Tailspin (Better Than You) (16 page)

              As I place her on the toilet seat, then start the shower, I can’t help but think I was, but instead of it helping me realize that I have to let her go, it makes me think that she needs me now more than ever. When I look back at Logan, I see that I’ve lost her again, that she’s wrapped up in her own mind so very far away. Crouching, I bring her eyes to meet mine again. “Come back,” I say, but she doesn’t respond. I leave and grab her bag from the room. Place it gently beside her. Before I leave the room again, I glance back at her, but still she doesn’t say anything, just stares at me and waits, as if I can make everything disappear. But I know that I can’t, not yet, so I walk away.

              Emily and Joshua are sitting on the couch when I get downstairs, their arms wrapped around each other. The TV is off, neither one of them are talking. Silence fills the room. When they see me, they pull apart and slide over, opening a space barely big enough for me. As I slide in and their arms wrap around me, I’m reminded of the responsibility I have, of the fact that their lives are more important than mine.

              “I’m so sorry, guys,” I whisper into Joshua’s hair, pulling them tight into me. We sit like this for a while, nobody saying anything. Finally, I add, “That will never happen again. No one will ever hurt you.”

              “And you?” Emily asks cautiously, her voice barely above a whisper.

              “I’m okay,” I respond automatically, even though it couldn’t be farther from the truth. I haven’t been okay in a long time. “Everything will be okay.”

              As soon as the words have settled into the air, there’s a sound behind us, at the base of the stairs, and then light footsteps running up them. I call Logan’s name, but don’t move from my position between Emily and Joshua. I can’t keep leaving them behind. But then Joshua pulls away from my side and meets my eyes, his filled with entirely too much wisdom and understanding for a twelve year old boy.

              “She needs you,” he says. “She doesn’t have anyone else.”

              “Neither do you.”

              He shakes his head. “That’s not true. There’s three of us,” he points at himself, “And only one of her,” he finishes, pointing up the stairs.

              Before I can let him see the tears in my eyes, I pull him in for a quick hug, jump off the couch and run up the stairs. I find Logan in the bathroom, sitting over her bag, stuffing clothes into it and making a mess, her hair everywhere and her face shiny with tears.

              When I grab her arms and wrap myself around her, she tries to fight. I can’t help but wonder where this fight was with Danny, and that’s when I realize that she’s doing what she thinks she has to do. “Lo,” I say into her ear, soft and slow and steady. Her tears fall onto my skin, seep into the hair on my arms, but before another one can splash against me, I pull her onto my lap and cradle her delicate body. Tentatively, I place my lips against the skin of her neck and inhale, just waiting for the moment that she pushes me away. But it never comes. In fact, the way she spins her body so that her legs are straddling mine has convinced me that it isn’t all in my head, this thing between us.

              I’m not sure who makes the first move, who presses whose lips against whom. Maybe it wasn’t either of us but a force bigger and stronger, two ends of a magnet bound to find each other eventually. Her tongue slips into my mouth and I try to suppress a groan, I really do, but I’ve imagined this moment in so many ways, so many different times, that the gravity of each second is almost too much to bear. Her smell, the sweetness of her mouth mixed with the saltiness of her tears, the hard ridges of her back pressed against my palms.

              I want this to be more than what it is, more than the simple pleasure it was with Heather and more than the obligation it was for Logan. After mustering every ounce of willpower I possess, I pull away from Logan’s lips and look into her wide eyed stare. “I won’t let him hurt you,” I tell her. Before she has a chance to respond, I’m kissing her again, moving our mouths together in a careful dance. This isn’t going to happen here, though, on the floor in a room where it’s been done before. I stand and pull Logan up beside me, quietly lead her down the hall to my room.

              Once the door is closed, I turn to face her, grab the edges of her shirt and pull it up and away from her body. She makes a move as if to cover herself, but I step closer into her space and place my lips on the curve of her collarbone. “Let me help you forget,” I whisper in between each touch. Right away I can tell it’s what she wanted to hear. Her previously tense body softens into the empty spaces of mine, two pieces of a puzzle finally perfectly aligned. Where she’s soft and pliable, I’m hard and straining, ready to take her and make her mine. But there’s still this voice inside my head, a part of me that’s insisting that it’s too much, too soon.

              “I don’t know if this is right,” I admit, never letting my lips leave the softness of her skin for too long. As I walk us towards the bed, I imagine her telling me that she wants this, too, that it’s right in every way that counts, but not a word leaves her lips. When we’re lying on the bed, my body hovering over hers, I look into her eyes again. “Tell me you want this.”

              Maybe it’s a cop out, but when she doesn’t respond, just stares back with eyes full of so much emotion that they’re threatening to overflow, I decide that words are overrated. I need her, more than I’ve ever needed anything. This time when our mouths meet, I forego the gentle caresses and instead devour every inch of her. She’s a glass of water and I’m a dehydrated wanderer. She’s the gravity that’s keeping my feet on the ground, the dreams keeping my head in the clouds. In this moment it’s all too easy to believe that everything will be alright.

              A noise escapes her mouth, the first time I’ve heard her voice since all of this started, and I pause at the top of her bra, afraid that it’s going to be a command to stop. But when I look at her face, the way her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are half closed, I’m almost positive she’s about to say nothing of the sort. Almost. “Should I stop?” I ask, praying that she says no.

              Logan clears her throat, licks her lips. I want to be the one licking those lips. “I don’t…I’ve never…”

              As her words trail off, I’m thinking one thing- she’s a virgin. All this time I assumed she wasn’t, because of who she’s with, because of what she’s done, and here I am about to take that away from her. I lift myself off of her. “You’ve never what?”

              “I’ve never done this with anyone but
him
,” she says quietly, looking away from me.

              Not as bad as I thought...but still. “Ever?”

              “I’ve been with him since I was fifteen. No one else.”

              “
Fifteen?
” That’s only three years older than Joshua. What was Emily doing when she was fifteen? Shopping and making dances to Britney Spears songs, that’s what. I can see her pulling away from me again. Just when I’ve told her to forget, I’m bringing it up, asking her questions she doesn’t want to answer. To show her it’s over, I drop my arms and bring my body back to hers, thigh against thigh, chest to chest. “Let me love you,” I whisper, before fully realizing what it is I’m saying. If I’m being honest, I’m not sure what it is I
want
to say. Do I love her? Is this need to protect, to
fix
, what love feels like? I’m not sure.

              As I move down her body, my eyes catch things I was missing before, like the freckles placed in random spots across her chest and the silvery-white scars scattered across her skin. Some of them are deeper than others, ugly, jagged lines that do nothing to detract from the silkiness of her skin. Others are mostly artificial, light and barely visible but determined to be there, unwilling to be forgotten. As my hands reach around to her back and undo the clasp to her bra, I take in every scar. When the bra falls away and she’s completely bare from the hips up, I cover each of those marks with my lips, slowly and methodically covering her memories with something new.

              Logan shifts and then her delicate fingers are reaching for the bottom of my shirt, lifting it up. I help her get it over my head, amazed by how that simple act has me harder than before. This, more than anything, is a sign that says she wants it, too.

              As I kiss lower down her stomach, I stop at one of the darker scars. “Where did they come from?” I ask and then continue my descent.

              Her body squirms against mine, and I know that she’ll answer my question. “My mom, myself, accidents. Depends which ones you’re talking about,” she responds nonchalantly, as if we’re talking about marks on the wall that can be easily erased.

              And then those hands that I always saw as gentle and meek are grabbing my face, pulling me up and against hers, clinging to my hair and my neck as the breath pours out of me and into her. Logan’s hands are needy and my hands are busy pulling the rest of our clothes off while we somehow manage to never let our lips detach.

              Then it’s just skin against skin.

              Her scent fills my head. Her moans fill my ears. I push in, briefly thinking about a condom but losing that thought as she pulls me closer, wraps her legs tighter. Every inch of me is consumed with
her
.

              I hold out as long as I can, but when her back arches and her head tilts back, there’s nothing I can do to stop the waves pulsing through me. It’s over just as soon as it began, it seems, our bodies coming back down to earth and drowning in the reality of the situation. Already I can sense her hesitancy; the way she shifts to her side as soon as we’re done, facing away from me. How, after a few minutes of heavy breathing, my arm wrapped around her waist, she attempts to stand and maybe walk away. But I’m unwilling to let this moment end, to let real life seep back into my dreams.

              “Stay,” I whisper into her skin, and surprisingly she listens, her body deflating with defeat and sinking back into the bed, into my touch.  We stay that way for a while, me listening to her breathing, memorizing every freckle without moving from around her. In a half-awake, half-asleep state, I ruin the moment and open my mouth. “Will you ever tell me about yourself?”

              Logan doesn’t answer at first and I begin to think that maybe she’s asleep, that she didn’t hear my question and it’s probably better that way. But then she starts to speak, her voice wrapping around us in the quiet room.

              “Sam and I were driving home from a party one night. She had just gotten her license. This girl Sophia was in the back seat, passed out on God knows what. She was Sam’s neighbor so I tolerated her, but she always talked too much. One of those girls that has to one up you and claims to know everything.” She pauses, shakes her head before continuing. “Anyways, Sam had been drinking but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Danny had just...” Another pause. I don’t say anything, although I’m dying to ask,,
just what, Logan?
“Um, we just had too much to drink and next thing I know, we’re lying there covered in blood. It felt like it was forever before I could move. I start freaking out and Sam tells me we can’t call 911.
Not yet
, she said.Then she asked me to help move Sophia to the front seat.”

              I’m distracted by the image of Logan covered in blood that I don’t hear what she said. It’s like I’m watching a movie and she’s narrating, and the images are just now catching up to the words. Then I see it; Logan and Sam moving this unconscious girl into the front seat, placing her in the shadow of blame. There are so many questions I want to ask, so many things I want to say, but I keep quiet. “I didn’t know what to do. Sam was my best friend, my
only
friend. So I helped her. When the police came, we were sitting against the car. We told them we were afraid to move Sophia. I was in so much pain but didn’t realize it, I guess because of the adrenaline. I ended up having to have surgery. Internal bleeding or something.”

              She points to the dark scar on her stomach, the very one that made me question all of them. I could have never imagined the kind of story lurking behind it. The police in me wants to tell her how wrong it was, what she did, but the other parts of me, the brother and father and mother and friend and lover, imagines her at fifteen, scared and alone, and wants nothing more than to take her pain away. “I’m sorry you had to make a decision like that,” I tell her, lightly kissing her lips.

              Turning her head away, she wipes the tears from her eyes. I position myself so that we’re face to face again. “Look at me, Lo.” And when she does,  I don’t tell her the truth like I planned to. I don’t spill the lies and bare the truth. Instead, I silence it all with a kiss and pray to God that what’s between us is enough to save us.

              As she’s falling asleep in my arms, safe for now, I hum her the very song Mom used to hum to me when I was little and scared, when the thunder outside or the monsters under my bed were enough to keep me awake and nothing but her voice could keep me safe.

20

April 4, 2009

              It’s only a few seconds after I’ve woken up that I realize I’m alone.

              The stillness of the room is the first sign. The empty but still warm spot next to me the second and final. As I look up at the ceiling and stretch, straighten out every part of me that feels coiled and stiff, I wonder why I’m not surprised that she’s gone. I wonder if it’s a bad thing, how small my faith in her is, but I know she’s a creature of habit and I know she pushes away because no one else has pushed closer.

              After my body feels loose again, I sit up and face the window, watch the tiny dust particles that float through the orange streams of light. Breathing in, I imagine that those little pieces of dust are parts of Logan and me and are working their way into my body, into my lungs and circulating with the air that sustains me. I hold in that breath for as long as I can before I push it out and drop my head into my hands.