“Do not project with me, okay Eppie?” Low and soft, Phil’s voice dropped in tone. He admonished me again as he said, “I do not operate based on guilt. I do not need there to be a perfect happy ending all wrapped up in a silver bow. I do not believe in the term closure.” I straightened in my chair, each of his words pulling up my spine. “You haven’t turned out one way or another. You’re still turning out. And this is all part of that process. I’m here because I care about you, believe it or not. It’s true I never had a case like yours, yes. But that wasn’t because of what happened to you, Eppie. That’s not what made your case so different. It’s because of who you were. Who you are.”
Was it possible for your own thudding heart to actually give you a headache? Because that’s what happened. The blunt beating right behind my eyes pressed into them so painfully that tears gathered. I’d need both an aspirin and a tissue if it didn’t let up. I bit my lip to keep it all pinned back. Then I let go and said, “But I’m who I am because of what happened to me.”
“And if you believe that to be true, this visit you have planned has the potential to continue to mold and shape you. I just don’t want you to go through it alone, Eppie. That’s all.”
I listened as I fiddled with the straw in my cup. White dots formed in my vision, the beginnings of a migraine altering my senses. I was used to being nauseous all of the time. Now should be no exception, I figured. If anything, it was comforting to have that level of consistency in my reactions, as weird as that was.
“Honestly, Phil,” I began, forcing out the words through the painful mess in my brain. “If I didn’t break then, there’s no way I’m going to break now.”
And at that moment, like he’d had this line prepared from the first day he walked through those hospital doors, he said, “I just want you to keep one thing in mind.” His gaze secured onto mine as he continued, “Not all breaks are clean. Sometimes we crumble, sometimes we erode. And those erosions, Eppie—the ones that chip away at our hopes and our dreams and our plans for our futures—those are often a lifetime in the making. It’s those we must watch out for, my dear.”
FOURTEEN
“Knock, knock.”
I dumped my Coke in my lap. All 24 ounces of it, which was a considerable amount. Enough to soak my jeans and the patchwork quilt on my bed, along with both the top and fitted sheets.
“Eppie?” Lincoln’s head popped around the slightly ajar bedroom door. He used his foot to push it all the way open and took in the scene. “What happened?”
“You scared the soda out of me!” I shrieked, ripping the comforter from the bed and wrapping it up into a ball. My arms and legs were sticky with syrup and I used the fabric to dry them off. “How’d you get in?”
Cautiously, Lincoln edged toward me like he wasn’t entirely sure if I would throw the wad of cloth at him or not. I guess that would’ve been a good reaction, had I been going for a little dramatic flare. His hands came up in front of him as he tiptoed closer, not convinced I’d behave myself. “Your dad. Real nice guy.”
“Seriously?” I was dumbfounded by what his statement implied: one, that my dad was with it enough to open the door, and two, that he came across as a decent person at that.
“Yeah, we shot the breeze for a bit, then he told me I could find you up here. Apparently, he’s a Dodgers fan. Might be a source of future contention between us, but at least he enjoys the sport of baseball. Didn’t know that about him.”
I stripped the bed sheets and gathered the remaining fabric in my arms, sidestepping Lincoln as I made my way to the laundry room down the hall with my load. “That makes two of us,” I said, opening the lid and shoving the bedding into the ceramic basin. The detergent was in a cabinet above the washer, so I had to stand up on my toes and really stretch to get it. Even still, I could barely pull it from the shelf without teetering and losing my footing against the cold tile.
Lincoln laughed, yanking the bottle from my grip. “There are advantages to having a really tall guy around, you know,” he said as he closed the cabinet door and unscrewed the detergent cap. He filled it about halfway with the electric blue liquid. I never understood how something with that much color could actually get things clean. It seemed counterproductive to douse your soiled garments with even more brightly pigmented stainy stuff. But whatever, it worked.
The smile Lincoln wore as he began the load of laundry was more than just a smile—there was a whole lot of flirt tucked in there, too.
“I can get things down from those hard to reach places, clean cobwebs, locate missing people in large crowds, and offer a new perspective on the world in general.”
“I was following you until that last one.” I slammed the washer lid after he drizzled the detergent over the sheets and I turned around to lean against the machine. My arms crisscrossed over my chest because I worried what they might do if they just dangled there freely. They didn’t feel all too trustworthy at the moment, to be honest. My arms begged to snake themselves around Lincoln’s trim waist. They also hinted at wanting to pull him as close as our bodies would allow, until the space where I ended and he began blurred together.
It was his fault, after all. He’d delivered that too flirty grin.
“Here,” he smiled again, effortlessly. “Let me show you what I’m talking about.”
Without warning, Lincoln’s hands hooked under my armpits, and in one swoop, I was eye level with him, just like that.
And apparently my arms weren’t the only appendages with their own wishes. I’m sure they were insanely jealous of my legs, which were now wrapped around his middle, crossed at the ankles to brace myself and keep me suspended. Yes, my arms were definitely envious of my legs.
“How do you like the view up here?” he smirked, the air from his words landing on my mouth, almost with the weight of a kiss. Our faces were close, only an inch of separation. Now both my arms and legs were jealous of my mouth. A civil war was certain to break out amongst my body parts, I feared.
Lincoln’s tongue suddenly ran over his bottom lip. I really wished he hadn’t done that because it made my legs weak and if they loosened their grip around him at all, I’d plummet to the ground. And I was currently pretty far off the ground.
He jostled me a little, maneuvering so he could bring his hands under my thighs to support me. Oh crap, my sticky, soda drenched thighs. And he was grabbing them. How unsexy could this get?
“You like it?” he asked again.
“The air must be thinner,” I blurted, struggling for breath, sanity, and all the other things that disappeared when a guy had their hands so close to the inseam of your shorts.
Despite all those losses, I pulled in a deep breath and I didn’t smell the soda that covered me, but instead was filled with that minty, musky scent that clung to Lincoln’s skin. Was it weird that I was overcome with the desire to lick it from him? Didn’t lizards or something smell with their tongues? Did that make it less strange that I had the urge to suddenly do it, too?
No, Eppie, attempting to relate to an amphibian did not lessen the strangeness.
Thank goodness Lincoln started talking and pulled me out of my head. “In fact, I do think it’s thinner up here, and I think that partly explains my frequent need for an inhaler.”
Holy heck, was he cute. I mean, really cute. Not at all awkward like I’d thought before. Maybe my short-girl perspective from earlier had been distorting my view of him the way those fisheye lenses did, because now that we were directly face to face, I could see his features in such a new way, and let me say, he was freaking adorable. Downright sexy even, since I could see the pulse in that thick vein along his neck. Maybe it was beating so quickly as a result from the strain of having to hold me like this, but I chose to believe it was from something else. That was a huge turn on.
“I like you, Lincoln.”
He didn’t falter a bit. “I really like you, Eppie.”
I sighed a contented, longing sigh. Who did that? I mean, if you were a southern belle maybe
you could get away with literally swooning. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t a southern belle, nor a lizard, so none of my reactions were fitting in the least.
I was just a girl with too much trouble in my life and in my head.
“I have a lot of dirty laundry.”
“It’s just a couple sheets and a comforter.” He began sliding me down the length of his body. If I joked that the change in altitude had messed with my brain earlier, I was a delirious mess from this latest act, dizzy with sensations that felt every single amount of friction created across every square inch of my body. When I landed on the floor, my knees forgot to lock and they left me dangling, completely unhinged.
Lincoln’s hand at my back steadied me and I looked up at him, grateful.
Once on solid ground, he didn’t revert to looking awkward at all. Maybe because now I had a true glimpse of his hotness as a reference point. And my body also had its own reference point of just how incredible his body was. No, awkward was definitely no longer a fitting descriptor when it came to Lincoln.
I gathered my air and collected myself to the best of my abilities in order to elaborate on the laundry comment while I silently contemplated his immense hotness. “Not literal laundry. Figurative. I’m sort of a mess.”
“I know.”
I wasn’t sure if I should’ve been insulted or relieved by that.
“You know.”
“You’re sorta messy. Something happened to you when you were young, and I suspect that might’ve influenced your decision to pick up a stray, wounded creature.”
“But I like Herb,” I defended. I did. That dog was with me every waking moment when I was home. I enjoyed his unlikely companionship, and I thought he was pretty fond of me, too. Could’ve been the treats I snuck him that influenced that fondness, but I didn’t mind. We had a mutual adoration for one another, whatever the reason.
“I wasn’t referring to Herb.”
Lincoln’s finger reached out and swept across my jaw, just the tip of his nail gliding along my skin. My breath shook out of me in unsteady panting sounds and my toes and fingertips tingled. With his head cocked slightly, his eyes slanted, he took my chin between his thumb and index finger and tilted it up with the most gentle guiding, directing my eyes to angle toward his. “What on earth do you see in this sorry, wounded creature, Eppie?”
“I don’t see any of your wounds.”
Lincoln had said we all had more that we were hiding. Though I supposed it would make sense for him to be included in that all-encompassing statement, the truth was that Lincoln just seemed so together. If he had wounds, they’d healed and scarred over and I sure couldn’t detect them at first, or even second, glance.
“You don’t see my wounds, hmm? Well, I don’t see your dirty laundry.”
“Are we just blind then?” I laughed. Lincoln joined in, and his face lit up with that customary smile.
“I’m not blind, Eppie. I can just see just fine. And what I see standing here is a girl that I’m really quite fond of. One that I actually haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I first saw her carrying a limp, bloodied dog into a veterinarian’s office weeks ago.”
“That visual doesn’t make me out to be very attractive.”
“Not sure what’s more attractive than someone helping something so utterly helpless. It’s like compassion in the purest form. That—to me—is incredibly hot.”
“That’s funny.”
“I’m not kidding around, Eppie. I really like you. I’ve liked plenty of girls before, so I’m completely aware of these feelings inside me and what they indicate.” Lincoln searched me out with his eyes. I didn’t hide from them. I didn’t even want to. “And I’d really like to kiss you, too. I’ve also had this feeling before, and it’s the everything in me is begging to kiss her type of sensation,” he chuckled and it was the best sound in the whole world. I’d record that sound and play it over and over again in my heart. “So far, there’s only one known cure that I’m aware of.”
The room was spinning just like that washing machine. I figured it didn’t stop at just the room, and I assumed the entire house had been swept up in a Wizard of Oz-like tornado. Everything became a blurred mess around me.
I didn’t figure we were in Kansas anymore.
“Can I kiss you, Eppie?”
I nodded my yes, several quick nods in a row, not quite sure how it was possible for my body to answer without getting permission from my mind first, but somehow it did. Bodies and minds must not always be connected. Or maybe my mind had lost the most recent battle in my warring body parts. Oh man, I was certainly out of my wits and felt no control over my limbs or body, either. It was all haywire.
Then, just as tenderly as he’d reached out, Lincoln lowered down to me again. I pressed in, my hips against his thigh. He stooped over, bending at the knees, bringing his face in line with mine, so our mouths were right there and ready for each other’s. With both hands cupped softly along my jaw, he crept closer, diminishing the gap.
This was the part where I usually closed my eyes. When I’d kissed other guys in the past, I always had my eyelids sealed tightly shut, almost as a means to imagine they were someone else, I supposed. Sure, I’d had crushes before, but nothing that elicited the feelings in me that Lincoln did. I’d wanted to kiss those guys, but each time the build up never matched the end result. All the nervous visions and the waiting and the anticipation, it was all of the hype before the great let down. The hope of a passionate connection with someone always turned into a sloppy, clumsy mashing of too limp lips and too eager tongues. Nothing ever lived up to my daydreams, so I’d close my eyes to at least try to daydream someone, or something else, into being while the disappointment played out.
I didn’t want to close my eyes with Lincoln. I needed them open, just to be sure of him.
And so we were right there—right in that place where personal space was no longer a real thing. We’d barreled through it, and it dissipated like vapor. Being like this—so near to someone’s own furiously beating heart—caused panic to wedge in my throat. I figured I trusted Lincoln, but I wasn’t sure how much I trusted emotion in general anymore. It had lied to me too many times before. The heart was often a deceiver.
“It’s okay, Eppie,” he whispered across my lips.
I nodded again, knowing it was. Hoping it was.
Then his mouth was on mine.
So softly, almost not even there at all. I wasn’t sure if I should press in to feel more of him on my lips, but in the time I vacillated, Lincoln’s warm hands on my face urged me closer. I gave up on trying to determine what would happen next and just let my body and my mind relax into the moment. Surrendering, my eyes slipped shut, not to block Lincoln out, but to focus on him so much more. Because it wasn’t all about looks and attraction like it had been with the other guys. It wasn’t superficial like that. It was so much deeper in a beneath my skin sort of way.
It was the buzzing in my fingertips that flared up when one hand slipped down to tangle with mine. It was the stutter of my heart as he slowly—almost methodically—tilted his head to approach the kiss from a different angle. It was the dizzied swirl in my brain when he let out the quietest of groans from the back of his throat. And it was the numb, weightless feeling in my bones when he took his other hand and splayed it across the small of my back, begging my body toward his.
Just as cautiously as he’d approached the kiss, he pulled back with a gentleness that almost made it hard to tell when it was actually over. Even now with our eyes open and locked and then flitting across one another’s lips and skin and mouths and eyes again, it was still just as intense. The emotion clung to us and breathed out from us. The moment wasn’t over. If anything, it had only begun.
“That was...” Lincoln spoke, swiping his thumb across his bottom lip.
“That was...” I echoed. Perfect. Innocent. Intense. Magical.
“Phenomenal.” He slouched over and brushed his nose to mine. “In my opinion
, it was absolutely phenomenal, Eppie. Just as I thought it would be.”
He stood back up fully and swung his arms around me, pulling my head to his chest as he curled his shoulders over to cocoon me in the space there. And then I realized the most important advantage to being tall. One he’d failed to mention.
“Your heart...” I said, pressing my head in closer to his body. “It’s right here.” I pushed my palm to his white t-shirt, feeling the steady beats thrumming on my skin as I heard them pulsing into my ear, a unison of sensation. This was the best part by far, to hear and feel his heartbeat so close to me.
“It is,” he smiled down at me. He grasped on to my hand with his own and threaded our fingers together. Squeezing and tapping them to his chest lightly, he said, “And yours is right here with it, too.”
FIFTEEN
“Beer?”
I could hear the popping suction of the refrigerator door as it pulled open in the kitchen, followed by the clinking of bottles when the door rattled back into place. I imagined penguins bowling in it and that the clinking sound was a strike, because that’s what it sounded like to me. Someone had once told me not to “let all the penguins out” when I’d left the door open for too long, trying to decide on something to eat. I knew that was a weird visual, so I tried to stop thinking it and instead focused on normal thoughts like answering the question asked of me. Did I want a beer?
“Nah,” I called out through the narrow, beige hallway separating us. There was a brass light fixture on the ceiling, its bulb darkened and gray, burnt out for who knows how long. “I’m good.”
The small duplex had an actual mantel, and it was well decorated, which impressed me significantly. Bachelor pads typically repurposed traditional architecture like this into something more bachelor-y. Like converting bathtubs into oversized ice chests, or swapping out a kitchen table for a much more functional pool or foosball table. But this mantel was proudly fulfilling its intended purpose with over a half-dozen framed images perched on its wooden ledge.
Love Like Crazy Page 9
