by Audrey Bell
I had doubted all year that anybody ever liked me.
Outside the auto shop, Christian smiled apologetically into his cell phone. He laughed. I could imagine him talking to his mother. I could hear the warmth in her voice, and I could see from his eyes that the smile was real.
His parents adored him.
I had called Aunt Lynda and told her that we were driving and that we would be late. She hadn’t called me back. Still, I knew I should tell her we’d be at least a day late.
I called her cell phone and was sent straight to voicemail. “Um, hey, Aunt Lynda, it’s January. I just was calling to let you know that Christian’s car broke down. I put diesel in it.” I cringed. “Accidentally.” I cocked my head. “Anyway, we’re in western Tennessee, but you know, the car won’t be fixed until tomorrow.” I flinched remembering that this was really my fault. “So, we’ll be there tomorrow night. Look, my phone is almost out of minutes, but, um, maybe you could send me a text, just so I know you got this? I don’t want my mom to worry.”
I hung up the phone and stared at it for a second.
It would be fine. Aunt Lynda was older. She probably only checked her phone occasionally. And she’d bought my ticket. So, she’d been expecting me. I tried not to worry. Aunt Lynda had always been a space cadet.
“They say hi.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. Although my dad thinks your name is February.”
“Might be an improvement,” I said.
He smiled.
“You two want a ride into town?” Roy, the mechanic, asked.
“That’d be great,” I said. “Also. Where do you find a pizza around here?”
“Dominos.”
Christian wrinkled his nose.
“Look who’s the snob now.”
“Yeah. Well, you know how working at McSorley’s spoiled me.”
The bed and breakfast was in some ways worse than your run-of-the-mill highway motel. It was set a few miles off a country road by a literal cow pasture, in a charming white-shingled house with a sagging roof.
And while the ceilings were high and the hardwood floors clean, the woman at the front desk, with a countenance reminiscent a sketched image of Mother Hubbard, wore cross the size of her hand at her throat and glared at Christian when he said we needed a room.
“You want one room?” she squawked.
“Yes,” Christian said. He looked confused. Like the woman had no possible reason to be glaring at him.
“We’re married,” I said.
Christian’s eyes popped.
She smiled. “Oh, that’s wonderful.”
“Thank you,” I said, squeezing Christian’s hand. He looked deeply concerned and started to open his mouth, so I dug my fingers into the palm of his hand.
“What the f—” He stopped himself when the innkeeper raised a judgmental brow and grinned stupidly at her. “Great view,” he said, nodding through the windows at the parking lot.
The innkeeper led us up a spiraling staircase to a room on the third floor. The room was small, the white and lavender wallpaper curled at the corners where it met the toothed molding at the ceiling, and the silk pillows on the window seat had been chewed at by the sun.
The room had a sagging porch that overlooked the cow pasture and a swinging bench that hung from a rusted chain. You could hear the highway roaring in your ears when you stepped outside. And when I sat down on the swing, the porch creaked and its railing wobbled.
Christian set his hands gently down on the porch railing. And, then, suddenly, he shook it.
“Christian!”
“This is dangerous. Don’t lean on it,” he said, grinning. He let go over the railing, which continued to wobble.
“Well, don’t break it. I can’t afford a new railing.”
“They need a new porch,” he said.
He smiled and grabbed my wrist, pulling me towards the door. I pulled back, so that he was on the swinging chair, his knees on either side of mine. He bent his head towards mine and kissed me.
The chair creaked ominously. “Come inside.”
I let him pull me by the wrist this time.
The windows in our room were bigger than anything you’d find at some corporate motel, and, even though the bed looked forty years old, it had an elegant filigreed headboard—chipped and fading, but still beautiful.
“I’m sorry I broke your car,” I said softly.
“They’ll fix it,” he said, with a smile. He sat down on the foot of the creaking bed. He smiled at me.
“This is weird.”
“What?”
“Not arguing with you is weird.”
He took my wrist, pulled me towards him, so I was standing between his legs. He kissed my collarbone.
“Is this your way of telling me to shut up?”
He kissed my collarbone again.
I would never have let Tyler or Schuyler touch me after I’d been driving in a car for two and a half days, I thought, as his cool hand slipped underneath my shirt, and traced a path up my lower back, leaving me shivering.
The sun streamed through the windows, the late afternoon fading over the creaky porch.
“Sh…” I whispered, laughing, when he pulled me on top of him, so that I was sitting astride his legs.
He twisted his hips, pinned me beneath him. “Do you still hate this shirt?” he asked.
He tugged at my shirt and I heard it ripping as he worked half the buttons and I worked the other ones.
He unclipped my bra, pinned my hands over my head, and nipped at my neck. I heard myself whimper. “Christian.”
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. I pulled his shirt over his head and I could see the rippling muscles across his chest and down to his hip. I could hear the urgency in his breath as he rocked forward, and I could feel how hard he had gotten through his jeans.
I reached for the waistband of his jeans, and for the first time, he hesitated. “My leg’s nasty,” he murmured against my temple. “Fair warning.”
When he stepped out of his jeans, I saw the scarring. His leg didn’t look like a leg from his knee to his hip. Gnarled flesh, angry, white-hot slashes up and down and wider than any scar I’d ever seen. Purpling scar tissue. His leg looked ancient and old and like it hurt terribly.
I dropped to my knees and kissed him at the center of the mess, where the bone had once broken through the skin and given him that hitching limp.
I ran one hand up it softly, gently, kissed him closer to his knee.
I took him into my mouth, heard his voice catch.
“January…”
I’d never wanted to do this for anyone else before.
He pulled me up to my feet, kissed me. “I’m not going to last if you do that.”
“I don’t think your leg is nasty,” I said.
“Well, you’re a little bit twisted.” His voice vibrated against my ear.
He caught both of my wrists in one of his hands and pushed me back onto the bed. And then he pinned my hands over my head and pressed himself against me.
I didn’t know what to do after that. He moved gracefully, and powerfully, and he seemed to know exactly what to touch, exactly how hard, how hot, how cold.
“You okay?” he whispered, running his hand down my leg, and pulling it back. He stilled against me, like he expect me to stay no.
I locked eyes with him—those gentle, dark blue eyes that seemed lighter today than I’d ever seen him. I touched his face. “I’m really good,” I whispered.
He smiled at me softly.
It hurt briefly, for half a second, and I dug my fingernails into his arms and he held perfectly still, lips pressed to my forehead.
“I’m okay,” I said.
He still didn’t move. “Jesus, you’re beautiful,” he said.
I moved my hands down his chest, breathing shallowly. Then I closed my eyes. Feeling him was as good as seeing him. His lips were soft, and slow, and
gentle against mine. He moved slowly, barely rocking his hips and he was shuddering from the effort it took him. I could tell.
I splayed my fingers across his chest and opened my eyes. “Let go,” I told him softly. “I’m okay. You don’t have to be so careful.”
His shoulders were hard, like boulders beneath my hands. And I clung to him when he did what I asked him to, and let go, and his hands were on my hips and I felt him building and building and building inside me. It felt so good, having him, and what he was doing to me. It felt so good I thought I might cry.
Christian
She wore my t-shirt afterwards. Even though I hadn’t packed for the trip, I didn’t mind. I wore sweatpants, and her body against mine, her head on my shoulder was enough to keep me warm, as we sat on that creaky, dangerous-as-hell porch.
January had found a cheap bottle of wine—that seemed to be a talent of hers—and I’d ordered pizza—bad pizza, but I was hungry enough that it tasted like the best thing ever.
“This is terrible wine,” January said.
I smiled and took the last slice of Dominos.
“What’s Thanksgiving normally like for you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “We used to switch it up. Our house, then my aunt’s house, and then my uncle’s house in New Jersey. But my aunt sold her house a while back and my uncle has a place in Florida now. It’s been just us for a while. Since before Sam died. Thanksgiving was never that big of a deal for us. Beginning of hockey season—always crazy.”
She rocked back in her chair. “You never really talk about hockey.”
“Not much to say.” I wiped my hands on a flimsy napkin.
“You were really good,” she said simply.
I shrugged. Yeah. I’d been really good. But, I’d never understood why I was better or what made me better. I always felt like I just had slightly better luck. That’s what being really good at hockey felt like: having really good luck all the time. You can’t comprehend exactly why you can get around more defensemen and get off more shots. You just do. You know it has something to do with being faster and more precise, and you know that that has something to do with practice, but when you’re in it, when you’re skating towards someone trying to stop you, it always felt like a gamble. Like you were playing with house money. Like it was anyone’s guess who’d come out on top.
“I saw you. At the Harvard game,” she recalled.
I smiled. “Freshman year?”
She shook her head. “Sophomore year. In the fall. I mean, I must have seen you freshman year. I went to that game too. But, I remember watching you specifically sophomore year. You were number 3.”
She could’ve gotten that from a Google search, but I knew, from the look in her eyes, that she might have actually remembered watching me play.
I remembered that game.
I remembered every game.
But that game had been loud—one of the ones where we both played vicious. Harvard’s home rink—a sea of spectators dressed in red—that was our color too. They kept chanting “Safety School” at us.
Like any elite hockey player in their right mind would choose playing for Harvard over BU.
Like we cared about their SAT scores or what high school they’d been the valedictorian of.
I’d hated them that night.
Corliss, a talentless left-handed hack who I’d run into at off-campus parties, taunted me just before the opening faceoff. I didn’t know what he expected—anybody could’ve told you what a dumb thing it was to do. I always played better angry.
I’d gone nuts. It had been a blowout. We won by nine. Our biggest win in a six years. Everyone came for revenge. Taylor pulled me off the ice a minute into the third period and let our freshmen get some game experience, but I wasn’t any less out for blood when we were up seven than I’d been when the puck first dropped.
The packed rink was only a quarter-full by the time of the last buzzer sounded. We’d beaten them so badly, nobody wanted to stick around and watch. It would ruin anyone’s Saturday night.
“You were amazing,” she said breathily.
I grinned cockily. “Thanks.”
She caught my expression and rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“The way you’re looking at me right now.”
I laughed. “Like you’re kind of a fan?”
She smiled and refilled her paper cup with the cheap wine.
“I’m not anything like that anymore,” I said, after a second. “I tried to come back…” I shrugged. “I didn’t even make the team.”
She walked over to me, cup between her fingers. She sat down, straddling my legs. She looked at me carefully, gnawing on the edge of her cup as I ran my fingers lightly up her back. “But you were amazing.”
I shrugged.
“You know you were.”
“I was good.”
“Amazing.”
“I’m not going to say that I was amazing.”
“You must miss it.”
I tried to kiss her. I didn’t want to talk about this anymore.
She didn’t let me. She smiled and turned her head. “Remember when you were so afraid of me you changed your work schedule?”
I looked at her.
“I wasn’t afraid of you,” I said indignantly.
She leaned back and tapped her long fingers on my shoulder.
“I don’t normally let people see me like that,” I said, after a minute.
“Like what?”
“When I’m all fucked up,” I said. I cleared my throat. She sat back on my knees and looked at me. “With Sam and hockey and Vanessa and everything.”
“It’s not fucked up to be sad about your brother dying and your hockey career ending.”
“When I’m alive, though, and he’s not, it feels that way.” I looked up at her. “Sam was the one with the good attitude. He’d have done a lot better. You know? He’d have been positive. Made people feel good about things. I can’t do that. You know? I’m okay. I’m fine. But everyone wants me to show up for the games and…” I shook my head. “So they can see the proof. Or feel like they made me better.” I shrugged. I took her wine glass and took a sip. She was smiling at me. “What?”
“You’re really sweet.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” I said. I tried to kiss her again. This time she let me. I cupped her chin and kissed her hard and deep.
January
Christian slept badly. It woke me up, his heart pounding underneath my head. His body slick with sweat, how he twisted in the sheets.
I shook him awake, and he woke with a jerk, sitting up suddenly, breathing hard, like he couldn’t catch his breath.
“Hey, you okay?” I asked, in a hushed voice.
He got out of bed, grimacing when he put his weight onto his bad leg. I followed him to the bathroom and sat on the counter while he splashed water on his face. I pressed a facecloth to the back of his neck.
“It’s nothing,” he said gently. “Go back to sleep, I’m fine.”
But I waited for him to go back to bed.
He lay still beside me for a long time, breathing shallowly, one leg slung over my hip. I fell asleep first I had a feeling it was a long time before he did, too.
There was a different person sitting at the front desk, a teenage boy with a dopey smile. A really dopey smile, like he'd smoked a blunt before his shift.
"MORNING, DARLIN," he said loudly.
"Could you tell me where I might find a Starbucks and a grocery store?"
"Oh, if you head on into town. It's not far. About half a mile thataway. There's no Starbucks though, just Dunkin. Next to the Food Lion."
I nodded. "Thanks."
It was a strange thing to be doing, walking along a wide country highway towards a Food Lion on Thanksgiving morning.
When I arrived at the depressing strip of stores, I took a breath. I didn’t feel sorry for myself—depressing town, depressing grocery s
tore, Thanksgiving. None of it bothered me. I hummed while I shopped underneath the fluorescent lighting—turkey, the closest thing to organic I could find, cranberry sauce, microwaveable mashed potatoes, Pepperidge Farm bread.
Two bottles of cheap champagne—sure to give us both a headache.
There was just one checkout line and the woman in front of me was paying with a bundle of coupons. It should’ve depressed the hell out of me, but I kept thinking of Christian. And there wasn’t anywhere I’d rather be going back to than the rundown inn. Because he was there.
I’d never wanted to take care of someone before. Never really wanted to be taken care of either.
I wanted…
I don’t know what I wanted then. Maybe I had wanted Christian all along and it had taken seeing him to know it.
But everyone before had been easier.
Easy to manipulate. Easy to drive crazy. Easy to play.
Christian had already seen the games I'd played. I'd confessed the first night he met me, when I was getting hammered at the bar with no clue how to pay for my drinks, when I was sure the thing settling my pounding heart wasn't vodka tonics, but the growly bartender.
He'd never tell anyone I was perfect. All of my other ex-boyfriends would have. He would always think I was a little crazy.
And that was a relief, because, really, I was crazy. And it was exhausting to pretend to be perfect when you’re crazy and angry and think that every boy your age is either immature, boring, or a jerk.
I got coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Walked in the sun on the side of the road. Thought about Christian’s nightmares. Wished I could make him blame someone else.
I knew, somehow, that it would be impossible for him to fully absolve himself.
I knew there would always be something else he could have done. In his mind, there were yellow lights to stop at, just one more girl to say goodbye to, just a gas station to pull over at for a soda. Or a reason to leave early. Or the movie he could’ve seen instead. Anything.
I had only wanted someone to make me feel safe. Christian had made me feel so, so safe. And now I wanted him to feel like he deserved to be alive, deserved to be happy, like he didn’t need to suffer for the rest of his life because he’d lost Sam.
