“You okay, man?” Spike was still at our feet, giving something one last tug. That was reassuring to me. I’m not sure why, but it felt like he was covering his bases. Checking and rechecking and that sort of thing.
“No. Not okay.”
“He’ll be fine,” I interjected. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re doing this together,” I assured. Lincoln’s head shifted and his eyes traveled to the valley below as he took in the depth or height or whatever distance is was between us as Earth’s familiar surface underneath. “Hey. Don’t look down.”
“I... I, I can’t help it.” With an Adam’s apple jumping so much it looked like it was dancing, Lincoln swallowed the longest, most deliberate—and somewhat painful appearing—swallow. “Down is all there is.”
“Until it’s all up,” Spike said, his voice accented like a Southern California surfer. “Cuz when you jump, down becomes up and up becomes down.”
I’d never expected such truth-filled words to come out of someone as unlikely as Spike, but he was absolutely right on more levels than he probably even realized. My world had been so upside-down until Lincoln. And now, even though we’d technically be dangling from the sky, I knew everything would continue to be right side up. Because that’s what he did for me, he turned my world back around. He righted my life.
“Here we go.” One last squeeze of our shoulders as Spike said, “On the count of three...”
“I’ve forgotten how to do that,” Lincoln yelped. “I don’t remember how to do that.”
“One,” I said, slow and steady. “Two.” He joined in for that one, echoing my voice.
Then we said “three” in unison and took the leap together.
THIRTY-THREE
“Your hickeys are really impressive.”
“Shut up,” Lincoln said. His hand flew from the steering wheel to his neck to cover the reddish-purple spots that dotted along his collar. “In all of the paperwork riddled with warnings of possible spinal injury, unlikely death, and far-fetched retina damage, they made no mention of the necessity for turtlenecks. I would’ve come prepared had it at least been brought to my attention.”
“Those harness hickeys will get you every time.”
“I think,” he said, “we can agree that this was the least of my concerns.”
Lincoln really had done well, given the circumstances. After making me promise not to think any less of him had he peed his pants, projectile vomited on me, or performed any other involuntary reaction as a result of the impending free fall, we did it. We jumped.
And it wasn’t half bad. I mean, after all, I was as close as I’d ever been to Lincoln, physically Velcroed to his body. That was the good half. The bad half was everything else. Come to find out, there’s a valid reason for panic. It’s your body’s way of reminding you that there are limits in this life and sometimes those limits are better left untested.
People are not meant to dangle from bridges; this was a new fact for me. The supporting evidence came to me in the form of an extreme head rush that pushed so hard against my skull, shattering only seemed inevitable, and as a living, breathing human, I really wanted to keep my brains in my head. It was also in the crazy wedgy that I was still attempting to release from my butt cheeks. That was going to take a while to get free. And finally, it was in the fact that I’d hummed the entire time. That, for me, was a sure sign that everything about it was wrong.
We all had coping mechanisms. Humming was mine, and while jumping might’ve taken a slight edge off of Lincoln’s fear of high up places, it didn’t do much to keep me from my usual blocking out of reality through vocal chord vibrations. And that was okay, because this wasn’t for me. Goodness, Lincoln had already done so much in the way of lessening my own fears or facing them head on or whatever it was that happened when we visited my mother’s resting place. This was meant for him.
I figured I’d follow him to whatever heights necessary in order to help him overcome anything. If he was willing to walk the ends of the Earth with me, it really was the least I could do.
“Oh no.” Lincoln’s body suddenly pulled taut, rigid in his seat. “Oh no, no, no, no!” He banged his hand on the dash, soft at first, then much harder, like beating a drum. “Trudy, don’t fail me now, girl!”
“What’s wrong?” Though I had limited knowledge of anything vehicle related, I assumed the croaking sound that came from the engine, coupled with the look cloaking Lincoln’s face, only meant bad news for his precious camper.
“No, no! Please, no, Trudy.”
And then we sputtered to a stop.
In the middle of a twisty two-lane road in the desolate woods, just an hour shy of home.
At dusk.
And without a cellphone. That, too. Because although Spike had seemingly taken quite good care of us when preparing for launch, one minor detail we’d all overlooked was to remove Lincoln’s phone from his pocket prior to the jump. And that resulted in a swim for his smartphone down Rushmount River, only to end in a watery grave. Mine was inconveniently perched on my nightstand at home.
“Dammit!” Lincoln’s fist connected with the steering wheel, then suddenly, “I’m sorry, Trudy. I didn’t mean to hit you,” came out as a quick apology. His hands affectionately stroked the wheel. “Forgive me.”
“Okay,” I said. “So I haven’t spent a whole lot of one on one time with you and Trudy, but I can see you’re taking her breakdown unreasonably hard.”
Lincoln was out of the camper and at its backside, where, I gathered, the engine was. So much was just absolutely backward about this day. So much.
“Come on, girl, come on,” he begged, tweaking some valve with dexterous fingers. His eyes squinted and he stooped down to fiddle with another cord before yanking his hand back quickly. “Ouch! Trudy, that wasn’t necessary!” His thumb was in his mouth, soothing whatever burn he’d just received.
“I feel like I should leave you two alone to duke this out.” Guys loved their cars, I knew that. Lincoln, though an exception in everything else relating to nineteen-year-old manhood, was not one here.
“We’ll be fine,” he waved me off. “But sometimes she holds a grudge and refuses to budge for hours at a time. This could be a long night for us, Eppie. Just gotta warn you.”
“As in, we won’t be able to get her working? And we’ll have to stay out here overnight?” I looked around, surveying our surroundings. It was unfathomably gorgeous. Evergreens rose up from the ground, like we were bordered in by hundreds of Christmas trees, minus the decorations and tchotchke ornamentation. A lake peeked out through the branches and reflections of light flickered silver twinkles across its shimmering surface. This was where the term picturesque originated. “Such a shame to be stuck in a place like this with you.”
“Is that sarcasm I detect?” With a wink, he gave me one of those smirks that arrested my breathing and made my toes tingle. “If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought that you and Trudy orchestrated this little snafu.”
“Oh yes, Trudy and I are in cahoots. She knows just how badly I want to be stranded overnight with you.”
“Eppie.” It was as though Lincoln was a pre-pubescent boy again the way the sound crackled out of him in two different octaves. “Don’t say things like that to me. Please.”
I gave him a sidelong glance.
“Though I’ve tried desperately hard to remain a gentleman with you, saying things like that is pure kryptonite to my chivalryness.” That was a new term. “Such phrases don’t even enter my brain but go directly to other various body parts that I don’t have too much control over.”
Oh dear Moses, I was blushing so badly it actually hurt my face. Just like that burn on Lincoln’s finger, his words singed my cheeks. I was now thinking of said body parts, and that just wasn’t right to think those things. At least not yet.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Lunging forward, he hip-checked me as he passed by to fish something
out of the backseats of his van. After fumbling around, he whipped out a towel, snapped it at my backside, and took off racing down the hill, dodging trees and shrubs at his feet, looking absolutely, adorably ridiculous. “Last one to the water is an apple fritter!”
***
“We don’t have suits.”
It was the time of evening when the sun was nearly all the way down, just hovering over the horizon as though paused in the air. Because of this, velvety light skimmed off of everything in its path, including Lincoln. Including his body. Including his abs. Mostly just on his abs, actually. Or maybe my eyes were fixed on his abs and so that’s all I could see. But I swear it was as though Mother Nature was highlighting Lincoln’s muscled upper half on purpose, like she really wanted me to appreciate it, too. I wasn’t about to pass up that opportunity.
“Who needs a suit?” He was fiddling with his belt at the same time he toed off one shoe, then the other. Despite the highlighting, I couldn’t continue staring. This was getting a little too intimate. “Ever heard of skinny dipping?”
“Lincoln! No.”
“No, you haven’t heard of it? I figured you were sheltered and all, but this kind of activity really is common knowledge. It’s when you disrobe, then swim. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried it. Exhilarating on the highest level.”
“I feel as though the same could’ve been said for the bungee jumping. How much living do we really need to do today?” It was rhetorical, but it sort of wasn’t. I was not about to get naked in that murky water with Lincoln. Nakedness was not going to happen.
“I figure while Trudy’s cooling off, we should do the same.”
He was about to take his pants off. Lincoln was going to remove his pants. I was not ready for this. When the leather strip of his belt slid backward, releasing the metal hook from its loop, I did the only thing I could think to do. I launched at him, full force, tackling him to the ground.
Lincoln was instantly leveled, flattened onto his back, and there I was, straddling his bare waist. Unintentionally, of course, because this was not the execution of some planned out football play. This was just me freaking out. Simple as that.
“Whoa there, tiger.” It was a whisper, which was worse than anything he could’ve done because suddenly this felt way more intimate than Lincoln only possibly shedding his clothes in front of me. His fingers lifted to my hair, gingerly. “Whoa.”
“I... I’m sorry.” For the tackle. For freaking out. And mostly for the fact that I was still sitting on him, not budging, seemingly frozen in place.
His face, for the first time that I was aware of, remained expressionless. “Don’t be. Don’t be sorry. At all.”
Had I wanted to stand up and remove myself from his body and this increasingly awkward situation, I wouldn’t have been able to since my legs had no feeling in them. They weren’t even Jell-O or mush. They just weren’t there.
“Eppie, you’re stunning.” Lincoln’s eyes didn’t crinkle like they so characteristically did. They were wide open. Saucers even. “The sunlight on you. In your hair. Skimming every part of your body. You’re so beautiful.”
The ground against my knees was wet and I had to figure that all of the grassy area underneath Lincoln was equally as damp and uncomfortable, but he didn’t let on if that was the case. He looked like someone lacking any plans to ever move from where he lay. That made me want to stay in place just a little bit longer, too.
“So beautiful.”
I smiled down at him, gazing into his honey brown eyes. I knew that descriptions such as the word gazing were so daytime televisionish, but I did exactly that: I gazed. Because he was beautiful, too, and I didn’t know if it was okay to say so or if that was an ego-killer or not. So I just gazed—longingly even—and let him stare back up at me with his gorgeous, warm eyes.
“I thought skinny-dipping with you would be something, but this—you on me in a sunset-lit meadow—this is... this is just... Quite honestly, I have no words for what you’re doing to me right now, Eppie.”
When the wind rushed at my back and along the bending reeds of grass feathered out around us, Lincoln shivered slightly, his stomach muscles clenching against the breeze, although a warm one. And even though I figured he wasn’t cold, I couldn’t help but lean down to drape myself across his chest. It was instinct. It was instinct to be as close to him as possible.
It was also instinct to slip back up almost as instantly as I’d bent over in order to slide first my right arm, then my left, out of the armholes of my long-sleeved shirt, lifting it slowly up and over my head. Lincoln’s hands reached out to assist me as I wiggled the cotton fabric off, and he tossed it to the grass beside us in a ball. Though I still had a thin-strapped tank underneath, something between us changed now that there was more skin than clothing. Some exchange of vulnerability.
His hands, all calloused from work, should’ve been rough against my skin, but that’s not what I felt when Lincoln touched me. When his palms stroked up my bare arms to my shoulders, something fluttered inside. When his fingertip ran along the upper hem of my top, so lightly—maybe not even making actual contact with my skin because at this point I couldn’t be held responsible for even verifying if that was the case—my eyelids blinked much more than necessary, so rapidly.
“Every inch of you is artwork,” he spoke as his finger traced the lowest dip of my shirt and the shallowest part below my collarbone. No one had ever touched me here, and I wasn’t sure if I should consider this a base or not because he wasn’t even grabbing my chest or anything like that. Truly, he wasn’t even touching my chest. He just ran his longest finger slowly, back and forth, over the soft divot of flesh in the middle of my chest, in that valley there.
And it was the most sensual thing I’d ever experienced.
“Is this okay?” His eyes were relaxed with that look of desire hooded within them when he nodded up toward what he was doing with my less than impressive cleavage.
“Mmm, hmm,” I nodded back, my bottom lip pinned between my teeth. I wasn’t especially trying to appear sexy. It was out of necessity that I did this. Otherwise that lower lip would tremble and that couldn’t be considered attractive at all. That would just look pathetic.
Lincoln licked his lips. “Tell me what else is okay.”
I didn’t know how many other steps there were in between this and everything else. I was new to this. I was new to love, and I was painfully new to expressing it.
“What about this?” His finger pulled back across my flushed skin and over toward my shoulder, but it stopped short before getting there and changed up its path, cutting down my side, now on the outer edge of my torso. It was as though Lincoln was outlining my body, careful not to go too far, but going just far enough that I would surely lose it from this game of sensation. “Yes or no?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, only in the right corner of his mouth.
“This?” His thumb quickly brushed against the full underside of my breast, more on my ribs than anything. “Yes or no?”
“Yes,” I said again, figuring that would likely be my answer for any question he may ask.
Another smile.
Lincoln’s other hand mimicked the same slow movements, and he gripped his remaining fingers against my back, his thumbs still teasingly close.
“Eppie, I’ve slept with two girls in my life.”
My body sunk within his grasp. “Oh.”
“I want you to know that.” His hands didn’t let up on their light touch. They sloped their way down to the round curve of my hips and wrapped on there. “Up until now, I thought I knew at least two girls quite intimately.”
My heart was sinking just as fast as my posture. I couldn’t fit the pieces of his sentences together with the way his hands were resting on my body. It felt like the most ill-placed subject matter—to be talking about his exes when holding me this way.
“Oh,” was all I could say again.
Now knowing what path his hands we
re permitted to travel, Lincoln’s fingers followed that line along my body, busying themselves at my heart’s expense. I wanted to cry.
“But I was wrong,” he said, hands paused in place. “That was just sex. There was no intimacy there. This, Eppie?” His eyes rounded so much, so fully open. This was wonderment. This was wonderment on his face. “Oh man. I mean... touching you? Asking you what you’re okay with instead of just assuming and taking it from you? Jeez, Eppie. This... this is truly the most intimate thing I’ve ever experienced.”
I wasn’t certain why the sensation to cry still lingered, but it held on, gripping me. “Me, too.”
“Your body—I mean, I know I’m a guy—but your body is off the charts. And here you are, letting me explore it. Trusting me to explore it. Trusting me to know what pace to take. I can’t even... I just... Thank you, Eppie.”
I laughed a little. “For what?”
“Thank you for letting me earn your trust.”
“I trusted you enough to jump off a bridge with you, Lincoln. This doesn’t seem like nearly as much.”
“No,” he stammered. “I mean, yes—thank you for that—but this is different. This is your body, Eppie. This is such a big deal.” His words were racing at the same speed as my heart. “I know you probably figure since I’ve slept with someone before, that this wouldn’t be a big thing to me, but it is, Eppie. So much.”
I was grateful to hear that, because for a novice like me, this did seem like a big deal. Having Lincoln validate that I wasn’t in the same category—that this wasn’t in the same category—was overwhelming on all levels. No one before had ever really respected the fact that this body belonged to me. My mother certainly hadn’t when she’d sickened it to meet her own need for attention. The doctors didn’t when they’d tested and poked and prodded at her request. But it was mine, it always had been, and now I really felt like I might finally be okay with giving pieces of it to someone else.
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