Delicate

by K. L. Cottrell

  He faces me again and, even across the stretch of emptiness between us, seems to look right into me with those sunny eyes.

  “Soooo,” he starts, “that time I caught you going through dance steps in the kitchen, you didn’t laugh or act lighthearted or playful about it. You got all embarrassed and talked about how you shouldn’t have bothered with those steps ‘cause it was stupid and you were rusty and….”

  He pauses to shake his head. Then he curves a soft smile at me.

  “I didn’t like that. I know how much dance meant to you, and it’s obvious you miss it, so this whole thing was my roundabout way of showing you that going back to it would not be stupid. If I can pick up basics from the internet in a few weeks, you can definitely wake your skills back up. You’re so talented. It would be easy for you.”

  I feel like he has closed his hands around my lungs.

  Feel like I’m going numb, but not in an alarming way—I just can’t find room for the rest of the world in my brain, only for him.

  For this sweet shock he has immersed me in. For this beautiful gesture I never saw coming.

  “You told me to forget I even saw you that day,” he says, “but I couldn’t. No way could I sit back and let you miss out on something you love just ‘cause you feel self-conscious. I want you to be happy.” He lifts his hands a bit. “So here I am. Super Beck.”

  Both of my lungs and my heart. He’s got them all in his grasp.

  And it is what finally cracks me apart.

  I fly up off the couch.

  His expression stumbles out of innocent kindness and into the pulse-tripping warmth that I alone get from him—but the scorch of it is in view only for a second, because I have to hug him. I have to.

  Throwing my arms around his neck feels like waking up from a nightmare.

  Being instantly locked into his arms, drawn right up against his chest, feels like being rescued.

  Just like that, there is only our space now, not his and mine, and it is spreading the most welcome heat all throughout me. I think the same is true for him—he holds me so hard, his chest heaving with wild breaths that he quickly starts burying in my hair, nodding when a soft whine of relief is torn from me.

  I’m home once again.

  “Oh my….” He exhales, and the drift of it to my neck through my hair almost makes me gasp, as if I haven’t already been breathing much like he has. “Noelle, I….”

  Now I’m the one nodding.

  It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t finish his thought out loud. His tone alone speaks of significant things, just like his embrace does, and it resonates with me like—like—

  He pulls back from me, but only to wind his hands up to my face and urge it toward his. And I do pant for a breath now, dropping my arms around his waist, feeling dizzy from how close we are to a kiss.

  We’re so close to each other.

  Wonderfully close to the old version of us.

  Temptingly close to the new one.

  His lips graze mine.

  “Stop me,” he whispers in a tremble.

  And I…I….

  - 19 -

  B E C K E T T

  now

  “I don’t want to,” she whispers back to me.

  Right onto the breath I’m letting out.

  Right into my bones.

  A deep shakiness has taken over me, but it doesn’t loosen my hold on her face. And I can’t breathe any better than she can, but I still push my mouth onto hers.

  It takes the world away.

  Everything goes away except for the ardent kiss she presses back up to me, and the soft sound in her throat, and her arms squeezing impossibly tighter around me.

  Our lips slip away from one another and then desperately rush in again, and again, slightly clumsy but impossible to halt, to even calm.

  Nothing is more important right now than this.

  Not easy breathing. Not elegance.

  Not rules.

  I take the parted-lips invitation to love her tongue with mine and make both of us gasp for air that much more. One of my hands loses itself in her hair, and both of hers splay graspingly over the back of my shirt. I know within short moments that there might be fingertip-shaped spots of tenderness in those places tomorrow, but I’ll treasure every single one—they’ll be from this, from her fervently piecing me back together, not sorry or even shy, outright clutching me with all of her strength while we burn through kisses the likes of which I’ve never given or received before.

  Being close to a girl has never scared me this much, nor has it ever given my life so much meaning.

  I have never loved this with a girl as much as I love it with Noelle. Never felt so much like savoring every single second so I’ll never forget any of them, even as I itch to let them straight-up consume me.

  The fact remains that nothing feels better to me than she does.

  With her kissing me like this after everything—the dance surprise, yesterday, everything—I have to believe that nothing feels better to her than I do.

  And it only strengthens the truths about us that I’ve been dwelling on longer and longer lately.

  She huffs, “I miss you,” out of our kiss, against my mouth. The words are heavy with the same lovely and shadowy things I feel. Adoration, warmth, shame, vulnerability.

  They have me confessing too, “I miss you so fucking much. I know I said I could get past it—the way you make me feel—but I….”

  Her hands drag down to my lower back, where they make fists in my shirt. “Me too. I’ve missed you more than I should, in so many ways, Beckett, but I—I haven’t been able to help it.”

  I’m too overwhelmed to say any more of what’s in my head. I only manage a nod that doesn’t even touch how much delighted and longing agreement I feel for her words—and the resulting brush of my lips against hers makes those things worse.

  Her breath catches. Her fingers tighten around my shirt.

  “What’s…?” Her voice is weakening. “What’s wrong with me for feeling like this? And for being happy you feel the same way?”

  God knows I’ve wondered similar things about myself countless times.

  Wondered how it is that I would have done literally anything for Cliff’s health and happiness, but then here I am, like this, with the woman he loved.

  The weight of it puts a strain on my own voice. “It’s wrong with me, too, Ellie.”

  But oh, yes, how aware I am that heaviness isn’t all I feel.

  I’m also so light because of her.

  As hard as it was to start accepting how I feel about her, it takes root a little more all the time, because she is unparalleled.

  My one hand flexes in her hair for a second. I set my other thumb drifting back and forth over her cheek.

  Her sigh caresses my lips, causing some of the tension to melt out of her muscles.

  I love being able to do that to her.

  I love what my kisses did to her not three minutes ago and three long weeks ago.

  I love what I’ve done to her over all the painful time we’ve weathered together.

  God, I’m starving for her, and it feels like being on the edge of bursting, of shattering, of going crazy.

  And I have so many things to say.

  Heavy words and light words and pleas and additional confessions that have been building in me for minutes, days, weeks.

  I want to tell her that although I didn’t mean for the dance steps to lead to this, I wouldn’t take back a single second. Want to admit that I don’t think I’d take back any of the millions of seconds that we’ve lived through since Cliff died, because we’re stronger now than we’ve ever been in our lives—we made each other strong when we thought we’d be weak forevermore.

  But I also want to share the feeling of betrayal living in my stomach. It’s so sharp that I haven’t even been brave enough to talk to Cliff’s ghost about it, have struggled to look at it straight for myself. I feel like I’ve been going behind his back, which is
something I never would have done, and on my worst days, it has just about made me sick. I’m sure Noelle has been in much the same boat.

  And this brings me back around to those lighter truths I’ve unearthed. I understand that the things we wouldn’t have done before were tied to the people we used to be. Nothing could have shaken our loyalty to Cliff back in those days, but when you lose someone so important to you, it upends everything you know. She and I had to adjust after he died, had to fight to learn how to live without him, because there was no escaping that indelible change. So the people we are now…God, they’ve gone on loving him despite their grief and the passage of time, but somewhere along the way, they also started….

  I know I’m too nervous to say that last part to her just yet, though.

  No matter how often I’ve thought about it over the last couple days, it’s still scary.

  I don’t have the courage to ask if she has realized, like I have, that our feelings aren’t as new as they’ve seemed. That they’ve been in us for a while and we simply didn’t notice because they grew slowly and quietly over these two tumultuous years, beneath everything else we were trying to get through.

  Takes my breath away every time I think about it.

  We might have been catching on a bit before the accident with the deer. Upon looking back, I’ve remembered signs and shifts and unusually sweet seconds. However, that distressing event was what forced the change into view; the sudden threat of losing each other spilled light all over what exactly it was that we were terrified of losing.

  Our friendship ran deep, yes. But something else did too.

  And it probably really was the root of my issues with my ex, like Jenna implied. I spent months failing to be who she wanted because I’d be damned if I let go of Noelle for anybody. A lot of it did have to do with our friendship, but an alarm of some sort should’ve gone off in my head when I basically felt fine after Jenna dumped me. The fact that we hadn’t exchanged a single, ‘I love you,’ during our relationship because I hadn’t wanted to—the fact that a completely different woman truly made me feel like me—should’ve been a huge hint.

  But I just….

  I was so used to Noelle being Cliff’s.

  It had been a solid, indisputable truth for years.

  His death didn’t free us up or something, didn’t make me feel like it was my turn to find out just how glorious she could be. As far as I could tell, all it did was hurt like hell and make her and Theodora feel that much more like my family. So I never dared to even dream about even wondering if the things that had started happening with her and me were the kinds of things that happened when two people—

  “What are you thinking about?” she asks in a soft voice.

  My heartbeat skips hard, taking my breath away anew.

  I whisper back stupidly, “I don’t know.”

  Her chuckle is unexpected and breathy.

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking either.”

  She sobers again as she inhales. Her fingers finally release my shirt, and her hands start rubbing over the places as if to smooth the wrinkles that are probably there.

  “This is…um….”

  Word by word, her voice is going quieter still. The motions of her hands feel increasingly fidgety.

  “It’s a lot,” she barely gets out.

  I swallow at the lump suddenly forming in my throat. Feel her gulp, too, through this hold I still have on her face.

  “Yeah, it is,” I agree.

  The silence we fall into now has a certain feel to it that the first one didn’t. Like there’s a mountain of words on the tip of her tongue, too, not just on mine.

  I’m not sure what to do next.

  I don’t know how long this reprieve will last, so it’s hard to decide what to do with it while I have it. Kissing her again sounds so damn good—better than good—but so do simpler touches. I’ve felt the absence of those like missing limbs; it has been awful to not be near enough for hugging or tickling or comforting or any of the other things we used to do together on any given day. I would love standing here and looking at her with her hair in my fingers every bit as much as I would enjoy tasting her bottom lip the way she just has.

  We don’t get to find out if she’s any better off than I am—a little voice is drifting to us.

  “Mommy? Uncle Beck?” has come from the direction of Theo’s room.

  For the first time since before Noelle yanked me into that hug, enough space forms between us for us to look at each other.

  As uncertain as her expression is, it’s also so tender. So pretty.

  Such tenderness has never been aimed at me by anyone else.

  Old parts of me have no idea what I’ve done to deserve it from her, but new parts of me do, and the last thing they want is to shy away from it. They want to treasure it, be proud of it, never stop earning it.

  I wish I could get a kiss from her that matches this look, but my chance to do so has quite passed. The kiddo’s nap appears to be over.

  Noelle has just called back, “Sweetheart?”

  It frees me up to clear my throat and try to clear my thoughts of things I wish we could share, moments I wish we could find ourselves in.

  As well as the moments we did have before, because damn, the way she kissed me….

  Yeah, there’s no more time to spend on all that. And whatever we might’ve gone on to say or do next is going to have to wait.

  So I relish how she turns her face into the cradle of my right palm for a few sweet seconds. How she curves a smile up to me when I step back and take my hand with me.

  I smile at her, too, before we turn our attention to Theo, who is shuffling into view down the hallway, rubbing at her eyes.

  “I want some more pancakes,” she informs us drowsily.

  It warms me all the way through to hear Noelle chuckling along with me from so close by.

  Fills me once again with a dizzying array of desires—innocent ones, sweet ones, goofy ones, hot ones. I don’t even know which sound the best to me right this second.

  One thing is for sure: today’s events have helped me relax out of missing her so badly and have also made me miss her even more.

  Luckily, my actions are decided by Noelle gently nudging my arm with her elbow and asking, “What do you think? Wanna have a pancake party?”

  I can’t help joining in on the new smile I catch her giving me.

  Definitely can’t help cherishing the hug Theodora clamps around me while she interjects, still a bit sleepily, “You do. I know you do. You love pancakes a lot.”

  Laughter bubbles up in me.

  I pat her back and say, “Pancakes are fine. What I love a lot is you. And that is why, yes, I am down for a pancake party.”

  “Yay!”

  Noelle echoes, “Yay!”

  It only takes another look at that face for me to give in to touching her again. But unlike earlier when we went from hugging to kissing, I don’t feel bold—my fingers aren’t very steady as I tuck her hair behind her ear.

  She hesitates before letting herself nuzzle my hand again.

  We may have had another slip-up, and I have the strong suspicion that we won’t be able to resume keeping up so much distance, but we aren’t free of what has been holding us back from each other. There are still boundaries in place.

  At least, there should be.

  Yeah.

  Yeah, we can share touches like this without losing control of ourselves. We can find the middle ground between nothing and everything while we try to sort ourselves out.

  I finally, brightly say, “Okay. Pancakes!” Then I drop a playful thump to Noelle’s shoulder and pat Theo’s back again. “Safety first! You girls go put your hair up.”

  Theo lets me out of her hug while Noelle bursts into hearty laughter. “Oh, good idea! Super Beck to the rescue again—no syrup in our hair today!”

  I lift my chin and affect the Superman knuckles-on-hips pose.

  And I don’t know which
I love more: the way Noelle’s eyes widen in admiration and heightened amusement or the way Theo copies me and declares herself Super Theo.

  They both have me dissolving into laughter so honest that it makes me feel satisfied deep down, where the two of them dwell in my spirit—where I’ve been feeling so cold and empty lately.

  No, I don’t want to worry myself out of living in these moments.

  They’re what I need.

  —

  It shouldn’t happen again.

  I had to remind myself of it again and again throughout the rest of the afternoon.

  Even when Noelle and I were focused on Theodora or on cleaning the kitchen, the urge to kiss her kept swelling up. It didn’t matter that we weren’t alone and that the intensity between us had largely been put on the back burner. She was cute and funny and lovely—attractive to me without trying to be, seemingly without even noticing.

  Getting back to the topic of dance didn’t distract me much either, and not just because of what it led to earlier. It was also because of how gorgeously engaged Noelle was in the whole thing. She was being drawn back into that world, and I loved the look of it on her; it was exactly what I’d hoped my surprise would achieve. She cheerfully watched me when I showed her more of what I’ve been learning, and she was helpful with tips on form and technique. Theodora and I were her starry-eyed audience the entire time, whether she was showing me how to do a graceful pirouette or doing simpler things like affecting different poses to show us how to fill every movement with energy and purpose, even the lift of a chin or the reach of an arm.

  In fact, Theo was quick to back me up when I revisited the idea of Noelle getting back into dance classes.

  “Yes, yes, yes!” She grabbed her mama’s hands and jumped up and down. “You can be in my class!”

  That made us laugh, which added to the blush in Noelle’s cheeks. After letting Theo down easy that they couldn’t be in the same class, she sighed into slumped shoulders and said what I expected her to: “I don’t know, Beck.”