Page 42 of Boy Blue
That was my speech, and the honest truth. I looked away, across the room and out the back window where the sun was still shining and the world was white, and everything was pure and untouched. Then I looked at Blue again, tracing the lines of his face, his slender shoulders, the hard edges of his knees beneath the sweatpants he’d yet to change out of.
I needed to make myself clear.
“When you come to remember who you are,” I said. “You surely won’t want to be associated with someone like me, a poisoned well.”
“No,” said Blue. He rose to his knees. “You’re exactly someone—” His voice broke beneath the words, and his mouth worked, eyes shining, his nose turning red. Then, on his knees, he moved between my thighs and wrapped his arms around my neck, hard. “You’reexactlythe someone.”
The heat from his body jolted through me like a blow, warming me up from the inside, holding me steady. My lungs juddered in my chest. His arms were tight. My hands reached up, not to pull him off, as I ought to have done, but to hold him there, so I could feel that sensation, his skin against mine,his breath in my ear, the steady pulse I could feel beneath my fingers, fair curls drifting across the backs of my hands.
“Blue,” I said, whispering his name. “You don’t even know me.”
“I thought you were mad at me for kissing you,” he said, sounding on the verge of tears. “That’s why you went off today.”
“Not mad. Not at you. Just confused. At myself. You’re too sweet to be with the likes of me.” I kissed his cheek and breathed into this closeness. “You’ll regret me when you remember.”
“Then I won’t remember.” His words were fierce in my ears. “And I won’t care. Not as long as I have you.”
I dipped my chin, my eyes closing, shoulders relaxing as the weight of this, this blessing, draped itself all around me. He most certainly would remember and he might regret, but until then, I had this.
“Blue,” I said. I pulled back to kiss his cheek, then pressed my cheek to his, the warmest, sweetly pink cheek in all the world. “Blue.”
When he kissed me on the mouth, arms still around my neck, the world went white, pure white, soft, like the caress of an angel’s wing. Maybe love did exist. Maybe.
CHAPTER 18
blue
The tea went cold. It went cold because Wolfe held me in his arms as though he never meant to let go, and the angsty spikes that had formed inside me as I’d watched him take off on his snowmobile in the icy cold air, spikes that had been folding in on themselves and reforming, a phalanx in my gut, was turning in on itself with plans to go away forever.
You’re exactly the someone, I’d told him. And he would be, even if my memory came back. I hoped it never did.
“What are we—” Wolfe began.
I pulled back to look at his face. To see the tasks count themselves behind his eyes because that’s who he was. He was going to earn money to buy a lace cutter, each step in the plan following along in an orderly fashion. That’s how he kept his world together. The work that kept his hands busy.
And here I was. A stranger who he’d opened his doors to. Who he’d sheltered and fed and taken care of. I cupped my hands around his face, a little cool to the touch. Watched his eyes flicker half shut, as if he were prepared to hold his breath for a long, dark time. Where maybe he imagined I was gone and he was all alone.
“I should get my special order off the snowmobile,” he said with a sharp gasp, as though he was reaching for anything he could cling to.
“Will it keep?” I asked. He was still shivering. He was chilled through. No matter what was on the snowmobile, I didn’t want him going back out into the cold, not yet.
“Yes.” His eyes flickered again. “It’s just stuff.”
I didn’t care that he’d been to jail, though I didn’t imagine there were words that could convey this that he would believe. He’d been so despondent telling me his truths. As if the wound of my going were already fresh.
“Then let it keep.” I felt wiser than him in that moment. Knowing everything could wait. I wanted it to wait. And I wanted him warm. I stood up and pulled him to his feet. He was careful with me, looming over me by half a foot, even in his socked feet. Shoulders wider. Stance heavier. Thighs thicker.
As I looked up at him, his eyes softened.
“Come on,” I said, and led him the short distance to his bedroom, where the bedclothes were still rumpled, the blinds half drawn, slivers of sunlight laced with slats of darkness.
“We should talk,” he said, pulling back, resisting.
“We did talk,” I said, tugging.
We stood in the open doorway of the bedroom, the air still, musty with sleep.
“I know everything about you,” I said. “Everything. Everything important.”
