When We Met

by A. L. Jackson

  Her eyes got a faraway look as heavy tears slipped down her cheeks.

  “Our freshman year Ian said he couldn’t come home for Thanksgiving, and our parents never really liked me, so I decided to stay here with Dean.” She must have seen my skeptical expression, because she added, “Ian always had to tell my parents to back off because they were never happy with me or anything I did. My grades were never as good as his. My boyfriends never measured up to Ian’s perfect girlfriends. My dad always said I dressed like a whore, but he congratulated Ian when he lost his virginity. It was always difficult with them. They practically paid me to move away from them.”

  “Are you serious?”

  She choked out a depressed-sounding laugh, and even in the dark I could see her eyebrows rise in confirmation. “So apparently Ian just told my parents he couldn’t come home because he wanted to come hang out with me here so we could have time without our parents fighting over how I wasn’t making them proud the way Ian was. He called me the night before Thanksgiving to tell me he was boarding a plane with a friend who lived in the area, and would be catching a ride, and not to tell Mom and Dad. There was some crazy snowstorm, and he got stuck in Chicago.”

  The tears came harder, and for long minutes Indy didn’t continue the story. After taking a few large breaths in and out, she looked up at me and gave me a depressed smile.

  “I was woken up the next morning by a phone call around six. I was alone in my dorm room, my roommate had left for the break, and I remember it smelled like her perfume. I don’t know why I remember that. It’s just something that has always stood out, because I hated that fucking perfume, and it’s all I could smell as I listened to my mom sobbing on the other end of the line. Ian and his friend had decided to try to drive since there were no flights, and it was only about four hours. We’re from Chicago, so Ian called his friends all night until one of them agreed to come get them at the airport and drive them. They didn’t make it forty-five minutes before they, and another car, hit a huge patch of black ice and spun out of control. They both went off the road and into a ditch. The driver was paralyzed from the waist down, Ian’s friend broke his collarbone, and Ian’s side of the car was pinned underneath the other car. They said he lived for about ten minutes after the crash. They didn’t say the exact words, but it wasn’t hard to figure out how much he’d been suffering for those ten minutes. And he’d been coming to see me.”

  “But, Indy . . . that doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “I know that,” she cried. “But I’m not sure my parents do.”

  “You don’t—”

  “My dad said, ‘It should have been you’ when I was finally able to make it home.”

  I flinched back. “What the fuck?” I breathed. “Indy, I—I don’t. God, I’m so sorry about Ian. But your parents, they’re wrong.”

  She nodded absentmindedly, her jaw shaking as she did. “Through everything, all I could think about was that Ian suffered. That he was in pain for those ten minutes, and I wasn’t there for him when he’d been there for me my whole life. I—I just lost myself after that. I clung to my relationship with Dean because my parents hated me even more, but nothing took the pain away. Over and over I relived that phone call, the smell of that horrible perfume, and the fact that he suffered—and I started cutting.”

  My chest felt hollow and my stomach dropped. “Indy, no. . . .”

  “Somehow it made sense to me. Like if I felt pain for him, I was taking away what he had gone through. I never did it to kill myself. It was always on my legs, and I knew where not to cut, but I couldn’t stop. It became addictive. Every time I thought about him, I’d have to do it. Dean tried to get me to stop, and I tried—God, I tried so fucking hard, but I felt like I’d failed Ian,” she cried. “I know none of this makes sense, but at the time it did. My parents never even found out—I was able to stop before sophomore year ended—but when I had to go home over summer . . . it was horrible. It was like even though they didn’t know, they knew that I was refusing to cope, and they just got tired of having to deal with their disappointment. I found my bags on the driveway when I came home from the gym one morning, the locks to the house changed. So I came back to school early and found Dean and Vanessa having sex.” She took a deep breath and I could tell she was trying to steady herself.

  “I hadn’t been there for Ian, I was never a good enough daughter for my parents, so much so that I can’t go home anymore, and I found out my boyfriend—the only person who knew what was happening and was trying to help me through it—had wanted to dump me and hadn’t done it yet because he was just afraid to upset me.” I started to say something, but she cut me off. “That is why I’m trying to tell you it can’t work. That is why I’m telling you you’ll leave. Everyone does. And you think you want to save me, but it’s not your job to save me, Kier. I need to save myself, and I’m trying. The drinking—it’s bad, I know. But it’s done. It has to be, just like I stopped cutting for Ian. I can’t keep drinking to forget a guy who never cared about me. But while I’m trying to save me, you shouldn’t have to get caught up in the mess that is my life. Do you understand now?” she asked, her voice breaking on the last word.

  I thought for a minute before responding, and when I did, I took her face in my hands and pressed my forehead to hers. “I know what you’re saying, but you’re not scaring me away. I hurt for you, Indy. I hate what you’ve been through, and yes, I wish I could take it all away. But I know I can’t do that, and I’m sorry. That will always be hard. You’ll always miss him. Your parents—they can go to hell if they can’t see how amazing you are. I still stand firm on my opinion of Dean, even more so now. But what you’ve been through? What you did to yourself? You’re not scaring me, Indy. Everyone struggles with something. Everyone has different ways of dealing with the shit that happens in their life. Yours was destructive, yeah. But you? You realized that and stopped it and have been fighting it alone. Do I wish you hadn’t ever done it? Of course. But do I admire you? Hell yeah. You’re the strongest person I know for stopping.”

  “You’re making it seem like I’m someone better than I am.”

  “No, I’m not. I told you,” I whispered against her lips before placing a kiss there. “I see people, and I see you. Now I know what you’ve been hiding, and I still see the same girl I want to take care of and spend my time with. Nothing’s changed over here. I’m just waiting to see if you’re going to give me more reasons why you think I should run.”

  She huffed and rolled her eyes. “I’ve given you plenty.”

  “Well, not running.”

  “Kier . . .”

  “Tell me something. Yesterday when I was here, you’d been crying, and you didn’t want to see me. Did that have to do with me, or did that have to do with this week and Ian?”

  Her eyes roamed my face in the shadows. “Ian. I was—I was struggling.”

  “Understandable.” Placing a soft kiss on her throat, I moved away from her and spent a few minutes burying her under her blankets before grabbing the ones I’d been using and wrapping them around me. When I was done, I moved so I was lying next to her and she laughed at the amount of time it was taking me to do this. “Now that we’re not going to freeze, why don’t you tell me about Ian?”

  Her smile fell. “What? What do you mean about him?”

  “This is a hard time of year for you, and you were struggling alone yesterday. You told me tonight you didn’t want to be alone, and you’re not. So instead of struggling, why don’t you tell me all the good things you remember about him?”

  Her eyes shone in the dark as she stared at me in silence for what seemed like countless seconds before whispering, “Okay.”

  chapter five

  Indy

  Kier and I had spent the rest of the night doing just that. I’d told him stories about Ian as we lay bundled up in blankets, and eventually we fell asleep that way. The power kicked back on sometime early in the morning before we woke up, and at some point we�
�d shed our multiple blankets. We had woken up with two blankets covering us together and Kier’s body curled around mine.

  I hadn’t woken up next to anyone since last school year with Dean, but even then it had never seemed as perfect as waking up with Kier. On the rare occasions Dean and I had spent the night with each other, it was always awkward, and when I woke I was uncomfortable—and that was if I’d been able to fall asleep at all. But my body seemed to fit perfectly against Kier’s, his head resting just above my own, one of his legs fitted between mine, the arm he wasn’t using as an additional pillow wrapped securely around my waist, his hand splayed across my upper stomach.

  As I lay there enjoying my stolen moments with him, his pinky started lazily dragging back and forth against my stomach before he grumbled, “Power’s back on?”

  “Must be.”

  He made a tired sound in the back of his throat and rolled away from me. “Do you have anything planned today with your housemates?”

  I rubbed at my face and tried to hide how unhappy I felt about him moving away from me. “No, they’ve been gone working, so we haven’t talked about doing anything.”

  “Do you want to spend the day with me?”

  “Maybe,” I said softly, my smile telling him my answer. “What’d you have in mind?”

  His normally golden-brown eyes looked like they were shining from the light filtering in through the window as he studied me. A few moments later he said uncertainly, “A non-Thanksgiving day.”

  “Now that sounds perfect.”

  After I’d taken a shower and gotten dressed, I met him at the guys’ house. He’d already started to cook breakfast for us. After a non-Thanksgiving meal, we spent the rest of the day talking, watching movies, and eating food that had absolutely nothing to do with the holiday. It was weird, and it was just as I’d thought it would be—perfect.

  Yesterday he’d shown up not long after I came back from my run, and we bounced back and forth between the kitchen and living room as I read and worked on two papers I had due within the next couple of weeks, and he finished homework and studied for a test. He’d fallen back into his quiet self, and while I liked that he could spend an entire day with me just doing homework—not mauling me or even touching me, considering that he was always a couple of feet from me—as I tossed and turned last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it started bugging me.

  He’d even kept his distance on Thanksgiving—something I hadn’t noticed until now because I’d been so busy feeling comfortable and safe in his presence. And when I thought back, I realized I couldn’t remember him actually being close enough to touch me since we’d woken up in the pillow room.

  Saturday morning I knocked loudly on the door to the boys’ house until he answered, his face easily slipping into a smile when he saw me. He took a step back to let me in, shutting the door behind me.

  “Good mo—” he began, but I cut him off by grabbing his hand and staring down at it. He watched me and asked, “Is my hand okay . . . ?”

  “Why haven’t you touched me since Thanksgiving morning?”

  His laugh ended on a sigh. “Honestly? It makes it easier for me.”

  “Makes what easier?” I asked, looking up at him.

  “Being near you.”

  My eyes widened at his blunt honesty and I bit down on the inside of my cheek, looking at where his fingers were playing with mine before glancing back up at his face. “You haven’t kissed me since the night in the pillow room,” I murmured.

  “No, I haven’t,” he said simply, his golden eyes never leaving mine.

  I didn’t know what I’d been expecting—for him to grab me in his arms and kiss me right then, to try to make an excuse for not wanting to kiss me anymore, something . . . but I hadn’t expected him to just agree. I blinked quickly and dropped my gaze and hands as I felt my cheeks burn. “O—um . . . okay.”

  He didn’t say anything, and my embarrassment only seemed to build. I turned and started for his door, only stopping when his hands came down around the top of my arms, his chest pressed firmly against my back. “You came over to say those two things, and then leave?”

  “Uh, yeah . . . pretty much.”

  His laugh was quiet and deep, the sound sending vibrations from his body to mine. “What did you want me to say?”

  “Nothing, I didn’t have any expectations.”

  “Liar.”

  I gritted my teeth and dropped my head to stare at the floor, and my eyes fluttered shut when the faintest touch of his nose trailing up the back of my neck had a shiver going through my body.

  “You didn’t ask why, so I didn’t tell you why. But I could already see your mind working in ways that are dangerous for both of us, and I’m not gonna let you leave when you’re thinking up some kind of bullshit that has you prepared for me to leave you.”

  “We’re not dating—technically you can’t leave me,” I whispered, and he laughed against my skin.

  “Now you’re bringing technicalities and labels into this?” His hands moved down my arms to wrap around my waist, and he leaned in to speak in my ear. “And you and I both know people don’t have to be together to leave each other. But us? No, we don’t have a label. I don’t need one, but if you do—we can talk about that on a day that isn’t today. I’m your safe place, and when you’re ready, you’ll be mine. If you ask me, that means more than a bullshit label.”

  “Again with the ‘when you’re ready’?” I asked, and turned in his arms to look up at him.

  Kier gently pushed me back until I was pressed against the door, and rested both his forearms against the wood, leaning in so our foreheads were resting against each other’s. “It’ll always come back to waiting for you to be ready, Indy. You weren’t ready to tell me about Ian, or face what you were doing to forget Dean—because you weren’t ready to get over him—so you weren’t ready to know what I was doing for you. I kissed you, partly because I thought I would go insane if I didn’t, but mostly because I needed you to be able to see what you were doing to me, to get a glimpse of what you’ve come to mean to me, and to see that no matter what you could possibly have told me, I wouldn’t run.”

  I brought my hand up to his stomach and grabbed at his shirt, bringing his body closer to mine. “So why stop?”

  “Because you told me everything. You laid yourself bare. You had to feel vulnerable after that, and I didn’t want anything I did to feel like I was taking advantage of you. So now everything’s out there, and now I’m waiting for you to be okay with that—to be okay with moving on from Dean and not keeping Ian a secret anymore. I won’t push you to get there, and I won’t kiss you until you are there. Not to speed things up, and not to make you think I don’t want you, but only because I’m waiting for you to be ready. Once you’re ready, I’m taking you and I’m not giving you back. You’re going to be mine, Indy. I’ll keep you safe from yourself. I’ll be there for you when you struggle with urges and what happened to Ian . . . but there won’t be anything between us. No Dean . . . no worries of me leaving you. Do you understand now?”

  I swallowed past the tightness in my throat and nodded. My breathing was rough from having Kier this close to me, and hearing his words. That alone had me straining not to close the inches between our lips—but I knew what he was saying, and I knew I would wait.

  No guy had ever talked to me the way Kier did, or said the kinds of things he said to me. No guy had ever been as considerate, and no guy had ever known me better than I’d known myself. And though I wasn’t in love with Kier yet, I loved him for what he was doing for us.

  “And after I’ve barely tasted you, it’s hard not to. That’s why I haven’t been touching you. Not because I don’t want to, but because being this close makes it harder to keep reminding myself why I can’t have you yet.”

  He pushed away from me, that crooked smirk crossing his face as he stepped back farther into the house, his arms crossing over his lean, muscled chest. With a slight raise of his eyeb
row, his golden eyes darted to the space next to him. “So, are you leaving or staying?”

  I bit back a smile and took a step toward him before pausing. “I shouldn’t stay.”

  His eyebrows pinched together, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Because right now I keep looking at your mouth, and I’m going to convince myself I’m ready if I don’t get some space from you for a little while.”

  He automatically wet his lips before a challenging smile crossed his face, and my fingers twitched as my heart raced.

  “Leaving! I’m leaving.”

  I turned and bolted from the house, his deep laugh following me as I ran down the porch and away from him.

  • • •

  Kier

  School started up again two days later, and the rest of the semester began passing quickly with the winter break approaching. The classes were the same, the work still sucked, and for the most part I kept to myself. Except now Indy was filling my days and nights.

  In the last week and a half, I’d spent more of my time with her than I had alone. It was the sweetest form of torture being near her and still never touching her, but it was worth it to see her opening up to me the way she had been. Even through classes, homework, and the stress of finals around the corner, she seemed to relax more in that time than I’d ever seen her in the last year and a half. Indy was a master at faking a smile—and she looked beautiful when she did. But, God, Indy just smiling was amazing.

  And as the real smiles became more frequent, and fake smiles became only a memory, I just sat back and counted down the days until she would be mine. I knew she was ready; I was just waiting for her to know, too. Judging by the tension between us, and the fact that she no longer set foot in my room, it wouldn’t be long.

  Now as we walked across the campus toward my car, she wrapped her arm around mine and pressed her body close to my side. She slipped her hand into my jacket pocket to grip my hand, and her body shivered against the cold air. But even with that, she smiled up at the lightly falling snow.