowling, Edy fought him off weakly with an arm, before giving up and withdrawing to the fetal position in laughter. He tugged on her limbs to extract her and finally promised not to do her any further harm.
“Shush,” Hassan warned and kissed her. “Before your granddad throws me to the wildcats.”
“Wildcats,” Edy said. “Really aren’t that wild. Or threatening.”
“Shut up,” Hassan said and she ruptured in another fit of laughter.
They grinned, nose to nose, mouths wide. When their smiles melted to a brush of a kiss, Edy rose to meet him. She met him in a sweep of lips, with a hand to the back of his head, with a thought for the time lost, wasted, stolen still in the back of her mind. Her kisses turned hard fast. They turned open mouthed, desperate, and greedy.
He responded by climbing atop her.
Edy wrapped arms around his neck and met conquering kisses, promising kisses, goodbye kisses without the goodbye, all as his hands reached and roamed. She swept her hands across the muscles of his body, first touching, then kneading stone to sweat. When he tossed aside his damp shirt he returned to her more determined than before, mouth working her over, stirring her up, so that she rocked beneath him. Edy whimpered; body caught in her hypnotic, ferocious sway, grinding against solidness and melting, somehow knowing what to do.
Edy glanced at the faint and shady hole where the doorknob used to be and questioned how hard Frank and Mary Reynolds slept. A thunderous snore from down the hall was her response. Had they been so loud they’d missed it before?
Hassan froze. “That scared the pakhana outta me. He needs to get that checked.”
Her heart slammed like a gauntlet already. “Yeah,” she whispered. “He does.”
Silence weighed in on them and Hassan adjusted his weight, drifting hints of citrus and leather and surging intensity just by moving, just by breathing. Edy thought of parting with him in a week, a month, a lifetime. No amount of time with him felt like enough.
As she had the thought, her shirt fell away.
Edy’s shirt fell away, and oh God, those lips of his, would make her embarrass herself. He was everywhere without caring, searing murmurs of appreciation, burning words of love into her skin, melting her to a broken whisper of his name, and then, not even that.
He brushed the place where her bra clasped between the cups and Edy inhaled borrowed air.
“We—we’re waiting, right?” Hassan said and dragged a finger along the swell of her breast. He made a point of drawing back to prop up on one elbow.
Waiting. Yeah. About that.
“Why not?” Edy breathed. “We’ve got forever, right?”
Okay, that wasn’t fair. That really wasn’t fair. But their future slamming into a brick wall hurt her in ways that made her lash out, wounded and mean. So, she told him she was sorry.
“It’s okay,” Hassan said. “Let me wait for you.” He touched her face.
“That’s not—” Agitation choked her as she groped for the right words. Mentioning his parents in bed felt wrong. “Trust me; that’s not it,” she
said lamely.
She felt him shift to face her in the dark and knew she didn’t have to finish, knew that he got it. That the issue wasn’t him waiting on her to feel ready, but rather, them not feeling like every moment of their lives—including this one—took place with an audience that included his parents.
He exhaled. “We should get some sleep. Today’s been crazy. And I’d, uh, hate to find that your grandfather actually does own a rifle.”
Right. Their day had been crazy. Because there were new grandparents and old lies and Hassan’s hands on her combined with a future they may or may not have had. She gnawed on her lip, nostrils flared, until Hassan returned to his makeshift bed.
Edy expelled a breath. “Come back,” she said. “I miss you.”
Hassan slipped into bed again and cinched her tight against him, so that her back pressed his chest and their bodies cupped. They laid there awhile enjoying the silence. Eventually, he tucked the stray hair on her cheek behind her ear and dotted her neck in kisses, trailing to her collarbone until she gripped the sheets and whimpered. Edy twisted to face him and their mouths crashed, desperate, bitter and greedy.
Reality hit her like a brick. It could be their last chance, their only chance to be together. Would she take it and treasure the memory or hold out for the certainty of knowing she was ready?
“I have protection,” Hassan said. “But it may be too old. It’s in my wallet if you want it.”
He waited for her in stillness.
Last chance.
“Get it,” Edy said and swallowed a throat full of nervousness.
He disappeared from her and the silence stretched on. The bed creaked with his return and seconds later she heard the crumple of foil. He breathed steady, but heavy, and eventually he went still. He’d either broken the rubber or figured it out.
“Got it?” Edy whispered.
“Yeah.”
He climbed atop and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple. His shoulders shook. His body shook. Of the two, Edy was the steady one.
“I’ll be okay,” she whispered and pressed her hand to his face.
“You always are,” he said and gathered her into his arms.
They became one as they never had before.
Seven
Wyatt dreamed the dream again. Fainter and through a prism of pink. Up and on his feet, he ventured to the window. He heard the pop pop pop as lights flashed. A splash of glass. A crush of chest. Screaming. Was it his? No, he didn’t think so. Wyatt hovered, lost between here and there, unsure of where he belonged. I’m okay. I’m okay. He was not okay. His lips parted. His body fell. He was nothing. He was everywhere.
“Please,” said the one, the boy. “Don’t do this to her.” He whispered it like a secret, their secret, eternal.
The girl didn’t talk. She rained tears instead.
“Come on now, you’re a fighter,” said the boy. “Fight this. Fight now.”
But he wasn’t a fighter; he was a kid, a lonely kid, cold and shivering in the dark.
He was tired.
The world turned away.
He didn’t care if it turned back.
Wyatt woke this time when the door to his hospital room opened. A bouncing redhead from the dietary department rolled in with a smile inappropriate for the lunch she aimed to deliver. She wheeled past a dry erase board that listed his pain level as a scowl and parked in the corner next to Sandra.
“You’re still here?” Wyatt said to his cousin.
Sandra lifted the top from his lunch and snorted. Hot tea. Brown broth. Red jello. Yuck.
“The liquid diet lives another day,” she said and twirled a finger in celebration.
“Yeah, well, me too,” Wyatt said. He pressed the up button on his bed’s remote and his back panel shifted up—up enough for him to shove the lunch tray away.
“Eat,” Sandra hissed. “Or drink. Whatever it’s called. Either way, get some nourishment.” Her eyes, ginger in the light, widened enough to scold him. Despite the edging liner and the whipped lashes of mascara, shadowy bags entrenched under her orbs. His wasn’t the only mask to have cracked.
“You look bad,” Wyatt said.
“You look worse,” she said.
The cousins stared at each other.
“I don’t need you keeping vigil anymore,” Wyatt said. “I’m conscious now. You can go back to your life.”
In fact, Sandra and his father had been the only two to visit him faithfully. The grandfather he shared with her stopped by once, looking like Vincent Price in a mink coat. When he offered to foot the bill for Wyatt’s commitment in a residential treatment facility of his father’s choice, Wyatt’s dad threw him out, shaking and cursing, threatening to hurt him if he came back that way again.
Was that what Wyatt needed? Treatment? Or did his father know best?
Sharp, stabbing pain scissored through his chest, cutting at some vital part and slicing the air away. Just as Wyatt opened his mouth to complain, his nurse wheeled her cart in, barely a head above all her various supplies.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she said in that Louisiana drawl he’d come to know. “It’s me, Shelly Thomas.”
She introduced herself each day as if expecting him to forget. Who knew, maybe pain or morphine did erase the woes. Either way, Wyatt concentrated on exhaling and felt his pain ease fraction by fraction, stubborn inch by stubborn inch.
His nurse drew an idiotic smiley face on the dry erase board and scribbled ‘goal’ next to it, like she did every day. If Nurse Thomas thought she could wrangle that kind of smile out of him, then she set her sights way high indeed.
“How are you feeling, dumpling?” she said.
Like an actual dumpling.
“Great,” Wyatt rasped.
Her hazel eyes swept the length of him as if he’d told the truth instead. “Pain that bad, huh?”
No. Pain that good.
“You ever been shot?” Wyatt said instead. “It’s like a pinch, but explosive.”
Sandra snorted out a laugh. “I think I like you better as a gunshot victim. At the least, you’re more entertaining.”
That almost did get a smile from him. Nurse Thomas gave them one of those no nonsense looks best left for school teachers and strict moms. It told him she was some kid’s to love and not above good discipline either. He imagined her pouring juice in the morning and making sure all the homework was done.
Wyatt bet all the homework got done in her house.
“To answer your question, my darling, I have not had the displeasure of being shot,” his nurse said. She reached into her cart, grabbed a thermometer, and stuffed it in his mouth. Shush the gesture said. When the beep came and his temperature met her approval, she moved on to taking his blood pressure. “And I thank God you escaped with your life.”
‘God.’ Did he thank God? Should he thank God? Wyatt just didn’t know.
“Let me get you something for your pain,” his nurse said.
Minutes later, morphine flooded his veins, milking free a sigh of relief. Wyatt had no idea he’d closed his eyes, but when he opened them, Nurse Thomas and the pain were gone.
“Give me my notebook,” he said to Sandra.
“So you can write Edy again? No!”
Wyatt’s temper spiked, then flattened. He resisted the urge to inhale deep, knowing the bandages around his chest would restrain him. When the tickle of a cough came on, he cursed that too, knowing it would feel like thunder rammed through. He counted backwards, willing it away as his eyes began to water. Sandra sat up and immediately poured him a cup of water.
Wyatt coughed up what felt like a small child. He looked down, always expecting blood. There was none. He sighed in relief and took the water from Sandra.
“Give me the notebook,” he said again.
He followed her gaze to the wastebasket, where paper had been stuffed already. A mountain of letters to Edy sat there, angrily abandoned, unfinished.
“Wyatt,” Sandra said delicately.
“She chose someone else, okay? It happens. Please accept it.”
He wanted her to shut up, go away, disappear. He hated the careful way she spoke to him or how she made plain what was obvious.
“I never said she didn’t,” Wyatt said. “Now can I have my notebook?”
Since he’d recovered well enough to manage it, he’d taken to writing, hesitantly at first, maniacally on occasion, and well into the night when the mood struck and pain rode high on near-blinding magnificence. He wrote even then. Especially then. Not necessarily to or about her, but only when his thoughts swung round that way.
Sometimes he wrote to Hassan.
Those went in the trash, too.
Why had Hassan tried to save him? Why had he stripped down and plugged up hemorrhaging holes in Wyatt’s body with the shirt from his back? Yeah, it was humane and anyone would say they’d do the same, but faced with it—faced with the opportunity to let someone they hate go—how easy, hard, possible would it have been to … do nothing? He didn’t know, but the question haunted him; the answer eluded him.
Hassan had tried to save his life. Who knows? Maybe he did save his life. And what had Wyatt found the air to say, with Hassan bent over him as his life ebbed away?
“Tell Edy I love her.”
Then he drifted away.
Eight
Oh man.
Hassan shifted. The bed groaned and creaked under the sway of his weight. Weak winter sun bathed one side of his face, lying about a warmth that didn’t exist outdoors. He had an arm around Edy’s middle. He looked down just as she snuggled into him. He opened his eyes. Really opened his eyes.
The bedroom door was open.
The bedroom door was gone.
Hassan sat up and an icy draft abused his bare torso. Just as he squinted in the sunlight, Edy’s grandfather filled the doorway.
He was dressed in camouflage with a rifle on one shoulder.
“You. Up. Now.”
Water dropped into his belly. Ice froze his veins. Did Frank know he wore nothing under this blanket? Dumb question. The rifle was right there.
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