When We Met

by A. L. Jackson

  “And?” I prompted.

  “And I didn’t want to be alone tonight,” she breathed.

  My heart beat harder in my chest and heat flooded my veins, but I tried to stop my initial reaction. Telling myself that if her housemates had been here, she wouldn’t have come looking for me, and that it was possible she would have gone to any of the guys in my house. But it was damn hard to keep telling myself that when she’d been coming to me sober for the second time.

  When I didn’t respond, she huffed. “I can’t see you very well, so I can’t try to figure out what you’re thinking and it’s bothering me.”

  I bit back a smile and reached out until the tips of my fingers brushed her stomach. Her muscles contracted at the contact, but she didn’t pull away. I let my fingers trail across her stomach until I found one of her arms, and then I slid my hand down her soft skin and intertwined my fingers with hers.

  “Well, then, you won’t be alone.”

  Her breathing deepened and she curled her fingers around mine, and my body relaxed at the simple movement. “What is it about you?” she asked.

  Even though she’d asked me before, I knew this question wasn’t meant for me. Just her tone told me she’d asked herself that question at least a hundred times, and I wondered what answer she’d started coming up with.

  “I told you—”

  “When I’m ready.”

  I swallowed roughly and nodded in the dark room. “Yeah.”

  “And you’re not going to tell me when exactly it is that I will be ready?”

  “No.”

  “But I still feel safe with you.”

  God, I hope so.

  Indy cleared her throat and took a step back, her grip on my hand tightening as she did. “The pillow room has a lot of blankets. I, uh, don’t really feel comfortable having you in my room yet—even though you were already in there yesterday. But it’s comfortable up there, and even though it’s probably colder up there than the rest of the house, we’ll be able to stay warm.”

  If only she had any clue how many times I’d been in her room. My lips twitched into a smile. “Lead the way.”

  After stumbling our way up one flight of stairs, down the hall, and then up more stairs, she suddenly paused in front of me.

  “I wasn’t joking when I said it’s full of pillows. We didn’t turn this room into a bedroom. The carpet is covered with dozens of pillows, and there are probably another dozen blankets at least in here. You have to walk very carefully or you’ll trip and go down.”

  “Okay . . .” I could see enough so I could make out the silhouette of her body, and the lumpiness of the floor, but that was about it.

  She started walking painfully slowly, and after she took a few calculated steps, I took two—and immediately fell, taking her down with me.

  “What the hell kind of death trap is this room?” I grunted into the mass I’d fallen into, half of which felt like a pillow, and half of which seemed to be a blanket. At least the landing was soft.

  Indy was laughing so hard she didn’t respond for a few seconds. “I told you to be careful where you walked!”

  “I was!”

  “Obviously not.” There was a rustling noise before the blanket was yanked out from underneath me. “If you find blankets, grab them.”

  “You just took mine.”

  She huffed. “You’ll find more. Come on, it’s freezing up here, and it’s only going to get worse the longer the power stays out.”

  Not wanting to risk standing, I crawled around on the pillows, grabbing anything that felt like a blanket as I moved toward where Indy was already waiting by the window. I could see her silhouette and breaths coming out in little white puffs.

  “I think I got five?”

  “I got six,” she said as she began wrapping blankets around herself.

  Dropping mine, I wrapped the ones she’d collected around her until she was completely covered. “You look like a burrito.”

  Her soft laugh filled the space between us. “I can’t move my arms.”

  “Doesn’t matter, you don’t need to. At least you’ll be warm.”

  “Oh, there’s no doubt of that.” She smiled at me in the dark room before frowning. “But now I can’t make you look like a burrito.”

  “I don’t want to be a burrito. I wouldn’t be able to move my arms.”

  “What the hell, Kier?”

  I laughed and grabbed the blankets I’d dropped. “You’ll get over it.”

  After I covered myself, we huddled closer together and talked for an hour about classes, housemates, and why she had always been afraid to say anything to me since she never saw me talking to anyone. Like I’d known it would, that topic led to her asking again why she felt safe with me, and when I couldn’t give her an answer, she stayed quiet for a few minutes.

  “I haven’t felt safe in a long time,” she finally admitted softly, and then shook her head. “I don’t mean I’ve felt like I was in danger or anything. I just—I’ve felt—it’s hard to explain. . . .”

  I just waited.

  “I’ve felt like I was on the verge of destroying myself for so long, and I just couldn’t stop. It made me feel like I was drowning, and even when I thought I had people helping me keep it together, they weren’t. And they never made me feel as at peace as you do just by being near me. This feeling is so different—such a nice change. Like I’ve said, I don’t know how to begin to explain it, but it’s just this feeling I have around you.”

  And this was it. That tone. It was the same one she’d had yesterday when I tried to talk to her and she asked me to leave. And I knew at that moment that she was ready to know about all those Saturday nights I’d been taking care of her. I didn’t know how I knew; I just knew wherever this conversation was leading this time, it would lead there. She’d told me she’d felt safe before, but never like that. Everything was different this time.

  She laughed awkwardly. “I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up. I know you won’t tell me why.”

  “It’s because all I want to do is take care of you,” I said before I could stop myself, and risked a glance at her wide eyes.

  “Wh-what? Take care of me?” She laughed. “Kier. You don’t even know me. I’m—I’m a mess. I’m apparently a slut—”

  “Don’t. Don’t say that about yourself.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “Yeah, Indy, I do.” I held her gaze for a minute and watched as she bit down on her bottom lip, like she was trying to stop herself from saying something. “Destroying yourself . . . ,” I mumbled, echoing her words, and let that hang in the air for a few seconds. Taking a deep breath, I looked away as I said, “Indy, you always seem so surprised that you’re hearing me talk—or you say something about how I’m quiet. And yeah, I’ll admit I don’t talk to a lot of people—and last year, we didn’t talk at all. But we’ve talked a lot over the last three months, more than you realize. That’s not the only difference in this year, though. I saw you at the parties at our house last year, and you were never like how you are now. You’re wild; you’re out of control. You’re with multiple guys, and you never remember a thing.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked, her voice shocked, but just barely above a whisper. “You’re never there.”

  I kept speaking like she hadn’t said anything. “You say you feel like you’re on the verge of destroying yourself, and Saturday nights are the first thing that come to mind, Indy. Because, although no one can stop you from drinking, or doing whatever you want to do . . . I know you don’t like who you are when you drink.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Same reason I know which room is yours. Same reason you stumble into my room at some point during every party. It never fails, you end up in there, and we go through the whole thing all over. You trying to remember my name, me carrying you over here to your room, you figuring out I gave you the bread and wondering why.”

  “Safe room,” she mu
mbled to herself, her mouth forming a perfect O when it hit her. “You leave the water and pills, too, don’t you?”

  It hadn’t been a question, so I didn’t answer. I just sat there as her mind worked around the information she’d just been given, and everything she was trying to piece together.

  “Are you the one who locks my bedroom door?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

  I nodded. “People know you live next door. They see me carrying you out of my house and returning not even ten minutes later alone. I don’t trust someone not to take advantage of that.”

  “But why—why would you do that for me? I don’t remember any of—” She cut off suddenly, her face blank for a split second. “And why don’t I ever remember it? I don’t get that drunk, Kier!”

  “You’re right, you don’t get that drunk. You’re definitely drunk, but not to the point where you wouldn’t remember anything from the night before. The first couple times I thought you were doing it just to be . . . I don’t know, I thought you just wanted someone to take care of you. So I did. But then I realized you really had no clue. After the last three months of it, all I’ve been able to come up with is I think you block out these nights in your mind. Like there’s already something bad about them, so the rest of it you just decide to forget as well.”

  Her face went blank, and she didn’t respond for a long time, but I knew I was right. “Dean . . . I drink to forget Dean.” She sighed raggedly. “He was—”

  “I know who he was to you,” I said, clenching my jaw and cutting her off.

  “You do?” she asked, shock coating her words.

  Of course I did. Every time I saw him on campus, I wanted to punch the bastard. “There was a party a few weeks into the school year, and it was the second night you stumbled into my room. After I got you in bed, you started sobbing, saying you were disgusted with yourself. You’d slept with some guy and said, ‘It didn’t work—my heart still hurts,’ and told me all about Dean. When the next two weeks went by with similar results, I started buying you the bread. Partly because it would absorb some of the alcohol you were drinking, and also because the first three weeks before you fell asleep you kept complaining because you didn’t understand why the world was suddenly banning garlic bread, and all you wanted was to find some. Some weeks you eat it and stay away from guys. Some weeks you stumble into my room without it, and those are the nights you cry again.”

  “That’s really . . . embarrassing. Oh my God,” she groaned. “And after all that, how could you sit there and tell me I’m not acting like a slut?”

  I glared at her and resisted the urge to shake her. “Did you not hear me? I know you don’t like who you are when you’re like that. You tell me you disgust yourself. I see you when you’re sober, Indy, and I know you’re not that girl. You’re trying to forget someone, and you’re wasted whenever you do something.”

  “Like that makes it okay?”

  “No,” I answered honestly. “But you—the way you are, the way you honestly block all of this from your mind, I think that proves you’re not a slut. You said you feel like you’re drowning, and to be honest, that’s kind of a perfect word.”

  “Did you fix my car, yes or no?”

  “Yes,” I said hesitantly, and she laughed without humor.

  “Then why did you tell me it wasn’t you? Why did Misha say it was her?”

  I looked away for a second before saying, “Misha and Darryn are the only ones who have figured out what I’ve been doing every week. I don’t talk to them about it, but they’ve figured it out. And I needed help getting into your car to fix it the other morning. Misha knows you weren’t ready to know I was helping you. She was just protecting you.”

  Even in the dark room I could see when her jaw started trembling and tears filled her eyes. “So all of this, this whole feeling safe with you, has just been an illusion? A product of not remembering certain nights, but for some reason, remembering to come to your room?”

  “If that’s how you want to see it.”

  “How else would I see it?” she nearly yelled.

  “Sober, you feel safe near me, drawn to me. Drunk, you feel the same way. You came to me the first time, second time, third, and so on. Nights you don’t remember at all. But you still came to me. You knew I was safe, and that’s all I needed to know to keep taking care of you.”

  “God!” she cried. “Why would you keep doing that week after week?”

  “Because someone had to let you know.”

  Her eyebrows pinched together in confusion as a line of tears fell down one of her cheeks. “Know what?”

  “That you mean a lot more than you think you do. You don’t seem to think very highly of yourself—and I don’t know why—but you’re wrong. Whatever it is, you’re wrong . . . and Dean was an idiot to let you go.”

  A soft cry burst from her chest, and when I started moving toward her, her voice stopped me. “Don’t! Please don’t.”

  I sat back and watched helplessly as she tried to pull herself together underneath all those blankets.

  “I want that to be true . . . but it’s just not,” she whispered. She didn’t say it like she was searching for more compliments. Every word had so much truth and pain behind it, the admission had me rubbing at my chest as I shook my head in confusion.

  “Indy . . .”

  “Thank you for taking care of me, and trying to protect me from myself, but I told you, I’m a mess. My life? It’s . . . God, Kier, it’s beyond complicated, and so many people have already given up on me—it’s not long before you will, too.”

  “And what makes you think that?”

  “Because there’s no reason for you not to. The people who were supposed to be there for me through anything gave up on me. Why wouldn’t you?”

  My breathing deepened as frustration pumped through me, and I had to wait until I had it under control before I responded to her. “Well, you’re not giving me much of a chance to prove myself, are you? You’ve already determined that you’ll disappoint me. That’s a new one.” My lips quirked up on one side in a sarcastic smirk. “So this time it really is ‘it’s not you, it’s me’? And we’re not even dating.”

  “Kier . . . ,” she protested. “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right, Indy. I don’t.” I began shrugging off all the blankets, and her eyes widened. “No matter what you think about yourself, I see differently. See, I don’t talk to people unless I want to give them my time. And, God, Indy, I want to give you my time. But I see people, and I sure as hell see you. I may not know what’s hurting you, I may not know why you’re destroying yourself, but I still fucking see you. I see that you need someone to save you from yourself.” When I had all the blankets off me, I carefully stood, never taking my eyes off her pained expression. “And I’ll still be that guy. I’m still that safe place, and I’ll still be there ready to take care of you if you find you can’t handle whatever’s going on and you start trying to destroy yourself again. But I won’t listen to you basically tell me you’re not worth being saved. Because that? I don’t believe that for a goddamn second.”

  “You don’t understand what you’re saying,” she said as I turned to leave, and I looked back at her.

  “No, I do. If I’m capable, I will save you every time, Indy. Believe that, if nothing else. I don’t need or expect anything in return. I’m doing this because it’s what you deserve and what I want to do for you.”

  “I want you! You consume me in a way I’ve never experienced even though up until ten minutes ago it didn’t make sense! I want the feeling you give me to never end, but there’s no way—”

  I dropped to my knees in front of her and cupped her cheeks in my hands and brought my mouth down onto hers. “Don’t finish that,” I growled against her lips before kissing her again.

  Her mouth moved easily against mine, and when I traced my tongue against her lips, they parted on a soft inhale, allowing me access to tease her tongue with my own.

&
nbsp; “I need to be able to touch you,” she pled before deepening the kiss, and I released her cheeks to begin quickly, and awkwardly, pulling down the blankets I’d wrapped around her.

  Once her arms were free, I laid her back on the pillows and hovered over her body for a few seconds before relaxing on top of her. An annoyed groan sounded in the back of her throat when she tried to move her legs, but the six blankets wrapped—and now tangled—around her lower body prevented the movement.

  Moving back enough so I could look down into her eyes, I shook my head and whispered, “Nothing is ever guaranteed, but you can’t write us off before you even give me a chance to prove that I can be good for you.”

  That pained look was back in her eyes. “I have a feeling that you would be. I’ve had that feeling. But that doesn’t mean that I’ll be good for you.”

  I brushed my lips against hers, everything in my body yelling to taste her again. “Let me be the judge of that.”

  Fresh tears welled up in her eyes, and my body tightened as I prepared to make my case again. Instead of the resistance I was coming to expect, she choked out, “My brother died. Two years ago last Saturday. But it was Thanksgiving, so it’s also kind of tomorrow.”

  “Indy,” I crooned, my hands going to cup her cheeks again.

  “He was my twin, and I loved him”—she cut off on a sob—“so much. We were nothing alike, but still inseparable until college. He was my best friend, and we loved to drive my mom crazy . . . probably just because she gave us such horrible names.”

  I smiled and brushed at a tear. “I love the name Indy.”

  Her watery gaze drifted over to me. “My brother’s name was Ian. Indy and Ian . . . Indy-Ian. All our friends just called us Indian instead of trying to say our separate names.” She laughed softly and shook her head. “He got a scholarship to play football in Texas. It was the first time we’d ever been away from each other, but I didn’t get accepted there, and there was no way he wasn’t going. It was like a dream for him. He’d always been so focused in school and football . . . my parents had always been proud of him.”