Page 23 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
“When you say it like that, it sounds pretty lame.” There’s a pause as he stretches his legs out on the bed. “Give me a chance and I’ll come up with something better.”
I lean against him and tip my head onto his shoulder. He’s firmer than I expected, and he smells like warm bedsheets and Ivory soap. He loops his arm around me, and it feels so good. So normal.
But, as easy as Rick is making it to lose myself in the fantasy, I’m not normal.
“Have you ever thought about what it’d feel like to die?”
“Not really.” I feel his warm breath in my hair as he says it.
“I think about it all the time. I think about it, and I dream about it.” My insides tighten with the image of the wreckage. “There were a few weeks, right after, that I wished I had.”
His arm squeezes my shoulders. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Chris did.” My voice catches on his name and a tear courses down my cheek.
Rick pulls me tighter against him and holds me. I feel his chest hitch, and I realize he’s working to hold back his own tears.
“Why are you here?”
I feel him stiffen a little as he clears his throat. “I figured that was sort of obvious.”
“You don’t have to stay . . . now that you know. You don’t have to pretend.”
He holds up his free hand. “No pretending. I would never insult you like that.”
“Sorry I lied to you. I should have told you. I just . . . I guess I needed one normal thing.”
He chuckles. “We were never really normal, V. I mean, don’t relationships usually end when someone gets deployed? The ‘dear John’ thing?”
I shrug. “Yeah, I guess.”
“So, us and normal really don’t belong in the same sentence,” he says into my hair.
His warm breath on my scalp makes me shudder. “There have to be tons of other girls dying to go out with you. I still don’t get us.”
He shrugs against my shoulder. “Sometimes it just clicks.”
“Clicks.” He’s right. We just clicked, right from the very beginning.
“A concert,” he says, lifting his head.
“What?”
“That’s where I’m taking you.”
Pressure builds in my chest at the thought of being swept away in a crush of bodies, but before I can open my mouth to protest, he adds, “My aunt plays in the symphony. She’s been on me about being a crappy nephew and not coming to see her. She’d totally get us tickets.”
“When?”
“She said something about next week . . . or maybe it was this week. Fuck, I hope we didn’t miss it.”
“What does she play?”
“Um . . .” Silence.
“Wow. You really are a crappy nephew.”
“Yeah . . . well. We’ll find out together.”
