Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  Her soft whine into my shoulder becomes a new body-wracking sob.

  But she nods.

  I nod with her. “I don’t try to take care of you just ‘cause he wanted me to. That’s part of it—of course it is—but I also do it ‘cause I want me to. You and Theo haven’t been left all alone, and neither have I. We’re all stuck in this hellhole together. You’re not some charity case or some burden or obligation. You’re…you’re two of the only three people I’ve ever felt safe with. I need you just as much as you need me. That was true before, and it’s still true. You’re my family.”

  I don’t know how she can hug me so hard when her spirit is so weak.

  I’m managing the same thing, though.

  Miserably, she cries, “Please forgive me-e. You mean so—so much to us, and I don’t…I don’t wanna l-lose you, too, and….”

  Sniffling, I start gently rocking her. “I do forgive you. You don’t have anything to be afraid of. It’s okay, Ellie.”

  The nickname is a slip-up.

  In the space of a heartbeat, my nervousness surges back up, because I know how irritated she can get when we call—I mean, when we used to call…. And now she’s probably reminded of Cliff all over again, which means she’s about to jerk away from me and glare at me again and undo what we’ve….

  Except none of that is happening.

  Not a thing about her has changed. She isn’t tense in my arms. She isn’t groaning or complaining. She’s still letting me keep her close for both of our sakes.

  For the first time in years, she isn’t upset about her nickname.

  Maybe because for the first time in years, I’ve used it to soothe her, not tease her.

  I don’t know why—and it’s a little embarrassing, to be honest—but this is when the tears finally get the best of me.

  Noelle doesn’t mention it. Doesn’t seem to mind at all.

  Of course she doesn’t.

  All she does is whisper tremulously, “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  I take a juddering breath out of my silent weeping. Then I shake my head against hers. “I can’t either.”

  Her breaths are uneven, too, on my shoulder. “Thank you for not leaving me to miss him by mys-self.”

  It takes me many moments to get myself under control enough to speak again. It hurts to even think about how this whole thing could’ve ended up. “Thank you for not making me leave.”

  “I’ll never make you do that.” She sniffles thickly. “You’re never not welcome. You’re our family.”

  Yeah.

  Old insecurities and new pains aside, that’s one thing I know, one certainty in this world full of horrible surprises and living nightmares.

  I’m safe with her, like I said. Whether I’m bleeding from being on my dad’s bad side, doubting what I’m capable of in everyday life, or crying because my best friend is dead, I’m safe with Noelle Bright.

  And she’s safe with me no matter what happens—no matter how shadowed she may ever become over the death of the man she loved.

  I still don’t know how we’re supposed to get through this, but it means the world to me that we can stick together while we try.

  - 17 -

  B E C K E T T

  now

  Having Noelle agree with me that we can put our candlelit moment of weakness behind us and get back to being friends…God, it meant the world to me.

  Obviously, a huge part of me doesn’t want to pretend those kisses didn’t happen. I can’t help it. No one ever wants to pretend that about things they loved every millisecond of. But the rest of me is relieved she didn’t call me horrible and call the last two years a series of mistakes.

  I don’t want to be a mistake to her.

  I also don’t want to be a knife in Cliff’s back.

  Thankfully, yes, she feels the same way.

  However, that didn’t make seeing her any less awkward when I went back to her house to spend a bit of time with Theodora; I don’t believe I’ve ever slogged through more awkwardness in my life.

  Noelle and I kept more distance between us than I remember there being in a long, long time, but it didn’t bring me a sense of security. It just felt wrong. And laughs were harder to come by because it was the first time we had tried to talk normally since….

  My God, did I miss her easy laughter. Echoes of it were still with me, and I wanted so badly to hear it fresh and free right in front of me.

  The bottom line, I guess, is that I still just missed her.

  And she was so beautiful even though I knew she had had a long day.

  I kept catching her looking at me like she might’ve been thinking the same thing where I was concerned.

  Every time that happened, we both visibly tried to act like it hadn’t.

  Tried to act like we weren’t thinking anything the least bit not-friend-like.

  Tried to ignore how accidental glances at lips kept putting color in her cheeks and something in my throat that refused to be cleared away properly.

  And I personally tried to ignore how she ended up spending long, lung-gripping seconds rippling her fingers against the thighs of her leggings. Not only did it make me wonder if she wanted to touch me, but it was also the very same thing she did in her shadowed kitchen just before I reached out and touched her and sent us snowballing.

  Memories I was not allowed to think about.

  So we focused on Theo as much as we could.

  Not that that was an actual chore, of course; she’s a gift. It did something good to my soul to give her piggyback rides around the front yard to the tune of her shrieky giggles. Spending time with her always does good things for me. And it was extra special then because I was so grateful not to have been kicked to the curb by her mama.

  We’ll get used to it, I just kept telling myself when the awkwardness prickled at me. Noelle and I only kissed last night. Not enough time has passed for us to move on. It’ll happen soon.

  Well, that was three days ago, and all of it is still on my mind.

  I’d like to say I’m getting better day by day. We’ve kept up our habit of talking on the phone at night, which is a lot less tricky than seeing each other—in fact, we haven’t been spending anywhere near as much in-person time together as we were for a while there. We’ve also steered away from topics related to what happened. So those things have helped.

  But the truth is that being apart from her and Theo, physically and emotionally, has made me feel like two big pieces of who I am are missing.

  I’ve tried not to dwell too much on that aspect; it’s more important that I get my head right. Noelle and I agreed to do that. We know we can’t get ourselves into another dangerous situation, and avoiding that starts with not getting caught up in dangerous thoughts.

  We’ll get used to the agreement, I tell myself again now. We’ll get back to the way we were.

  Then I finish setting up this YouTube video on my TV. I’ve been taking advantage of having time to work on learning more dance steps. And, gotta be honest, I’ve been feeling renewed excitement about it.

  A plié is when you bend your knees. For a demi one, you only bend slightly, and for a grand one, you almost bend into a crouch—gracefully, of course.

  A relevé is when you stand on the balls of your feet, tiptoe-style.

  An arabesque is when you have one leg stretched out straight behind you, whether it’s lifted off the floor or not.

  A pirouette is a turn you do with one leg fixed into a kind of triangle; your knee angles out to the side because your foot points in toward the knee of the leg you’re standing on.

  Today, I’m going to keep working on jeté leaps. I can’t do really big ones, obviously—the ones that look like someone doing the splits mid-air—but small ones haven’t been too hard to get down. The instructors suggest putting a shoebox on the floor to practice jumping over, which helps.

  I get the video playing, then scratch at an itch on my cheek.

  My left cheek, I real
ize when I feel the scar beneath my fingertip.

  Just like that, more memories are spiking through me as quick and hot as lightning. Noelle’s thumb being in this very place because my face was in her hands while we shared kiss after fervent kiss. And then back before that on a different night, when she so sweetly kissed my scar itself.

  God, they’re making me feel—making me wish and feel and….

  I squeeze my eyes shut in a hard blink, then shake myself. Shake away the affection and wanting. Shake off the tingles cascading down my back.

  “Get back to normal, Beckett,” I tell myself out loud.

  And the order triggers a particular thought I had on Saturday.

  A truth about what ‘normal’ looks like for me and Noelle.

  A fact I didn’t want to lend credence to then and damn sure can’t lend credence to now.

  I shake it off, too, and restart the video.

  Dance steps. That’s what I need to think about.

  Dance steps, not danger.

  —

  A full week after my and Noelle’s mess-up, things feel better yet in some ways and even worse in others.

  On one hand, Theodora’s birthday is under two weeks away, on the nineteenth, so Noelle and I have been planning her party over calls and texts. It’s been fun. And I feel as though I’m just about done working on dance stuff, so secretly planning how to bring that up to Noelle has also been fun. I’ve gotten the deer’s damage to my car fixed, and my regular work is going well, too, and I even grabbed a drink with Blaze and our boss during happy hour on Friday.

  But on the other hand, I still feel tangled up because no matter what I distract myself with, nothing really gets rid of what Noelle has done to me.

  These dichotomous emotions won’t balance out.

  What I mentioned to her the other day keeps coming back to me: our sudden deer accident shook loose things that had been hiding inside us. Now that they’re in view, they can’t be shoved away again.

  It’s all beginning to hit me pretty hard.

  Try though I do to push on, it’s beginning to mess with my moods, my sleep, my appetite.

  Instead of improving a little every day, I grow a little more stuck.

  For example, yeah, I’m excited to share my dance steps with her and hopefully give her the confidence to pick back up on dancing if she wants to, but realistically, how do I expect to do any of that if I can’t spend too much time with her in person? Not that I’m unwelcome around her; I’m just afraid I’ll get sucked in if I get too close. And I don’t mean close-enough-to-touch close. I’m talking about what should be a normal distance from one human to another. I don’t feel like I can spend very long standing at a normal distance from Noelle without risking blinking and suddenly finding myself touching her in ways that won’t carry old innocence. Whatever restraint I had the other day in her yard seems frailer now.

  But even if I could contain myself, what if she couldn’t do the same?

  What if one of the soft expressions I’ve sometimes been able to sense through our phone calls ended up on her face when she was near me, and then without warning, she was touching me?

  We would snowball all over again, I fear.

  Yet not seeing her as often as I want to has been really hard.

  Pretty sure I saw her more than this when Jenna and I were still dating.

  What stings even more than that knowledge is how even briefly thinking of my ex makes Noelle stand out that much more vividly in my mind. What I felt for those months is so, so pale in comparison to what I’ve caught myself feeling for Noelle.

  Jenna never put a spark in me.

  She never shook me up this badly.

  Seeing her name on the screen of my phone never did what seeing Noelle’s does right this second—I didn’t feel nothing, but God knows I didn’t feel everything either.

  I don’t know how you can feel everything in the time it takes to inhale and accept a call, but it’s happening to me. It’s been happening all this time.

  “Hey,” I greet her, unable to keep warmth out of my tone. Part of the ‘everything’ is deep joy that I’m on her mind, that I’m getting a slice of her time.

  That she’s saying, “Hi, Beck,” in a warm tone of her own. “How are you?”

  A little bit tortured.

  “Just fine. How ‘bout you?”

  A beat passes before she echoes, “Just fine.”

  I wonder if she feels the way I do.

  Her tone wasn’t any different just now, but neither was mine.

  Not sure if I’m terrible or justified in hoping she’s having as difficult a time as I am.

  “Hmm?” I ask, realizing I’ve missed what she just said.

  “My pa—oh. I asked what you’re doing for dinner.” She takes a measured breath. “My parents invited us to go out in a couple hours. You and Theo and me. So I wondered if you felt like…or….”

  My heart swells. My pulse picks up pace.

  I’m being invited to dinner?

  What an unexpected crossroads this is.

  Hell yes, I feel like going, but it’s risky to go around Noelle when I know I won’t want to leave again.

  However, would this particular dinner be so risky? With Gail, Grant, and Theo there?

  Maybe it’s just what we need to get things really nudged in the right direction.

  Theo’s birthday party is sure to be a safe event with lots of people around, but that’s many days away, and it is only now occurring to me that I can’t wait that long to see her and Noelle again. I can’t. But this dinner also sounds safe. The two of us could be kept in line in the company of three other people.

  My voice comes out more quietly than I mean for it to. “I would love to go.”

  The sigh I hear on her end is also quiet.

  I wish I knew what her eyes look like right now.

  “Awesome,” she replies. “Thank you. We’re so excited.”

  I bet they’re soft again, those eyes. This is another time that I think I can sense what her expression is.

  So the warning rises up, up, up through me, and I don’t try to stop it from escaping. I think it needs to be put out there, like the compliment I gave her that day at The Chocolate Shop.

  My voice is still quiet. “I’m—I’m gonna think you’re beautiful. Just so you know. I’ll try to keep my eyes off of you, but I’m sorry in advance for if I fail at it.”

  I hear the catch in her breathing, and Jesus, I wish….

  “Ri—” a weak clear of her throat, “—right back at you, Beckett.”

  It brings me a strange sense of comfort, this exchange.

  Like when you’re about to get a shot at the doctor’s office and you acknowledge there’s going to be a tight pinch of pain—that doesn’t make the shot not hurt, but it does kind of prepare you for it.

  “I can’t wait,” she adds.

  “I can’t either,” I admit.

  I spend the rest of my time alone lazing around my apartment and dimly hoping I’ll soon be getting control of these sparks that are still in me.

  It sure doesn’t happen when I meet up with everyone at the new Italian place in town. Noelle is beyond a sight for sore eyes with her gentle smile and her hair hanging loose and her dark orange dress flowing just short of her knees. And the way she looks at me makes me feel like I’m the only person she sees in this whole place—maybe I am, since Theo is clumped up with Gail and Grant and they’re all a few steps ahead of us.

  Love it.

  Hate how much I love it.

  But it does seem to help that Noelle and I gave each other a heads-up about this. Though we don’t grin and rush into a hug, don’t link arms or walk close together, we also don’t suffer the same discomfort from the other day at her house.

  I’m glad for that.

  Things seem to get a bit easier still once we’re seated, when she and I join her mom and dad for a glass of wine and a beer, respectively. It helps us relax, as does having a cheerful Theo se
ated between us. Although our shoulders loosen and our conversation does, too, there’s still space separating us; there’s still a boundary. And a cute one, at that.

  So this outing isn’t bad.

  Steady? No. Outright precarious? Also no.

  We’ll get used to it, I continue to tell myself.

  I’m finally starting to think it could be true.

  I waver something fierce at the end of it all, though, when Gail and Grant get ready to take Theo home with them for a sleepover and bid their daughter and myself a fun night.

  Ordinarily, yes, she and I would head off together and hang out. But not now.

  They don’t know that.

  We do.

  And we share a look full of a hundred different things—it’s another two seconds full of everything, but it’s not only happening to me this time, it’s happening to both of us.

  Then we say our goodbyes to her family, then agree to talk on the phone in a bit, then remind each other to drive carefully, then head for our own cars.

  I don’t merely feel a little bit tortured having walked away from her. The torture is here in full force.

  After we’re each safely at home and we’re on the call, a heavy silence follows our words of greeting.

  I stare at the ceiling above my couch, rub absently at the front of the muted blue sweater her attention danced over more than once tonight. She kept looking at it and then up at my eyes, as if comparing the colors or something, every single time.

  I think about the light way I caught her watching me and Theo when I was fulfilling the kiddo’s request that I cut her small pizza into skinnier pieces. And I think about how Noelle reciprocated the easy smile my glass of beer helped me give her.

  “This is hard,” comes her strained voice through the phone.

  I don’t know if it closes more tightly around my throat or my heart.

  Shutting my eyes, I let her confession roll over me.

  Then my own truth leaves me, as dim as my memories are glowing: “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”