When Savannah looked up at Eric and met his gaze straight on, she didn’t see the man she’d made love with on the couch. Even Lucy paled, in her mind. Every memory of him was grass-stained now. “Keep up the good work at IHAO. I bet a lot of people are living better lives because of you.”
As she turned to leave the kitchen, he ran to her and caught her from behind. She didn’t care enough to struggle. Even if Stacy caught a glimpse of whatever he was about to do, what difference did it make? At this point, Stacy would be more upset with her father than with Savannah.
“What?” she hissed as Eric spun her around and hugged her close.
His chest jumped against hers, and he released a low sob, still clinging to her body. She’d never felt quite this uncomfortable with Eric. As she pulled away, she saw the tears streaming from his blue eyes. His white-blond hair looked thin and messy, and his expression of pain pronounced the crow’s feet clawing across his face. When he whimpered, “Thank you,” she felt sorry for him.
Savannah left Eric in the kitchen and hobbled to the bathroom. When she’d closed the door, she turned on the water, stripped naked, and released a torrent of tears. She leaned against the tile to take pressure off her poor ankle, and scrubbed Eric from her body. The act was empowering.
In one weekend, her life had shifted. One affair, and she would never be the same. She didn’t feel like a bad person—not exactly. If anything, she felt like she knew something now that she’d never known before.
After Stacy called out her goodbyes and left the apartment with her dad, Savannah dried her tears and her dripping wet body. Wearing only a towel, she crept back into her room and reached inside her backpack. She pulled out her planner and, after some fishing around in there, her cell. Chris answered straight away, like he’d been waiting for her call.
“Can I see you?” she asked.
Of course. Of course she could. He’d been hoping she would phone him up. He’d even convinced one of his roommates to lend him her car so he could take Savannah somewhere special. Savannah smiled when Chris talked about living in a house with a guy and a girl. His place was probably neat and clean, with minimal decaying garbage and other assorted foul odors. Plus, living with a girl surely added to his sensitivity in relating to other people—though, Savannah realized, that was an odd assumption for her make when all weekend she’d made a pig of her attempts to console both Stacy and Eric. Or, maybe she’d done an okay job with Stacy today, but she’d totally failed with her dad.
Anyway, why was she thinking about all that when she was on the phone with Chris? The past belonged in the past, and Chris was her future. “So, give me your address,” he said. “I’ll leave the house now and I’ll be there soon as the car lets me. Wear something comfortable.”
Wear something comfortable? As in, “let me slip into something a little more comfortable,” or as in, “Put on your sweats, we’re digging for worms”? She cut her losses and tossed on her famous blue flare jeans over the sluttiest thong in her underwear drawer.
As Savannah slid into the passenger seat of Chris’ roommate’s car, she couldn’t conceal the smile that had plastered itself to her lips. Moreover, she didn’t want to. It matched his.
Chris’ driving was smooth, like his personality and his manner of speech. They had everything to talk about. She asked about his roommates, and he told her they were actually his fellow band members—this was Eve’s car. That’s how they ended up with a vocalist who was afraid to sing in public. Chris and Yu had collaborated on a few projects when they started to hear this angelic little voice singing from the bathroom, or the hallway, or wherever. Eve was a true poet. She made up lyrics on the fly as he and Yu rehearsed their songs over and over again. Soon, they had a singer. Before that, they hadn’t even realized they were writing songs.
When Chris slowed down, Savannah looked around. “I don’t think you can park here. This is a hospital zone.”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “We’re going to the hospital. You’re going to have someone look at that ankle.”
Savannah’s fingernails dug into her purse. She took a sharp breath in and held it high up in her chest. Chris definitely heard it, but he only smiled as he stepped out of the car. If she’d wanted to go to the hospital, she would have damn well gone to the hospital on her own. There was nothing wrong with her ankle. Well, there was, but it wasn’t a big deal. Why did nobody believe her? She was fine.
“Oh,” Chris said, almost as an afterthought, when he opened the passenger door for her. “Did you bring your health card? Because they’ll want to see it at triage.”
“Yes,” she hissed through gritted teeth. This was not her idea of a memorable first date.
Chapter Eighteen
“Aren’t you glad I brought you here?” Chris teased as he helped Savannah into the car. “All this time you’ve been walking around on a torn anterior talo-fibular ligament!”
“Also known as a sprained ankle.”
After spending three hours in emerge and one hundred and twenty seven dollars on a damn brace, she was back to liking Chris…a lot. Her mood had dipped below sea level for a while. She was really and truly pissed at first—she’d said no doctors and he took it upon himself to bring her anyway? How could she not feel a little trampled? But Chris’ spirits were so eternally high that she couldn’t help feeling hers elevate after fifteen minutes sitting next to him. In the waiting room, they talked about everything and nothing, they flipped through magazines and poked fun at pop culture. They laughed a lot. And then they talked about Eric.
“I’m surprised by your reaction,” Chris had said.
Savannah’s heart nearly stopped at the perceived criticism. “What do you mean, my reaction?”
He’d set down his magazine on the messy table in the middle of the waiting room, and turned to look her straight in the eye. “When you learned new information about this man, Eric, you automatically shut him out?”
“Yeah,” she said in a whisper. She didn’t want the other people waiting at emerge listening in. “I guess, but so what? He wasn’t the person I thought he was.”
“Or maybe the person you somewhat idolized turned out to be human, and that disappointed you.”
Idolized? She hadn’t idolized Eric, had she? No, she’d felt sorry for him, if anything. “Maybe when I found out he was a pothead, he didn’t seem as worthy of my sympathy…or something…you know?”
Chris had nodded. “But maybe that quality actually makes him more worthy of your sympathy. We don’t seek refuge from pain that isn’t there.”
Savannah had laughed, then winced as she tried to lift up her ankle. “I don’t even seek refuge from the pain that is there.”
When Chris laughed, she’d watched his lean body bounce in the ratty waiting room chair. His smile was inexplicably bright in the dead of night. He’d shifted his orange dreads from his shoulder, and she’d set her head down against it. Was it her imagination, or did he still smell like jasmine tea?
* * * *
As Chris guided Savannah into her apartment, he said, “Remember RICE: Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation.”
Ice. Savannah felt a brief ‘what was I thinking?’ chill as she looked over at the couch. Eric’s hands had melted ice down her belly, his cock had infiltrated her numb pussy...what a strange few days. A fizz of ebullient emotion sprang up in her heart, and she hugged Chris’ arm tight to her chest. Most guys wouldn’t want to hear everything she’d told him today, but she trusted Chris with her secrets. He seemed to understand everything. There were no other guys like him.
“Can you take me to my bedroom?” she asked. “It’s at the end of the hall.”
She hopped alongside him, clinging to his arm. The strength within him trembled in his lean muscles. He was commanding in a metaphysical way—she could feel the power resonating from his soul. It was strange, but comforting.
“I was hoping they’d put you in a cast,” Chris laughed as he opened her bedroom door. “I wanted to sign it.”
/> She watched him look around her space as he led her to the bed. They sat together on the edge of the mattress, side by side, and they looked at each other in the mirrored length of her closet door. For what seemed like a very long time, they rested together, touching only at their thighs, gazing into the mirror and breathing deeply. She felt so attuned to him already. Just sitting here next to him, her body tingled…no, it wasn’t just her body, was it? Her psyche trembled in his presence. She remembered his music, and how impressed she’d been, how it had impacted her on levels she couldn’t comprehend. He was so deep in her already. He’d touched places…he’d been places inside of her she didn’t know yet.
“You can sign me,” she said.
“Hmm?”
Pointing to her backpack, she said, “There are markers in the front pouch. Since there’s no cast to sign, you can sign me.”
With a grin across his cheeks, Chris fell to his knees and zipped open her bag. “Where?”
Why did she take off her top? She couldn’t quite say. It just seemed like the thing to do. She pulled it over her head and traced a finger across her belly. “Here.”
Chris laughed. “I meant ‘where are the markers?’ but don’t worry—I found them. Non-toxic, huh?”
She could have felt embarrassed for misinterpreting, but why bother? With Chris, she felt strangely at ease. She felt a kind of freedom she’d never experienced. It was wonderful, and it encouraged her to unzip her jeans and shuffle out of them—which was easier accomplished in her mind than in practice. Chris smiled, of course, as any boy would smile in the presence of young nudity, but he also shifted toward her to help pull her jeans past the ankle brace. She noticed him noticing her barely-there thong. The lust in his eyes seemed tempered by something else. Adoration? Appreciation on some level beyond the purely sexual. And that made her nod, as though her body were saying, “I understand the sentiment, and yes, I agree.”
Setting the markers out on the bed beside her, he kneeled before her and gently lifted her injured ankle up and over his shoulder. “Elevation.”
He wore jeans and a threadbare button-down shirt over a visible undershirt, and still Savannah felt overdressed. She unhooked her bra with one hand and the weight of her breasts brought the cups swinging down and the straps tumbling across of her arms. Raising one hand at a time from the bed, she untangled herself from her bra as Chris looked on. “Bare,” she said. “Almost completely.”
Nodding, he gazed the length of her, from her eyes, down her chest, to her very extremities. “What colour should I sign in?” he asked, running his fingers across the markers on the bed.
“Every colour,” she replied. “Maybe not yellow—it won’t show up on my skin.”
But Chris was apparently not one to take things for granted. He uncapped the yellow marker first. The tip felt wet and cold as it met the flesh of her belly. She watched him sign Chris, but when he moved the marker away, she said, “Nothing’s there.”
“That isn’t true,” he replied. “You saw me press the marker against your skin. I’m sure you felt it as I signed. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
Suddenly Savannah’s heart felt too big for her chest. She inhaled quickly, in a gasp, as her eyes filled with tears. The inexplicably big emotion overtook her, until she was gulping back sheer sentiment. What was this feeling? It wasn’t sadness…no, sadness she’d met many times before. This…this was elation. She felt too big to be embodied. Her soul seemed to expand in every direction. And when she released her hold on that cascade of tears, Chris kissed his fingers and pressed them to her wet cheeks.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Savannah said, trying to make light of herself.
“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Chris replied with a smile that glowed past her tears. “You have emotions, and you’re letting me see them. There’s no greater commune.”
“Sex,” she countered before she could stop herself.
“Sex is emotion in motion.” He picked up the red marker, and wrote the words across her belly. “Mae West said that.” And then he slipped out from under her leg and lifted her, laid her out like a gown on the unmade bed. Sitting beside her, he traced her flesh with his eyes and she felt his gaze like feathers upon her skin.
She felt as though the happenings of now were somehow bigger than the world outside her bedroom. This experience, strange and exciting, was the microcosm of a new conviction of the heart. She would be changed by it.
As Chris reached for a new marker—blue, this time—she asked, “Could you write me a poem?”
“On the spot?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.
She could tell he was surprised she’d request such a complicated task. Tracing her fingers up her legs and her belly, then around her bare tits and down her arms, she replied, “On all these spots. Can you?”
Licking his pink lips, Chris smirked. “I don’t see why not.”
Fully clothed, he straddled her stomach without setting his weight down. She watched him cogitate. Already, she loved his mind. He was a creative and a scientist—what more could she desire?
And then his eyebrows jumped and a huge smile broke across his lips. He set the felt tip of her blue marker against her upturned wrist and started to write. The slick ink tickled her skin as he wrote on it in devoted silence. She couldn’t read the words, and asked, “What does it say?” as he traced the marker across her chest.
“Patience,” he whispered, grabbing the green marker and continuing down her left arm. He worked fast. The letters were big and sloppy, but his work made her smile. When he reached her left wrist, he sat between her open thighs and wrote in black and then red and then purple down her belly, down her right leg, up her left. The markers tickled her tender flesh, but the pressure of his fingers filled her with desire. Under her thong, the one item of clothing that remained, she was wet with anticipation.
“There,” he said, obviously self-satisfied. “Your poem. It’s finished.”
She gazed down at her multi-coloured body and her heart burbled with giggles. “What does it say?”
With a formal nod, Chris perched himself over her. She gasped at his proximity. Setting his fingertips against her left wrist, he traced them across her body as he read:
Savannah’s skin
is my palimpsest,
to write on and over
everything that’s been written
on and over
and on and over
and on and over
her guarded heart,
her determined mind,
her weary life,
and not least,
her torn anterior talofibular ligament.
She laughed at the last line. Now she could see the words anterior talofibular ligament ran the entire length of her left leg in purple markers, like a series of big, letter-shaped bruises. “Your poem doesn’t rhyme,” she chuckled.
“Well,” he replied in a mockingly taken-aback tone, “you never said it had to rhyme. Should I clear it all away?” Lifting her wrist to his mouth, he placed the tip of his tongue against her flesh and gave it a warm lick.
She gasped, though she didn’t intend to. “No. Leave it. It’s beautiful.” She wished he would read it again—she wasn’t sure she caught the full meaning the first time around—but his tongue was now moving up her arm, smudging his beautiful words.
“All is ephemeral,” he said, kissing the tender nook of her elbow.
“Yes,” she whispered. Of course he was right, but that didn’t stop her from wanting something to hold on to. She decided, if her poem wouldn’t last into the ages, she could at least hold on to his hair.
Chris looked up and smiled. “Seizing the reins?”
“I get the sense I couldn’t steer you if I tried. You choose your own path.”
He nodded, but said, “The path chooses me.”
Releasing his dreads, Savannah traced her hands down his face, crossing his cheeks and running a fing
er down the ridge on his nose, across his lips, in a circle on his stubbled chin. And then down. She unbuttoned his shirt from the top while he worked at it bottom-up, never removing his gaze from her. His blue eyes shone in the dim light from across the room. With him, she felt surrounded by candlelight, even when there was none. She knew she was special. That’s how she felt with Chris. There was truly nobody else for him.
Chris swung his legs around the side of the bed and let his shirt, undershirt and then his pants fall to the floor. When he stood beside her, he seemed miraculously tall. His pale shoulders curved in, drawing her eye to the orangey-brown hair around his pink nipples. There wasn’t a lot of it—there wasn’t so much that he appeared bearish—but there was enough that she could look at his chest and think, ‘He’s a man.’ If there was any question regarding the extent of his masculinity, the bulge beneath his tightie whities cleared that right up.
Savannah was almost embarrassed that her eyes shot right to that spot, but she wasn’t embarrassed enough to stop looking. She liked the trail of hair running down his belly. What did the kids call that strip below the navel, back when she was in middle school? The happy trail? Something along those lines. She reached for it, stretching her arm out as far as it would go, but Chris’ body was just too far away.
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp,” he whispered, “or what’s a heaven for? Robert Browning.”
“Are you an English major now?” she chuckled as he took her hand in his and approached the bed.
“English minor.” Setting her fingertips just below his belly button, he pushed down on his underwear. A raging erection shot out of it so fast Savannah gasped. It urged up against her wrist as she traced her hand down Chris’ front. He moaned and tossed his orange dreads side to side. His smile reminded her of…something… It wasn’t like Eric’s—that had been a smile of gratitude directed toward Savannah. Chris’ smile seemed to express gratitude directly toward the maker of his fine physical form. He seemed grateful for the ability to experience such pleasures.
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