She didn't answer, only looking up at me with her lips pursed in a tiny pout. It wasn't intended as manipulative, but more than that, it wasn't intended as a gesture of concern, either. I didn't think she realized how much she cared, and if she did, she didn't want anyone else to know about it.
"Goddamn it. We're goin' to the cottage, RISD," I said, pointing at him. "I need some decent light to check out your face, and you—" I turned back to Erin. "—are shivering." I shrugged out of my suit coat and draped it over her shoulders. Leaning close, I whispered, "I can see your nipples through that dress. Stay covered, or we're not making it back to the room after this."
"And I can see your dick through those pants," she replied.
I pressed my thumb to her lips. "You will have to fight me," I said. "You might leave, but I'm not letting go of you. If that's what you want, you'll have to fight me."
Chapter Eight
Erin
Nickand I existed in a sphere that knew no time. Sleeping, eating, none of it mattered. Who needed rest when we could talk about science or music, or indulge in the wild need we had for each other? It was an unending surge of fight-or-flight, one gut-fluttering peak after another, and instead of escaping a saber-toothed tiger, we were blind to the eventuality that our weekend would end.
"I want to know about you and Shannon," he said, drawing circles on my belly.
"We don't talk anymore," I whisper-sighed. The technical term for this condition wassated. I was most wonderfully sated, and my body hummed with the contentment of being used in the best ways. Everything was loose and warm, and it made the words fall from my lips with ease. "It's complicated."
"Try me," he said.
I started to disagree, but then I realized I wanted nothing more than to drop my weapons and walk away from this fight. A small, petty part of me laughed at that, reminding me thatof courseI'd be the one to capitulate first. I might've been the stalwart here, but Shannon was the brute strength. She did everything I couldn't, and she did it better.
"I send her rocks," I said, as if that made a lick of sense. "I found the first one along the Chile-Argentina border when I was watching deformation trends at Copahue. That's a stratovolcano with a lake-filled crater, and it sprang to life about one million years ago. In the past decade, it's seen some action. Pyroclastic rock ejections, constant fumarolic activity, chilled liquid sulfur fragments, a lake that drained and then subsequently refilled. As you can see, I had my hands full."
He met my eyes, nodding as if he understood that I couldn't simply say 'a big volcano in South America' and not because I was an unapologetic geology geek. I needed the cushion of these technical words to wade into the ones that were far less objective. He pulled the blanket up, and tucked it tight around us.
"Anyway, I was hiking around the cone one morning. I wasn't looking for anything, just trying to get a feel for the pulse of it," I said. "I found a stream, one that seemed to originate from Copahue's glacial peaks. There was some rough quartz in there. I didn't really think about it when I sent it to her, it just felt like something I needed to do. Shannon used to tell me this story, about Mom bringing a little rock collection here with her when she emigrated from Ireland. That leaving home was scary, and those pieces of earth were all she needed to find her way back. When I found that quartz, it made sense to me."
"Did Shannon respond?"
"I didn't make it very easy," I said, running my fingers through the dark patch of hair on his chest. I loved that he was fuzzy, and not bald and glossy like a string bean. "No note. No return address. Sure, she could've beaten my email address out of Matt, but what would she have said? 'Hey, did you mail me a rock?'"
Nick laughed at that, and slipped his fingers through my hair. "But you continued sending them?"
"When I discovered something interesting, yeah," I said, but then, with my fingers tracing the hard lines of his chest, thought better of it. "I mean, interesting to people who don't look at rocks all day. The sparkly and shiny things, mostly. I didn't keep a schedule or go looking for something to ship back to Boston. I let the earth show me something worth sharing."
"Did it help?" Nick asked.
"Every time I wrote that address on a shipping label," I said, my cheek pressed up against Nick's shoulder, "it was like I was reminding myself that I could go home at any time."
"But…" he started, his forehead wrinkling in confusion, "you can. Right? Your family, I've known them a few years now, and while I don't know what happened with you and your sister, I do know that you're welcome home anytime. This weekend isn't the exception, lovely."
Nick's hand moved from the small of my back to my hip. He squeezed, punctuating his point.
God, look at us.
We were naked, tangled together, running on mere minutes of sleep as we fought to consummate the shit out of our fledgling marriage, and even managing to knock out some deep conversations about sibling-on-sibling violence. We deserved a medal for our efforts.
"Long story short," I said, dropping kisses on his neck between words. "I went to live with Shannon when I was sixteen."
Nick's lips brushed over my temple and he murmured, "Continue."
I opened my mouth but the words didn't come out. This wasn't a story I was accustomed to telling. It was steeped in years of hurt, resentment, and the omnipresent hint that I should've dealt with my abuse the same way my sister did.
Meet my therapist, she'd said.It will help.
Come to the gym with me. It will help.
Focus on school. It will help.
