Page 25

25

Ben Stirling

Jeremiah’s hands skate rings around my shoulder blades. The sensation is intense, deep to the point of pain, and then it’s not. It’s like he has a sense that tells him where my discomfort lies and how close he can get to it and still stay closer to pleasure than pain. It’s like a dance. A slow dance that leaves stressed muscles lax once he’s worked them over.

I’ve lost track of time. I can’t tell how long I’ve been here.

Long.

I think I’ve been here for a long time because his pace finally slows and the pressure lessens.

The massage is winding down. His touch is less firm, more comforting. Lighter and soothing now. His fingers roam through my hair, tugging just enough to make my scalp tingle. He holds my head in his hands, making a cage with his fingers that hits various pressure points and makes me feel contained. Nimble fingertips work to find the fine blades that are buried in bone, blinding me. He removes them one at a time, and as he does, the noxious vines that wrapped themselves around the base of my skull and my face evaporate.

His hands glide up and down my back, coming to rest over my rib cage. He pauses for a second.

I’ve had enough massages to know this signals the end.

“Breathe in,” he says, and I do. I take a breath that feels big but only fills the top quadrant of my lungs. I hold it until he says, “And out.”

As I exhale, he uses both hands and the weight of his body to force the breath from my lungs. It leaves me empty.

The second time he tells me to inhale, it’s painful, like a sob in reverse. Oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, and water vapor swell and expand rapidly, swirling into a hard globe that feels trapped behind my sternum. When Jeremiah excises it, it leaves my body with a long, mournful sound. I’d stop it if I could, but it takes flight before I have time to try to hold it in.

“Last one,” he whispers. His lips are close to my ear, words quiet and warm as they bathe the side of my face.

I breathe in. This time, the breath comes easily, filling my lungs completely. Filling them to bursting. Extending spongy tissue and stretching elastic fibers to their limit, flooding my arteries so hard and fast, I’m left reeling.

Jeremiah presses down as I exhale.

I’m weightless, light, floating for three, maybe four seconds. Then I’m back in my body, hyperaware of the barely there drag of Jeremiah’s touch being rescinded.

Something inside me rebels.

Something else rises, rumbling as it raises its head, alerting me to the fact that I’m hungry.

Famished.

Starved.

Touch starved.

It’s been so long since I’ve been touched that I go cold at the thought of it ending.

Jeremiah places a towel over me. It’s warm in the wrong way. Not fleshy or dense and the weight is all wrong. It’s too light. I keep my head buried in the hole in the table, hiding, even though my face has developed a pulse of its own and my lips feel puffy from the pressure of being in this position for so long.

Jeremiah’s footsteps retreat. In the kitchen, a cupboard door opens. Glass tinkles. Ice cracks. A faucet runs for several seconds. Then he comes back to where I am.

“Don’t rush,” he says. “Take your time getting up and drink this when you’re ready. It will help flush the toxins out.”

Despite what he said, I get up quickly. The room spins. No, not the room. I spin. My head spins. I blink into the light as though I’ve woken in a dark cave with the beam of a flashlight shining directly into my eyes. I sip the water as instructed. It’s icy, and each time I swallow, there’s a sharp sting where my neck and jaw meet.

My headache is gone, but it’s left a vacuum. An empty space that needs to be filled. Tiny molecules organize and begin to shift, vibrating and rotating as they snap together to form something bigger. Something different.

A different kind of pain.

A deep, brutal ache forms and fights for freedom. It’s lurked beneath the surface for so long. Too long. I clamber to my feet, extremely aware that I need to take cover, and fast, because this thing is coming out of me today. Now. I need to find refuge and solace. I need to be alone. I need to be somewhere with a locked door and, ideally, a very large pillow. I need to get out of here. I need that as much as I need air. I need it as much as I’ve ever needed anything.

Only, there’s something I need more.

If I was in a better frame of mind, I’d recognize the embarrassment of it and I’d never, ever allow it to happen. I’d leave now.

I’m not in a good frame of mind, though, and something inextricable is keeping me here. Gravity. An unmistakable pull. Something I know I need even if I don’t understand how to explain it.

“Jelly.” My voice cracks as I name it. “I need you to hold me. Please .”

For his part, Jeremiah doesn’t act like it’s the craziest thing he’s heard all week or even all day. He takes the glass from my trembling hands and sets it on the table. Things inside me collapse. Tall structures I’ve painstakingly built break into pieces. Walls crumble and fall in on themselves.

Jeremiah doesn’t hesitate. He steps into me like he was expecting it. Like this is something that happens. Something usual, not out of the ordinary. His chest collides with mine, pecs hard and solid, belly almost concave. Strong exactly where I need him to be. His arms wind around my neck. A tight, dense compression, just where I need it. My hands find their way around his waist, limp at first, but it isn’t long before I’m fisting the back of his shirt, clawing at him. Clinging to him.

Every emotion I’ve felt since Liz died finds and assaults me at once, forcing my breath out in ragged, chopped fragments. Fast on the way out, short and shallow on the way in.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t get a good breath.

The pain I’ve held inside for so long rushes to the surface and finds its way out in the form of a howl that’s muffled at first. A soft sob smothered by lips clamped together and buried in the meat of Jeremiah’s shoulder.

The next one is louder, accompanied by a wet, tacky click that sounds like something that comes from Luca when he’s sad in the night.

The last one is broken. It’s a bruised, bleeding cry that comes straight from my bruised, bleeding heart. It pours out of me. Gushing, unbridled. Long and endless. Once it starts, it doesn’t stop. It feels like it won’t ever stop. Like I’ll be here, in this moment, forever. Like I’ll never feel better. My eyes burn savagely. So does my throat. The gnarled fist of grief reaches inside me, finds what it wants, what it needs, and clenches so hard that finally, finally, finally , the sorrow I’ve carried with me becomes too heavy. Too much. So much that it overflows and runs down my face.

My tears are hot and angry at first, burning heated tracks down my face, spilling out of me with rage and fury.

I struggle in Jeremiah’s arms, tearing at his clothes, pushing him away and pulling him closer.

For his part, Jeremiah stands firm. Firmer than anyone or anything I’ve ever held on to. Steady as an anchor in a storm. Sure as a metal stake planted into the earth. He doesn’t speak as I struggle or when the fight begins to leave me. He simply holds me.

He holds me like he’s not just holding me, he’s holding me up. Like I’m adrift and he’s the only thing in my orbit still standing.

Tears pour down my face in a steady, unrelenting stream. All the pain I’ve pushed down finds me and ravages me, leaving me shaking and frail by the time it’s had its way with me.

The entire time, Jeremiah doesn’t flinch.

When I’m finally empty, I’m shell-shocked, confused, and relieved. More relieved than I’ve been in months. Many months. Over a year. I step back, but still, Jeremiah has me. He has his hands on the underside of my forearms, near my elbows, supporting me and keeping me upright as I regain my balance.

When I’m stable again, he looks at me for a long time. I look at him too. His eyes are an ocean, a sea of blue without any waves. I know I should look away or apologize for my outburst or feel embarrassed or something like that. I don’t though.

I’m not sorry.

I don’t feel anything other than completely and utterly seen.