This Is Falling (32 page)

She tilts her face to me, but her eyes are
almost glued shut. She’s seconds away from passing out, and as bad
as this sounds, she’s beautiful—even like this. I take a handful of
the wet towels and run them over her forehead, cheeks and neck,
trying to cool her and make her feel less like a speed-race of bile
just cleared her lips.

“There, that any better?” I ask, and she
moans, her mouth too weak to fully frown. “You think you need to do
that…
again?” I lean my head toward the toilet, and Rowe
cracks one eyelid open long enough to see before closing it again.
She shakes her head
no
, bringing her hands to her mouth to
wipe again. “Okay, come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

Rowe’s legs are sexy as hell, but carrying
them drunk has me wishing she were five-foot-two instead of the
extra six or seven inches she is. Lifting her body from the floor
is tough, probably because she’s not helping. Like…at all. I nearly
jar her head into the doorway of the women’s shower room as we
leave, and when the small mousy girl from down the hall exits the
elevator and catches us, she blushes.

“She got a little carried away tonight,” I
whisper, and she smiles and rushes back to her room.

It takes me a few seconds to get the keys
from my pocket and unlock our door, but I finally do. Rowe manages
to sit up at the edge of my bed, and I pull her shoes off first,
then the long baseball socks she had on with her costume. “You want
one of my shirts?” I ask, working the buttons of her shirt off
until I get to see the entire bra that has been teasing me for most
of the night. Well fuck. This night could have gone
so
differently
.

“Can I have your green one?” she asks, and I
head to the closet to begin sifting through my hangers.

“You mean gray? I don’t have a green one,” I
say, finding the long-sleeved shirt she usually sleeps in and
flipping off the light before I shut the closet door behind me.

“No, the green Boston one…with the Red Sox
logo on the front,” she says, pulling her arms from her bra and
laying back against my sheets, letting out a big breath while her
body sinks deeply into the blankets scrunched up around her.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that shirt is in your
head. Come on, give me your arms—I got your favorite gray one,” I
say, lifting her body enough to pull my shirt over her head and
down her arms and body. I tug her pants from her legs, and she
crawls up to the head of my bed after I drop them to the floor,
gathering the entire blanket up in her arms, squeezing it tightly,
her face buried and her hair a tangled mess.

Once I flip the light out, I kick off my
pants and shirt and slide in between her body and the wall, doing
my best not to shake her. She moans a few times, and I know she’s
still feeling dizzy and sick, so I start to stroke her hair, trying
to tame the wild mess she’s managed to create.

“I hope you find it, Joshy.” I pause, my
breath held and my hand an inch away from her head, frozen in my
almost
touch.

“Find what?” I say, the knot in my throat
impossible to swallow.

“The Boston shirt. It was always my favorite.
I hope you find it.” And that’s the last word she utters before her
breathing turns heavy and her throat gives way to the tiny
vibrations of a snore.

Joshy. Not Josh, or I was
thinking
about Josh’s shirt, or sorry, was just
thinking
about Josh.
But
Joshy
. An intimate pet name, full of all kinds of…shit,
I don’t know what the fuck it’s full of—but that one word. That
goddamned name! That name I can’t even hate because Josh is dead.
And Rowe has no clue. And clearly
Joshy
is still alive and
well in her subconscious.

For the next hour, I stare at her, watching
her small movements while she sleeps. Every flit of her eyelid
makes me jump, just waiting for her to tell me she needs to go back
to him, or find him, or talk to him, or see him. And she can’t. Not
because she let him go, but because he’s gone. And whether I like
it or not, I’m competing for the girl I love…with a ghost.

Chapter
27

Rowe

“Come on, just one more party…before you
leave me to go home with my boyfriend
and
yours.” Cass has
been dropping little hints ever since the Halloween party about not
going home with Ty over Thanksgiving, but Ty seems to be pretty
good at ignoring them.

“Why don’t you just tell him you want to come
with us? I’m sure he’d love you to be there,” I say, pulling out my
oversized sweatshirt and leggings to change for an evening of
finals studying. Cass pouts when I do, knowing she’s probably lost
her battle to drag me to a party tonight.

“Because…” she says, letting her lips flap
while she flops on her back on my bed behind me, her face still in
full-sour mode.

“Because you’re afraid you like him more than
he likes you?” I ask, wondering when I got so bold with my
questions for others. These kinds of things seem funny coming from
the girl who barely woke up from a two-year social slumber. Cass is
staring at me, not saying anything, but her eyes flash with a brief
moment of sadness before she rolls her head to the other side, and
she starts picking at the corner of my corkboard.

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” she says, pulling
her knees to her chest. “Come do Pilates with me.”

I lie back next to her and let out a similar
lip-flapping breath. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t Pilates,” I say,
holding my knees into my chest and rocking slightly like Cass
is.

“I know, but I like to pretend it is. It’s
really just wallowing, but it makes me feel better…you know, if I
call it Pilates?” she says, pulling her face tightly to her
kneecaps, masking the small tears I see forming.

“Yeah…it does,” I say, pulling my knees to my
chin and turning to look at her with a soft smile. “Tell him you
wanna go.”

She shakes her head
no
. And I don’t
blame her. I was afraid once, too. Still am. We both rock slowly,
keeping our eyes locked so we can talk silently, like I’m trying to
pull her sadness out of her heart and cure it for her. I think Cass
would be content to lie here like this next to me in our small safe
cocoon for the rest of the night, but the soft knock on the door
wakes us from our trance, and Cass sits up quickly, heading to the
mirror to finish straightening her hair.

“Hey, study buddy,” Nate says, walking in
with his heavy backpack loaded with probably every book he owns.
“Can I crash your big night-out plans?” The grin on my face is
probably making my response obvious.

“Gah! You two are cute, but when I want to be
pissy—you kind of make it tough. I’m heading to Paige’s party. I’ll
be home late,” Cass says, stuffing her phone, wallet and keys in
the back pocket of her jeans.

“Ty’s wearing…an interesting T-shirt,” Nate
says, biting his cheek and smirking knowingly at me. My latest
bribe to him was that he had to wear this special shirt Nate and I
ordered for him. It reads:
“It’s past my bedtime,
and I want my milky wilky and my widdle teddy weddy bear named
Cookie. Wah!”
When I sent the
ransom
text a few days
ago, I told him he could find his next party shirt in his mailbox,
where we left it.

“Oh great! I better get something out of this
little grudge match you three have going on. You know, in this
scenario, I’m the one who’s
with
the guy with the
embarrassing shirt,” she says, and Nate and I both seem to get the
same idea at the very same minute. And it only takes Cass a second
or two longer to catch up with us. “Oooooooh no! You two are
not
pulling me into this! No getting creative ideas to make
shirts for me!”

“Oh, but come on, Cass…” Nate starts. “You
know you want a shirt that says something like ‘I’m with Teddy Bear
man’…”

“Or ‘My boyfriend wears tutus,’” I pipe in,
barely able to finish my words I’m laughing so hard. Cass, on the
other hand, has her arms crossed while she stands at the door
looking at the two of us, cracking ourselves up.

“Are you done yet?” she says, her lips pulled
up to the side, and her face irritated. This only makes us laugh
harder, and Cass rolls her eyes and holds up her hand. “Good night,
children
!
”

It takes us almost fifteen minutes to settle
down enough to actually open up books on my bed and dig in for some
studying. We both have big final exams the week we get back from
Thanksgiving break, and I have an essay project due for my art
history class. I really want to finish it early so I won’t have to
focus on any homework while I’m with Nate.

At first, I was a little anxious about going
to his parents’ house for the holiday—worried that I was intruding,
and maybe missing, just a little bit, the traditional thing I
always did with my parents. But the closer we got to break, the
more excitement bloomed in my belly. This—and just being close to
Nate, period—was making it extremely hard to study tonight.

Somehow, I’m able to read two chapters, and
my brain seems to retain most of what I read. Nate is sitting on
the opposite end of the bed from me, his legs stretched out next to
mine, and every so often he nudges me with his toes.

“Keep your stinky feet to yourself,” I say,
pushing his socked foot to the side, which of course only makes him
drop it completely on my lap and kick it around under my nose.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I…
in your space?”
he teases. I pick up my heaviest book and open it, resting it on
his ankle, pretty much trapping his leg in my lap. He chuckles, and
folds his book closed, laying back a little and resting his chin in
his palm, his elbow holding up his weight. I can feel him staring
at me for several minutes, and I’m no longer even coming close to
paying attention to the words on my pages. I close my book and turn
to the side, my face flat against it like a pillow—and we lay still
like this, quietly studying one another, for several minutes before
either of us talks.

“Do you still think about him a lot?” I’m not
surprised by Nate’s question, but it causes my pulse to race, and
my stomach to twist tightly, nevertheless. He’s chewing on the cap
to his pen, his face so kind and regarding. It’s not a jealous
question—not like how he is when we joke about Tucker. No, this
question is one of genuine interest, of wanting to know me that
much deeper, know how my insides work, and how my head routes the
thoughts of everything that happened.

“Yes.” I can see a hint of sadness color his
features when I admit this. “But not as much as I used to. It’s a
little less…everyday.”

More silence settles in, but it’s
comfortable. We’re still for several minutes, and then Nate reaches
his hand for my foot, and he pulls it into both hands in front of
him, digging his thumbs into the bottom for a massage.

“Is it bad that I don’t think about him as
much as I used to?” I ask, and Nate’s hands pause. He takes a slow
deep breath without looking at me, and I can tell he’s really
thinking about my question, putting himself in my shoes.

“Honestly? I think it’s human,” he says, his
thumbs circling my foot again. “Either way…I think it’s okay.”

We don’t talk about it anymore, and after a
few minutes, Nate picks up his books and hauls them back to his
room. He has early workouts in the morning, and we’re leaving for
his parents’ house later in the day, so he said he wanted to let me
really focus to finish up my paper. And in my gut, I felt a little
pang over him leaving, like there was something else, something
unspoken. He didn’t want to be here. But I also didn’t fight to
make him stay. That small conversation put something in both of our
heads. And I was thinking about Josh tonight…more than I wanted
to.

Plane rides were definitely better
with
Nate. It took about three hours to get to New Orleans,
and another hour or so to get from the airport to Nate’s parents’
home in Baton Rouge. Their house isn’t large, but it’s old. The
grass out front seems to stretch forever until you get to a porch
flanked by white posts and stretching the entire expanse of the
home. It’s yellow, like sunshine, and with the sun setting behind
it, I swear I’ve stepped into a postcard.

“I love your home,” I say, and I realize it
comes out kind of corny, like the thing you’re supposed to say to
be polite. But I mean it—I really love his home. It feels like I
fit here. I keep that part to myself, though, because
that
sounds crazy.

“Yeah, I guess it’s nice,” Nate shrugs,
lifting our bags from the back of their family van. Nate’s father
picked us up from the airport, which made it nice since there were
three of us. Nate pulls Ty’s chair from the back and unfolds it
next to the van; I watch as Ty lifts himself into it. The move
takes seconds, and I wonder how long it took before it was
easy.

“Your mom ordered pizza; I hope that’s okay,”
Nate’s father says as he pushes Ty’s chair up the sidewalk to the
ramp at the side of the porch. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen Ty
not push himself, and when I realize I’m staring, I shake my head
and look away quickly, hoping nobody noticed.

“It makes Dad feel good to do it sometimes,”
Nate whispers into my ear. I just mouth
oh
and smile.

Pizza was the
perfect
idea after our
trip, and maybe I was just starving, but the slices were gone from
my plate in minutes. With dinner done, Nate pulls our bags to the
bedrooms down the hall, and he gives me a quick tour of his
family’s home. The living room and kitchen are one big room with a
giant stoned fireplace and a TV mounted to the wall above it. The
floors are long, wooden planks, and every wall is adorned with a
collection of family photos or art. I notice a few paintings in the
kitchen—signed by Nate’s mom, Cathy; I wonder if the others were
done by friends.