Offside (12 page)

Nicole held open the door while I stood on the porch and just watched her. She continued to watch me as she tilted her head toward the foyer.

“Are you going to come in?” she asked.

I looked down at myself.

“I’m all wet,” I said.

“Yeah, you are,” she agreed. “Come in anyway; take your shoes off here by the door.”

I did as she said, but even with my shoes and socks off, I was still dripping a bit.

“You are soaking wet,” she said. “Is that a wool sweater?”

“Um…I don’t know. Maybe?”

Her fingers ran down the sleeve.

“Well, I’d say it’s pretty much ruined,” Nicole said. She pursed her lips together and looked up at me again. “Let’s get it off, okay?”

“Okay.” My head was still pounding as I stared at her, unmoving.

Nicole took a deep breath and sighed, then reached up and unbuttoned my sweater. She pushed it off my shoulders and hung it on a hook next to her father’s police jacket. She pulled at the knot of my tie, loosened it, and I bent my head down so she could loop it over and off. She tossed it over the same hook as the jacket. Her fingers brushed over the front of my button-down shirt once, and then she began to release the buttons one at a time.

“You’re freezing,” Nicole said quietly as she finished with the last button. Her fingers pushed my shirt open. I couldn’t do anything but watch her hands in seemingly slow motion, trailing up my chest and easing my shirt off my shoulders and down my arms.

“Come on upstairs. The towels are up there, and I’ll find you something else to put on.”

I followed her blindly up a flight of stairs to a small landing. There were three doors—two leading to bedrooms and one to a bathroom. She grabbed two towels from the cabinet under the bathroom sink and placed them on the counter.

“Dry yourself off a bit, okay?”

“Okay.”

She walked into one of the bedrooms and left me in the bathroom. I dried my chest and arms a bit, but I started shivering anyway. I used the towel to rub my hair, but it just flopped back over my forehead again. Nicole walked back in holding a plain white T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

“These should work, I think,” she said. “I can put your other stuff in the dryer, but I’m not sure there’s any hope for the sweater. Go ahead and put these on, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Okay.”

She looked up at me again.

“Thomas?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you get yourself changed, or do you need help?”

Her words finally penetrated, and I glanced down at the towel still in my hand and the clothes she had placed on the counter.

“I can do it,” I replied quietly.

She nodded and closed the bathroom door.

I pulled the button of my Dockers open and dropped the zipper. I had a hard time getting the wet fabric down my legs but managed to do it without falling over. I yanked the sweats and T-shirt on, but the sweats were falling off my hips. I found a drawstring inside and tightened it a bit. I picked up my wet pants and boxers but wasn’t really sure what I should do with them. I didn’t want them dripping all over the place, so I just hung them over the edge of the bathtub. I opened the bathroom door and wandered out to the little hallway.

I glanced into one of the rooms and knew right away it was Nicole’s. I recognized the window because of the little desk and chair right under it. There was an old desktop computer with a CRT monitor sitting on top of it. On the other side of the window, where I wouldn’t have been able to see from the outside, was a full-sized bed with a blue comforter over it, a dresser with a lamp, and a nightstand containing an MP3 player, and a stack of dystopian-themed books.

“Thomas?”

My head kept pounding, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I felt her come up beside me, and her hand touched my elbow.

“Geez, Thomas—you’re absolutely freezing,” Nicole said as her hand brushed up and down my arm. “Your skin feels like ice.”

She looked me up and down, and her voice softened.

“Come here,” she said as she took me by the hand and led me to the edge of her bed. She pulled back the comforter and the sheet under it and placed her palm on my shoulder blade, pushing me forward. “Get in.”

“In your bed?” I asked.

“You need to warm up,” she said, “and you look like you’re about to fall over.”

I didn’t have any energy to argue with her even if I had been so inclined. Once my head made contact with her pillow, and I was completely encompassed by her scent, there was no way I was going to protest. I inhaled deeply as my eyes closed and my body sank into the warmth of the blankets Nicole pulled over me.

“My mom died today,” I heard myself say and then corrected myself. “I mean…on this day.”

“I know,” Nicole told me. “I saw the date on the stone.”

“What were you doing there?” I asked.

“Running,” she said. “I usually run in the morning, but it was raining too hard. When the rain stopped, I decided to go. My route takes me past the cemetery, and I saw your Jeep there. I looked around, and I saw you on the ground. I thought you might be…hurt or something. I didn’t know about the day…”

Her voice trailed off, and I nodded. It made sense. I felt the bed drop a little and opened my eyes. Nicole was sitting beside me with her eyes full of concern.

“Is this okay?” she asked. “I mean, if I sit here?”

I looked up at her and nodded again. She was quiet for a minute, and I just kept basking in the scent that was all around me as I stared blankly toward her bedroom wall.

“Thomas? How long were you out there?”

“What time is it?”

“Almost three.”

“In the afternoon?”

“Well…yes.”

I turned my eyes into the pillow. I had left the house shortly before eight in the morning.

“A while,” I finally said.

“You were soaked,” she reminded me. “It hadn’t been raining for a good hour when I saw you.”

I shrugged, which made the blanket shift off of my shoulder. Nicole reached up and fixed it again.

“Do you want anything?” she asked. “Are you hungry? Or I could make some hot chocolate. That might warm you up.”

I shook my head and closed my eyes. I sank further into the pillow and finally started to feel a little warmer. At least I wasn’t shivering anymore. The mattress shifted again, and I opened my eyes to find Nicole standing to walk out the door.

“Stay!” I reached my hand out from under the blankets, toward her.

Nicole turned back toward me and slowly returned to the edge of the bed. I relaxed again as her fingers ran down my arm. When she got to my wrist, I flipped my hand over and wrapped my fingers around hers. I looked up to her just to check her expression, but she didn’t seem to mind. I closed my eyes again. Soft fingers brushed over my temple and began tidying the hair that was plastered to my forehead. Her fingers continued up and over my head, pushing the longer strands back over the top of my head as my consciousness faded into the background.

I felt as if I were floating—my mind only barely comprehending the images in my brain.

Nicole’s hand still stroked my hair, but we were sitting out on the cliff near the ocean with the wind blowing across our skin. I had my legs pulled up against my chest, and Nicole’s were sticking straight out. She was pivoting her feet back and forth at her ankles.

“
Is this it, Thomas?” Her voice was a low whisper over the wind and the waves. “Is this the real you, without the costumes?”

I looked down and realized I was sitting on the rock, naked. I looked back up at her, trying to figure out if I should be embarrassed by my lack of clothes, but she was only looking at me inquisitively as she awaited my answer.

I didn’t have one for her.

I was disoriented for a moment when I finally woke up, but I didn’t feel at all concerned about where I was.

The light in the room was dim, and the clock on the nightstand said it was twenty after eight. I was warm and comfortable, and the smell all around me was just glorious. I couldn’t describe it, but I could definitely name it—
Rumple
. It just smelled like her. I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply before opening them again and focusing on what was around me.

Nicole was on the floor with a reading lamp beside her along with a bunch of books and papers. She kept going back and forth between one of the large textbooks and a notebook, where she furiously scribbled notes and then to a worksheet. Every once in a while, she would stick the tip of the pen in her mouth and nibble the end of it. As I shifted in the bed, she looked up at me.

“Hey,” she said quietly.

“Hey,” I replied hoarsely. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Hi.”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes at all.

“How are you feeling?”

Dying…empty…dead…revitalized…cold…warm…unsure…

I didn’t know, so I just shrugged.

“Hungry?”

I shrugged again.

“It’s getting late,” Nicole said quietly. “Do you want to call your dad and let him know where you are?”

I shook my head.

“He might be worried.”

“He’s not,” I said. I didn’t think Dad had ever really worried about me in the way she meant. He’d be pissed if I wasn’t at my next practice or if I didn’t show up for a game, but it was Saturday, and I wasn’t missing anything. I didn’t think he would be too concerned with my workout schedule right at the moment. It did make me wonder, however, what her dad would think of me being here in her bed.

Shit.

“Is your dad here?” I asked, my eyes going wide with a bit of panic, now that I was thinking about exactly where I was—in the sheriff’s house, in his daughter’s bed.

And he had a gun.

“No.” Nicole bit down on her lip to keep from smiling. “He’s on a fishing trip. He won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Oh.” I relaxed again. My vision blurred into the pale off-white pillowcase. I inhaled again, letting the scent of her overcome all my other senses for a moment.

“Don’t you want to go home?” Nicole suddenly asked.

I shook my head emphatically.

“You really should.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Her blue eyes looked over me, and I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her everything, but I knew I couldn’t. How do you say that on this day—of all days—going home is the very last thing I want to do? How do you explain to someone how much your own father hates you? How much he would prefer that you had died on this day instead of her?

I would have preferred it that way, too.

“I’m not going home,” I said. “I can leave though. I don’t want to be…in the way.”

“You’re not,” she said. He voice was still soft and warm, and I was reminded of my dream, which was odd. As much as I remembered everything else, I rarely remembered my dreams. “But I do think your dad would want to know where you are. He has to be worried—”

“Trust me,” I said. I licked my lips, feeling how dry they were. I hadn’t had any water or anything to drink all day. “He’s not worried, and he’s not looking for me.”

She seemed to contemplate this for a while.

“Do you want to stay here?” she asked.

My heart started beating a little faster.

“Can I?” My voice was just barely above a whisper.

She nodded and put her pen down on her notebook before looking up at me again, her brow furrowed. She collected her legs underneath her and gracefully stood without using her hands for balance. She took two steps toward me and sat on the edge of the bed. She reached out and ran her fingers through my hair, and I closed my eyes to the feeling.

“Will you tell me about her?” Nicole asked softly as her hand traced around my ear.

I looked up at her, staring into her eyes and searching for something though I didn’t know what. No one ever asked me about my mom, which was probably because almost everyone in the town had known her. I never talked to anyone about her before, and I realized I actually
wanted
to tell Nicole about her.

“She played the piano,” I told her. I tucked my head back into the pillow. “And she wrote plays. She wrote musicals and even wrote the music to go with them. None of them were really popular or anything, but lots of different theatre groups performed them. Everyone always liked what she wrote.”

“I’d like to see some of them,” Nicole said. I looked back up at her.

“You would?”

“Yes, I would.” She smiled a little, but it didn’t last.

My mind swirled around and tried to come to terms with…well, with everything. I was having a really hard time just not staring at her. I was trying not to think too much about how I was in her bedroom, lying on her bed with her hand touching me, and how her dad apparently was gone until morning.

“She really liked plays, then?”