Accepting the Fall

by Meg Harding

  He saw Zander while he was browsing, and he lifted his arm to wave him over.

  “Hey.” Zander leaned in, and Cole didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t the quick kiss to the cheek. Zander’s lips were dry and slightly chapped, cool against Cole’s warmer skin. “Sorry I’m late. There was a Savanah incident.”

  “She’s got an incident named after her?” teased Cole, nudging Zander toward the line for tickets.

  “She’s a menace,” said Zander darkly. He shook his head. Their knuckles brushed where they hung between them. “I have a house full of lizards. She let the damn things in through the back door, and they’re all over.”

  Cole muffled a laugh with his fist. “How’d you, uh, deal with that?” He suspected Savanah was more a girl after Cole’s own heart than Zander’s. He had a small garden setup in the backyard purposely for the Anoles’ enjoyment.

  Zander grumbled. “I paid the girl next door an extra fifty to run around and catch them. I’m sure I’ll be finding them staring at me from all over for the next several days.”

  “Could be worse,” said Cole, trying not to smile too brightly. He couldn’t help it—it was funny.

  “How so?”

  Cole leaned against him, bumping their shoulders together. “It could have been bugs. Anything’s better than that.”

  “I can kill ants and spiders. How am I supposed to catch the lizards?” Zander gesticulated widely. “They’re fast little bastards.”

  Cole had tried, he really had, but he lost it then, and the laughter burst forth. It was good to have a distraction, something to so thoroughly take his mind off his growing pile of concerns. “Sorry,” he gasped. “Really.”

  “Yes, you look so sorry,” said Zander dryly. They were at the kiosk. “Two tickets for Thor, please.”

  It was an effort, but Cole attempted to school himself back into something resembling publically appropriate. The giggles were sticking in his chest though, popping free randomly and in prolonged stints. On the plus side, Zander went from looking offended to fondly amused quickly. For some reason that made Cole’s mirth all the worse.

  “I think I broke you.” Zander steered him past a group of staring girls. “Do you want candy? Snort like a pig for yes, cry for no.”

  Cole flicked him off and wiped the tears from under his eyes. He straightened his spine and went for dignified. “I do not snort.”

  Zander raised an eyebrow in clear judgment. “You can tell yourself that all day long, doesn’t make it true.” He scrunched his nose and the noise he made was damn near an “oink.”

  “So rude.” Cole skirted around him and made for the food. “I’m not sharing my Twizzlers with you.”

  “However will I live?” Zander’s tone was light, and Cole found he responded to it with an internal sense of contentment. When they weren’t trying hard to be normal, things were suspiciously close to better than good.

  Like two old puzzle pieces slotting back together.

  Cole mentally grimaced. God he was getting way too whimsical about it. He bought popcorn smothered in butter—ignoring Zander’s snotty and vaguely appalled gaze—and a jumbo bag of Twizzlers.

  Zander got a plain pretzel and caught Cole’s look of disdain. “I’m not going to be the one with clogged arteries.”

  Cole waved the bag under his nose. “You know you want some,” he sing-songed, grinning.

  Gently, so as not to upend the popcorn presumably, Zander pushed the bag away. “You’re ridiculous. Come on, let’s get seats before all the good ones are gone.”

  The theater was packed, and Zander led the way up the stairs to the very back. It wasn’t deserted so far up, but they’d be able to sit with a couple of seats between them and any neighbors. The ads were already running, and Cole made himself comfy, using Zander’s shoulder as a prop for his own and slinging his legs over the opposite armrest. Zander naturally ran hot, and he was a firm line of warmth against Cole. He poked Zander’s bicep, nearly double the size it had been at seventeen. “You filled out.” It was a risk mentioning their history, but they couldn’t ignore it forever. Not if this was going to work.

  Zander went still for a drawn moment, and then he smirked, his eyes getting that familiar mischievous glint. “You didn’t.”

  Cole’s noise of outrage was low but no less potent for it. “I have muscles,” he said indignantly. Granted they weren’t bulging, and they were mostly in his calves from walking, but still. He was a good thirty pounds heavier than he’d been at sixteen—and it hadn’t all gone to his stomach. He could feel Zander’s shoulder shaking against his with silent laughter. “You’re such a dick.”

  “Sorry.” Zander didn’t sound sorry at all. “So what’s this movie about?”

  “You don’t know?” Cole could probably have reigned some of the incredulity in his tone in, but seriously?

  “Uh, no.” Zander frowned. “I don’t watch a lot of things that aren’t picked by Savanah. And honestly, I don’t actually pay attention to those because they’re mind-numbing to the extreme most of the time.”

  “You… you’ve not seen any of the Marvel films?” Had he lived under a rock before Savanah?

  “Nope. I mean, I know Marvel is comics, but that’s about it.”

  Before he could think better of it, Cole said, “I have so much to teach you. There’s a whole world out there you have no idea about.” Cole had grown up with the comics. Zander, apparently, had not. “You didn’t read comics when you were a kid?”

  Zander scratched at his cheek, uncomfortable, and Cole felt like an ass for making him so. He opened his mouth, intending to ixnay the question, but Zander answered before he could. “Dad wasn’t a fan. He always said there were better uses of my time.” He shrugged, shoulder shifting along Cole’s. “He was an ass.”

  Cole badly wanted to ask about the past tense, but he refrained. “Well, I’ll teach you about the film universe. You’ll love it; there’s action and a bunch of crazy hot actors—and actresses—to look at.”

  He settled more comfortably against Zander, turning toward him rather than using him to face away. “All right, so it started with—”

  Much like everything else Cole cared about, he was fiercely passionate about Marvel, and when he talked about it, it showed. It was in the way his hands moved and his eyes practically sparkled. It was the way the pitch of his voice rose and fell with his excitement, and he’d speed up when he got to something he really liked.

  Zander didn’t take most of it in, too distracted by watching Cole try to update him on a dozen or so movies before the advertisements for this one ended. The rundown left Cole breathless, and Zander more than a little hard in his jeans. The film starting was a blessing and a curse. It meant Cole had to stop talking, which sucked, but it gave Zander’s inappropriate erection the chance to settle. An almost-at-capacity theater was not the place for a boner, and his body needed to get with the program.

  Unlike their last date, Cole was all over him from the get go. At first it was just the press of their bodies alongside one another, but as the film went on, Cole’s arm ended up linked through Zanders, and his head rested on Zander’s shoulder, and their legs were pressed together from thigh to ankle.

  Zander didn’t have the slightest clue what happened in the film.

  He was hard-pressed to focus past analyzing how every point of contact felt. Cole’s fingers would twitch against his arm depending on what was happening on the screen. He would jump and startle, and sometimes he’d go ramrod straight in his seat and his feet would hit the floor as he leaned forward, literally on edge.

  Zander, about halfway through, decided to rest his hand on Cole’s leg. This made it obvious when Cole was tensing with anticipation, and every time he shifted in his seat, Zander’s hand moved with him. He suspected that were he to try kissing Cole, he’d be turned down in favor of the on-screen action.

  He was charmed by Cole and simultaneously frustrated.

  It took a lot of control to not
drag his hand up a little farther, to not move a little to the left when Cole shifted forward, and touch. He wanted the exclamations Cole continuously muttered to be directed at him and not the giant, blond Thor—who, Cole was right, was insanely attractive.

  Zander didn’t know what he was doing. This wasn’t his original plan, and he suspected sleeping together would not be at all awkward or something he wouldn’t want to repeat. As for allowing himself to be happy and to have someone now that he was no longer in the military… he wanted that. Deep in his bones, he did. But he wasn’t sure how, and frankly, he was scared. He’d faced gunfire and knives and almost lost his life more than once, and none of that instilled such a sense of walking toward the unknown.

  Don’t think about it, and just go with the flow.

  Easier said than done.

  He must have squeezed Cole’s leg while he wound himself up, and he came back to the present to find them holding hands. Cole’s was slightly clammy against his, and when Zander grazed the tips of their fingers together, he could feel the faint residue of butter from Cole’s popcorn.

  The normality, the simplicity, of how comforting a gesture it all was, had him reclining in his chair.

  Before he knew it, the film was over and people were filtering out while they continued to sit in the no longer dark room. Zander stared at their joined hands, sweeping his thumb over Cole’s knuckles. He never would have done such a thing in public before, not while his father was alive anyway. The chance of it getting back to him had been an ever present paranoia. It was a fear he’d pushed down in his memories of Cole and he’s time together. He’d been young and rash then, and after Cole… the fear had been at its worst. He’d started to think more. To worry.

  He’d gone about it all a bit backward somehow.

  Cole had felt like safety to him.

  Things were different now, though. Zander could be whoever he wanted and hang the rest of the world and their opinions.

  “Can I kiss you?” he asked, chest tight and too many things he didn’t want to acknowledge floating in his mind. He wanted a kiss that was more than just a quick barely there brush of skin to skin.

  Cole was sucking on his lower lip, chewing softly on the thin skin as he so liked to do when he thought. “That’d be…. Yeah.” He nodded and licked over where he’d bitten, leaving the pink flesh glistening.

  Zander’s heart performed the two-step in his chest. This was the big tell. Would kissing Cole still turn his stomach to molten lava and erase every thought from his brain? Would it leave him breathless and wanting, with the feeling he’d be lost if he stopped? Or had that all been the wild fancy of a teenager who didn’t know better?

  “Um, Zander? Sometime this year?” Cole looked hesitant. “Unless you changed your mind.”

  “No!” He’d damn near shouted that. He cleared his throat. “No,” he said, lower. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  He brought his hand up to cradle Cole’s cheek, smoothed his thumb over the sharp line of his jaw. Stubble tickled his palm, rough and nothing more than a shadow that would be gone come the morning. Zander leaned in, grazing the tips of their noses together, just sharing air for a drawn out second. So close but not touching. He felt the change in Cole’s breathing against him when Cole parted his lips. He heard the hitch in it as Cole waited.

  Zander closed the distance.

  It was softness and warmth, the slide of their noses bumping, their chins scraping, their lips relearning the feel of one another. Zander held Cole steady, tilting his head for a better angle. With his tongue, he traced the curve of Cole’s lips before venturing into his mouth. Cole met him push for push, and what had started out gentle turned heated quickly. Their tongues tangled together as Zander and Cole teased and chased. Cole tasted sweet and sugary, and vaguely like strawberries.

  The air between them was damp and heavy, neither willing to pull away. Zander felt as if the oxygen was being sucked from his body, and he hadn’t the slightest inclination to do anything about it. The world would end if the kiss stopped. He didn’t need anything else but the slick glide of their tongues and the dull graze of teeth as they fell into their own private world.

  They both jolted as someone coughed near them, and Zander’s eyes flew open. He hadn’t even realized they’d been closed. The boy watching them was red in the face and wore the theater’s uniform. He was clasping a broom. “Ummm,” he said, clearly fumbling for words.

  Cole’s skin was flushing to match the boys quickly.

  Zander couldn’t settle on feeling embarrassment at losing control in public or being pissed they were interrupted. To help facilitate thinking, he disentangled himself from Cole till they were no longer touching anywhere. “Sorry,” he finally said. “We’ll get going.”

  “That’s uh, thank you.” The blush had spread to the young man’s ears and neck. He nearly fell over trying to scramble out of their way so they could scoot by.

  Leaving the theater, they carefully kept a foot of distance between them. “Think we freaked him out?” asked Zander as they approached the parking lot.

  “Nah. I think he was embarrassed for interrupting us. I’d have gone all tomato colored too.” Cole glanced at Zander. “He definitely wasn’t disgusted if that’s what you were thinking. If I had to guess, I’d say he was interested.”

  That’s exactly what Zander had been thinking. “Really?”

  “He was holding the broom and dustbin very strategically,” said Cole, smirking. “And he couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

  Once more it was the end of a date, and they were stopped beside Cole’s vehicle. Zander shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from putting them on Cole. He’d indulged in enough unintended exhibitionism for one night. “So….”

  Cole had his keys out and was running his thumb over the jagged edge. “I’m still not ready for you to come home with me.”

  Zander wanted to ask when Cole would be. The kiss had made things abundantly clear to Zander. What happened between them seventeen years ago hadn’t been teenage lust or infatuation. Everything he’d felt then, he felt now. Except now… now it was so much stronger, though no less confusing. “All right. I guess this is good night, then.”

  “Good night.” Cole kissed his cheek, lips damp from licking them. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

  Chapter 13

  Savanah’s therapist didn’t look old enough to have completed the required schooling. Her long red hair was pulled into a messy bun, and her glasses gave her the appearance of a librarian. Zander had a hard time believing she could be a day over twenty-five. Cathleen Hopkins had come highly recommended to him from the station wives’ grapevine, though.

  “Hi, Zander,” she said, shaking his hand. “It’s lovely to meet you.” She repeated the gesture for Savanah. “Why don’t you two follow me back and we’ll get started?”

  Zander was looking forward to this like a hole in the head. Talking about feelings was right up there with having his nails taken off by pliers on his list of fun things to do. But for Savanah, he would endure.

  Cathleen’s office was cozy and unpretentious, which he supposed made sense given she worked with children. There were two big, plush couches, and the bookshelves were stuffed with kid’s books and toys. The carpet was a colorful affair that portrayed a train track and green field. There was no desk and no degrees hung from the walls.

  She was already chatting with Savanah, but she broke off to motion for them to take a seat on the couch against the furthest wall. Once they were comfortable, she went right back to talking to Savanah, asking her about school and her interests. Savanah was mostly one-wording her, unsure of this new person and taking her usual time to warm-up. Cathleen didn’t look at all put off by the lack of enthusiastic response.

  Eventually the conversation swung Zander’s way.

  “How long has it been just the two of you?”

  “Almost a year and a half,” answered Zander. It had been the quickest year and a half ever.r />
  “And what is it you do for a living?”

  Zander didn’t get the point of these questions when he’d had to spend nearly an hour filling out paperwork with this information. “I’m a firefighter.”

  Cathleen turned to Savanah, who was picking at a string on the couch. “Do you like what your dad does, Savanah?”

  She shrugged.

  Cathleen continued on, unbothered. “He saves people for a living. That’s pretty neat, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  Zander didn’t understand how this was supposed to help Savanah. He pictured his money being washed down the drain.

  “Is it a little scary, too?”

  Zander tuned back in. Scary?

  Savanah nodded.

  “That’s normal,” said Cathleen calmly. “Do you want to talk about why it’s scary?”

  Yes, yes Zander did, so he could fix it.

  “No,” said Savanah.

  “All right. Let’s talk about something else.”

  Zander was a half-second away from throwing his hands in the air. Why were they veering off topic? Didn’t that defeat the purpose of therapy?

  By the time the hour was nearly up, Zander knew absolutely nothing he hadn’t already.

  “Savanah, why don’t you go out front? If you ask Marcy at the front desk for candy, I think she has some lollipops.”

  Savanah gladly vacated the room, and Zander moved to follow.

  Cathleen stopped him. “I wanted to have a couple minutes with you.”

  He sat back down, suddenly wary and nervous. “All right.”

  “Could you give me a more in depth rundown of what Savanah’s dealing with? What encouraged you to bring her to therapy? What are you hoping for your daughter to accomplish?”

  Zander blinked. Somehow he didn’t think saying, “My kind-of-boyfriend and daughter’s teacher has been nagging me for months because he thinks I’m missing something,” was going to fly. “Savanah’s mom, she, uh, she’s not in the picture. Obviously.” He cracked his knuckles. “She dropped her off on my doorstep with some of her stuff. I have lawyers handling the situation. She doesn’t want anything to do with either of us, so that part’s not too complicated. I’ve made sure—I’m making sure—she can’t take her back. Savanah doesn’t talk about her mom much, only in passing comments and normally when she’s throwing a tantrum. This is her first school year, and she was having some behavior issues with the other kids. She’s a lot better now, though. But it was recommended I have her talk to someone to make sure everything’s okay.”