Page 23 of 56 Days
Their eyes meet, a spark of electricity connecting the air between them, a fork of lightning in an otherwise dark sky.
“Well,” Ciara says, hoping she can get the next three words out before her entire face is aflame, betraying her, showing her for the nervous wreck she actually is. “I’m here now.”
“And I’m glad you are.”
He has said this softly, and now he reaches for her.
She lets him.
He slides his arms around her waist and pulls her close until their faces are touching, cheek to cheek. She can feel the heat of his breath, smell the beer on it. The acute intimacy of this, coming so suddenly, is disorienting, and that mixed with the wine makes her feel loose and fluid.
Less anxious. A braver version of herself.
Maybe even a different person altogether.
He presses his lips against her temple and murmurs, “I don’t want to infect you.”
She can hear—and then feel—him smile. She slides one hand around his waist until it’s resting on the small of his back. His skin feels hot beneath his shirt. She runs her other hand up his arm and across his shoulder until she is touching the skin on his neck, cupping his jaw, pulling him toward her.
“I’m willing to risk it,” she says to his lips.
By her estimation, they have now spent around ten hours together, just talking. But when his mouth finds hers, they tell each other something neither of them could possibly say: that they are two very lonely people hungry for touch, needing it,starvingfor it. Tenderness quickly turns to desperation, as if they’re both trying to cross the barrier of their own skins.
She unbuttons his shirt. His chest is covered in a blanket of fine, dark hair. She presses her palms into it and then up toward his collarbone and onto his shoulders, lifting the material from his skin. It’s when he steps back to do the rest himself that she first glimpses it: a thick cord of scar tissue, snaking nearly all the way down his side.
Seeing her looking, he angles his body to give her a view of the whole thing.
“I know,” he says. “Impressive, right?”
The silvery thread of smooth, newer skin is about half an inch wide and curves from just underneath his left shoulder blade down to his waist. Pairs of pale dots appear at neat intervals, one on either side: the skin’s memories of the staples that must have held it in place while it healed.
She traces it lightly with her fingertips. “What happened?”
“It’s not a nice story.” He sighs then, as if resigned to the telling. “I got in a fight. On a night out. When I was seventeen. Drank too much, got too brave, looked at some guy the wrong way. Looked at thewrongguy the wrong way. He waited for me outside, broke a bottle off the wall. I know I’m lucky it wasn’t worse, but...” He turns back to face her. “I feel like I paid a high price for one moment of madness. Not even madness, just stupidity. And now I have this thing on my body forever that isn’t anything to do with who I am.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It’s not yours either.”
He looks away. “I don’t know about that.”
She touches his cheek, pulling his face—and eyes—back toward her.
There are no nerves now, no overthinking.
She feels a strange peace; the voice in her head has, miraculously, gone away.
These last few days have felt like a door being opened very, very slowly. Now, finally, Ciara is ready to step through.
I can do this, she thinks.
It was easier than she’d thought it would be, but there is no solid ground on the other side.
She doesn’t care. She lifts her face to his and kisses him.
She steps over the threshold and throws herself into the fall.
