True Heroes (61 page)

              Caleb didn’t smile or flinch away or engulf himself in a blinding chauvinism; he reached around her back and gently unclasped her hands, moving them by the wrists up to his shoulders before dropping his to his side again. “Until now, I never knew there was another way.”

              Her hands dropped from his shoulders, her heated fingers forging their embedded prints through his clothes and into his tight skin, and grasped at her dress. Tiny whispers fluttered into buzzing echoes. “…do it…do it, do it, do it, do it, do it….”

              She unclasped and snatched his hands into hers, pulling them and him closer until his forearms draped over her shoulders and her arms hugged around his torso. He could feel breath again, relishing it this time as he filled his sphere with the sound of her exhale. “I found a neat little trick I can do in fields like this.”

              “What’s that?”

              Caleb went into his mind, thinking as heavily as his light head would allow, and found a string of plangent tones playing from a song he hadn’t heard in twenty years. The top of the dome wavered and quivered throughout the sides, music echoing lightly through the enclosed space; slight plucks from a mandolin swarmed behind the lower end of a piano’s keyboard and the simple rocking of violin string, all swaying back and forth, back and forth. Their bodies matched. “I feel strange.”

              “How? Are you okay?”

              She nuzzled closer to him. “I feel great but I don’t know. I’m wondering I guess. Alotta things. My birthday is in a month. I don’t wanna be older….”

              “What’s wrong with being older?”

              “When you’re older, you have to say good-bye to being younger. I never liked good-byes. They’re always emotional and then your heart starts beating and your brain starts running, which in my case is the worst thing that could happen, and it’s always permanent. You can’t take back a good-bye. Do you like them?”

              “I don’t think I’ve ever said good-bye to anyone, but they leave anyways. Ninety-nine percent of people you meet in your life you’ll never talk to or see more than once.”

              “The older you get, the more good-byes are forced on you. Maybe that’s why I don’t like the idea.”

              “For every good-bye there’s a hello.”

              “Yeah…and that moment when you know them.”

              “Exactly.”

              “What if I don’t know them?”

              “Then at least you’ve met them.”

              “What good is meeting them without knowing them?”

              “When I was younger, I always saw it as evidence that there was life out there beyond me and mine. I was always proud of that.”

              “Like how?”

              “Like I could sleep at night knowing there was something besides me out there. Like a brother in a world-wide family.”

              “Like a hero?”

              “Heh, don’t push your luck.”

              Her head came off his chest and looked up. “Why are you here?”

              “Define here.”

              The song picked up its pace slightly. “Why are you dancing in a bubble, in the dark woods, in Ohio, et cetera?”

              “I’m here because I don’t have anywhere else to be. Why are you in my arms?”

              “Becau—because I don’t know where else to be now.”

              He leaned his forehead onto hers. “This could be the last time you have nowhere else to be.”

              “So what?”

              “So I think I’m going to kiss you.”

              “…are you sure?”

              “Fairly sure, yeah. You’re too young to stop me.”

              “And you’re too old to resist.”

              His head slowly slid off hers as his hands reached around to the small of her back; her arms folded at the elbow as her eyes darted from one of his to the other. “You know you could stop me,” he whispered as the music quieted and the field dimmed.

              “Nobody would want to.”

              His energetic dome became still and clear as Power watched from the pinnacle and the calm darkness excluded them from its nightly cover.

Chapter 15

             
Caleb jolted to life. His head sat up while the rest of his body stayed down. Both eyes looked through barely opened lids, but only took in a close-up of the arm of a couch. He groaned lightly as his back flexed his upper body above the curved clothe backing. He blinked hard and wide several times, now sure that it was Alice in her bed that he saw. ‘That was in her bedroom.’

              He waited for his power to respond, but found the internal consciousness unresponsive in its slumber.

              Caleb shrugged it off and let his body fall back into the soft couch cushions. His hand moved to scratch his chest and found his shirt was off. He reopened his eyes and saw that and his pants on the floor in a pile. “What happened last night?” His whispers didn’t escape the pillow. “We…danced, came back. I thought we went to sleep. That leaves ten hours it had alone with her. Still, it would want to rub my face in the act, not hide it by moving me back to the couch.” Alice rustled around under the blankets behind him. Caleb leaned up and looked at her closely with his chin resting on the back of the couch. ‘Her shirt’s on, pants up, nothing out of place. She looks…so beautiful. What are you doing to me? I just expected to keep moving until someone finally destroyed me. You electrify me so much more than I thought was mine to have. It’s far and beyond what I deserve. What are you doing with me? What are you going to do when something screws this up? No, I won’t let anything do that. You deserve the happiest life anyone can have. As long as you think that future is with me, I won’t let anything stop us.’

              She took a big breath suddenly as her eyes popped open and looked down to him. “What are you looking at?”    

              “You. And your bed that magically floated out here.”

              “Your big-blue-princely-self brought it out here for me. I wanted to sleep in the same room as you but I didn’t think you sleeping on the floor was very nice, even if he seemed to enjoy the idea.”

              “It is asleep right now, so we won’t have to worry about its input for a while.”

              She sat up. “You don’t have a shirt on.”

              “Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. Did you and it do something with my body last night?”

              “What could he mean? Like did we use his body as a sled, or…sex? Oh, oh! No! We didn’t do that.”

              “You just talked?”

              “Like always. It was nice, ditto.”

              “Hmm, see, my pants found their way on the floor as well. Any thoughts on that?”

              She looked away from him. “I’ve got a lot of thoughts on that—where do I start? Why did he ask that? Why is he trying to get me to open up on something so personal? Not even about me but about him, but he’s asking me which means he wants to know what I think because he knows I’ll think out loud.”

              “I was joking; don’t let your brain go too crazy.”

              She looked up as he was buttoning his pants, and swiftly looked away. “Pale skin but tight, not as muscular as I expected, but still pretty strong looking.”

              “I don’t go out with my shirt off very often.”

              He slipped the crumpled shirt over his torso and waited for her to turn around again. “You should.”

              “Do you want everyone else to see me?”

              She finally turned back and looked smartly towards him. “Everyone is going to see you one way or another.”

              “Not that part of me necessarily.”

              “They can if you want them to.”

              Caleb tilted his head for a second before smiling. “This is you being jealous? Of something I haven’t done and never will do?”

              “Who’s jealous? You can do whatever you want.”

              He smiled wider and walked around to the side of the bed she wasn’t occupying. As he sat, she crossed her arms and looked at him harshly. “I want to lie down on this bed, and for you to hold my hand and forget about everyone else.”

              She didn’t budge as he lain down and pulled back the white sheets. “I’m sure there are plenty of other girls that would do more than just lay down with you. Maybe have sex like you seem so fond of doing today.”

              Caleb toned down his smile and stood back up. “All right, I’ll sit here then.”

              His bottom was half in the recliner before she screamed loudly, “Don’t sit there!”

              He shot up out of the cushion and stood with his hands up. “I’m sorry I’ll just sit...couch. I won’t be able to see you when I talk to you though.”

              “I don’t care just…yeah, sit there.” Caleb sat down heavily and tapped his fingers on the arm rest. Over a minute trolled by with his mind too aghast to say anything. “I thought you were going to talk?”

              “Did I do something wrong, or is this still you being jealous?” She began mumbling furiously while he could feel her stare piercing the back of his head. ‘This is something else. What the hell did I do? We were dancing and kissing just last night and now she’s at my throat.’ Caleb tilted his head. He turned around to look at her. “This is about the kiss isn’t it?”

              She stopped mumbling. “What do you mean?”

              “I’m not entirely sure, but you said you’d never kissed a guy before. So, you kiss me and then I’m on your couch almost naked. I assume that you’re thinking my mind was revolving around sex, but you couldn’t be further from the truth.”

              She allowed her look to soften and her arms to unfold. “I’m scared that I’m not going to give you what you want, so you’re going to go find someone else who will give it to you whenever you want it, and that made me angry at myself and I took it out on you.”

              “I promise you I don’t consider that a priority. I really didn’t know how my clothes got off. I was scared you molested me while I dreamt.” The face he made from his turned neck brought her a smile finally and her eyes ignited whatever inner flame Caleb had become the conjurer of. “I’m sorry you thought it was that way.”

              “You can’t be sorry; you didn’t do anything.”

              “The direct result of an action I took was for us to have a tiff, and I’m sorry for that.”

              She held her arms open and looked sad. “I’m more sorry.”

              Caleb crawled up the back and to her side, embracing her in a hug as she reciprocated the action. He rubbed her hair gently and twirled it between his fingers every time they reached the ends of her dark tresses, feeling something marvelous sparkle when the strands fell through his gently clasped fingers. ‘She’s mumbling into my chest. It’s so warm to the skin, to my mind, and to my soul that…she’s mumbling about me.’ “What are you thinking?”

              “That I ruined my morning plans with you.”

              He pulled her from his chest and readjusted his body, bringing their faces even with their heads lying on separate pillows. “What plans?”