This Much Is True (8 page)

“I know what I’m doing. We do it all the time. Off and on. It works.”

I’ve inadvertently entered into this strange conversation with him, and if he’s paying attention to it at all and what I’ve said before, I’m giving up way too much information. All the lies I’ve already told him could start to unravel if he puts it all together. He takes a bite out of the York dessert and closes his eyes a moment, clearly enjoying the simple pleasure of it all. I consciously lick my lips and begin to savor the mint candy taste, while all these uncontrollable salacious thoughts about him race through my mind as I covertly watch him.

Then he’s staring at me again, and I’m staring back.

We both know where this is going.

It’s not like I haven’t done this before. I have. With too many guys by some girls’ counts. It’s just this time seems different, note-worthy. I’m unsure of myself, and my twin sister isn’t here to tell me how everything is going to be okay, that everything happens for a reason; that love can be as real as the sex can be. I straighten up, square off my shoulders, affect a dancer’s stance, and seemingly look for a spot in front of me as if I can plan for the jump and time it to the music suddenly playing inside my head.

Ballet is my life. Ballet is what I know. Ballet is all I have left.
Run, Tally. Run.
My vision blurs, and the room goes dark.
I can’t breathe.
Ballet is all I have left.

It’s as if I’m readying for a performance but there’s this whimpering sound filling the room. It proves to be a distraction for both of us. Linc has this strange look upon his face. The sound gets louder, and it takes another long moment to realize it’s me who is making it.

He’s there within seconds. He holds me to his chest, strokes my back, and tells me that everything is going to be okay. I attempt to take in air and vaguely note I can’t breathe and tell him this. Somehow, he knows what to do for me. He undoes the clips in my hair and runs his fingers through it. The intimacy of his actions moves me on some deep level that I’m incapable of understanding at the moment. I just know that I don’t want him to stop, and I tell him this between these staggered gasps for air.

The room gets smaller and smaller as I struggle to get air into my lungs. He leads me over to the sofa, and I sort of collapse on top of him while my limbs refuse to cooperate and move in any synchronous way at all. I couldn’t stand again even if I wanted to. The world seems to be fading away in all different directions at the same time. My neck pulses in time to my heaving chest, which goes up and down in this staccato, jerky rhythm. I struggle with all these competing convulsions and try to take in air. All the while, Linc holds on to me.

“Not sure. What’s happening? To me.” I gasp between breaths. Embarrassed now as I seem to spin even further out of control, I close my eyes in an attempt to ward off this attack. All these incongruent thoughts hurtle towards me.
What is his game? Is this part of the Good Samaritan act? Comfort the Landon girl? She needs saving. What is wrong with me?

Eventually, I tell myself to just focus on breathing, and I think I hear Linc tell me this, too. “
Holly,
” he says with true concern. “It’s going to be okay.” He’s said my sister’s name with such believable reverence that I actually accept that I’m Holly for a few interminable seconds. My breathing returns to normal, and the uncanny filmy dark recedes.

The alcohol must have rushed through my system at an accelerated rate and been spurred on by this emotional outburst that has literally overtaken me despite reinforcements of food and kindness—or maybe because of them.

I haven’t cried since my sister’s funeral, but I do now.

They are these slow-motion tears. ‘
Hot fudge tears
’ Holly used to call them. The kind that trail down your face in an uncontrollable stream, like the hot fudge sauce that endlessly drips over the sides of a sundae cup at Dairy Queen. “
Tears of heartbreak,
” Marla called them once, after she and Charlie broke up the first time. My tears seem to be a combination of long-held grief and this tremendous relief at actually being able to breathe again. However, remnants of panic still swirl. I take an unsteady breath and dully note I’ve smeared this guy’s silky grey shirt with Marla’s black, long-lash mascara. This unsightly charcoal stain trails across the front of it now.

“Your shirt.”

“It’s okay.”

“No…I…” Words desert me. I can’t speak. I can’t explain what just happened.

He gently strokes my face and tells me it’s going to be okay.

All I can do is nod a couple of times and focus on the farthest point in the room away from him just past his shoulders. I do what I can at all costs to avoid looking directly at him.
Breathe.
I just keep telling myself that. Only my uncontrollable sniffling and unsteady jagged breaths every minute or so serve to break up this pall of silence that has overtaken the room. Inevitably, mortification rolls its way toward me. I’ve just lost it in front of a complete stranger.

“I think that was a panic attack,” Linc says into the quiet after a few minutes. “You okay?”

I nod, still unsure of my ability to speak coherently. After a long while, I steal a covert glance at him. Now he leans against the back of the sofa with his eyes closed. One of his hands is still wrapped up in the strands of my hair like a rope he’s been holding on to—a safety line, perhaps. I half-smile at the irony.
Who is saving who in this scenario? What is wrong with me? What just happened?

He opens his eyes at my somewhat involuntary movements and tugs at my hair and pulls me toward him. He gently kisses my forehead. His lips travel down the side of my face and then reach the sensitive spot at my neck. I practically melt at his subtle seduction at a soul level, while my body heats up under his careful ministrations.
Oh, God. Why is he doing this to me?

“We used to have a ranch when I was about eight years old,” he says so softly that I strain to hear him. “My dad liked to train wild horses. He always said it just takes patience and time, and that you don’t tame a horse as much as you come to understand it.”

“Am I the wild horse in this scenario?” I ask faintly. My pulse races out of control. I bury my face into the dampness of his shirt thoroughly embarrassed by my unusual emotional breakdown. I catch my breath and hold it and will myself to pull it together.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “But you definitely need saving.”

“Does that line work with all the girls you bring here?”

“I don’t bring girls here.”

“Oh.” I slide out of his arms and stand up, intent on achieving balance on a physical level as well as an emotional one because for some inexplicable reason I already know that it’s vital to initiate some kind of distance from this guy. He scares me on some deep cosmic level because I like him
too much
already, and, as it is, I have more than enough fears to battle on a daily basis. “I should go.”

“What if you didn’t? Go?” Linc pauses for a full minute and seems to just draw me in with his kind face.

He’s good-looking.
At a detrimental level.
The kind of guy you would be seen in public with and most girls would cattily be saying: “Why
her
? Why did he choose
her
?” I catch my lower lip between my teeth, embarrassed at the calculating assumptions I’ve made about him in such a short amount of time. We’ve gone from the prospect of a one-night stand to a relationship. The first I often employ, and the second I will never entertain.
Ever.

It dawns on me that I’ve been staring at him again. His eyes are incredible, and I get lost in them again because there’s a part of me that clearly wants to jump into the alluring deep end with him and another part of me that uncharacteristically hesitates mightily.
I can’t look away from him.
It’s disconcerting and enthralling at the same time.

I take in air in the faint hope of clearing away all these wayward thoughts of him. Then I absently wipe at my face with an embarrassed hand wave in the next. I’m supposed to be Holly—perfect and sweet,
not Tally
—bitchy and on edge.
What am I doing here?
And I
cried
in front of him. I haven’t cried since the day we buried Holly.

“I should go.” I attempt to smile and extend my arm around the great room.“
Really
. This has been…illuminating.

He raises an eyebrow, surprised by my exceptional vocabulary, perhaps.

Me, too.

He reaches for my hand and pulls me to him. I experience this inevitable solace as his arms go around me and hold me there.

“Don’t go, Holly,” he whispers.

And then he kisses me.

So I stay because when a girl wants to be someone else, she can be.

* * *

He strips off the calfskin boots one at a time and then helps me shimmy out of my skirt. Slowly—with purpose—he fingers the lace top and gets this secret smile. His touch sends an electric thrill all the way through me. He explores the inner layers of my lingerie and slides his hand inside the waistband and then travels further down. Obviously, he’s seduced lovers before. We both have, and yet I hold my breath and willingly fall back with him to the bed and put my arms around his neck and pull him to me because
I need this. I do.

He leans down and kisses my neck while he explores my body more urgently and the sensation of being set on fire from within flares all over again.

“I want you.” His words whip against my neck and accelerate my heart rate.

Our movements co-mingle like the old-fashioned lava lamp on his night stand. Green wax yields to the warm blue water. We’re lit up and changed by the heat and perform this ritualistic dance. I laugh at these crazy thoughts and Linc laughs, too, pleased he can please me, I suppose.

Lincoln Presley is a god. His star power illuminates my skin with light and sets fire to the rest of me. He whispers the name ‘
Holly’
into the crook of my neck and trails kisses there, too, while I openly experience all this secret regret for not telling him my real name and lying about my age.

It is true that
no
is not a viable answer to his question:
“Do you want this?
” Because I do.

Want this? I
need
this. I do.

Years ago, Ms. Kenner, my health education teacher, said sex should not be taken lightly. When I was a seventh grader, I wondered how it was to be taken, and, by ninth grade, I knew. Lightly was not a word that ever came to mind when it came to sex. Yet there’s something more significant, more substantial, and more absolute with Linc; he’s different from all the rest. I relish the unexpected liberation, although I know I’m being reckless and wasteful at the same time. I’m like a bird on fantastical flight. I soar above it all and revel in the unique experience of Lincoln Presley.
Sex is not to be taken lightly. No. Not lightly at all. Not with him.

Linc tells me how much he wants me. I giggle and remind him we could have done this before dinner. I treasure his easy laugh as his exploring hand parts the space between my thighs. My resistance of him evaporates as I become water being splashed onto a hot surface and all but disappear.

* * *

I’m the one who told my parents she was gone when the state patrolman let me borrow his cell phone. “There’s been…an accident. In my car. Accident. An explosion. A fire. She’s. Gone.” I’m the one who sat and held hands with the medic and first learned there was nothing I could have done and that Holly was gone—gone long before any of them had arrived on scene. I knew this. I saw what happened, but it is true that I didn’t believe him.
I couldn’t.

It is true that I haven’t really cried until tonight. It is not true that I don’t care. It is not true that I’m over it, over
Holly
.

I am coping. This is me coping.

Intense thrumming brings me back. I look up at Linc and wrap my legs tighter around his waist and grip his shoulders. This guy’s amazing body overtakes mine. It’s real, not imagined. His concentrated efforts have a purpose. It is true that I could say
no
to the baseball star who’s now intent on going all the way again, because he believes I’m twenty and old enough, believes I’m Holly, and believes I’ve got the birth control covered. But then, it becomes close to impossible to actually say
no
when the word morphs into an ecstatic moan of
why not?
It is not true that if a girl is given a choice, she will actually make one. The obscure line between
yes
and
no
disappears like an etch-a-sketch drawing that once shaken will be gone forever.

This baseball star from Stanford is swift and fantastic. He is both adept and gifted. He’s the magician and masters the only magic I believe to be left in the world. I need his magic or I just might drift away.

I bask in the astonishing thought that I am with him.
With him.
Liquid fire burns through me. I struggle to breathe. He is steel. I am the magnet that holds him here. I am here. He’s here most definitely. He’s alive. I must be, too.

It is not true that fizzy holiday punch mixed with 100 proof vodka and champagne lessen the need for feeling something—anything at all, but the unexpected escape from grief proves to be true. I cry out and strive for control at the same time as we climax together. I’m suspended somewhere in between surprise and wonder as he moves inside me in a steady rhythm now.