by Gray, Ace
My hand freezes on the keg I’m moving. Jonas isn’t stupid, and he’s known Mina for a while. His comment is unexpected but I doubt it’s unwarranted. So that means he can’t see it. What if she can’t? I know from time to time I keep my emotions a little packed up but what I feel for Mina has to pour out of me. I can barely keep it contained, I do it only because I have to. I couldn’t function day to day if I let it take me over like it threatens to, and the last thing Mina needs is someone weak, falling apart at her feet.
“Of course it’s her wearing your ring, I just mean… I dunno… Now everyone knows.” Jonas shrugs.
“Yeah, sorry. I just get a little touchy when it comes to social media.” I can’t help but cringe.
“Oh, yeah.” He drags out his words. “I tried to look you up before your interview. No social media presence at all is a…unique trait. Why do you hate it?”
“It’s depressing.” I feel that tightness well in my chest.
“Cat memes are depressing?” Jonas laughs.
“It’s only the good, the flashy, the phony. No one ever shows pain, or ugly. The people you compare yourself to don’t exist. It makes for serious mind games.”
“Yeah but everyone knows it. They go into it expecting it these days.”
We’ve both shifted, Jonas with his hands on his hips, me with my hands shoved deep into my pockets, neither of us working.
“You’re going to have to forgive me, Jonas, but I disagree. Completely. And I’ve seen the first hand proof.”
Another letter—deep, dark words written on skin—flashes in my mind. Eddy killed himself because he felt like he couldn’t keep up. Like he wasn’t good enough. He said as much in his suicide note, scrawled on his forearm in Sharpie. I hadn’t liked social media before, but after hearing how they found him, what his letter said, how he’d compared himself…
I don’t ask Jonas for a minute; I don’t trust myself to speak. Every note of my voice will crack like Eddy’s neck. The knot lodges in my throat and tears prick the corners of my eyes. The guilt washes over me. I should have known. He tried to talk to me about that stuff. He tried to get my advice. I’d given it flippantly but I didn’t ever ask him why he wanted it. I didn’t ever ask if he was okay.
It takes everything in me not to run for the open garage door. Fresh air means I might be able to breathe again but running through the brewery is unprofessional. It would invite questions from Jonas and Aspen too. Questions that poke at bruises I don’t want to answer for. Not to just anyone anyway.
“James?” Aspen asks as I pass the bar. “Everything okay?”
“Yup.” I answer without giving her a second glance.
I can’t breathe. The weight of my best friend—my dead best friend—is sitting on my chest. I’m surprised I got a word out when Aspen asked. I’m surprised I’m standing. The world sure as hell seems like it’s spinning.
The fresh air presses uncomfortably against me. Or maybe that’s just me in my skin right now. I’d claw out of it if I could. The crunch of gravel beneath my feet doesn’t reach my ears, it’s just a vibration up my bones. I don’t even know where I’m walking, just that it’s away.
Away from the words. From social media. From Jonas who brought it up and Aspen who saw. I’d run away from this feeling completely if I could.
“James?”
Mina’s voice pulls me back from the whirlpool for a second. Long enough for me to look around and see her standing there, leaning out of the front door of her restaurant. When did I get to Main Street? How long have I been walking?
“What’s going on?” Mina asks when I don’t answer her, don’t move closer.
I want to tell her. If I was going to let anyone in, if anyone would understand… But the urge to run away still courses through my veins. A small part of me says no. Don’t. Stay. Talk. That part gets squashed in the trample of panic.
And so she won’t see, so she won’t know my weakness, I turn without a word. If I managed a single one, she’d know. She’d see. She always does. That thought lifts the smallest bit of the darkness. Mina always does. It’s enough for me to go back to work.
“I’m sorry,” I say when I walk back into the keg room. “There’s a whole thing…” I trail off, and I can’t find the words. I can’t find the bits of myself I’m comfortable sharing.
“It’s okay, James.” Jonas smiles a small smile. “I’m sorry I hit a nerve.” He reaches over and claps me on the shoulder. “Let’s go back to talking about Mina. Beer, if she’s part of the sensitive spot.”
“No, she’s not part of the sensitive spot.”
I smile as my eyes fall to the floor, and I picture her the way she’d been this afternoon, back lit by the sun, dark curtain of hair rippling in the breeze. Her collarbone was highlighted by the shadows cast by later afternoon sun and her tanned skin fell over it like silk. She always says the smallest things are what she finds beautiful, and when I think of her like that, of the shadow dipping into her collarbone, I agree.
“You guys set a date?” Jonas asks.
Something closes around my throat. These are the questions I’m going to get. All the time. People barging into our private lives.
“No,” I manage despite the intrusion; I’m proud of marrying Mina after all.
“When you do, you guys should totally look into the Peace Garden. The overlook is insane. And the house across the street is…” He keeps rattling, and I let the words wash over me without listening. I want to marry Mina but the wedding… My stomach heaves.
This, along with the meltdown I had this afternoon, are the things I’ll just have to file under never telling Mina.
My bones are still a little hollow from earlier when I finally knock on Mina’s door, sending the vibration zinging from my fingers until it resonates throughout my whole skeleton. Thinking of Eddy unhinged me today. I blow out a deep breath.
“What’s that for?” Mina asks, appearing from nowhere and leaning casually against her doorframe a step above me.
I take a minute to look her over without shame. Mina has long legs but just because she’s tall, her torso is long too. There are two freckles way up high on her thigh that I can see when her cut-offs are angled just right. And I like the way her shirt hugs the underside of her breasts more than her cleavage. Her collarbone is just as sensual now, rucked up with her crossed arm, and her dark hair falls like water over rocks across it.
She’s beautiful.
Even if her hazel eyes are a little pinched and her pink lips are thinned.
“James?” she asks but she doesn’t move.
“What?” I step up to her stair and lean in.
“What’s going on with you today?” She doesn’t lean in but she doesn’t lean away either. She just tilts her chin so she can still meet my eyes.
Another sigh balloons my chest but I don’t let it out. I hate it when Mina sees me as less than. Sure, it brought us back together but talking about Eddy is too much for me. Seeing me fall apart like that is weak and unattractive. Or it makes me feel that way.
“Am I allowed to say, I don’t really want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” she says and steps aside. “But you know you can talk to me about it.”
My eyes meet hers as I step past, and I can read her face like she’s typed her plea out in Times New Roman. She wants me to share. She wants me to puke my guts out. I guess a little part of me wants to, but the resounding voice inside me says, don’t falter. Be her pillar.
“Meen, I know I can.” There’s an inherent “but” in my sentence that I didn’t really mean to put there. She waits expectantly. I suck in a deep breath then hold it as I walk past her to the kitchen.
She comes in, eyes wide and sad in the way only Mina can manage.
I remember the first day I saw her eyes like that. She came into my brewhouse and something was different. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it, then I realized it was her eyes. No matter what Mina’s face did, her eyes told me everything. S
ometimes they worked together, sometimes they fought. That day her lips curled up in her warm smile but her eyes, they stayed wide. And heavy. As if she saw the weight of the world rather than felt it. She apologized to me that day for something she didn’t need to and those eyes, ghostly, hollow and hurt, compelled me to tell her to stop apologizing. To stop being afraid. She straightened her spine, and for the first time that day, I saw her as something more than a girl I work with.
And each time I fell into those deep pools of sadness, I wanted to stay. I wanted to stay with the girl who didn’t always seem happy. Who became a little more beautiful when she fought against the sorrow.
“So, nothing?” she asks after letting me grab a beer and getting lost in the label and my thoughts.
“You said I didn’t have to talk about it.”
She presses her lips to the rim of the bottle, takes a swig then shrugs. “I guess I wanted you to want to talk about it.”
“So you wanted me to be different?” I mean it as a joke, but I don’t get my tone just right.
“No.” She arches back like I’ve hit her. “I would never…”
“It was a joke. It was a joke.” I scramble both with my words and after her. “I’m sorry I screwed it up.” I catch her hand not wrapped around a beer bottle and pull her back toward me. “I suck at communicating, Mina, and I’m sorry.”
She sighs.
“Please, don’t hate me,” I murmur as I wrap my arm around her low back and pull her up against me.
“I could never hate you,” she says with a hint of disappointment. “I promise, I’ve tried.”
“I’ve never done anything but love you.” I lean in and run my nose along the bridge of hers.
She sighs then looks up at me. Her eyes have softened, and she leans in, nestling into my chest. “I just want this to work. I need it to. My heart barely survived you once. I still feel the ache of where it split.”
“We’re going to make it.” I brush her cheekbone with my knuckles. “Just be patient with me and know no matter how terrible I am at communicating, I am in this, and I am in love with you. Be in it and in love with me, yeah?”
She arches back and smooths the wrinkles of my shirt. “I have this feeling like the other shoe is going to drop any day now.”
“That’s my fault, I’ll own it, but I swear there is no other shoe.” I pull her hard and she bumbles back into me. I keep hold of her and let the momentum carry us back to the edge of the counter. She gasps. I use her surprise to capture her lips, to breathe with her breath.
Each kiss of hers is a gift that I’ve been waiting to get. Whether waiting three years or three minutes. I was deprived for so long when we were friends, when it was torture, that even another second hurts sometimes. More than the doubt, more than the weight of what got dredged up this morning, waiting hurts.
So I don’t.
Wait that is.
The sound of her beer bottle on the counter is haphazard and hurried before her newly emptied hands are at the hem of my shirt. I let her yank. And crawl it up over my head, dodging my beer bottle. It knocks my hat off and Mina pays no attention to the clatter.
She kisses down my chest instead. Until she can’t reach, pinned against the counter. I step back, and to my surprise, she drops to her knees. Her hands make quick work of my belt then my button. I take a swig of my beer just before she takes me between her lips.
Mina is hungry, starving, judging by the way she devours me, and it is insanely sexy. The way she wants me… I know what she means when she says that being wanted, like this, is enough. It’s more than.
It’s everything.
To Mina,
I refuse to write beloved or dearest wife or something else like that—my vows are to you. To Mina McLennan, soon to be Larrabee. My vows are to Wwho you are at the very core of it all. You and I have stumbled enough times for us to be cut and scraped down to the bone and with that much exposed, I can honestly say I’ve seen all of you and I love it each piece. Every piece. (???)
And good god do I love you.
Even when I’m insufferable while losing at disc golf. (I really don’t mind losing to you. Sort of.) Or laughing at your angry face. (It really is cute, what can I say?) Or even when I’m realizing that I broke your heart and that I have the power to do it again. I needed you then, maybe more than ever. I deserved you then, maybe less than ever.
But you loved me. You kept on loving me.
For the record I love you just as much. Maybe more. I don’t know how to tell you all the time but it’s there. Alive beneath my skin and thumping through my veins. I don’t know how to show you all the time, but the plans build up in my head. My hands itch to create the world you deserve.
I love you Mina.
“Should we talk about living together?” I ask as I play with the edges of Mina’s hair where it’s splayed out on my chest.
“Ummmm, sure, I guess,” Mina hesitates, and I feel her tense against me.
“I don’t know if I should address the guess so or the sheer panic moment you had first.” My brow furrows when I shift back to look her full in the face.
“It’s not panic.” She sighs. “It’s fear.” She bites her lip.
“We’re engaged. I’m pretty sure living together should have factored into you saying yes.” My stomach churns. She said she was waiting for the other shoe to drop, what if she was just dropping hints. “Did you want to change your mind?”
“No,” she says immediately as she pushes up to her elbow. “Not at all, but…” Her words trail off, her gaze following suit.
“But what?” My finger moves to her collarbone and trace the skin bewitching me.
She swallows, so rough that it jostles my finger as it tracks along her bone. “But I’m worried that you will once you’re always here. Once you see me in all my glory. It’s a lot. Some might even say, too much.”
The way she says those two little words, I know why she says it. Because I said it three years ago.
“Mina.” I can’t hide the hurt in my voice. “I’ve explained this before. I’ve apologized.” Why can’t she erase it? “I told you that’s not what I—”
“I know, James, I know,” she interrupts while rolling out of my arms and out of her bed completely. “You say it was because you felt things you weren’t allowed to feel.” She pulls on a tight t-shirt without a bra and I try very hard not to get distracted. “What about this time?” Her words help pull my mind from her body.
“Huh?” Sort of.
“Look, James, you have all these rules about what you’re allowed to feel and what you aren’t. I get it. I actually like how measured you are. It makes the payoff when you let loose damn near orgasmic, but when we start living together…” She grabs shorts and slides them on without underwear. This time I’m focused like a laser. On her words. On the more I know are coming. “When we’re together all the time there will be times you feel more than you bargained for. That’s life. And you’re going to retreat. Push me away. And I’m going to splinter.”
“That’s not going to happen.” I scramble out of the sheets and over the bed to her side. To her. “I swear to God.”
“You don’t believe in God.” She shoves her hands onto her hips.
“I believe in us.” I thread my arms through hers.
“And when it’s too much? When I’m too much? Will it be like last night?”
“Las night?” I cock my head as getting blown in the kitchen flashes through my mind. I didn’t push her away. Matter of fact, I remember pulling her closer, much closer, despite her small protest, palms against my thighs as I kinda sorta made her swallow me whole.
“You wouldn’t talk to me.” Sweet sorrow flirts with her voice.
The feeling of dread tugs at the back of my mind, at the corners of my heart. I don’t want to churn my feelings back up. I don’t want her to see the dark decaying bits. That would be too much.
“Can I just make you a promise?” I ask when a compromise pre
sents itself.
“Of course.” She nods but her gaze is still cloudy, distracted.
“If it’s about us, I’ll talk. I won’t ask for space. I’ll stay but only if you will.”
Her eyes finally come back to mine. They flit back and forth like a scale she’s weighing the truth of my words on. I hope more than I care to admit that she sees how much I mean it.
“You can promise me the stars and the moon, James Larrabee, and just like your promise to talk, I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I feel the snarl in my throat but I still it. I still it by leaning in and kissing her. Deep, so I can taste her, pressing my tongue to meet hers. My hand slides down the small of her back and into her shorts, grabbing a handful of her ass.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Why not?” I breathe against her lips. “You have somewhere you need to be besides beneath me?”
She smirks, I can feel it against my skin. “No.” She shuffles closer and hooks her hand into the waistband of my sweats. “But we can’t solve all our problems this way.”
“You can solve one problem this way.” I rub my erection against her body, flush with mine.
“You’re incorrigible.” She giggles.
“And you like it.” I bend down to drag my teeth along the edges of her collarbone
“Normally, but after last night…”
“I can still feel your mouth around me from last night.” I thrust against her a few more times, seeing if she’ll yield.
“I did it in the hopes that your frown would go away,” she admits a little breathless.
“It did.”
“And that you’d tell me with the tension…uh…released.” Her bright rose blush spreads along her collarbone then up her neck, pinking up her cheeks.
“You were using sex as a weapon?” I ask with a breathy chuckle against her skin.
“As a tool.”
I shake my head as I move lower on her body and close my mouth over her nipple despite her shirt. She gasps and her hands slide up my body before shoving into my hair, pulling me tight against her chest much like I did to her last night.