by Lily Cahill
I take a second to appreciate the way she looks, sprawled out against the rumpled sheets. Her breasts heaving, her eyes glittering with desire. I take my cock in hand and rub the tip of it against her clit, making her moan and cry. She’s so slick, so ready. And still I tease her, driving her desperate body, until she clutches at my shoulders and begs me to fuck her.
When I finally sink into her, it’s as if there’s no world beyond this bed. No breath beyond the breath we share. Her eyes flutter open, her pupils wide and focused on my face. In that moment, all her defenses are down. I can see into her, see the love inside me reflected in her.
It’s so much, too much, so I kiss her. That just makes the feeling spiral out and radiate through my entire body. I’m pumping inside her, driving us both closer to madness, and yet my heart feels like it’s swelling to the breaking point. Her kiss is like a gift, like she’s giving some part of herself to me in a way she hasn’t before. Something in me breaks open to her, something that will never be whole again without her.
She tears her mouth from mine to cry out. I bury my face in her neck and follow.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lilah
MY DOUBLE BED HAS NEVER been this crowded, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. Riley makes up for taking up the vast majority of my bed by holding me as close as possible. He has a sleepy smile on his face, his eyes closed, his hair mussed. Love hits me like a fist in the chest.
There’s no going back now. I’ve been falling for a long time—probably since that first day of class, when he pissed me off so much. I should have known then that my reaction to him was more than the usual.
Now, here we are, tangled up in the bed where I’ve never brought a man. I spent money to please him that should have been in my savings account. I went to a football game, for God’s sake. I’m definitely in deep. I lay my hand over his chest so I can feel the strong, steady beat of his heart.
Normally, this would be the part where I freak out. I’ve had previous relationships that I had to end because they got too real. There aren’t a lot of people who have been in my life for the long term. My Gamma. Natalie, until she died. But no guys. I’ve always felt like there was no point investing in a relationship that would inevitably end.
But this thing with Riley … for the first time in my life, I’m really willing to make it work. My grandmother was right, he’s worth compromising for. He has already changed my life by making me rethink how much I hate football players. I know now that I blamed the whole team for something only a few of them did. And I believe Riley when he says the team culture has changed. It feels good to let go of my anger. It makes me realize that Natalie wouldn’t have wanted me to carry it in the first place.
For most of my life, I’ve avoided opening up to people. I pour all my emotions into my art to keep myself from saying them out loud. But I’m ready to do things differently. Riley is a wonderful man. He won’t hurt me, he won’t leave me. Look at how hard I’ve tried to push him away! Now I’m ready to pull him in, hold on tight. I’m ready to open my heart to him, my life, my everything.
“What happened to the carving?”
Oh, it was just too perfect. I got an email from Marty earlier in the evening while I was waiting for Riley, and I couldn’t wait to share my news. Well, I could wait a little while. Now Riley can see how much faith I have in him, how I’m willing to work on his behalf.
“That’s the next surprise,” I say, snuggling him closer. “I was offered five grand for your piece.”
He pushes me back so he can see my face. “What?”
“I took your piece to the Melee Gallery, where I sell most of my work. Marty Carlson—he’s the guy who normally teaches the art class—he flipped over the piece. He said he’d buy it from me on the spot.”
“Five grand? Five thousand dollars?”
“Isn’t that great?” I ask, wiggling with glee. “I mean, I knew you were good. But if you can command this sort of price now, think of how much you’ll be able to make when you’re established. Marty said that if you had enough work, he’d build a whole show around you!”
Where I expected him to whoop with joy, his face darkens. “You sold it?”
“No, Riley, I’m proving to you that you can make money as an artist. You don’t have to play football!”
This last part probably comes out a little too pleased. Riley’s serious brown eyes go molten with anger. “Jesus, are we still on this? When are you going to get over this? Every other girl I’ve dated loved that I was a football player.”
“I’m not like every girl,” I say, resenting the comparison but trying to keep my temper in check. “If you want to play football, that’s fine, but—”
“Fine?” he scoffs, putting space between our naked bodies. “Do you have any idea how hard I’m working? How much this matters to me?”
“If course I know,” I say, desperate to get back on solid ground. “I just wanted you to know that you have options. You talk about it like it’s the NFL or nothing, but it doesn’t have to be that way.”
He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Tell that to my father.”
I don’t know what to say. “Can’t you see,” I try tentatively, “this is an alternative. You could have a different kind of life.”
His gaze, which had been fixed on the empty bookshelf where his piece had been, returns to mine. “Your kind of life?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Digging up your feelings so you can sell them?”
“That’s not what I do,” I say, though part of me wonders if it isn’t the truth. “Besides, what I do with my work is my business.”
“Yeah, right. But business has been shitty, hasn’t it? You told me yourself. I bet that five grand helped, huh? How much do you think you’ll get from the little figurines upstairs?”
How can he believe that I would sell anything he’s given me? The thought makes me sick. “It was an offer. I didn’t take it. Marty asked if he could keep it overnight and take some pictures.”
“You didn’t sell it.”
“No.”
He exhales hard. “And you’re not going to?”
“Not unless you decide you want to. But Riley, like I said—you could make some real money. You could have a career.”
“Because the career I have now isn’t good enough?”
“Riley,” I say, my voice breaking as he rolls out of bed and starts dressing. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Seriously, Lilah. Do you have any idea how many girls would kill to be with a football player?” He punches his arms through the sleeves of his shirt.
“Is that what Jeremy Hudson used to say?” I instantly regret the low blow, but I’m angry now too. Why isn’t he listening to me?
Riley’s shoulders stiffen with shock. “Right, I forgot. Because we’re all rapists, we’re all monsters. We’re all exactly the same.”
“That’s not—”
“Look, I’m tired of the explanations, the excuses. You’d do anything to get me away from football. Why can’t you understand how much it means to me?”
I hug my arms around my naked body. Only minutes ago, we’d been close and warm. Now he feels like he’s across an unbridgeable gulf. “I don’t want to lose you. I can get over it. I’m getting over it.”
“If you weren’t so stubborn in the first place, there wouldn’t even be a problem.”
I am stubborn, and I don’t consider it a flaw. “You don’t get to tell me how to live my life.”
“Oh, but you get to tell me how to live mine? Everything is on your terms, in your space, in your time. I feel like I’m being pulled in a thousand directions, and it’s killing me.” He shakes his head, turning away from me. “I thought you were different. I thought you saw me, really saw me.”
“I do, Riley.” I follow him out of bed, naked and vulnerable. Taking a chance, I lay my hand on his tense back. “I see you.”
He shakes me off. My heart falls as quickly as
my hand. “Please, Riley. I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
He turns to me, and the pain in his eyes lances me. “You’re just another person who wants to tell me what to do with my life. You can’t accept me as I am. And I’m starting to wonder if you ever will.”
The world tilts on its axis as he walks out the door. I call out to him, my voice cracking on his name. But the only answer is the slam of the front door.
After Riley leaves, I sink to the floor with my arms wrapped tightly around myself. Hot tears are spilling from my eyes even as my skin prickles with cold, but I can’t think of anything but the searing pain inside me. My mind feels shattered, every thought causing a new wound. How did it all go so wrong?
This is why I’ve always been careful with my emotions. Loving someone is like spinning a web between two souls. You may be stronger together, but it doesn’t take much to shred the connections. That’s how I feel inside—shredded, laid open, lost. Riley. I hurt Riley, and he hurt me.
A single thought pierces through the pain. This is how I know I’m in love with him. My heart is crying out to him, begging for him to come back so we can hurt each other some more.
I can hear the empty house echoing around me. If I were to call my grandmother, she would come home to comfort me. But I don’t want to talk to her; I don’t want to confess how badly I fucked things up. How badly I always fuck things up. Hiccuping, I tip over onto my side, pulling the blanket from the bed to wrap around my shoulders.
I didn’t meant to hurt him. But I assumed that he would be as thrilled as I was with the idea of living as an artist. I deliberately ignored the things he said about how much football means to him because I didn’t want it to be true. He was clear that he wasn’t interested in making money off of his art. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t respect it. At the moment, I don’t have much respect for myself.
Was he right? Was I selling pieces of my soul away?
I’ve never liked looking at my own work. I can’t help but be critical; I’m not bad, but I can always get better. More than that, it’s that looking at my own paintings makes me think of the pieces of myself I scraped off or broke away in order to make the work possible. The thoughts and feelings that fill a landscape with energy, or intensity, or yearning. I let myself feel them, feel every brutal centimeter of those emotions, so I can remove them from myself. Once a painting is done, I want it gone.
But Riley is wrong if he thinks it’s inherently wrong to make money off my paintings. Those paintings kept food on our table when Gamma couldn’t work and the medical bills were looming. How dare he judge me for that? I want him here, so I can yell at him for it.
I have the stray thought that all my careful makeup is ruined. It might make me feel pathetic and vain, but it’s enough to make me get up, pull on a long T-shirt, and drag myself to the bathroom. When I catch sight of myself in the mirror, I break down again. I can see the bleak sorrow in my own eyes.
I started tonight with such good intentions. I wanted to tell him how impressive he was in the Blue and Silver game; I wanted to tell him that while I still didn’t understand the game, I was going to try. For him. And then I would tell him about the offer on his piece. I would tell him how proud I am that he’s talented in so many ways.
I would tell him how much I love him.
For the first time, I can understand why Natalie didn’t call me for help before she committed suicide. How can you admit to another person that the darkness has taken over? How do you get through this kind of pain without part of you dying inside?
Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to paint since Natalie died. Since Natalie committed suicide. Why don’t I use that term? “Died” makes it sound like something happened to her, instead of something she chose. That’s the part that I can’t get past, can’t get over. Natalie chose to die. She joined the ranks of people I loved, who chose to leave me.
Riley.
Natalie.
My mother.
I’ve spent my whole life trying to pretend that not having a mother doesn’t matter to me. I have Gamma, and that’s enough—more than enough. But there’s always been this shard inside me. My own mother didn’t want me, has never wanted me. That thought has been festering inside me for most of my life, poisoning everything. It’s made me terrified of how easily I could lose everything.
Gamma has never failed me. She gave me every bit of her love, attention, and wisdom. She has never let me doubt that she loves me and that she expects me to be the best version of myself. But with her heart problems, I could lose her anytime. For the last three years, since her heart attack, I’ve been terrified that the river of life is going to take her away. It kept me from going to art school, it kept me from experimenting with my art. Loving her so much has stunted my growth, and I’m afraid it’s permanent.
For so much of my life, there was Natalie. We were so close, it was as if we shared the same mind. She supported my decision not to go to art school because it meant that I would stay in Granite with her while she was going to MSU. She never wanted to leave this town, and I pretended to feel the same. Going to New York to accept the Pitkin last year was one of the few times we’d been apart, and it was terrifying and glorious to be on my own. But then I came back and found that rape had crumpled Natalie up, tore her apart. I couldn’t put her back together again.
And now there was Riley. Since I met him, all the parts of myself I’ve shut down, shut off, have come rushing back to life. He’s nothing like I thought he would be, and goddammit, why is that so hard for me to accept? Nothing is ever going be what I think it will be. All my plans and dreams and expectations and fears are ripping me apart. I’m trying to make him into someone else, which is crazy. He’s so wonderful, exactly as he is.
I wash my face, the cold water shocking me awake. It’s still early, but I have no interest in the dinner I’d planned to eat with Riley. Maybe later, when my stomach isn’t a bath of acid. Sleep seems impossible. Instead, I do the thing I always do when the pain is too terrible to bear. I slip on some yoga pants, pull back my hair, and I go to my studio to paint.
My eyes are too raw to handle the lights, so I let the moonlight guide me up the stairs. My bare feet barely disturb the silence of the house. In my studio, I’m greeted by the dozens of blank canvases perched against the wall. I dig through them until I find a small one. Then, sitting on my stool with a palette full of oils, I begin to paint.
I don’t do portraits. I paint landscapes, because it’s always been easier for me to translate what I feel into rocks and mountains rather than human faces. But I need to understand something that I’ve never let myself feel before. I need to look myself in the eye, and see who I really am.
I work from the mirror in my studio, not letting myself think about what my hands are doing. I’m tempted to give myself some of the flair I would normally have—artfully styled hair, smoothed features, a fabulous outfit. Instead, I paint myself as I am, in this moment.
Rounded shoulders under a ragged shirt. Toes curled over the bars of my stool, clenched tight. Aching, tired eyes. Frown lines burrowing into my skin where my smile used to show. And I make myself feel it, make myself feel all the things I normally ignore. I lower myself in the bleeding chasm of my loneliness, and force myself to wallow there.
When I finish, the sun is peeking over the horizon. My eyes have dried long ago, and I feel hollowed out. My muscles are sore—it has been months since I’ve painted this way. Carefully, I wash my brushes and palette and set them to dry. Then I turn to look at myself.
I tamp down my urge to focus on the technical details. Instead, I make myself look at the girl in the painting as if she were a stranger.
The first thing I think is that her sharp chin reminds me of my grandmother. Sweet and stubborn. The tilt of her head makes it look like she’s listening to something, trying to hear an explanation that’s too distant to understand. Her eyes are haunted, heartbroken … and determined.
> I thought I was out of tears, but fresh ones jump to my eyes. In the eyes of the girl in the painting, I can see the strength I don’t feel. The girl in the painting isn’t going to let her own mistakes ruin her life. In the bleakness of her eyes—my eyes—I can see a glimmer of strength that refuses to be extinguished.
If I could talk to my mother, I would tell her that Gamma and I don’t need her. If I could talk to Natalie, I would tell her that she will always be my best friend and that I wish she had let me help her get better. Both of them are beyond me. But Riley … Riley isn’t gone. And I’m not going to let him out of my life without telling him how much he means to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Riley
THERE ARE FEWER GUYS HOLDING tight to my carved figurines in the locker room today. Reggie is still thumbing the miniature version of his lucky shoes. A lot of good that will do him.
Ben is doing high-knees and jumping jacks right here in the middle of the locker room, taking up all the available space and air with his energy.
“Hey, man, can you cool it and relax for a minute?” I want some peace and quiet for a second, and the flurry of motion in front of my eyes is making me dizzy. I’m trying to find a way to block out the noise. All the noise of the reporters and television shows questioning our capabilities. The speculation about whether we’ll win a single game, if we lost to Hawaii. And the buzzing is only getting louder with every thump of Ben’s shoes against the concrete.
“I’m just limbering up, mate. You can’t go out on the field cold.”
This is a pretty stupid statement considering we have never gone into a game without a pre-game warm up. No team in the history of sports has gone into a game without coaches taking everyone through a warm-up. Ben extends his arms and starts twisting his torso from side to side, throwing his arms out over the rest of us, just expecting us to get out of the way. It’s all I can do to stay seated on the bench. Reggie is giving him the eyes of death, but I don’t have the energy to quell whatever fight is about to start.
