Awaken (27 page)

We both fell silent and I tried to steady my breathing, but it still caught in my throat like someone was trying to strangle me. Justin turned so his whole body was facing me. He set one arm up on top of the couch and leaned against the back cushions.

“Can I teach you something that might help you relax?” he asked.

I shrugged, convinced I was incapable of relaxing at this point.

“You need to learn to escape. It’s hard for you to handle silence because you’ve always been bombarded with noise and distractions. You barely ever have to think because a machine is always doing it for you.” I wiped my eyes and nodded.

“So, with that and with everything else that has happened, you probablyfeel – ”

“Terrified?”

He smiled. “You need to find peace in quiet, not panic attacks.”

“I’ll try.”

“Okay,” he said. He turned off the television and the room turned darker, lit only by a light in the opposite corner of the basement. He focused on me. “Lay your head back and close your eyes.”

I glanced at him with disbelief but did as he said. I leaned my head against the couch and closed my eyes. In the silent room I was only aware of my heart beating and the sound of my breath.

“I want you to picture a place where you feel like nothing could ever hurt you. Your utopia.”

I pressed my lips together with concentration and hoped an image would pop into my head. “Okay.”

“What do you see?”

I stared as hard as I could. “The back of my eyelids.”

Justin waited patiently while I thought about it. I couldn’t
see
anything.

“Maybe I don’t have a perfect place.”

“Picture a place that’s calming. Where you feel safe.”

I squinted harder. I only saw darkness.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

His voice was steady. “It’s because you’re looking with your eyes, Maddie. Look with your mind. Imagine a place you love.”

I exhaled deeply and thought about how wonderful the day had been with him.

“The beach,” I said finally.

“Good. Now describe what it looks like.”

I creased my forehead. “What do you mean?” I asked, and opened my eyes to stare at him. “It’s a beach.”

His eyes were patient and his mouth curled up at one side. “You need to concentrate on this. Really imagine it.”

I took a deep breath and looked away. I squeezed my eyes tight and still envisioned a postcard picture of a beach.

“Try and describe it,” he said again in a soothing voice.

The details were obvious. “There’s an ocean and there’s brown sand and blue sky.”

I felt Justin move next to me. Suddenly annoyed, I opened my eyes and got up to my feet, pressing my hands against my hips.

“I’m sorry, but making me feel like an idiot isn’t helping me unwind.”

He sat calmly on the couch and studied me. “I’m making you use your mind. A part of your mind you don’t use often enough in DS.”

“Well, what’s the point of closing my eyes and pretending?”

He leaned forward. “The point is
imagining.
Letting your mind go.”

I gestured at the back wall of the basement. “The beach is right down the street, you know what it looks like. There’s over a million pictures online if you want to look at them. I’m sorry, but this isn’t the relaxing escape I was planning on.”

He watched me with a hint of amusement on his face. “Are you finished?”

“I’m finished playing the ‘describe my happy place’ game. Because I can’t.”

He cocked his head to the side. “I don’t take you for a quitter.”

I frowned and played with the zipper on my sweatshirt.

He kept his eyes steady on mine and I noticed a cautious edge inside of them slip away, like the shields were finally coming down. Their dark brown pool of color, in the dimness across from me, moved like liquid.

“I’ll help you if you’re willing to try,” he said. “And don’t say ‘I can’t.’ Those words really irritate me.” Justin leaned forward and patted the rug in front of the couch, right in front of his legs. I sighed and took a seat, my back inches from his knees.

“Okay,” I said as I hugged my knees to my chest. “Let the learning begin.”

“Lean back,” he said.

This I didn’t expect. Justin gently guided my shoulders back between his legs until my neck was resting against the cushioned seat of the couch. I could feel his legs lightly resting against my shoulders. My chest inhaled rapidly as he lifted my arms up and rested them on top of his knees like armrests. I instinctively closed my eyes.

“Remember when you asked me what makes us human?” he asked.

I nodded and tried not to gasp as he carefully, hesitantly, ran his fingers through my hair.

“It’s our senses. That’s another thing that sets us apart from computers. Smelling, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting. I don’t care what virtual world those computer programs can create. Are you telling me a computer can do this?” he asked, as he slipped his fingers softly through my hair. I gulped.

“No,” I managed to whisper.

“Okay,” Justin said, his voice smooth and velvety. “Don’t just look at the ocean, Maddie. Be there, walk along it, breathe it in, hear it. Use your senses.”

With his fingers slowly sifting through my hair, I went back to the ocean. I remember once when I was little, when my grandma was still alive, she took me to Newport and we stayed overnight at a hotel on the beach. I remember an early morning walk we took together on a cloudy, windy day and how happy and invigorated I felt being outside and holding her hand.

“I see it,” I said finally. Justin wove his fingers through my hair and lightly rubbed my scalp and the feeling made me want to moan.

“What time of day is it?”

“It’s morning,” I said. “The sun is still low in the sky. It’s just starting to rise over the cliffs and there’s a heavy marina fog.”

“Describe the fog.”

I grinned and my face relaxed as he traced his hands lightly across my cheekbones.

“So foggy you can feel the air, like you’re walking in a layer of clouds.”

I was quiet as I felt the ocean air resting heavy around me.

“Look out at the water,” he said.

“It’s wild. The waves are somersaulting over each other. They’re breaking eight waves back. Some are crashing down so hard they kick up spiraling funnels in the sky.”

I was there. I saw it all. I felt it all. Justin’s fingers flooded into my dream as if his hands were the wind tossing my hair.

“It’s humid but the wind’s cool. I have a jacket on and a stocking cap. My shoes are off and the wet, hard sand’s freezing cold on my feet. I can feel it squeeze between my toes with each step. Rock stacks are scattered down the beach. People are out walking but I can’t make them out in the fog. They look like floating shadows.”

My arms were so light they could have floated off of Justin’s legs. “I can feel the sun rays filtering through the fog. The air smells damp and salty.”

I breathed a full, deep breath that filled my body until every crevice of my lungs expanded. And then I let go. With a long exhale, my worries were pushed away. I was utterly calm.

I was so content sitting there, I hardly noticed Justin lift my arms off of his legs. He slid down on the floor next to me and I could smell salt in his hair and sun on his skin. I turned and his face was only inches from mine. The next thing I felt were both of his hands on my face, lightly drawing me closer, and then his eyes closed and his lips softly touched mine. I closed my eyes and my lips caught on fire the moment he kissed me. The skin on my face was burning from all the trails he left with his fingers. He opened his mouth and I opened mine and he tasted so sweet.

It was weird because it wasn’t weird. At all. It’s like we were designed to do this. Like we should have been doing this all along.

The kiss deepened and he pressed his lips harder against mine. I reached up and pulled my hands through his hair and his tongue was in my mouth and I could feel a moan come out of his throat.

I balled his T-shirt in my fist to pull him closer just as he did the same thing to me and I felt his mouth smile against mine.

All my doubts melted away. My head was spinning and my heart and my stomach and my soul. I knew he wasn’t doing this because I asked him to. I could finally feel how bad he wanted it. His hands weren’t just on me, they were exploring me, like he’d been waiting all his life to touch me. He kept kissing me and I sank against him and melted into his arms and he just held my face in his hands, lightly tracing my jaw and my cheeks and my neck. He touched me like he could break me. I wanted him to touch me forever. His hands took his time but his mouth was hard against mine. I couldn’t breathe.

He leaned his head back for a second and our mouths separated, but his hands still cradled my face like he couldn’t let go. His breaths came out short and uneven like mine. His eyes were wild and confused and overwhelmed. We both tried to catch our breath as we stared at each other.

I couldn’t help but smile.

“I like this part of the exercise,” I said. He slowly dropped his hands and ran his fingers through his hair, which I had messed with my knotting and pulling. He rubbed his hand against his flushed face. His lips were stained dark red and I stared, wanting to taste them again.

“That’s not normally how it works,” he insisted. I didn’t want him to think. I wouldn’t give him the time to second-guess what was happening.

Still high off of his kiss I leaned into him, craving more. “It should be,” I said, and pressed my lips to his again as if this was common behavior for us. He kissed me back and his long arms wove their way around me.

“You taste like chocolate,” I mumbled into his mouth.

“You taste amazing,” he said, and I caught his words on my tongue and grinned because it was one of the coolest things I had ever felt.

I knotted my hand in his thick hair and pulled his face so close against mine I practically suffocated us.

We lost track of time.

We moved from the floor back to the couch, only to end up back on the floor again. My face felt perpetually flushed from my heart racing the entire night.

We only stopped to catch our breath.

Justin’s mood changed that night. He was warmer to me than I ever knew he was capable of. He had always been so careful with me, so hesitant. Now his hands were constantly busy, either touching my hair, my face, my arms, my waist. It seemed so natural for him to be this intimate, I was amazed he had the discipline to fight it off. He was too good at being sensual to imagine him being unemotional with people.

“Feel that,” Justin said at one point, and pressed my hand over his heart. Through his warm shirt, it felt like a tiny drummer was hammering away inside his chest. At least I wasn’t the only one who had a minor heart attack every time we touched.

I grinned back at him. I had everything I wanted in my hand. If I had to choose my eternity, I’d choose this moment, right now, with him. Because there’s no place else I’d rather be.

Hope and courage and risk dwell inside of us on an uncharted island and if we learn to look for it and tap into it, our possibilities are endless. That’s what I focused on during the drive to Eden. Hope that my future wouldn’t always be about running from my past. And most of all, hope that what happened between Justin and me was more than just giving in to the moment. More than a fleeting night. He didn’t bring it up during the drive and neither did I because sometimes you ruin the moment with words.

I was starting to think, maybe you need to feel your way more through life – just turn off the lights and follow your senses, even if you stumble once in a while. Maybe that’s what falling in love is like. Just feeling your way through the darkness until you find something solid to hold on to.

We exited the highway and turned onto a main street of town, with a bright yellow sign greeting us in blue letters:
WELCOME
TO
EDGEWATER
. It was an old-fashioned wood sign, not a digital screen like advertisements in the city. I waited to see gates and security guards standing ready to check us in but as we drove into downtown we didn’t hit the security booths I imagined.

“Where are we?”

Justin looked over at me with surprise. “This is it. Eden, as you like to call it.” I stared out the window at the main street, packed with shops and people sitting outside and families strolling down the sidewalks.

The city didn’t look anything like I imagined. We drove down a cobblestone road and passed a grocery store, restaurants, and coffee shops. We passed a city park with a gazebo in the center and people picnicking on the grass. There was even an Edgewater Hotel. I blinked up at the painted sign suspended over a green awning. Who would come here to visit? Train tracks curved along the side of the street parallel to the road and a light rail buzzed by.

My eyes searched for the fences. “How do they keep track of who comes and goes?”

He wrinkled his eyebrows. “What?”

“They allow random visitors here?” I asked with astonishment. “Shouldn’t we have to register somewhere?”

“Good god, Maddie, what were you expecting? A mental institution?”

I stared, dumbly. “I don’t know. Something barricaded at least.”

“Your idea of Eden is something barricaded?” He gave me a quizzical stare and I shrugged my shoulders.

“I thought it was a place people were exiled to.”

He shook his head. “No, that’s what the government wants people to think. The rest of us are the ones who are barricaded.” Justin looked out the window at the street. “Everyone that’s here chooses to be here. As long as they keep quiet and don’t cause trouble the government ignores them. There are a lot of cities like this, all over the country, but you’d never know because they’re not on maps. Cities where trees grow. Where people walk outside, where fear doesn’t rule people’s lives. My parents don’t even have locks on their doors.”

I stared down at the shaggy grass that lined the sidewalk and asked Justin to pull over. He parked along the curb and before the car fully stopped I opened the door and jumped out. I had felt real grass once before, at a zoo in Portland. It was soft and mushy and terribly fragile. If you pushed into it too hard, it gave way to thick, chalky dirt. If you dug your fingernails into it, you could easily rip it out of the ground. It amazed me how people lived with such a delicate plant. The turf ground I grew up with could hold up under anything. It didn’t get trampled with use or dried out in the sun. It persevered under the human lifestyle, which so much of nature didn’t.