This Sky

by Autumn Doughton

  He’s quiet for a moment, maybe even a whole minute. Slowly, almost like it hurts him to do it, he brings his hand to my face and runs a fingertip along my eyebrows. It’s weird and oddly relaxing at the same time. Then he asks me, “Do you still want what you wanted before?”

  What I wanted before?

  “What do you mean?” I sniff and stretch my legs out, disentangling our feet.

  “No strings, no regrets?” he whispers.

  My eyes open fully and even through my slightly blurred vision, I see that across the room, the TV is on and credits are rolling up from the bottom of the screen. My glasses are crooked on my head. I start to remember that Landon and I had been watching a documentary about Fleetwood Mac and figure that I must have faded away right around the time the band went into the studio to begin recording their second album.

  The bedroom is tinted silvery-blue and the glow of a streetlamp streams in through the window blinds, weaving a horizontal net of shadows on the ceiling and closet door.

  “Is that what you still want from me, Gemma?” he presses. “Just sex? No expectations? No promises?”

  Is that what I want still? Is that what I ever wanted?

  So much has happened since Landon and I met each other. I feel stretched out and thin in so many places, but also happy. And I don’t know much, but I know I don’t want to lose that.

  I swallow and place my hand protectively over my pounding heart. “I’m not sure. Maybe?”

  Maybe? After today, that’s my grand gesture? A big, fat maybe?

  Every fiber of my being screeches with disappointment.

  For a hopeful moment, I think Landon will push this conversation forward and I’ll be able to explain. But he doesn’t. With his fingertips still on my face, he simply says, “Okay.” Then, after a short pause, he rolls away from me and, in a cracked voice, adds, “I know it’s too soon for you.”

  Is it?

  My chest aches. My eyes are welling with tears. What is wrong with me? Speak up, idiot!

  I want to reset the clock and start over. I’ll do it properly. I’ll tell him that I’m afraid of becoming that girl again—the one who trusts blindly and gets her heart smashed up. I’ll admit that I feel frozen, stuck inside my cocoon by thorny ropes of doubt and indecision.

  Try, but not too hard.

  Go, but not too far.

  Jump, but wear a parachute to stop your fall.

  Is that how life goes? Is there a secret formula? Or is every turn, every choice, going to be blocked by a messy jumble of rights and wrongs, bald hurts and happiness, risks and shimmering possibilities?

  It occurs to me that earlier today, I was the one who asked Landon for honesty. Yet, at my very first opportunity to prove the point, I managed to mess it up.

  I wipe at my eyes and sniff.

  “Shhh,” Landon whispers, finally noticing my tears. “I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing, Gemma. I shouldn’t have even brought it up.”

  “No—” I start and stop, gasping for air. “I guess I’m confused.”

  And I am confused. I’m crying and acting crazy and a little out of my mind. It’s ludicrous.

  “I don’t want you to be confused,” he replies quietly. He leans forward to kiss me on the nose. “It’s okay. Just easy and uncomplicated, remember?”

  I choke on a laugh. Yeah right. I think we both know we passed that milestone a while back.

  Landon kisses me again. This time I grab at his jaw and try to draw him closer, but his mouth is a tense barrier between us. His arms are rigid around me.

  “Please,” I rumble softly, unsure what I’m asking for. Understanding? Forgiveness? I don’t really know myself.

  But Landon seems to understand me. He sighs and parts his lips, letting me inside his mouth. Then he pulls me into his warm, big body.

  He brushes my hair back from my face. “Don’t cry, Gemma.”

  “I’m not sad,” I tell him even though tears are running freely down my face now.

  “Oh, really?”

  “I’m not,” I insist, scraping my fingertips over his bare chest, reveling in the feel of his bare skin and the tiny hairs that make a path down the center of his body.

  He shudders and kisses my neck where it slopes into my shoulder. His hands slide up the side of my leg, stopping at my underwear. With a new sense of determination, I sit up and use my fingers to tug at the waistband of his boxer shorts.

  “Oh?” His eyebrows jump.

  In answer, I shift my legs beneath me and remove my glasses. I don’t pause a heartbeat before pulling my tank top over my head.

  As the cloth hits the floor, I hear Landon’s breath change. He bites back a groan and his hands find me. He moves them up my stomach to my bare breasts.

  Now I kiss him on the mouth. I kiss him until we’re both raw and achy and it’s like my heart has broken free and is floating somewhere outside of my body.

  Landon rolls his fingers over my shoulders and slides them down my back. Slowly, he backs up against the headboard, dragging me along with him so that my legs straddle his hips and my knees are braced on either side of his waist. He holds my face between his hands and looks at me for a long time. He looks so long and hard that I start to feel exposed and nervous. I shift back onto the mattress, but when I try to tip my head away, his grip on my chin tightens.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he tells me as he feathers soft kisses along my jaw and skims the tips of his fingers over my lips. “Do you know that?”

  I don’t respond. Instead, I twine my arms around his middle and claw my way closer until it feels like there’s nothing between us, not even air. The TV has gone silent and the room is still. I know that somewhere, beyond this room, beyond this apartment, the sky is glowing phosphorescent with stars.

  With his arms holding me close, he laughs and rolls me so that I’m on my back. Then he glides his hands up my side, fits his mouth to me, and kisses me with so much want that I nearly come out of my body.

  In the past couple of weeks, Landon and I have had a lot of sex. Long, drawn-out sex on a bed. Hot and rushed sex on the floor of his living room because neither of us could stand to wait. Passionate sex on the futon in 6B while Weebit tracked our movements with a startled, slightly curious look in his eyes. Awkward, almost funny sex in Landon’s car after work when we were both salty and smelled a bit like garlic and lemons. As I said: Lots of sex.

  But it’s never been like this before. Like being imprinted.

  We both move deliberately, carefully, like we’re under water. We touch and we explore and then we press our bodies together until I can feel every part of him, every place where his skin meets my skin. We hold onto each other until I can feel every dip of bone and muscle on his bare chest, every mountain and valley on his legs and arms. The hard cut of his shoulders, the depression between his hipbones, the square tips of his fingers.

  I taste his neck, running my tongue up his jaw, sucking his earlobe into my mouth, and capturing this part of him—soft and warm—with the edge of my teeth.

  Above me, Landon closes his eyes and shudders. “Gemma.”

  Just the way my name sounds on his lips, half-warning, half-prayer, has me breathing faster and tightening around him.

  “I wanted to take this slow,” he says, almost shaking with effort.

  In answer, I hold his face in my hands and drive our mouths together. He chuckles, almost like he’s in agony, and wraps his hands around my waist.

  Time speeds up or slows down. I’m not sure which. The sensations intensify and I start to lose track of the minutes. With Landon’s breath hot and damp on my skin, I wish that I could stay here—in the pause between my heartbeats, in the stillness of these obsidian eyes.

  He kisses my mouth. His hands squeeze my hips—blunt nails pressing into my soft skin. He moves deeper until it feels like I’ve climbed inside of his body and made a home for myself.

  And this is how the world breaks, blazing and molten hot like a dazzling sun. I kiss
him like I haven’t seen or touched another human being in one thousand years. I hold him to my body, my tongue inside his mouth. I shake. I tremble. I shiver. And when I cry out and fall, he’s right there to catch me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Gemma

  I have to hand it to myself. I manage to keep quiet until the midmorning.

  “What’s with you?” Julie asks for the tenth time in as many minutes. We’re stretched out on the steps in front of the theater where she’s currently in rehearsals for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Tart yellow sunshine is pouring over us, heating our skin and making our foreheads burn. It’s one of those overly hot fall days in California where your eyes sting from pure brightness and the air is so dry that your tongue feels about two sizes too big for your mouth.

  “Is it the Ren situation?” she asks, pulling her hair off her shoulders and fanning her neck. “Because I already told you that if you can simply keep your head down, this whole thing will blow over in a few days. Give it a week or two and there’s no way you’re still going to be a trending topic on Twitter.”

  “Being upset about the Ren situation is a given,” I say, then I register Julie’s words and my eyes go wide. I stagger. “Wait—is that true? Am I really a trending topic on Twitter?”

  Julie pops in a breath mint and leans back against the stairs, letting her strawberry blond hair pool on the speckled grey cement. “I didn’t want to tell you, but yeah, it’s true. His little Bruno Mars impersonation has gotten over a million views. And the shirt he was wearing in the video—the ‘forgive me Gemma’ thing? It’s a hashtag now and it’s popping up all over the place. This morning the anchor on Good Day L.A. wore a replica of it on air and things have been escalating from there.”

  I groan, my mind rocking.

  “You have a Wikipedia page.”

  “Okaaaay…” I say, slowly letting go of a breath. “So, my life is a meme. Crazy as it may seem, that’s not even why I’m freaking out right now. It’s something else entirely.”

  Julie’s face falls. Her voice turns wary. “Oh my God, it’s the play, isn’t it? You hate the play.”

  “I don’t hate the play,” I tell her.

  “You’re lying,” she declares. She sits up and crosses her arms over her body. “I asked you to watch today and give me your feedback. I wanted it and I can handle it, Gem. Tell it to me straight.”

  “Julie, I’m not—”

  Now she throws her head back and gestures toward the theater. “I knew it was awful!” At this point, she’s turning red and practically yelling. “Last week I told Martin—that’s the guy who plays Brick—he wasn’t coming across as mournful enough. And I know that I could be giving my performance more. Did you notice how much I’m struggling with my first scene? I don’t know what my problem is. It’s like I can’t seem to capture exactly what emotions that I should be working on and—”

  “Jules!” I break in and grab hold of a flailing arm. “The play is great. Calm down. It has nothing to do with that.”

  Julie stops pouting and blinks at me. “Then what is it?”

  Without answering her, I punch Landon’s name into my phone and find a site detailing his surfing career, including his wins and a bunch of stats that still look like gibberish to me. I’m not going to tell Julie everything right now, but I need to tell her some of it.

  Curiosity creases Julie’s brow as she takes my phone and looks down at it. After a minute, with wonder in her voice, she says, “I don’t understand. What is he?”

  “Well,” I say, sinking to my elbows. “It would seem that in the surf world, Landon Young is basically the second coming of Jesus.”

  She screws her face up in disbelief. “Run that by me again.”

  “Your neighbor,” I say slowly, making elaborate finger movements that look more like baseball hand signals than sign language. “He used to be a sort of famous professional surfer. Apparently this means that he went around the world surfing in contests and being all kinds of amazing.”

  “Are we both talking about your Landon? Claudia’s brother?”

  “Yep.”

  Her blue eyes bulge. “No way.”

  “Yes way.”

  “No!”

  I stare her straight in the face. “Yes!”

  Julie turns her attention back to the phone. She scrambles to scroll down, getting lost for a moment in the labyrinth that is the Landon Young image gallery. “Holy shit.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “This is like…” Her voice disappears when she comes across a professional shot of him bare-chested, standing knee-deep in blue-green water, his surfboard under his arm and a cocky grin on his face. I understand her speechlessness. I found that photo last night and was rendered mute for at least five solid minutes. “…so hot.”

  I sigh. “It’s seriously intense, right?”

  “Um, yeah,” she huffs then goes back to her perusal.

  “Jules, you had no idea?”

  She looks up and makes a scoffing sound. “How can you even ask me that? Obviously I had no idea or I would have said something to you.”

  “I figured as much, but I still can’t believe Claudia never mentioned it to you.”

  She shakes her head. “Who would have thought that my semi-reclusive neighbor who works at a bar and drives a beat up Ford, used to be a professional athlete?” She points to the phone “And with such huge press? It’s bananas.”

  “I know!” I earnestly agree, leaning forward to snag a mint from Julie.

  “But, isn’t this sort of a big deal? I feel like it should be part of his introduction repertoire.”

  I suck the mint through my lips, press my mouth together and drop my hand to my lap. “That would have been helpful.”

  Julie hooks one side of her hair behind her ear and asks, “So, what are you going to do?”

  I wilt a little. “I don’t know.”

  “Aren’t you a little worried? Do you really want to get involved with another guy with a fan base? Isn’t that, like, the definition of crazy?”

  “Landon is nothing like Ren,” I say slowly, thinking through the words as I say them. “He’s not seeking out the limelight or worrying about his hair or his image. He’s different.”

  “Okay. Different is good.”

  I look away, my eyes winding through the tall, skinny trunks of palm trees and landing on a patch of sun-drenched grass. “He’s nothing like we thought he was. He’s got so much inside of him. If you knew what he was like…” I shake my head, unable to finish.

  “Oh, wow.”

  I peer back at her. “What?”

  “Just… wow.” She touches my arm. “I knew that you liked him, and I know I joked about this.” She laughs abruptly, shakes her head. “You, my dear friend, are nutty, crazy, lasso-the-moon stupid over Landon Young.”

  “I’m not—” I break off and sigh in defeat. Who am I kidding? “That wasn’t part of the plan.”

  Julie laughs again. “Screw the plan!”

  “You don’t think I’m being an idiot? Isn’t it way too soon?”

  She shrugs, leans back against the steps. “Yes, you’re an idiot. And, yes, it’s too soon. But I don’t think you should let that stop you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Aw, bless your heart,” she says mockingly. “Isn’t that part obvious?”

  When I don’t respond, Julie grins hard.

  “What?” I press her, making an impatient movement with my hands.

  “You’ve got static, Gem. You love him,” she accuses, pointing at my chest.

  “Is love even real?” I ask in a rush. “Or is it a hoax propagated by Hallmark and romance novelists?”

  Julie shrugs. “You tell me, Gemma. You’re the one in love with Landon Young.”

  “Well,” I say, swallowing down a nervous flutter. I don’t want to be smiling right now, but under a blaze of brilliant blue sky, I can’t seem to help it. “I’m not saying that I love him, but I’m not not saying it.”
r />   Landon

  Some things are about the timing.

  Like right now.

  I know almost instantly that the knock on the door can’t be anything good.

  Why? It’s eleven in the morning.

  It’s not Claudia, I think. She’s at work.

  And it can’t be Gemma, who left hours ago to feed Weebit and get a head start on some errands. When she kissed me goodbye, she told me that she wouldn’t see me until tonight because she’s promised Julie that she’d go to campus and watch a dress rehearsal of a play.

  The apartment is completely quiet for a moment. The tap of my fingers on the keyboard has stopped. I’m not even breathing and I don’t think Wyatt is either. The silence collapses when the knock sounds again. This time, Wyatt lifts his head and barks.

  I save the poem I’m working on for my writing class and push back from my desk. I grab a balled-up t-shirt from the foot of my bed, slip it over my head and walk out of my bedroom. My breath whooshes in my lungs, making my chest rise and fall. My footsteps echo hollow and slow as I cross the living room.

  When I pull the door open, the first thing I notice is the sunshine. It’s so bright that I have to narrow my eyes. Then I see the badge, the shiny shoes, and the solemn face of the uniformed police officer standing in front of me.

  His eyes draw together and his mouth compresses. “Are you Landon Young?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Abigail Young is your mother?”

  The world crashes into sharp focus. “Yes. Yes, she is.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Gemma

  Julie stops when we get to the top of the stairs and shouts an accusation. “You!”

  I’m suddenly queasy. Filmy white stars burst behind my eyelids, spinning and winking at me until I feel so loopy and hot, I’m afraid I’m going to be sick right here on the balcony. Total vomitose. I blink. I open my mouth but all that comes out is a squeak.

  Holy panic attack Batman.

  Beside me, Julie is snarling. “If you think you can appear out of the blue and we won’t slice your balls off and eat them with peanut butter and toast then you have another thing—” I clamp my hand on my best friend’s arm, halting her rant midsentence.