by Julie Kriss
“That’s bullshit,” Nick said, looking back at me. “I already talked to Mom, and she says you have a girlfriend. Named Tessa.”
Eighteen
Tessa
* * *
I’d never been a comic book reader. I liked books—mostly thrillers and romances, and I’d read The Thorn Birds a dozen times. But comics had never been my thing.
Maybe it was because I’d never read The Electric Adventures of Lightning Man.
I was reading it now. Andrew had given me access to all of the issues online. I’d started with Volume 1, Issue 1 and read them on my phone, scrolling from panel to panel. I was some fifteen issues in now, and I’d never been more engrossed in anything in my life. Lightning Man was funny, fast-paced, and actually kind of moving. And the illustrations… my God. Andrew was so freaking talented, I was amazed by it over and over again.
“Hold on, Tessa. We need to adjust the fill light.”
I stood in the middle of a stark, cold photo studio, wearing nothing but a bra and a pair of panties. This set was of matching violet lace. Cardi B was playing on the sound system, a strategically placed fan was lightly blowing my hair, and several people stood around the edges of the set: the photographer, the assistant, one of the execs from the lingerie company, the stylist. I had my makeup professionally done and I looked like a million bucks. It was a great gig. And as I stood there on autopilot, I kept thinking about whether Lightning Man was going to find the potion that would give him his powers back.
He’d lost his powers when Temptus had slipped a potion into his nighttime cup of tea. Thunder Boy and Judy Gravity had made another potion to restore them, but they’d had to hide the vial in the lab when Temptus’s goons had broken in. Now Thunder Boy and Judy were kidnapped, tied up in a warehouse while Lightning Man searched for the potion. What was going to happen next?
“Okay, Tessa, we’re back in action. A little to the left, please.”
The stylist came onto the set and adjusted my bra strap. You’d think something as simple as a bra and underwear wouldn’t need a stylist. You’d be surprised.
I did my thing, giving the camera a few different angles to choose from as the photographer snapped away. I knew exactly how to place my shoulders, what angle to tilt my chin, how to position my thighs to the most flattering effect. As I did it I thought about Lightning Man again.
Not just the story and the illustrations, which were amazing. The idea of it. Andrew and Nick had created something different, something creative and cool. Something brave.
They’d decided to do what they really wanted and said fuck it, let’s try.
And as I stood there, showing off my tits, I couldn’t get that out of my head.
“Perfect! Thirty minute break.”
There was lunch served on a side table, but I wasn’t going to have any. I had to shoot for another hour after this, and I couldn’t have stomach bloat. So I put on a robe and drank a glass of lemon water as I sat in a chair and texted Andrew.
Tessa: What’s happening with the air conditioning guys?
Andrew: They’re done. How is the shoot?
Tessa: It’s fine. I have a question.
Andrew: Why am I not surprised?
Tessa: How did you and Nick start Lightning Man?
Andrew: It was after my accident. Nick spent a lot of time at the hospital with me. We had to do something besides stare at each other and drive each other crazy.
Tessa: So you just started telling stories?
Andrew: Something like that. Why?
Tessa: Weren’t you afraid your stories or your drawings wouldn’t be good enough? That they’d suck?
Andrew: Is this a weird way of telling me you don’t like my comics?
Tessa: No. They’re brilliant. Which your giant ego already knows.
Andrew: My giant ego appreciates the compliment.
Tessa: But you didn’t KNOW it was going to be great at first.
Andrew: No. But it was better than dying. By the way, Nick is back from his honeymoon. He talked to our mother. Now he thinks you’re my girlfriend, and he also doesn’t like you.
Tessa: Oh my God. Wear one FUCK shirt and get a permanent bad reputation.
Andrew: There goes the neighborhood.
Tessa: What can I do to impress him?
Andrew: You don’t need to impress him because you’re not actually my girlfriend.
Tessa: Right. Like Judy Gravity isn’t ACTUALLY Lightning Man’s girlfriend.
Andrew: She isn’t.
Tessa: She so is.
Andrew: No, she isn’t.
Tessa: They’re calling me. Off to show the girls for money, then to Miller’s for my shift. And she is.
Andrew: Damn it, Tessa.
On the same day my air conditioner was fixed, the heat was finally breaking. As I worked my evening shift at Miller’s, the wind kicked up and there was a dark bank of clouds on the far horizon. I watched them as I stood in the back alley on my break, feeling the hot, angry wind throw dirt onto my skin. My bobbed hair flew upward as the air swirled.
“Looks like it might storm,” Nate said when he came out to join me, pulling a cigarette from the pack in his pocket.
I nodded. There seemed to be no lingering repercussions from my turning down my boss for a date, though I noticed him looking me up and down more often than I was comfortable with. And he tended to join me on my breaks, like now. “I guess it might,” I said.
“About time the heat broke.” He lit a cigarette and offered me the pack. “Want one?”
“No, thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“I noticed that. Why do you come out here on your breaks, then?”
To be alone for twenty freaking minutes without having to talk to anyone. But that sounded bitchy, so I just shrugged my shoulders. “I need some fresh air.”
“I get that,” he said, taking a drag of his cigarette at the same time and obviously not getting the irony. “Are you still seeing that guy?”
I looked at him.
“When I asked you out, you said you were sort of seeing someone,” he said. “Are you still seeing him?”
Was he for real? That was only days ago. I was glad now that I’d said no. “Yes, I am.”
I thought of the moment when I’d put my cheek to Andrew’s, felt his warmth, smelled his skin. It didn’t matter that he’d told me to go home. I was still seeing someone.
“Yeah?” Nate said. “What does he do for a living?”
What did it matter? “He’s an illustrator and a programmer.”
Nate’s expression went hard, and I realized because it was some kind of comparison game, a dick-measuring contest. “Yeah, he sounds like a real winner,” he said. “Some guys have all the luck.”
I stared at him, shocked. I thought of Andrew getting in that car seven years ago, cocky and gorgeous and drunk. I thought of the photo I’d seen of the car smashed into the guardrail, the sickening way the metal was twisted. For the first time I let myself think of what it was like, really like, for him to live through that. Of how it would damage every part of a normal person. Of the kind of strength it took for him to get through it. “He isn’t lucky,” I said to Nate. “I have to go in now.”
I went back to my shift, but something was bothering me. Something that crawled through the back of my mind as I wiped counters and washed glasses, my feet sore and my back aching. It circled my thoughts as I ate dinner, finally putting some food in my stomach after skipping lunch and working a long day. When I finished at one in the morning, I was exhausted and out of sorts.
It was raining. I drove home as huge, warm drops fell from the sky, making loud smacks on my windshield. By the time I pulled into my driveway the rain was coming down so hard I could barely see. I turned off the ignition and looked across the street.
Andrew’s house was dark. Of course it was; he was probably asleep. And still I got out of my car, letting the rain hit me as I walked across the road to his front porch, pulling out my phone.
He answered on the first ring, so he must not have been asleep after all. “Tessa, what are you doing on my porch?” he said.
I stepped in front of his door, in full view of his security camera. “Can you let me in?” I asked, looking up into the lens.
“Why?”
“I want to ask you a question.”
He must have heard something in my voice, because his own voice grew tense. “Tessa, I’m going to bed.”
“What does it was better than dying mean?”
Now he was defensive, on full alert. “What?”
“You said that doing the Lightning Man comics was better than dying. What did that mean?”
The briefest pause—barely a second, but I caught it. “It means I was in an accident that almost killed me.”
“But you started doing the comics after the accident. And you said that doing them was better than dying.”
He sounded harsh and more tired than anyone could possibly be. “Tessa, go home.”
“Let me in.”
“God, you are fucking insane. You never take a hint, do you? Go home.”
I swiped my wet hair back from my face. I was under the overhang of his porch, but I’d gotten soaked on my way across the street. Lightning flashed, followed by a roll of thunder. At one in the morning, there was no one else on the street. “Did you try to kill yourself?” I shouted over the thunder. “Is that what that means? Because I know what that feels like.”
“You don’t know anything about what I feel,” Andrew said. “Not the first fucking thing.”
“I know what it feels like to think you’re worthless. To be lost. To believe that no one could ever want you or love you, that no one will ever love you. To feel like you don’t have anyone in your world and you never will. That you’ll always be alone, and it looks so long and hard that you don’t know what the point of it is.”
“Do you?” Andrew said, his voice raw through the phone. He was angry now, and I welcomed it. It matched my own emotion. “Do you know what it feels like for me to watch you walk out my fucking door every day? To know that some guy is going to come on to you while I sit here, and one day you’re going to say yes? And then you’ll be gone, Tessa. Like everyone else.”
I banged a fist on his door. “Andrew, let me in!”
“No.”
I banged again. “I spent three weeks in a mental hospital when I was seventeen,” I shouted into the phone. “I had a breakdown, okay? I couldn’t handle anything anymore.”
Nineteen
Tessa
* * *
He let me in.
The house was dark. When I closed the front door behind me, the lock clicked. A voice from down the corridor said, “Back here.”
I stepped through the living room to the hall. There was a dim slice of light coming from the bedroom.
I took a step, and my feet squelched. I kicked off my soaked sandals and walked, dripping, down the hall toward the slice of light. I could feel my T-shirt clinging to my body, the ends of my hair dripping water down my neck. I felt heat pulsing through me—adrenaline, embarrassment, lust—and shivers on my skin. I felt terrified and ecstatic and alive.
He hadn’t said anything about what I’d just told him. Not a word. But this was Andrew. He didn’t have to say it. I’m sorry, that’s too bad, I hope you’re okay, have you tried therapy? No. The things people struggled to say would sound ridiculous coming from Andrew. He didn’t have to say a fucking thing.
At the bedroom doorway, I stopped. I was familiar with Andrew’s bedroom, but it looked different tonight. The only light was from a bedside lamp; the blinds were shut. I could hear rain lashing the windows and thunder rolling overhead. Except for the sound of the storm, it was quiet.
Andrew’s chair was pushed to the foot of the bed, empty. Andrew sat on the edge of the bed with the covers pulled back behind him. I’d obviously caught him just as he’d maneuvered himself into bed, getting ready to get under the covers. He was wearing nothing but boxer shorts.
I took a minute to take him in. His shoulders were sleek and muscled, his arms like marble as his hands braced against the bed on either side of his hips. He had a short dusting of dark hair on his chest, over his pectorals and down the perfect line of his stomach. His chest was wide and strong, his abs and his waist perfect. I could even see hard muscles lining the sides of his ribcage.
His thighs were sleek and strong, not bulky. His calves were thin. He was barefoot, his feet resting limply against the bedside rug.
I raised my gaze back to his shoulders, his gorgeous collarbones, and then his face. He had trimmed his beard so it was sleek to his jawline. His dark hair was brushed back from his forehead. His beautiful mouth was set. And his eyes watched me with wariness tinged with hurt and anger and lust.
I knew he’d looked me up and down, just as I had him. I knew my shirt was wet and my nipples were hard, that my chest was rising and falling, that my cheeks were flushed. I liked that he’d seen all of that. I felt naked in front of him anyway.
He was tense as he sat there looking at me, his muscles bunching, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress. Even his knuckles were sexy.
“That was the truth?” he asked me, his voice rough.
He meant the confession I’d just given him. “Yes,” I said.
There was no joking now, no back-and-forth banter. The Andrew who used his wits as a defense, who would say something about how I must be crazy to hang out with him, was gone tonight. There was only this Andrew, who had been pulled out of that twisted car and gone into the darkness, who had put himself back together using the only tools he had. Who was still putting himself back together, day after day.
Lightning flashed through the blinds, and thunder rolled. Still, Andrew’s gaze held mine. “You can’t fix this,” he said in his rough voice, motioning to his legs. “Do you understand that? I’m not a project or a broken piece of furniture. You can’t fix it. I will always be like this. Always. You can’t fix me.”
I nodded. “I can’t fix myself, either,” I said.
“You can,” Andrew replied. “You will. And then you’ll leave.”
I could have denied it, but he wouldn’t have believed me. I knew what I was; I was strong, and I was tough, but I was broken. I wasn’t nice. I wasn’t normal. I wasn’t going to get married and have babies and have a nice life. I was always going to be thinking around the next corner, tangling things up in my head, cutting people with my sharp edges. It was how I was, and nothing was ever going to make me soft and sweet and gentle. I couldn’t fix myself; the only thing I could do was learn to like myself. It was something I’d started on the day I’d gone to his door with a cake in my hands.
And I wasn’t going to leave. But Andrew wouldn’t believe a string of arguments and words. The only thing that mattered to him was action.
So I reached for the hem of my T-shirt and pulled it off over my head.
Andrew breathed in and closed his eyes as if I was hurting him. He breathed out again as I unzipped my jeans and pushed them down my hips, peeling them off. They made a damp sound as they hit the floor.
He opened his eyes again. I was in nothing but a bra and panties. I reached behind my back, unclasped the bra, and tossed it away.
“Christ,” he said softly, under his breath. I wasn’t sure he even knew he’d said it.
I walked toward the bed. I braced myself with a hand on his bare shoulder—his skin was smooth and warm under my palm—and swung a leg over his lap as if I was getting in a saddle. I lowered myself onto his thighs and slid forward, my inner thighs against his hips. I settled myself against him, my bare breasts brushing his chest, and ran my hands down the smooth muscles of his arms.
“I’m cold,” I said, my voice raw.
He took another breath, his body stiff for a moment, and then he relaxed just a little as my ass settled onto his thighs. He seemed to be breathing me in. I knew I was doing the same to him; he smelled like he always did, vital
and clean and tangy, the smell of a man. The smell of a man I wanted.
He lifted his chin and looked at me. His hands left the mattress and his palms came to my waist, smoothing down over my hips, then up again. He didn’t grab my ass or my tits; instead he ran his hands up the sides of my ribcage, then to my back as I shivered in his lap, my nipples hard against him. I arched a little in pleasure as he stroked my back, up my shoulder blades, both of us melting into each other piece by piece.
Then he moved his hand up to the back of my neck, his fingers in my hair. He pulled me down to him and kissed me.
Thunder crashed again, and I parted my lips. He angled my head and kissed me deeply, his taste in my mouth, and as I throbbed at his touch I realized something: Andrew was experienced. I didn’t know what he’d been doing since the accident, but the man who was kissing me had definitely done it before. And he was very, very good at it.
His hands were good, too. Big and warm and confident, touching me in a way that was reverent and hot at the same time. I’d had too many bad dates in my life, too many unsatisfying makeout sessions with guys who tasted like tequila shots and thought that pinching my nipples through my shirt was a sexy move. I’d had too much sex that was a few minutes of nothing with only one of us getting off. Andrew’s hands were like magic, moving over my skin like every inch of it was important. He slid one palm down and cupped my breast, and even though I’d spent most of my day standing nearly naked in front of strangers, for the first time I felt like the sexiest woman alive.
I slid my tongue into his mouth, and he made a sound that was almost like pain. The muscles in his shoulders were tense as steel, his breathing shallow. I broke the kiss but I kept my mouth close to his as I stroked my thumbs over his perfect cheekbones and his soft beard.
“Andrew,” I said, “tell me the truth. Have you done this since the accident?”
He flinched a little under my fingertips, the slightest wince. His shoulders didn’t soften. “Do not,” he said, his voice hoarse, “do not use that as an excuse. Not now. Not ever.”
