Page 254 of What We Brave
I don't like quiet. Never have. Quiet is the space between the tones dropping. Quiet is the gap between the blast and the screaming. Quiet is the flat line on a monitor when you've lost them and there's nothing left to do.
But this quiet has breathing in it. Two sets of lungs. The rustle of sheets when Laine shifts. The creak of the house settling around us.
This quiet is full.
Which is great and poetic and I'm going to ruin it in three... two...
"Maybe we should set some ground rules around the dick touching. Like a tit for tat, or dick for dat kind of thing”
Silence, then, "Why are you like this?"
"I'm just saying. I don't want you to feel like it's not reciprocal. I'm a generous person, Blake."
"I'm going to suffocate you with a pillow."
"I'm extending an olive branch here —"
"You can stop talking anytime now, asshole."
Laine's giggling between us, so of course I keep going.
"Like I said, your callouses would be a problem, I'll admit that. But I'm willing to work through it."
"Reid."
Laine elbows me weakly. "Oh my God. Sleep. Now."
"I'm just trying to foster open communication in our relationship —"
"Sleep."
I grin into her hair. Blake's laughing. That low, shaking kind he does when something catches him off guard — the laugh he tries to hide because I think some part of him still believes he doesn't get to find things funny. But I can feel it through the mattress. Through Laine.
Got you.
That's my job. When the room gets heavy, when the silence starts pressing in — I find the release valve. I crack the joke. I take the heavy thing and make it light enough to carry.
It's not that I don't feel the heavy thing. I feel it right now — this warm, enormous pressure sitting in my chest like my ribs are too small for what's inside them. But I know what happens when you let that pressure build without a release. Things crack. Things break.
I've been broken. I know what it costs.
So I make the joke. And then I can sit with the feeling without it swallowing me. I'm so self-aware that I impress even myself sometimes.
Quiet settles again. The good kind. The kind I made safe.
Laine's fingers curl against my chest.
"Hey," she says softly. "Thank you. Both of you."
"For what?"
"For not giving up on us. While we figured our stuff out."
Blake's arm tightens around her. "Never."
"Never ever," I echo.
"This is what I wanted," Laine says. Her voice is thick now. "Not just the sex — though,obviously—"
