Come to Me Recklessly

by A. L. Jackson

  Somehow I needed to prove I didn’t want to be him anymore. Needed to find a way to make her understand that everything important had remained the same.

  I pulled into my neighborhood. As I neared my house, I pressed the garage door remote, and it sprang to life.

  “Oh my God.” Samantha looked at me, those blue eyes all swimming with excitement again. “This cute little house is yours? Now, this I did not picture,” she said as she leaned forward and peered through the windshield, taking it all in.

  I eased my truck up the driveway and into the garage. I threw it in park and cut the engine, swiveling my shoulders to look over at her while I still held on to the wheel. “And just what did you picture?”

  And how often and why were you picturing it?

  She shrugged, biting back the laughter that rumbled around in her chest. “I don’t know… something dumpier… like with peeling paint and dust covering the windows. Maybe with some of that yellow tape roping it off… HAZARDOUS WASTE stamped across it,” she said, digging it in a little deeper.

  “Are you kiddin’ me?” I was doing my best not to bust up.

  Laughter ricocheted around the cab of my truck when she set it free, and there was no stopping the force of my smile. I drifted on it, lost in the sound of the amusement rolling from her mouth. “I’m sorry!” she begged through an apologetic giggle. “You have to admit you were kind of a slob back then.”

  Back then, meaning back when I got to hold her and kiss her and make promises that had never come to be.

  Tonight I was feeling like it was high time they did.

  “Admit it!” she prodded, poking me in the side.

  I wrangled out of her reach, grabbed her hand to block her attack. “All right… all right. I was a slob. I admit it. You win. But some things do change for the better. Come inside. I’ll show you.”

  I jumped out and came around just in time to help her down. She rocked a little, and I steadied her. “Careful.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I know how to walk.”

  “Barely.”

  “Ha-ha-ha,” she tossed over her shoulder, grinning at me as I followed, my fingertips just brushing the skin of her back.

  At the door I stepped around her, reached in to flick on a few lights. “You ready?”

  “Yep.”

  I opened it wide, allowing her to walk in ahead of me.

  She wandered just inside, looking out over my living room and kitchen. “Oh my gosh, Christopher.” She smiled back at me. “Some things really do change.”

  Everything was completely organized, sleek and clean, dark colors with bold lines, the quintessential man pad.

  “Who taught you to be this clean? And who the heck designed this place?”

  I laughed a little as I made my way over to the kitchen. “Well, Aly and I lived together for a couple years, and she wasn’t about to clean up after me, so she trained me pretty quick. But all of this…” I gestured around the space, lifted a shoulder. “When I bought it, I figured decorating wasn’t quite my thing, so I handed Mom a credit card and told her and Aly to have at it. Within a week, they had the entire house looking like something out of a magazine. Suits me, don’t you think?”

  She nodded, raking her teeth over her bottom lip. “Yeah. It’s perfect for you.” She arched a brow. “And you clean all this yourself? It looks like every inch has been scrubbed with a toothbrush.”

  I leaned my hands on the island countertop, grinning across at her. “Hey, I get on my hands and knees to clean this place. Wear gloves and an apron, too.”

  “Really?” she asked, this adorable look of disbelief crossing her face.

  Shaking my head, I laughed. “No, not really. But the business with Jared is going great. Found myself with all this extra money that I have no idea what to do with, so I hired someone to come in a couple of times a week to keep the place clean.”

  “Oh, so you’re saying you’re spoiled,” she assessed with a grin.

  “Uh, no, not spoiled. I work my ass off. And before you ask, I do pick up my socks and underwear from the floor and every once in a while I even venture into doing my own laundry.”

  “Impressive,” she drew out with all the sarcasm she could muster.

  “Isn’t it?” I winked and pushed off the counter. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  Her eyes lit up and she walked into the kitchen. “Do a shot with me? We were drinking all night and you and Jared were all sweet and played DDs for us.”

  “Are you insane? You’re already going to have the hangover of a lifetime tomorrow.”

  She shrugged. “Like Aly said, I don’t get to go out all that much, and however terrible I feel tomorrow, it will be worth every second of tonight.”

  How could I argue with that?

  I opened the cabinet, dug the vodka out from the other half-emptied bottles I kept in there. I grabbed two shot glasses, filled them halfway.

  She edged in closer, and I could smell her vanilla, all the sweet emanating from her skin.

  God, I was a fool to bring her over here. Having her this close and knowing she wasn’t mine was pure agony.

  On the island, I slid a glass over to her, lifted my own. “What are we drinking to, Samantha?”

  She lifted hers, hesitated, averting her gaze before she gathered her courage and looked up at me. “We’re drinking to tonight… to reconnecting with people we thought we’d forever lost.”

  I’d gladly drink to that.

  Lightly, I clinked her glass. “To being found.”

  Her eyes darkened, and shakily, she tipped her glass back in the same second I knocked back mine. Fiery liquid burned down my throat, hitting my stomach hard.

  Samantha forced hers down and pinched her eyes closed as she blew the air from her lungs. “Guh. That burned.”

  Quietly, I chuckled and didn’t stop to question myself when I softly brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen across her face. “Yeah. Not quite like those girlie drinks you’ve been chugging all night. You took that like a champ.”

  She grinned, her mouth falling lax. “Did that officially make me a dude?”

  A warm, relaxed feeling slipped over me, and I found my thumb running up and down her jaw, my hand cupping her cheek. She leaned into it, and my head tipped to the side, my voice subdued. “Uh… no… that most definitely did not make you a dude.”

  Spellbound, I stared, before she quickly turned away. She wandered over to stand in front of the large French doors that sat between my kitchen and living room and looked out onto the backyard.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  Out back, it was dark, but the pool light slowly changed from one color to another, and the landscaped yard glowed with the small lamps that jutted out from the strategically placed plants. The patio was set with comfy loungers and a matching table set.

  I came up behind her, stopping just off to her left and a foot away. “That’s my favorite part of the whole house. I love sitting out there at night, just listening to the city while I get lost in my thoughts.”

  Fingertips fluttered up to the glass pane, as if they were filled with a yearning to touch something they couldn’t reach. “You have a pool,” she murmured as if it were a secret.

  I edged closer. My breath fluttered through the strands of hair that flowed over the delicate cap of her shoulder. “Does that bother you?”

  Slowly she shook her head and drew in a long breath as if to steel herself. “Will you teach me?”

  I felt the frown crease between my eyes, pull at my mouth. The memories of her fear were vivid. Like it had all happened yesterday – that day seven years ago that had felt like the last day I’d been alive because it was the last day she’d truly been mine. The words scraped up my throat. “Aren’t you scared?”

  She laughed with quiet irony. “Everything about you has always scared me. Maybe it’s time I faced some of my fears.”

  Short pulses of awareness pinged between us, sending an upheaval of
nerves pitching through my body.

  “Not tonight,” I whispered, “not when you’ve been drinking.”

  Definitely not when she had me tied up in a million intricate knots.

  She swallowed hard. “What if I don’t have another chance?”

  “You’ll have another chance. I promise.”

  Silence surrounded us. Tension stretched taut across the space. Energy surged, and all I wanted was to press her to the glass, to feel my body against hers.

  Finally she shook herself off, regarded me over her shoulder. Her face was so close, my breath got all locked up in my throat. “Show me the rest?”

  I offered her my hand, and she accepted it. I led her down the hall off to the left of the kitchen, showed her one bedroom that had been set up as an office, the other as a guest bedroom.

  “Cute,” she said, trailing behind me.

  “Hey, there’s nothing cute about my house.”

  She giggled. “Right… sorry. Manly,” she corrected, grinning this grin that twisted around my heart, jolts of energy passing between our connected hands. I led her back into the living room and through the double doors that opened to my room.

  “And this is the last… the master bedroom.”

  She squealed and blazed past me. I scratched at my head. Apparently that shot had hit her hard, because she was suddenly without an ounce of shyness. The girl just kept shifting from one extreme to another.

  “Oh my God, Christopher, that is the biggest bed I’ve ever seen!”

  Yeah, and about the only thing I wanted to see right then was her laid out across it.

  She kicked off her heels and pretty much hurtled onto my bed and started jumping in the middle of it.

  I rubbed my hand over my mouth, my laughter low and full of amusement. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What does it look like? I’m jumping on this amazing bed.” She stretched her arms out, like she could fly, and a million questions spun through my head. It felt like I still got her, the way she used to say I was the only one who did. But so many years had passed and so much had changed.

  Slowly, I crossed the distance, my footsteps calculated as I came to stand at the edge of the bed.

  “You still go to church, Samantha?” I asked quietly, my chin lifted so I could take her in. Why that was the first question out of my mouth, I didn’t know. But so much was wound up in it, that goodness that I’d loved about her, the belief and faith I’d never experienced myself somehow still apparent in her eyes and soft on her tongue.

  I also knew the way she was raised in the church had a whole lot to do with why she hadn’t been allowed to see me.

  She slowed, bouncing softly, and she gradually lowered her arms. Her head tilted, and something significant flared in her eyes. “Yeah.” She said it like she was surprised by my asking, but like she appreciated that I had. Now she was just bouncing on her toes, closer to the edge. “But I don’t go to my dad’s church anymore. I needed a place where I felt comfortable to be myself, where I wasn’t the pastor’s daughter. Because no matter how old I got, everyone still expected me to act a certain way, you know?”

  My hands found her hips, and hers found my shoulders. She blinked down at me, sucking me into her warmth.

  From her back pocket, Samantha’s phone chimed with a funky little song, and her eyes went wide with excitement, while mine went wide with dread. For a second, I’d almost forgotten about Ben, that she belonged to someone else. I’d put money down on it being him. The asshole was like a thunderstorm raining all over my own personal town parade.

  But Samantha smiled too wide and dug into her pocket, squeezing my shoulder with the other hand. “Stewart.”

  Old affection tightened my chest, and Samantha flopped down onto her butt, pulling at my hand to haul me with her. On my side, I propped up on an elbow, and Samantha held up her phone so we both could see. Then she swiped into her Snapchat message.

  When the picture popped up, affection squeezed me so tightly I was sure it had to be constricting all airflow. But in it was this jolt of crushing pain that not one thing in this godforsaken world could have prepared me for.

  God, how much had I loved this kid?

  Stewart wore a goofy smile, his bottom lip jutted out in a pout, the words Can’t Sleep stamped across his forehead in the added font.

  Fuck, I couldn’t even begin to believe how much he’d changed, no longer that cute kid like I remembered. I could see even from the snapshot that he was almost a man. All traces of childhood had been stripped from his skin. But the sickness… it’d ravaged his body. He was drawn and worn and frail. His head was bald, and his sunken cheeks made his blue eyes stand out in stark contrast to the rest of him, his skin a pale, chalky gray.

  Goddamn it.

  Seeing him this way broke my fucking heart.

  Samantha looked at me, like she got me the same way I felt like I got her. Sympathy and sadness deepened the lines of her face. She turned back to the image. The way she looked at it killed me, like she was cherishing something that was already gone. She ran the tip of her finger over it. “He’s so sick, Christopher. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you… I wasn’t even thinking this is the first time you’ve seen him since he got sick again, and he’s so much worse this time. I just wanted you to see… His messages always make me happy. I’m just so glad to be with him in any way.” She whispered the last.

  I touched the side of her jaw, and my damned voice shook. “Don’t ever apologize for wanting to share something with me. I want to be there for you. I was just…” She looked at me, earnest and open, and I swallowed down all the emotion I didn’t know how to handle. “Shocked. I’d half expected him to still be a ten-year-old boy.” My mouth curved with a soft, sad smile. “Thank you for sharing this with me.”

  She nodded, laid back on the overflowing pile of pillows stacked against my headboard. She lifted her phone, twisted up into the silliest face, and snapped a picture of herself.

  I chuckled. “He’s going to know you’re drunk. Those fuzzy eyes are a dead giveaway.”

  A soft giggle floated from her, and she tinkered around on her phone, talking while she added a frame and a message. “Well, I am drunk, so not much can be done about that. And I pretty much tell Stewart everything.”

  I glanced at the photo, Samantha looking like the angel she was as she posed for her brother. It read, That’s because you’re missing me, across the top. She pressed SEND.

  Five seconds later, her phone buzzed with a regular text, and I snuggled in closer so I could read what he said. Where are you?

  Samantha cringed. So apparently she didn’t tell him everything.

  She tapped out a quick response. At a friend’s.

  It took all of three seconds for him to respond.

  In their bed?

  Another quickly followed.

  Who is this friend?

  “Nosy little bugger,” Samantha mumbled. A smile tipped the edge of her mouth. “I swear to God, he should write books. His imagination is off the charts. I’m sure he’s imagining all kinds of salacious scenarios right about now.”

  She was swift to change the subject. How are you feeling?

  Time stopped when she got his response. Like I’m dying.

  She shook when she attempted to type out her answer, and I just lay there frozen, watching her denial, the shake of her head and the way her fingers frantically beat at the keypad as if she could force it not to be true.

  “Why does he have to say stuff like that?” she begged through a pained whisper, looking at me helplessly, before she sent her reply.

  No, you’re not. You’re not giving up, Stewart. I won’t let you.

  Two minutes later, her phone beeped again.

  I love you more than anything in this world. You know that, don’t you?

  Her response was instant.

  Yes. And YOU are what makes this world great. You know that, don’t you?

  She waited for his return, but when none
came after a few minutes, she tossed her phone down toward the end of my bed and slumped back onto my pillows.

  I pulled her by the waist to face me. “You okay?”

  Contemplating, she slanted her eyes to her fingers that were twisting in my dark comforter, mixing in with the fabric of my shirt, her short fingernails grazing the material. Tormented eyes flicked up to meet mine, and they punched me with another shock of heartache.

  Her voice trembled. “Not if he’s not. I hate knowing he’s in his room alone, in pain, pretending like he just can’t sleep. I hate knowing he’s suffering and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.”

  “How could you think for a second you’re doing nothing for him, Samantha? You’ve always taken care of him. Been there for him so he wouldn’t feel alone. And after all this time? It’s obvious you still do the same. Why do you think it’s you he messaged in the middle of the night?”

  Her brow creased in grief and hope.

  “Because he knows he can count on you,” I continued, taking her hand and weaving it in mine. “He knows you’re there to listen when he needs you. That you love him with everything. You think that doesn’t ease some of his suffering?”

  “I’d give up everything for him, Christopher. Switch places in a heartbeat. I was so hopeful that I’d get to be a bone marrow donor for him, but I didn’t match.”

  I heard the heartbreak quivering in her tone, and her eyes glistened with moisture, emotion thick in her throat.

  And God, I didn’t mean to let it, but a tear broke free and streaked down the side of my face. It fucking destroyed me seeing her this way, seeing him that way. I’d hoped with all the hope I’d had left in me that he’d be okay, that he’d grow up to live a normal life like he deserved to.

  Samantha released my hand and reached out with her knuckle to gather the wet trail running down my temple, like maybe she was comforting me. “Why does it feel like you’re the only one who really understands?” she asked.

  I took her hand back, squeezing it, a soft puff of air huffing from my nose. “I don’t think I could ever really understand everything you’ve been through. But I’ve always loved him, Samantha. I never stopped.”