Never Stop Falling

by Ashley Drew

  “Can I come in?” I ask, my guilt wishing I hadn’t.

  Without hesitating, she maneuvers past me to open the door, her arm lightly brushing against mine, and goddamn my heart for reacting even to her slightest touch. I squeeze my eyes shut and mentally scold myself, striding past Cori while she holds the door open. Don’t let her affect you like this. Don’t lose focus. With my back turned, the door closes with a soft click and is followed by the flicker of the light switch as it illuminates the room.

  Not much has changed about the guest house. The same black-and-white prints of Paris, London, and New York City decorate the lemon-tinted wall above the wooden four-poster bed. A congruent stretch of open windows line the other two walls of the room’s perimeter, allowing a gentle breeze to sift through the gaps in the shutters and into the wide open space. But still, the walls feel like they’re closing in on us, and it’s suffocating, the silent questions dangling like rope and strangling our words.

  A silent beat passes before she asks again, “Is everything okay, Nick?”

  “You already asked me that.” My voice is hostile. I pinch the bridge of my nose, regretting it as soon as the words leave my mouth.

  “I did,” Cori acknowledges. “But only because you didn’t answer me the first time. I didn’t expect you back from Riley’s until tomorrow night.”

  I lower my head and squeeze my eyelids together at the sound of Riley’s name, the guilt taking refuge in my bones until the moment it combusts and cracks me from the inside out. Maybe it’s why I can’t even look at Cori, because seeing that beautiful damn face of hers would somehow void that guilt, and it’s the only thing preserving the last of my integrity. “You’re right. I should be with Riley right now, but I’m here...with you.”

  A few seconds pass in silence before she responds to my passive-aggressive remark. “Why do I get the feeling you’re upset with me? Did I do something wrong?”

  I run a hand over the top of my head, turning until I face her but keeping my eyes affixed to the floor. “Yesterday was an exceptionally hard workday for Riley. For the past several months, she’s been working on a case involving a homeless pregnant woman with substance-abuse issues. Berta made so much progress, finally realizing she had purpose, and was eager to live the life that Riley knew she could have—a healthy and promising one, full of potential and love. Riley went into this line of work for this very reason—to help those in need and make a difference in their lives, and she certainly achieved that here.”

  I walk to one of the windows where I peer through the blinds and inhale a breath of fresh evening air. Any hope of exhaling my woes fall flat. The room continues to suffocate me.

  “Berta never showed up for her thirty-two week checkup. That was two weeks ago, and Riley hasn’t heard from her since. Apparently, Berta was seen a few days ago somewhere in the city, sitting in an alleyway with a needle in her arm and completely out of it. It devastated Riley. She feels like she failed Berta.”

  Cori moves in my peripheral vision, walking in my direction but stopping after only a few steps. “I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for her. She’s truly something, Nick. That line of work takes a great deal of courage, and what she’s doing, it’s incredible. Riley is incredible,” she praises earnestly.

  “Want to know the worst part about it?” I ask, my voice short and bitter. “After her shitty day, all Riley wanted was me. For me to come home to her and listen while she lamented. To hold and kiss her, and tell her everything was going to be okay. To have her body wrapped in mine. She needed me. All of me. The one thing she needed, and I couldn’t fucking give it to her,” I curse, slamming my balled fist against the wall and using the other hand to massage the ache growing along my temples.

  “I’m sorry, Nick,” Cori apologizes, but if anything, it should be me apologizing. “If you and Riley are having issues, I’m sure you’ll find a way to work through it. But I can tell you’re upset with me. I don’t see what any of this has to do with me.”

  I surrender to my heart, feeling it leave my chest the moment my eyes find Cori. The sight of her—those amazing eyes, her brown wavy locks spilling over her bare shoulders, her trembling lips—it’s the very thing I knew my heart would do in one glance, and now I might not be able to pull it back in.

  “You don’t get it, do you? It has everything to do with you.”

  “I’m not following. I don’t understand, Nick,” she stutters, confusion in her eyes and voice as she nervously bites at her thumbnail.

  “Physically, my body was there, with Riley. But mentally? Emotionally? The entire damn time she was expressing her grief, and all I could think about was—” I stop, unable to finish that phrase as I pace back and forth, running a frustrated hand through my hair once more. “Goddammit!”

  A week ago, I would have never imagined being in this position, torn between the woman who I’ll soon vow my heart to and the woman who clearly still has it. When I fell in love with Riley, I was certain I had my heart. Broken and shattered, no doubt, but every piece accounted for nonetheless, ready to be given to someone that could put it back together. How wrong I was.

  “What are you trying to say, Nick?” Cori asks with caution, and her breathing grows rapid with every heave of her chest.

  “You!” I admit, my integrity buckling. “All I could think about the entire time was you! Jesus, Cori! I was fine without you. I managed. Because I didn’t think you’d ever come back. But the second you walked into the pub, I was done for. Because seeing you reminded me of how fucking difficult it’s been without you, and my heart broke all over again. That’s right, again, implying repetition, because you broke my heart when you left nothing but your letter. Do you honestly believe it was that easy for me to let you go? That your fucking letter would be enough for me to say goodbye? That easily?”

  Cori’s lips tremble, her eyes growing wide under her wrinkled brow. “How did you think I felt? Did you think it was easy for me? Dammit, Nick! Of all people, I thought you understood. Why now? Why couldn’t you have said something before? Why wait until now to say all this?”

  I shake my head with a smirk. “Is that all you can say? I just poured myself out to you, and all you have are questions? I’m not surprised. You’re full of them.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” she demands.

  “What right do you have to ask if I’m in love with Riley? Of course I’m in love with her.”

  “I never asked if—”

  Cori stops mid-sentence. Braiden said she was pretty wasted and probably wouldn’t remember what had happened last night, but I may have just reminded her. When I awoke this morning, my mind was already submerged in thoughts of Cori, but Braiden’s phone call and his recount of last night was the deciding factor. I had to come to her.

  “What makes you think she’s not the one for me? You don’t know her,” I accuse, my voice condescending as my eyes blaze into her. With every word slipping from my mouth, Cori flinches, and a twinge of guilt eats me up. We’ve never fought, not like this at least, and I definitely wouldn’t have raised my voice at her. But try bottling up heartache and frustration for six years, shake it forcefully, and the second you open it up, it’s bound to explode; the mess is inevitable.

  I pace the floor between the window and the foot of Cori’s bed. “If you got to know her, you’d see how amazing Riley is. She’s beautiful, intelligent, kind-hearted, funny. We aren’t in high school anymore, Cori. You’re not allowed to dictate who is, or isn’t, right for me anymore.”

  I see the realization settle in her eyes. “Listen, I can’t blame my actions entirely on the alcohol, and though everything that happened is sort of a blur, whatever I said to Braiden wasn’t meant to belittle Riley in any way. But whatever this is,” she says as she flips her hand from side to side at me, “it isn’t you. So, how about you go and cool off and we can talk like adults when you’ve decided to stop being a complete asshole?”

  Well, I’m not arguing that.

/>   “Bullshit! If what you said wasn’t meant to belittle Riley, then what, Cori? You know, she actually had great things to say about you after the party, and the fact that you’re—”

  “It’s not Riley!” she cuts me off, her voice tearing through the hostility. “I mean, it is her, but it isn’t.”

  I wipe a hand across my face, stopping at the foot of her bed. “You’re not making any sense right now. Dammit, Cori! I don’t...I need to know what the hell is going through your head because—”

  “It’s not just Riley. It’s any woman. I DON'T WANT ANYBODY ELSE TO FUCKING HAVE YOU!”

  And there it is. The confession I’ve waited to hear, what I’ve always known deep down—the reason behind Cori’s disapproval of women in my life. I don’t know if I should be pleased or upset.

  She whips around and stalks to the door, the flip-flops beneath her feet thumping against the wooden floor, and I can almost see her outrage trailing behind her in a cloud of smoke. She yanks the door open with force, allowing a gust of air to sift through and hopefully take the tension back out with it. Unfortunately, the tension remains, stagnant and thick.

  Maybe this is what I want, for her to push me away because perhaps by doing so, it’ll be easier for me to let her go and move on with my life.

  But before long, Norman’s words echo in my head. Don’t take the easy road because we often end up where we were never meant to go.

  Fighting the weight of my confusion, I slowly walk toward Cori. This woman—this goddamn beautiful woman—has no idea she controls my heart, completely and absolutely, and that makes me nervous as hell. When I reach her at the door, I see her agitation dissipate into small pools of heartache at the corners of her eyes. But if I know her as well as I do, that’s all it will be. Because Cori Bennett doesn’t cry.

  I stand so close to her that her body brushes mine with every rise and fall of her chest. She looks up at me with hooded eyes, her blush lips quivering. I bring my hand up and cup her flushed cheek, brushing my thumb across her soft skin as she presses her face into me and closes her eyes.

  “Why, Cori? Tell me why you don’t want anyone else to have me? Just...say it.”

  Her eyelids flutter open, the puddles of moisture still brimming at the edges of her eyes. All she has to do is say it, that she doesn’t want anyone else to have me because she wants me. All of me. Forever. And I’m hers.

  My forehead grazes hers, our noses barely touching, our parted lips only an inch away from unlocking the past and changing the future.

  But when I think we’ve finally reached an understanding, she pulls away, shaking her head. A piece of my heart shatters and cuts into my chest, but it’s a pain I already know.

  “You asked Braiden if I think of you…” I start to say without looking at her, my eyes fixated on the darkness outside the door as I let out a long, tired breath. “Every day.”

  And I disappear into the darkness, taking my wounded heart along with me.

  Photography has always been my escape. My refuge. Comfort that comes in the form of black-and-white and vibrant moments of frozen time, when real time is melting away all too quickly.

  Yet, the moment I get home and walk straight into my dark room, the very thing I need to escape from is staring back at me—several of them, in black-and-white, each dangling from a clothespin that’s strung across the back wall of the windowless room.

  I hadn’t realized how many photos I’d taken of Cori the other day, until I developed the negatives; some she was fully aware of and others I snapped without her knowing. If someone walked into this room right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if they took me as a stalker. If Riley walked into this room? I might as well confess everything.

  My brain tells me to rip every photograph off the line, but my stupid, foolish heart, already broken and beaten, seems to get off on the torture, and I leave the photos where they are.

  I shut the door to the dark room and turn off the lights. Switching on the red safe light, I cross the room to the work area, the darkness illuminated by the soft red glow of the lamp. The second I begin to work on the other roll of film, the door swings open, and Cori bursts through.

  “Jesus Christ, Cori! Ever heard of knocking?”

  “Ever heard of locking your front door?” Typical Cori and her smart-mouth responses. “Besides, I’ve been knocking on the door for the past five minutes.”

  She’s oblivious to the fact that she barged into a dark room in use. Had my film been exposed to the light from the hall, I most likely would have lost a good majority—if not all—of the photos, screwing me royally. Somehow, none of that seems to matter right now.

  I turn away from Cori and make sure the lid on the film cylinder is still tightly in place, but really, I do it to give myself a reason not to look at her. It kills me to look at her right now, so my defenses go up. “Who do I need to yell at for telling you where I live?”

  She hesitates before giving me her answer. “Your dad. I thought about asking Braiden, but then I’d have to explain myself to him, and I didn’t have time for that. Plus, I’m still embarrassed about last night.”

  “My dad, huh? I guess I’ll let it pass. I owe him, anyway.”

  “What you said earlier, is it true? You’ve thought of me?” she asks, innocently.

  The moment she asks, that defensive wall crumbles beneath me. Nothing can be built on a weak foundation, and Cori is my weakness.

  I turn to face her. “How could I not?”

  “We fell so out of touch with each other, I just figured…” She trails off, staring down at her feet.

  “That I would forget about you? That I could brush off an eighteen-year friendship with the one person that mattered most to me in this world? God, Cori.” A fiery passion grows within my heart as I plead my case, because God help me if this woman can’t see how much she consumes me. “You were everywhere, Cori. You are everywhere. All hell could be breaking loose at the pub, and in the midst of the chaos, I’d think of you. Or I’d hear a woman laugh, and immediately do a double-take to make sure it wasn’t you. You tore your way through my thoughts even when I tried to push you out of them. Cori, every goddamn day, I’ve thought of you. When I wake up. When I go to bed. In my dreams. I am always thinking of you.”

  She doesn’t respond, her expression contemplative as she absorbs my answer. Instead, she sets her sights on the display of photos behind me.

  Great. I completely forgot about that until now. This is not awkward. Not at all.

  Slowly, she crosses the room past me, her eyes fixated on my very embarrassing display of affection.

  “Wow, Nick,” she whispers. She’s mesmerized by every photo, each one a stolen memory of our day together: the one with the Pacific behind her at Bixby Bridge as she stretches her arms high above her head, the silly pose of her kissing the bag of Cheetos when we picnicked at Pfeiffer Beach, the close-up of her at McWay Falls at sunset, a light breeze tossing a few strands of hair across her face, but not enough to cover her gorgeous smile. All the while, I’m mesmerized by her, because who needs the photos when you have the real thing right in front of you?

  “Wow,” she repeats. “Forgive me for sounding vain, but these are amazing. I always knew your work was good, but this? This is phenomenal.”

  “I simply aim and shoot. It’d be wrong for me to take credit when the subject of the photo is devastatingly beautiful.”

  Cori faces me, the glow of the red light saturating her ivory skin. She’s stunning. Her eyes mirror the longing in mine, and the tension we felt in her guest house earlier dissipates into a mutual understanding.

  “Things are about to get complicated, aren’t they?” she asks, her breaths growing heavier the moment I walk toward her. Each of my footsteps shrinks the space between us, closing in on the past six years. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the guilt roars vehemently at me, but is soon silenced by the echo of Norman’s words.

  “With us, it has always been complicated, Cori.”

&nb
sp; I step as close to her as I possibly can, and when our bodies touch, I’m not quite sure whose heartbeat I feel fluttering against my chest—Cori’s or my own, or perhaps both, beating together in perfect rhythm.

  “Complicated often gets messy.”

  My fingertips brush the tips of hers. “Then, we’ll clean it up together.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “It won’t be. It will be far from it. But some messes are worth making, and this is one mess I sure as hell want to make.”

  Her tongue slides across her lips as she wets them nervously, luring my eyes to them. I bring my hand to her cheek and rest it there, my thumb stroking her full bottom lip. Her eyes grow hooded and her breath hitches at my touch.

  And that does it.

  With everything I have, I press my lips to hers, the force of our complicated situation no longer holding me back, and Cori reciprocates the kiss without the slightest hesitation. She parts her lips, moving perfectly in sync with mine as she brings her hands to the back of my neck and digs her fingernails into my heated skin. The moment she does, a low hum vibrates over my lips, as if there is a button for every sense on my body and she knows exactly which ones to push. Our mouths devour each other, growing eager and greedy, like we’re trying to feed a hunger we’ve been suppressing since the last time we were tangled in one another. I didn’t think there was anything that could have topped that night.

  I was wrong.

  As I pick her up, Cori wraps her legs around my lower back, crisscrossing them one on top of the other without ever breaking the kiss, and I set her on the edge of the table. My lips pull away from hers, restless and out of control, setting off to explore every part of her. They make a trail along the smooth contour of her cheek, set their sights on the crook of her neck, and stake their claim. Her body shudders the moment I graze my lips back and forth along the deep curve of her soft skin, and hell, I’d give anything to leave my mark on her, giving this patch of ivory skin a boysenberry hue.