Continuum (20 page)

I don’t want her to feel weird around me because of what happened at Homecoming.  I interrupt her fidgeting, “I had a really good time tonight, Fallon.”

“Me, too.”  She sounds surprised.

“I’m glad.  You really kicked butt at bowling.”  We had slaughtered the other team thanks to Fallon’s final total of 193.

Her quiet laughter is enchanting, “Thanks.  It’s all about the technique.  How you release the ball.”

I grin in response, “Apparently, I suck at that part.  Maybe you can give me some physics lessons because I’m pretty sure I never learned any of that.”

“You could use a few pointers,” she smirks.  I like lighthearted, teasing Fallon.  It’s so easy to talk to her.  This is uncomplicated.  I can do uncomplicated if that’s what she wants.

Shaking my head, I reply, “Probably more than a few.”

“Maybe you should try imagining the ball making contact and knocking down all the pins.  Envision the outcome you want.”  I roll my eyes at her suggestion.  That technique has already failed me.  I have spent many hours imagining the outcome I want with her, but so far no success.

“To be safe, I’ll carry around my lucky rabbit’s foot and wish on the next falling star I spot.”

Fallon glances at the clock on the dashboard, “I should go.  We do have a quiz first thing in the morning.”

Groaning, I unlock the automatic doors, “Don’t remind me.  Let me get your door.”

I step around to open her door and offer her my hand as she steps down from my mom’s massive SUV.  That electric tingling dances under my skin but she releases my hand as soon as both feet are firmly on the sidewalk.  We walk silently down her driveway and up the stairs onto her front porch.  She turns her key and unlocks the door but doesn’t turn the knob.  

Her green eyes are wary as she turns to face me, her silhouette outlined by the bright red backdrop of her front door.  I take a step closer and she moves back until her back is pressed against the door.  Her eyes are wide and her jaw is tense, but she doesn’t say anything as I slowly lean forward.  
Impulse control,
my brain whispers.

Her back is flush with the door and I place one of my hands on the door so I’m standing close but not touching her.  I kiss her softly on the top of her head.  I close my eyes for a moment and inhale.  She smells so good.  My lips against her silky hair, I murmur, “Thank you again for the great evening.  Good night, Fallon.”

Pushing off the door, I turn away and march back to the car before she can reply.  Before my control lapses.  Before I can do something truly stupid.  I slam the door of the SUV closed.  She has already escaped inside by the time I’m back inside the car.

 I press my forehead briefly against the steering wheel and put the key in the ignition.  
We are friends.  We are friends.  We are only friends.

Fallon

Come Monday, it is like our botched Homecoming weekend never happened.  Neither of us mentions anything that transgressed and we carry on our strange little routine.  We sit together before the morning bell, spend lunch in the art room, and then Ethan walks me home after Psychology.  We spend countless lunch periods and walks home discussing our favorite artists, books, movies.  I haven’t talked this much throughout my whole high school career as I have these last few weeks.  

It feels so effortless to be around Ethan that at times, I even feel normal.  But every once in a while, I catch a burning intensity in Ethan’s eyes that makes my stomach knot up with a hunger that has nothing to do with food.  When we are together, I try to convince myself that everything will work out.  But at night, when I am alone again, I worry about the consequences of my actions.  

One Friday afternoon as Ethan is walking me home, the heavens crack open.  In an instant, we are thoroughly soaked.  We both run through my front door, teeth chattering, water dripping into our eyes and off our clothes onto the floor.  I leave Ethan in the living room as I go to pull some towels out of the linen closet.  I pull a clean sweatshirt out of the dryer and quickly change out of my wet shirt and dump it into the hamper next to washing machine.

When I return with the towels, I have to stifle my gasp.  Ethan has taken his shirt off and lain it on the back of a chair to dry out.  His broad muscular back is facing me and I can see a long scar that stretches the length of his spine.  The small muscles in his back ripple as he runs his hand across the mantel of the fireplace.

Wordlessly, I hand him a towel while drying off my hair with a towel in my other hand.  He runs the towel through his hair making the muscles in his stomach stand out.  I try to focus my eyes on the blank wall next to him and fail.  His lips split into a huge grin as he says casually, “So this is where you live.”

He walks around the living room eagerly, like a dog that's finally been let inside the house.  I try to act just as casual, but having Ethan shirtless in my house has me on edge, “Uh-huh.  You walk me here almost every day.”

Twisting the towel in his hands, he wraps it around his neck as he walks around the room.  Ethan pauses, wrinkling his brow as he finishes his journey around the living room.  He snaps his fingers like he’s having an epiphany, “This is where you live, but this isn't really your home though.”

I swallow my surprise, “Excuse me?”

“I mean, there's no photos.  No trinkets.  No mementos.  This is just a place you live.  A house, but not a home.” 

I try to shrug it off, but Ethan has a tendency to be overly observant.  He already knows me more deeply than I ever intended him to.  My eyes scan the house I live in.  The walls of the living room are white and unadorned.  Long, gauzy gray drapes hang along the bay window.  

In the center of the room is a pristine white couch, not a single dent in any of the cushions, a perfectly fluffed, light blue pillow perfectly centered on each cushion.  A chunky knit, off white throw not so much as draped but placed mathematically over the back of the couch. The couch is flanked by gray linen wingback chairs with yellow flowered silk pillows.  On the raw wood coffee table are neat stacks of various books on architecture and my school books.  

The arrangement looks more like a showroom than a living room.  I had never really noticed how cold and empty this room feels.  My mind is racing as I think about the first day I stepped into this house.  I study the grain in the hardwood floor as the silence swells.  

Unexpectedly, it comes out of me, “My father bought this house Freshman year, after my mom died.  She was the trinketeer.  She picked out all the things in this room.  I never had her eye for arranging things.”

I look up from the floor as Ethan’s face drops, his eyes are horrified.  His long legs eat up the distance between us and he surprises me by suddenly pulling me into his arms.  My hands lay limply on his bare chest.  I rest my face against his shoulder and inhale deeply.  He smells of fresh rain and I have to resist the urge to turn my head and press my lips against his bare flesh.  His voice is quiet and sincere as he murmurs into my hair, “I am so, so sorry, Fallon.  I didn’t know...  I didn’t know what I was saying.”  

“It's okay, how could you know?”  I look up at him and he looks positively crestfallen.  I turn my head and clear my throat, “I fainted at school, cut my head open on a desk on my way down.  My mom was meeting me at the hospital.  There was a really bad storm.  She was driving on the highway and a truck was stalled on the exit ramp.  She didn't see it until the last minute and she tried to swerve and avoid it.  Her car rolled over into a ditch.  She died instantly.”  My voice catches in my throat.  I realize I have never said any of this out loud.  Everyone in Everest Heights already knew what happened of course. 

“I am so sorry, Fallon.”  His fingers run up and down the length of my spine and belatedly, I realize I’m trembling.

“For a long time I didn't let myself believe she was dead.  We had a closed casket funeral, so I never actually saw her body.  I liked to imagine the casket was empty and that she had just gone away for a while, that she was away visiting my Grandma in Florida.”  

The story no one knew was what happened after my mom died.  I pull away from Ethan’s embrace but grab his hand and walk him over to the pristine white couch.  I angle my body toward his and sit close so that our knees are touching.  Gingerly, I roll up the sleeves of my sweatshirt exposing my forearms.  I start by removing my watch and then slide off each bracelet, dumping each piece one by one onto the coffee table.  “It was a very dark, lonely time for me.  I still blame myself for what happened to her.”  

Ethan looks at me, his eyes are slightly puzzled as he watches me with silent curiosity.  Flipping my empty hands over, I stare at the twin scars running down the length of my wrists.  “My father found me.  I wasn’t expecting him to check up on me until the following week, but I guess he was worried about me.  I spent the rest of the summer in an intensive therapy program in Florida.  When I came back from treatment at the end of the summer, he had sold the old house and had all our belongings moved here.  All her things are packed away in the attic.  I always keep the other bedroom door closed because I can’t bear to see it empty.  I... I just can’t see it like that.  For a long time, I hoped that she was going to walk through the door and put everything in their proper place.  That everything would to be as it once was.”

He pulls my hands into his and presses each wrist against his lips to kiss each scar.  Ethan ducks his head down until we are eye level.  His blue eyes burn with sincerity and his voice is a quiet plea, “Fallon, you can’t continue to punish yourself.  It wasn’t your fault, it was an accident.”  

He gently pulls me into his arms, my face tucked into the crook under his chin.  My body sags against him and I am too weak to resist the strength of his embrace.  My face is wet, but not from the rain.

Ethan

I press my face against the dark sweep of hair hiding her face and inhale deeply.  Fallon smells incredible as always--her scent enhanced by the scent of fresh rain.  Her whole body is shaking and her shoulders tremble with her silent sobs.  She feels so small and vulnerable in my arms.  

Trying to sooth her, I rub her back in circles like my mom used to when I was little.  I can feel her tears against my skin and despite the sobs racking her body, she makes no sound.  In this moment, I know that walls have been torn down between us.  I know this secret is not something she has ever shared.  It is rare for her to be this open and probably even rarer for her to be so raw and exposed.

After a few minutes of holding her in silence, I feel her body begin to still.  Her breathing is still uneven but she pulls away, quickly turning away to dab at her eyes with a towel.  When she looks back at me her green eyes are rimmed with red and wary.  “So I told you about my scars, now I want to know about yours,” she says with watery bravado, her finger tracing the scar along my back.  A jolt of electricity travels down my spine and I shiver involuntarily.

“Sometimes I forge it’s even there, it seems like a lifetime ago.  I got it the summer before 8th grade.  My dad was sick of city living and wanted us to live a quainter life.  We were staying in this converted farm house out in the middle of nowhere in rural Illinois.  It was like a two stoplight kind of town.  We were growing our own vegetables and riding around in a vintage pick up truck.  There was even an old fashioned pharmacy in the main square that still served milkshakes at the counter.”  

My voice drifts off as I remember the days when my life was simpler.  When my family was still together.  It is odd how fast things can change.  Now I’m living in my mom’s hometown, sitting here with this beautiful girl whose broken heart I want desperately to make whole again.  

Fallon’s soft voice shakes me out of my reverie, “Sounds peaceful.”  She reaches over and squeezes my right hand, urging me on.  

I squeeze back and shake my head, trying to focus my thoughts, “Anyway, it was awful.  Scott and I hated it.  We were like twelve and ten years old.  Naturally we were extremely bored and the TV didn’t always work.  It was late June, so we had been complaining about this place for almost a month straight at this point.  My dad decided to have a real bonding moment with his sons.  He took us down to the river before the crack of dawn.  Gave us fishing poles and a bucket of worms and set us to task.  At first, we were fascinated but it turned out to be incredibly difficult and required far more patience than either of us had.  Scott and I spent most of our time fooling around and wrestling.  I guess the area where we were fishing had become eroded.  One minute I was being chased by Scott, the next the ground had given out beneath my feet.  I fell about twelve feet onto the rocky ledge of the riverbed.  I cracked my skull and fractured three vertebrae and broke both my legs.  I was in a medically induced coma because of the swelling in my brain and the damage to my body.”  

Her grip tightens on my hand and her eyes are wide as she presses her free hand against her mouth, “Oh my God.”

“The scar is from the surgeries to repair my spine.  The doctors told my parents that I would probably never walk again or lead a normal life.”  Fallon looks so serious as she takes in my story, I give her a sly wink.  “But, as you know Fallon, I don't take no for an answer.”

That shy smile crosses her lips, “Did you know you’re pretty incredible?  I’m glad you never give up.”

“I did get some help.  I was operated on by several of the country’s top spinal surgeons.  And of course, there were the years of intense physical therapy.  All the weight I lost while I was in my coma, I put it back on as muscle.  It was a long, arduous process.  But I started exercising, playing sports.  All the things I didn’t have interest in before I got hurt.  My injuries made me appreciate what my body is capable of.”

“Sometimes you need to see the darkness before you can appreciate the sunlight,” she murmurs into her hand.  Her dark lashes are wet from tears and her green eyes are burning with sincerity.

I have an overwhelming desire to close the small space between us and kiss her.  Instead, I reach over and brush her tear stained cheek with the back of my left hand.  My right hand is still gripped in hers but it slackens when I reach over.