by Vivian Lux
I recognized Maddie's chiming little notification sound and knew I wouldn't have his attention for long. "Thanks for not being a dick about this."
He smirked. "Oh, trust me, it's my first instinct. I don't want you anywhere near her, much less putting your feelings about her down on the page. But what the fuck am I going to do? You're my bulldog little brother. You're not going to let go just because I tell you to. Even if she's bad for you, you're still going to hold on to her."
For a second, the grime that covered the window cleared and I could see what truly lay on the other side. I slowly shook my head. "That's the thing. I'm not actually sure she's what's bad for me." I drew a thick line across the page, moving my pen, feeling the words starting to come. "I think... I think I'm what's bad for us." I bent my head and wrote her name on the top of the page.
SCARLETT
I paused.
Then I began to write.
The words were stubborn. They were shit. But after a half an hour, when I looked down at them, it was clear what they were saying.
I was wiping the grime away and looking at reality for the first time in five years.
When I fell in love with Scarlett, it was with an idea. An idea of who she was, an idea of who I was, and what we were when we were together. I built her up like an idol, the same way my fans built me up.
That girl in front of the bus? That girl, with her notepad and her strange shorthand, her long neck and hesitant smile and layers and layers of depth that she only allowed you to peel away carefully, one at a time? That girl--the one I thought I knew, the one I assumed was the same person I had revered in my head for so long--was not an idea to be worshiped. She wasn't an idol. She was like me.
She was real.
A real person whose pain, joy and sorrow I didn't know. How could I?
I knew nothing.
I'd wasted five years on the memory of a person I didn't even know.
I stood up from Rane's bunk, letting the notebook fall to my side. I didn't care if he read what I had written. Maybe it would help him to understand. I think I did now, anyway.
Writing it down let me learn that I didn't want the memory anymore. I was free of that. I wanted this Scarlett. Not my memory. The real one, the flesh and blood reality, who looked up from her notebook and smiled at me as I returned to the front of the bus and sat down next to her.
Chapter 22
Scarlett
Keir cleared his throat. "Ah," he said, staring down at his calloused fingers. "This is a little awkward."
"What is?" I wondered.
He looked up, gave a sheepish grin, then glanced at his hands again. "I sorta just realized something."
He was acting oddly. Certainly out of character from what I had seen this past week. He seemed...chastened.
"What did you realize, Keir?" I asked as patiently as I could.
"There's something I never said to you."
My fingers clenched into a fist, quickly, before I could catch myself. But I saw him notice it. And then I saw him wince a little. "What is that?" I asked, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know.
He took a deep breath. "I never said hello to you. I never asked you how you are."
I sat, stunned for a second. "I have to say, I wasn't expecting that."
"I know. Hi, Scarlett. How are you?"
He said it so earnestly that whatever sarcasm I normally would have flung at him evaporated on my tongue. "I'm...a bit overwhelmed, if I'm being honest."
"I hope you'd be honest with me."
"Well, then yes. I'm overwhelmed."
"By what? Anything I can help with?"
I stared out the window for a second. "Can I still be honest?"
"You'd better be."
"No, you can't really help. Since you're pretty much the reason why I'm overwhelmed."
I looked back at him, expecting to see him looking chastened or irritated. I didn't expect his smile, and I definitely didn't expect what it did to my stomach. Making it fall away like that. His smile was like riding a fucking roller coaster.
"Yeah," he murmured. "I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed myself." There was no mistaking his meaning. Not when he licked his lips like that.
He settled back into his seat, then leaned forward to pull a battered paperback from his back pocket. Then he leaned back with a sigh and started reading.
He was reading.
Back when we were dating, I used to have to drag him to the library with many idle, empty threats, and when those failed me, I resorted to tempting him with promises of 'what we could do afterwards.' "Finding new books puts me in a good mood, and you really like when I'm in a good mood, don't you?" I'd purr in my fake sex kitten voice, and he'd laugh and grumble and allow himself to be dragged along.
But he never read.
This Keir was reading avidly, eyes darting across the page. A little muscle jumped at his temple, and I watched, fascinated. This Keir was the same Keir somehow.
I desperately wanted to know how one became the other.
"When did you start reading?" I piped up.
He paused, turned the page, then dog-eared the corner. "First tour," he said, setting it down in his lap. "As you may have noticed, there's a lot of downtime."
"Yeah. A lot of time to think." I stared hard out the window for a moment, taking in the corpse-like pallor of the sky outside and the flat land that stretched in all directions toward a horizon of nothingness. "Where are we?"
Keir leaned in towards me, peering out the window. His nearness made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. "If I had to guess, I'd say we were somewhere in the region of Bumfuck, Florida."
I giggled. "The glittering metropolis of Bumfuck?"
"You've heard of it, I see."
"How could I have avoided hearing about Bumfuck? It's so noteworthy!" Outside of the window there was nothing. No mountains, no hills, no real landmarks of any kind. Just a vast emptiness dotted with pro-life billboards and signs for a topless steakhouse coming up at our next exit.
Keir sat back in his seat. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched him, not daring to take him in head-on. He curled up, bringing his feet inches from my thigh, and picked up his book again.
His T-shirt rode up on his side. Just a bit, exposing a half moon of tanned skin. I've touched that skin before, I thought, perversely. At one point I promised him that I wouldn't rest until I had kissed every inch of his skin.
Did I keep that promise?
He was sitting close to me, but not too close--not so close that we touched, and yet, I could feel the heat of his body all the same. And I couldn't stop thinking about how I knew that body. At one time, I knew everything there was about that body, but now it was like he was a stranger to me. If I lifted his shirt, right now, would that dark scar still be on his flat stomach? I know exactly where it should be. I remember pressing my lips to it, feeling the smooth tightness of it, the knot under his skin. It has to still be there; scars don't just disappear off a person. I want to see it again. Just to be sure. Just so I know.
I don't want him to be a stranger anymore.
The realization made me startle, and when I did, he looked up from his book and caught me staring at him.
Suddenly, his chin tipped and his eyes caught mine and he smiled that smile.
"Scar?" he said. Playful, teasing.
Normal.
The way he and I should be.
I looked down, feeling the way I always did when he looked at me--like he saw me, like he was watching me undress in the middle of the road.
I don't want to feel naked with him. I want to be naked with him.
I turned away, heart thundering, and squinted up at the blanket of gray clouds, pregnant bellies swollen toward the earth. We were passing a cow pasture now. I could see their brown and black bodies prone in the grass. Lying down, feeling the change in the barometric pressure.
The hurricane was coming but it was no match for the storm inside of me.
I squinted harder, feelin
g a little flutter in my head. Then a thud. Something beautiful danced in the corners of my eyes, something I imagined might be the material of fairy wings. Shimmering and translucent with danger.
Fuck.
I knew what it was. An aura. The shadow of a migraine bearing down, brought on by the same pressure that made the cows lie down.
Fuck.
The second I realized it, the floodgates opened. The sides of my skull started closing in, crowding my brain, crushing my thoughts.
There were stages to suffering a migraine, just like grief. First came acknowledgment. Once I cleared that hurdle, it was time to jump and land knee-deep in denial. If I just breathe, it won't happen. I just need to breathe, have a drink of water, relax. If I don't make a big deal of it, it won't be a big deal.
No one has to know.
I am okay.
Keir was watching at me. I could feel it. His eyes were like two hot pokers searing the flesh on my nape. "That's an ominous fucking sky," he said, though I was afraid to open my eyes and look at him. Already I could feel the tears of pain gathering in the corner of my right eye, ready to weep the second I stopped being strong.
I didn't want him to think he made me cry.
Instead, I yawned, feigning tiredness as the reason my eyes were tightly closed. "I don't think I've ever seen a hurricane sky before," I mused casually.
"Yeah, me neither. Bunch of blizzard skies, though."
I grinned, eyes still closed. "Lake effect, too. I don't miss Buffalo winters...at all."
"Not even a little? What about white Christmases?"
For a second, I opened my eyes. "Palm trees strung with Christmas lights are just fine with me," I said, then cringed. The pain felt like a spike driving deep in my right eyeball. I grabbed a sip of water and shut them again. Breathing deeply made the gathering pain ease its grip for a second.
Why the fuck hadn't I learned to keep pills in my purse by now?
Because I was always convinced each migraine would be my last.
When the pain used to come when I was young, my mother would scoff at me. "You have a headache? Give me a break from your drama for once in your life. A headache, she tells me. You have no idea what pain is." Then she'd turn all the lights on in the house and crank the volume on the TV, leaving me in agony.
I learned to say nothing. To minimize. If I told her nothing, I had a better chance of enduring it without her adding to the misery.
It's nothing. Don't be a baby.
I took another sip of water, though it sat like a leaden ball in my stomach. Outside of the window, the landscape was blurred. From the signs, I guessed we were on I-4 now, but visually, there was little difference between it and I-75.
Until suddenly, we were in a city.
Up ahead was a towering glass building, the closest thing I'd seen to a skyscraper in a while, half-finished and looking very out of place. It jutted upward out of the landscape like a living thing.
"That building, what is that? It looks almost like a mailbox."
Keir grabbed his phone and started reading. "Google tells me that's the Majesty Building," he read. "Eighteen stories of wasted potential, better known as the 'I-4 Eyesore.' Been under construction for fifteen fuckin' years." He glanced out the window over my shoulder. "Looks like it's giving us the thumbs-up. Or the finger. Welcome to Orlando, I guess?"
As if on cue, lightning shattered the dimness, seeming to strike the curl of the interstate, rising into the air. Then the rain came, pelting us at such a steep angle it was nearly perpendicular to the ground.
Traffic ground to a halt and the road lit up in a big, red glow--brake lights as far as my bleary eyes could see.
"Good to know some things don't change," Keir chuckled. "America the Beautiful, the United States of bad drivers. From Orlando to LA, everyone forgets how to drive the second it starts to drizzle."
But this wasn't a drizzle. This was a downpour. The sound was so loud in my ears, like a hammer between my eyes. I closed my eyes again.
That's when I felt Keir's hand snake around mine.
"Scarlett." His voice was almost inaudible over the din in my head. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine."
"No, you're not," he said. "What's wrong?"
I grimaced. "Just a headache."
"You don't look like it's 'just' anything."
"I'll be fine."
"Scarlett." His voice was low and hurt. "Will you please let me help you?"
I swallowed. The pain stole the words out of my mouth, so I could only mewl like a newborn kitten. "Okay," I yelped. "Yes, please help me."
"You have a migraine, don't you?"
I nodded mutely. I didn't know how he knew. I didn't remember telling him I suffered from them. But Keir seemed to know.
And he seemed to know what to do.
He got up. "I've got this," he told me. And with a deep breath, I searched my heart and realized...
I believed him.
Chapter 23
Keir
One minute her eyes were open, and she was smiling and joking with me. The next minute her eyes were closed, her face a mask of pain.
My mother got migraines. Wrenching, painful, days-long ones that would have her laid up in a dark bedroom, sometimes retching blindly into a bucket. We had to tiptoe around the house then. The slightest noise would bring howls of pain from behind the closed door.
When she left, the first thing I asked my father was if she had a headache and we weren't quiet enough.
Watching Scarlett go through the same stages of pain as my mother was strange. She was trying to hide it, trying to suffer silently. But that shit, it stays with you.
So does what to do.
"Here," I told her. I had run back to my bunk and grabbed a pair of shades. "Cover your eyes." I nodded when she did what I said. "Now. Give me your hand."
The bus wove sharply in the dense traffic. She moaned and lifted her hand to mine.
Her fingers, so small and elfin, trembled a little. I cupped her hand in mine for a moment--a moment, I'll admit, that was more for my own benefit than hers. "This might hurt a little. Breathe, okay?"
She nodded, swallowing. Her hand was cold and clammy in mine, but her skin was as smooth as ever. I resisted the urge to press my lips to her knuckles.
Instead, I dug my thumb into the meat between her thumb and forefinger.
"Ow!" she cried, and tried to wrench her hand back.
I closed my hand around her wrist. "This will help," I told her. "Just breathe. Trust me, okay?" I looked at her, needing to know. "Do you trust me, Scar?"
Her eyes were open behind the sunglasses. I didn't want to look at them, didn't want to see if indecision lived behind them. I didn't want her to be unsure...about me.
But there was nothing but trust. "I do," she breathed. "Just...go slower, okay?"
The layers of meaning weren't lost on me.
I pressed the tip of her index finger to my lips. "Trust me," I repeated.
Her chest rose in a little hitching sigh. "I trust you," she said, sounding a little more sure of herself.
Reluctantly, I moved her fingers away from my lips and settled her hand onto my lap. I ignored how close her hand was to my cock and instead, I pressed my thumb into the muscle between her thumb and forefinger again.
My mother, the hippie, had taught this to me when I was five and creeping terrified outside of her closed bedroom door, crying softly for my mother. "Keir," she called from inside. "Come help me."
I sat at the edge of her bed, as still and quiet as possible, but ramrod straight with the pride that came from knowing I was helping. "Press here--feel that dent? It shouldn't be there. Press and move your thumb in circles for Mama."
I did that now, as gently as I could, pressing the point in Scarlett's hand. She hissed, eyelids fluttering, body stiffening, as I gradually sank my thumb deeper and deeper into the knotted muscle.
"Other hand now," I said gently.
When she swung her o
ther arm eagerly over to me, I smiled a private, relieved smile.
"You can kiss this hand, too," she croaked. Some of the color was returning to her cheeks.
"You want me to?"
"Isn't that part of the treatment?" She turned to me, a slight smile on her face.
"Only for you," I confessed.
"Oh," she said, a little shy. Then another smile. "Lucky me."
"Lucky me," I corrected, moving her hand just an inch closer to my crotch as I massaged it. My thumb sank a millimeter deeper....
"Holeeeeee shiiiit," she breathed. She lifted her other hand and lowered the sunglasses, blinking. "Fuck, how the hell did you do that? Are you a wizard?"
I shook my head. "Keep the shades on. You're not out of the woods yet. But yes. I am a wizard. Thought you already knew that."
"I could kiss you." Her eyes went wide when she heard what she said.
"So kiss me."
"Keir...I..." Her lashes fluttered a second. Then she leaned forward. I didn't grab her. I didn't cup her face and press my lips to hers. I didn't slide my thumb across her lips or trace the line of her jaw. I didn't do anything but hold still, frozen in place, while Scarlett brushed my cheek with her lips.
"Thank you, Keir," she said.
"Anytime," I said. And I mean it. Anytime you need me, I will be there, I didn't say. Instead, I took her hand again. "Now, lie back. We're almost at the hotel and I want you to rest. Listen to Dr. Wilder."
"You're a doctor and a wizard?"
"Yup. And you're a pain in my ass. Stop talking and let me help you. You need a nap."
"Right now?"
"Yes, right now. Close your eyes, you stubborn little thing."
"Okay," she said. She leaned her head back and exhaled, then shifted in her seat.
"Uncomfortable," she complained. She rolled her head to the side, her cheek just brushing the meat of my shoulder.
She sighed at the same time I did.
Slowly, she melted, turning her face to bury it in my shoulder. "Hang on," I murmured, moving my arm.
When I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her tight, she sighed again, content like a cat. Then she rested her head on my shoulder. "Good night, Keir Bear," she said, brushing a little kiss across my bicep. "I..." She caught herself. "I'm glad you're here."