Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight) (28 page)

I want it to look dirty and gray and salted and torn.

I want the red bricks to show through and the black ice to take over.

I want it to look as awful as it really is.

I start on the outside edge of the courtyard, and drag my boots as I go, sliding in the ice that never fully melted underneath. I keep walking, like I’m doing one of those meditation labyrinths my mom always took me to, a maze, except with no dead ends, outlined in pebbles in some beautiful garden, something that was supposed to remind you of the path of life, of its twists and turns and continuity or some fucking-stupid bullshit.

Some fucking-stupid thing.

Because this isn’t twists and turns, this is skidding and ugly and my feet catching in bricks and the falling snow covering my progress before I am even close to the middle.

I’m not meditating, I’m falling, and getting up and I’m sobbing, right out here in this fucking-stupid empty courtyard and my rough sobs echo off the brick walls all around me, and there is something about that, anyway, about the sound of my ugly crying bouncing around while I fall and kick and skid in this fucking-stupid snow that is right, finally.

The whole world should feel how dumb this snow is, how it covers everything up, how you can’t fucking see anything, how cold it is, how it stops everything, keeps people from living their lives, going to school, going to work, how it can hurt people.

I kick, and I cry, and I even run, my circles smaller and smaller, and then I fall again, a really hard fall, on my side, it takes me right out, shocking me with a whomp of pain and a sudden loss of control.

I’m breathing hard, and my whole side is throbbing, so I just curl up, right where I am, wrapped up in my giant green coat, on the ground, in the middle of the courtyard, and I listen to myself cry and cry, hoarse and loud in the empty courtyard, the snow and crumbled ice painful against my face, the bricks hard and cold against my hip.

And then I’m not alone.

I can barely see him, my eyes so swollen and streaming, and I can’t even process that he’s here, anyway, on the ground next to me, pulling me into his stupid arms, pulling me close to his body and scooting a leg under my hip so I’m not really on the ground anymore.

It’s awkward, and our scraping and hitching and scrabbling against the ground and the broken-up ice is loud, but then, it’s just Evan, all around me, tight and warm.

On the ground, in the courtyard, the snow coming down on us like it means to cover us up in a drift.

I don’t stop crying.

I can’t, I can’t.

But every time I hunch around another sob, he pulls me tighter, and now he’s rocking me, rocking me in his arms, on the ground, the ground I kicked and ruined, and I can feel snow landing in my ear, but nowhere else, because he’s holding me so close to his body, away from the elements.

“Shhh,” he breathes, but I can tell he doesn’t really mean it, it’s just something you say to someone you find weeping on the ground in the middle of a snowstorm. He actually means I can cry as long as I need to, and he’ll weather it with me, right here, right where he found me.

Right where I’m at.

“Shhh,” he says again, and I’m crying so much into his neck and shoulder, it’s wet, and when I try to mop him with my mitten, he stops me and pulls us up to sitting, and hauls me into his lap, my head under his chin.

“You didn’t fasten your coat.”

“I saw you through my office window.”

“Oh.”

“I was taking my coat off, watching the snow, and saw you fall.”

“Okay.”

I can’t seem to say more than inane things, but he just holds me, still rocking, doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t start conversation.

We haven’t had a real conversation since we met at the coffee shop. He’s checked in, wanted to meet and talk.

I’ve told him I need to think.

He’s let me think, which means I’ve kept his secret, too.

Now he’s here, and right now I don’t care what’s between us, what’s underneath, not when I need to be held by someone who’s already seen me cry.

I can hear wind rushing through the gaps between the big campus buildings, and the hum of HVAC systems trying to keep up against the cold.

Evan’s breath against my ear.

The crunch of his sneaker against a chunk of ice as he sways with me in his arms.

My arms are folded between us, and finally, I push a little and he loosens his hold around me.

His face is reddened from the cold, his hair has blown everywhere, wet with snow and melting snow.

His eyes look so blue.

His dark brows are all wrinkled up, all worried, and I pull off my mitten, and I put my hand over his forehead. His skin is so cold, my hand is warm, and he closes his eyes while I press away his worry.

I drag my hand down over his jaw, his stubble is soft, long.

I watch my fingers rub over his lips, and he watches me.

I push my first finger against his lower lip, and he opens his mouth, draws in my finger, sucks, and then I close my eyes. It feels more intimate than sexy though it’s a little sexy. I scrape along his bottom teeth as I pull my finger away.

His hands are cold as he traces over my cheeks, and it feels perfect where the tears have burned. He cups my whole face in his hands, and his cold palms make me blow out a breath with the relief of physical comfort.

His hands gradually warm against me, and he pulls off my hat, and the cold wind over my sweaty hair feels good, too.

Evan scrapes my hair away from my face, breaking up the damp clumps, then twists my hair at my nape.

He slides my hat back on.

His mouth is warm and tastes like he has just eaten a mint, sugary.

I grab his face, scratch through his stubble with my nails and open to him. He’s a little too gentle, so I rake into his hair, fist the cool wetness of it, angle him over me.

“Jenny,” he kisses my top lip, my jaw, pulls apart my coat and kisses my neck, “will you tell me?”

“No,” I say. “Not now.”

I kiss his neck, his Adam’s apple, lick the hollow in his throat. I can’t hear him over the wind, the fans in the HVACs, but I feel his groan.

Then he holds my head still, and his kiss is deep, slow, his breath hard through his nose, and everything goes hot over my skin and the way the snow is touching us, dripping from our hair and skin as it melts, just serves as a contrast to this warm kiss, how it makes my blood rush in a scald over my chest.

He uses his kiss to coax me up, his arms under my coat and around my middle, until we’re standing, and he’s kissing my neck, letting us breathe.

“Does anything hurt?” He runs his hands over the side of my body that hit the ground. I hiss when he presses over my thigh, right under my hip.

When he softly touches the area again, I look down. He’s brushing handfuls of eiderdown off his hand, the wind picks up the tiny feathers and mixes them with the snow.

The ice and brick tore right through the coat my mother sent me, and it’s ruined.

“You’ve torn through your jeans, too,” he says, and shows me the bloody rip. “Come on”—he grabs my hand—“let’s get you cleaned up.”

I follow him.

The courtyard is a mess, and we pick through the chunks and patches of ice I exposed out from underneath the pretty snow.

* * *

I don’t let him treat me like a child.

I take off my coat, keeping the torn side up so it doesn’t spill too many feathers in his office. Then I untie my boots and put them carefully in a plastic boot tray he has under his coatrack.

Without looking at him, I unsnap my jeans and shimmy them off, easing them over the scrape, then I fold my jeans and put them on a chair.

Evan has taken off his coat and pulled out a first-aid kit. “Can you hand me an antiseptic wipe?”

Our eyes meet. He looks tired, his hair sticking up everywhere from the snow and my hands. His gaze drops over my side. I must look ridiculous, standing in his office in my sweater and flowered underpants and wool hiking knee-highs.

“Let me.” He looks back to his kit, pulling out the wipes, his eyebrows worried.

He sits in the chair next to where I am standing and tears open a wipe. The scrape is surprisingly deep for how many clothes were over my skin. I think a brick must have torn open my coat on the way down.

He starts at the edges, scrubbing away where the blood has dried. Then opens another and gently drags it through the raggedy grooves. My eyes water, it stings, but then he takes ahold of my thigh with his hand—I must have flinched—and his fingers are resting on my inner thigh.

Now nothing hurts.

He finishes cleaning it, takes his hands away to get gauze and tape.

“No, that’s okay, don’t dress it. It’s not bleeding anymore.”

He looks up at me. “Neosporin?”

“Okay.”

When he holds on to my thigh again, I close my eyes. I want to move my hips, or I want his hand to move. He swipes the ointment over the scrape but doesn’t take his hand away from my thigh. So I reach down and put my hand over his, guide his hand a few inches higher, then let go.

He rests his head against my stomach. “Jenny?”

“Just touch me. Okay?” I put a hand in his hair and ignore the way my throat feels like I should cry. I don’t want to cry.

I want Evan to touch me in that way he has, like he doesn’t believe he actually has permission but is so glad to be granted it.

He hikes my sweater and T-shirt up to rest his face against my skin. I step closer, and he opens his legs so I can stand between them. I jump a little when he kisses me over my navel, but then his hand soothes over my whole stomach, pushing into my skin, over my hip. He hooks a finger into the waistband of my underwear, and scootches it down over my hips, over my bottom, but no more.

His hands move over all the exposed skin, over and over. My waist, my hips, my stomach, the fronts of my thighs. At first, it’s strange. I’m standing in his office, my sweater hiked up, my underwear bunched down, and nothing’s happening but his hands playing over me.

I sift through his hair as it dries in the heat of his office. Touch the wrinkles in his brow. Follow the whorls in his ears. When I do that, he closes his eyes, so I do it over and over until his cheeks are pink.

On a pass over the hill of my lower belly, he brushes over the thin cotton of my underwear between my legs. Looks at me.

I’m not sure what he sees in my face, but then he starts kissing me right at the edge of where my underwear is rolled down, and his hands, warm, shape my ass again and again until my underwear is easing off, until it’s hardly hanging on and he slides it off with one of his long, slow, touches.

He brushes his fingers over my curls there, and I suddenly feel a blush start, over my neck and into my face, and I can’t help it, I reach and grab onto his hand like I would stop him.

I need him.

I’m not certain if I want him yet, there is so much we haven’t said. More we haven’t seen.

But I need him. I need the Evan who made me see with my eyes closed and knows that I cry. The one who lay down with me in a courtyard and hasn’t asked why. I need the one who fired himself just so he could touch me, knowing perfectly well that I’m actually just fine without him.

I need to tell him one thing first, ask him another.

I sit in a chair right next to him, so I don’t feel so exposed, bottomless, standing in front of him.

“What does
f/16
mean?”

He stills. I look at him, and his expression is hard to take in—his eyes are searching mine, his mouth his tight, his eyes shiny.

“I knew before,” I say. “From in the van. You saw the pictures on my desk. You didn’t say.”

He lets out a breath, loud, and looks down. “I’m sorry, I—”

“You were always completely honest with me. I trusted you with things I didn’t trust anyone else with.” I make myself breathe.

“I’m sorry, too,” I say, “I didn’t tell you, as soon as I saw, in the van, but I didn’t even have the words. Then, today, I got bad news from Dr. Allen, about my peripheral loss, and all I wanted was you.” Hearing myself say that, my throat closes, choking, and his fists tighten.

“Not therapy, Evan, but
you
. The way you always see me as smart and capable. How I can relax around you and just feel the way I’m feeling, but I couldn’t go to you because you didn’t say; you kissed me, the very first time you kissed me, and you knew, but you didn’t say.”

“I was—when I saw those pictures and realized what it meant, God, Jenny. I was so
happy
. I’ve loved talking to you online, the serendipity of it, the things you said about my pictures, and more and more, I realized Lincoln was a real woman, of course I
knew
that, but she was starting to live outside of my own mind. I respected her boundaries, of course, but I wanted to
know
her.”

“What about me?”

“Then there was you. I told you about you. You were real as soon as you walked into my office, so intelligent and angry. More and more, you made Lincoln less real, and that worried me. I had a relationship with her that had started to mean something to me. It’s why I wanted to meet her.
Needed
to meet Lincoln. I had been working through my
feelings with you for longer, trying to be honest with myself, then I met Lincoln online. It was confusing. Absolutely everything I was feeling. Meeting Lincoln was important to understand how I felt about both of you. When I saw the picture on your desk, it was the worst best thing. Some kind of miracle answer to my problem. But impossible, because how could you trust such an unbelievable coincidence?”

“I sent you my picture! I told you my
name
! And you
knew
and sent me bits and pieces.”

“I thought—”

“What?”
What
, exactly, what. I want him to tell me. This incredible convergence of the university, our landlord’s contract with them, a Christmas letter, my love of pictures, out of all that, what?

I needed him to tell me.

“I remembered, through all of this, when I was moving out, that the landlord had told me a woman from Seattle, a postdoc, was moving in. I thought of all the times, if I had some reason to look at the contact sheet in your chart, that I would’ve found out that way. Always, always, we were drifting together, always, I was getting to know you more, falling for you. I just thought. I don’t know. I thought, when I saw that picture on your desk, realized you wouldn’t
believe
in it. Believe or trust in me.”