I'll Be Here

by Autumn Doughton

  While mom and Jake buzz about the house dressing in their formal wear, I attempt to tackle my reading assignment for English but I end up having to start the chapter twice because I haven’t comprehended a word.

  5:50 arrives. And then 5:51… and then 5:52… When I look up next it’s 5:55 and I hear the doorbell.

  Alex has always been prompt verging on early. He gets it from his mother. Two summers ago mom and I went to a modern dance performance with Brooke, who insisted on leaving the house ridiculously early. We ended up waiting in the hot car for twenty minutes for the box office to open.

  The scene in the front hall is almost identical to the one last night. My mom and Jake are hovering, talking over one another. Aaron is hopping on one foot, his head bobbing with excitement as he shows Alex the lego-constructed creation clutched in his tiny hand. Alex’s eyes are moving from Jake to my mom, who is trying to take the bag containing our Chinese food from his hand, to Aaron. Even Ferdinand has decided to get in the mix and is currently zig zagging in and out of the clustered legs.

  I almost want to giggle at the overwhelmed expression on Alex’s face. Frankly, it’s a shocker when he doesn’t take a step back and excuse himself out the front door never to be seen or heard from again.

  “Oi,” I say, stepping into the fray, “give the man some room to breathe.”

  Alex’s blue eyes dart up and my belly does a flip.

  “Hi.” He sounds a bit breathless.

  My mother’s stare is burning a hole in my cheek but I don’t look at her. I don’t think I can handle her cat-ate-the-canary expression right now.

  “Jules,” Jake says and then jingles the keys.

  Mom springs into action, grabbing her shimmery shawl from the back of the blue upholstered chair in the sun room. Her heels click against the tiled floor as she lists off things that I already know about my little brother like how much toothpaste he likes on his toothbrush and to make sure to cut his food into small enough pieces.

  “…and if you let him watch that movie with the witches before bed he’ll—”

  “Have nightmares,” I finish the sentence for her.

  Mom gives me a look and then turns to the hall mirror and wipes her finger over her teeth to remove a smudge of bronzy lipstick. As she and Jake pass through the front door, her hand touches Alex’s shoulder affectionately.

  “Keep an eye on them,” she says to him, just loudly enough for me to hear and be mortified.

  “I will,” Alex promises as the door shuts behind my parents. We stand, perched awkwardly on opposite ends of the hall.

  Finally, Alex clears his throat and his eyes venture to mine. There is a question there. “Chinese?”

  ***

  The root of the problem is that I’m still not sure what’s happening between Alex and me.

  The lines are blurred. I’m balanced on the cleft of this invisible valley and I can feel the wind rushing up from the empty space below me—it whooshes by carrying my breath away with a tug. Goosebumps ripple across my arms and my heart spasms as I lean out over the infinite depths. I can’t see a thing. Just a mass of dense shapes that range from black to blacker and then slip away all together.

  I’ve spent the last hour trying to convince myself that this is completely normal—that Alex Faber and my little brother sprawled out on their stomachs racing remote-controlled cars across the living room floor is my regular Saturday night routine.

  Alex sits up and tosses me one of the plastic-wrapped fortune cookies from the coffee table before rolling back to the floor. His shirt catches and exposes a sliver of his stomach. It’s incredibly sexy and I imagine how the skin there would feel underneath my fingertips.

  He cracks the hard shell of both his and Aaron’s fortune cookie and pulls out the slim pieces of white paper and pops one of the halves into his mouth.

  “Read mine!” Aaron shoves the fortune into Alex’s hand.

  Alex sits up and clears his throat. “You have a kind heart and a gentle soul.”

  Aaron screws up his face and we laugh. “That’s silly! It’s not a fortune. It’s more like a—like a—”

  “Statement?” I offer.

  Aaron bobs his head my way. “Yeah. I guess. But I don’t really know what a sta-ment is.”

  “Statement,” I reiterate. “And it’s like a sentence—a declaration of facts.”

  Aaron’s head moves between us. “Huh,” he mumbles and then he turns his attention back to the far-more-interesting toy car.

  I am still chuckling when I look at Alex. “What’s yours say?”

  He blinks. “You first,” he says indicating the cookie in my hand with an inclined head.

  “Okay…” I break my cookie in half and read the words printed on the sliver of white paper. “A ship in the harbor is safe, but that’s not why ships are built.”

  He responds much like my little brother. “Huh.”

  I laugh. “Your turn.”

  Alex looks down at the small piece of paper trapped between his thumb and index finger. “What is to give light must endure the burning.”

  He shrugs and smiles at me sheepishly and when he blinks those dark lashes of his, my heart beats a frenzied concert and I can feel the blood start to move to my neck and face. The air in the space between us grows heavy and thick with something. Alex’s blue eyes smolder and move from my head down my body and—

  “Yow!” Effectively dashing the moment, Aaron’s car has zoomed over and smashed into my foot. I turn the vehicle around and point it towards the hall.

  “Jammies!” I call out as my little brother follows the battery-operated machine around the hallway corner in the direction of his room.

  “Be right back,” I say as I stand.

  Alex smiles and I can feel his eyes on my back as I head off in the same direction as my little brother. I manage to get Aaron cleaned and dressed for bed in record time and when he asks for popcorn after we’ve just brushed his teeth, I think I manage a pretty frightening you’ve got be kidding me look. He doesn’t ask twice.

  When I get back to the living room, Alex is stretched out on the large area rug with his back against the floor and his knees propped up. He reaches his arms over his head and once again, his shirt comes up so that I catch a flash of skin. Holy hell. He is so gorgeous.

  Alex turns his head to me and there’s that ghost smile that makes my heartbeat skip. I settle onto the floor and lay on my back in the same pose as Alex. The length of our bodies touch and I can feel the fire within me getting hotter.

  “So,” I begin shyly. “You mentioned a tattoo?”

  One side of his mouth comes up and he raises himself so that he’s half sitting. Angling his back to me, Alex pulls up his shirt and tucks it under his elbows so that I can view his entire muscular back and oh, what a back it is! There, just below his shoulder blade dark script is permanently inked under the surface of his skin. It is beautiful as is the boy that wears it forever. As I touch the words with my fingers he exhales a long breath.

  I lose and find myself in the long water

  I am gathered once more

  “I got it when I went to Paris…”

  I listen while Alex tells me about the ten-day long trip that he took with a group of architecture students and a few professors from the university.

  “I was feeling fairly introspective in the city of love and I decided to put that feeling on my body so that I could carry it with me forever. It’s from a Theodore Roethke poem.”

  Slowly, I reach forward and run my fingertip over the lines of the poem. The skin is smooth under my touch.

  Alex moves just barely—his shoulders tensing momentarily before relaxing. I watch the careful way that his back moves in and out as he breathes—almost like he’s trying to hold it all together. With a sudden gust of courage I bend over and I press my lips to his skin, caressing the inked words delicately. He stifles a gasps and spins so quickly that my heart skips.

  Our eyes meet and I am filled with a fierce i
ntensity. Fire pools in my belly as he brushes my hair away from my neck and kisses me there—in that sensitive spot just below my jaw. It drives me mad and I lift my body towards his conscious of all the places where we touch. Hips, fingers, shoulders, legs. His tongue gently circles back towards my ear and I squirm and make an inarticulate moan of pleasure. Just when I think I can’t take any more of his teasing, he digs his hands into the flesh at my waist and pulls me closer to him and our mouths come together at last.

  I’m sure there are more enjoyable things on this planet than kissing Alex Faber on my living room floor, but at the moment I can’t quite think of them. And if feeling this way is just some sort of subconscious ploy to get myself over my ex it’s sort of overkill because… because… well, I can’t even recall what my ex looks like right now.

  “Can I ask you something?” I manage between kisses, my breath coming out hot and fast.

  Alex is doing his fair share of hard breathing. He pulls away from my face and smiles. “Anything.”

  “Did you know I would be at Dr. Snyder’s office that day when you came in?”

  Alex sighs. He looks up at the ceiling though his fingers still move delicately over my skin.

  “Yes. Your mom told my mom so if you’re asking if I was surprised to see you there, then the answer is no.”

  I think even his chin is lovely. He didn’t shave this morning and there’s a day’s worth of dark stubble there. I tilt my head and kiss him there.

  “Did you really need those papers signed?”

  Alex’s eyes lock with mine. “Yes. Brooke needed her to sign the papers. That was legit. But I was there to see you Willow. And I was at the park to see you also.”

  I’m confused so Alex explains lifting my face to his with his free hand.

  “Laney told me where you’d be. She sent me a message on Facebook and one thing led to the other...”

  Okay, I wasn’t expecting to hear that.

  “What?” I practically shout. I could kill Laney Putnam right now.

  Alex shifts onto his elbows and cradles the back of my neck. “Please don’t be mad. She—Laney, was trying to be a good friend. And I wanted to see you. I drove down just in the hopes that I might be able to see you for a half an hour.” He cringes. “Jesus. Do I sound like a total stalker?”

  Okay, maybe I won’t actually have to kill Laney.

  “Nooooo, but I am curious about… about how and why you—”

  Alex doesn’t let me finish the question. He speaks softly to the small space between us. “After that night,” he begins and he doesn’t have to clarify which night. I know that he means the night that I tried to kiss him. The night of the winter solstice party. The night of the silver stars.

  “I was so confused. Willow, it just took me by surprise when you kissed me because I was supposed to be the one that wanted to kiss you and…and I know that I didn’t handle things right, but I was nervous. And that’s no excuse but what can I say?”

  Big breath. “The thing is,” he continues, grabbing at my fingers and pulling my hand to his chest. “I liked you. God, I thought about you all of the time and I swear that I couldn’t stop thinking about you if I tried. Trust me. I did try.”

  My head is moving back and forth. “But, why didn’t you say anything?

  His shoulders drop. “Because you were too young. Because of our parents. Because I was going to be leaving for college. I know that those aren’t good reasons but I kept telling myself that it was a bad idea. That we would both get hurt.”

  I continue to shake my head and roll my hand flat over the place where his heart beats. “Wow.”

  Alex looks away from me. His eyes are squinted.

  “I called a few times after that night but you never called me back. I know now that I should have come over here. I should have climbed up the trellis to your balcony like—”

  I can’t help but giggle. “Alex, I don’t have a trellis or a balcony.”

  He smiles faintly. “You know what I mean Willow.”

  And I do know what he means.

  “But, I didn’t come over here. I even stopped calling. I had a lot of excuses. I told myself that you’d changed your mind, or that I was waiting for the perfect moment. But the truth is that I was scared. And when we found out that Julie was sick, I didn’t want to be another complication in your life. I thought that I could hold out until things were more certain with your mom before throwing this huge thing at you. I know now that it was an idiotic move because one day my mom mentioned that you had a new boyfriend.” He pauses, searching my eyes for something.

  “At first, I didn’t worry. I thought that he would be like the others—around just long enough for you to learn his middle name. But, then he ended up being around longer than I’d planned on and well… well, you know the rest of the story.”

  Yes, I do.

  Alex is waiting for me. He’s already said so much and now it’s my turn. I try to think of the words but it’s like there’s not even enough air to breathe. My mind spins… unsure that Alex means what I think he means… unsure if I’m hallucinating or dreaming or… I flick through my mental journal—the bowling alley all those years ago, the way the corners of his mouth droops when he’s tired, his blue eyes reflecting the sun on a perfect day. And it all burbles inside of me threatening to come out in a silly jumble.

  Slowly, he leans in and his mouth grazes the side of my face. I close my eyes and let myself feel his warm tongue as he makes a trail of kisses down my neck.

  This is Alex.

  Warm breath singes my hair. “Is this okay?”

  “Yes,” I exhale. And, God, as his mouth moves faster I pray to all that is holy that Aaron is already asleep and doesn’t come out asking for a glass of water or something.

  I am so lost in sensation that when Alex pulls away it’s jarring.

  He’s got a serious expression on his face and my stomach tightens as if on alert for bad news.

  “W-what is it?”

  He closes his eyes and when he reopens them, I watch his pupils grow and then shrink again. “Willow, I don’t want to just be some rebound for you. I don’t think I could take that.”

  I cup his chin in my hands and kiss him on the mouth. “I don’t want that either. Alex, trust me, you are not rebound material.”

  “Good,” he says but he’s still frowning. “And Dustin? Is it really over with him? Please tell me the truth.”

  “If you want to know if I love Dustin anymore, I can say honestly that I don’t.” My heart is so full of Alex that I’m afraid it might burst and there is no room for anyone else within its walls. “We’re through.”

  “For sure?”

  “Yes. For sure.”

  A puff of air leaves him and I realize that’s he’s been holding his breath for too long. His shoulders slacken slightly and he curls his hand around my arm. I feel his finger tracing small circles across my skin. “Good, because… I don’t think I could handle that Willow. I’m not so great with jealousy and after wanting you for this long...”

  I know that modern women are supposed to confront jealousy in men with disdain because jealousy is: 1) immature, 2) a prehistoric throwback emotion to the days of hunting and gathering and fur wraps and living in caves, 3) a sentiment that implies possession and well, we’re humans, not things. But, I’ll be totally honest—Alex’s acknowledged jealousy does thrilling things to me.

  His hands move under the hem of my shirt so that they can feel the skin of my stomach. I am shaking despite the warmth of his body so near to mine and the flames growing within. When I finally look up from Alex’s mouth to his eyes all the stars in the night sky start clapping and cheering. It’s a standing ovation.

  This next kiss is gentler than I think it will be. In technical terms it’s chaste—lips touching lips, no tongue. But between those words there is a universe of something else. I’ve never been kissed like this—like a whisper, soft and gentle, floating up from the inside. Like a long sigh that first
sucks in the thick air around us and then propels it outward.

  Then Alex kisses my neck almost frantically. I can feel the singeing heat of his tongue trailing delicate lines on the soft skin there and I tremble. He grips my waist and pulls me closer.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  I let my hands move up the long, taut lines of his biceps and over his shoulders so that my fingers loop behind his neck.

  Fire, air, water, and earth.

  All the elements wrapped in blood and muscle. My mouth touches the soft hair along his jaw. When I follow a line back behind his ear, he groans into my hair. Our lips meet again and this time our mouths part. As his tongue finds mine, flicking and tasting the shape of me, I am lost.

  Later, I’m sure that I’ll relive the moments in detail. I’ll rewind over and over the part where he breathlessly rolls over me and I can feel the hard lines of his body above me. Or his hands climbing over my bare, hot skin—his fingers pausing over my heart, the scratchy tickle of his stubble on my neck, the sweet taste of him, his fingers in my hair and rolling down my side. Later I can pull these things apart like a puzzle and twist them around in my fingers as I put them back together one by one.

  But, right now, in this exploding moment…

  I can do nothing but live.

  Live.

  And it’s all right.

  It’s all right.

  I have serious issues with families in coordinated clothing. Just sayin’

  ~Laney Putnam

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “Earth to Willow,” Diana snaps her fingers in front of my face.

  She’s wearing this white puffy thing composed of more taffeta, lace and rosettes than I’ve ever seen. It’s almost unbearable. She’s officially surpassed storybook bride to something ominous. Her eyes are saucers and her normally pristine hair has been mussed by the tug of so much fabric. At the first bridal salon we went to, she kept trying to fix her hair with a round brush and the small bottle of hairspray she keeps hidden in her purse. Now she’s given up and has pulled it back into a hairclip borrowed from me.