I don’t just hear the exhaustion in her long, drawn-out sigh, I feel it. I suppose that’s what happens when the dark crushes in.
“I was in this car crash.” I don’t say a word when she starts talking. “I was seven. They, uh…” She swallows. Who knew that could be such an emotional sound? I fight the urge to stand and take her in my arms, forcing myself instead to stay completely still, folded up on the floor, back to the wall. “Dad was driving and my mom died.”
“Shit, Jules.” I push up to standing. “I’m—”
She steps back. “It’s okay.”
“Thefuckit is.” The urge to reach out is strong.
“I just mean I’m used to it. It’s my story now. It’s who I am.”
“Right.” I know the feeling. The pure resignation of having lived through something. Having lost someone. I force my body back, give her space.
“I got trapped in the car.” The way she’s giving me the story, without much inflection, even-toned, like she’s told it over and over again, makes me want to protect that little girl with my life. Seven fucking years old. “The emergency people—they were amazing. Just great. It took them ages to get me out. You know, those big jaws of life and everything. There was this one woman—a firefighter. Bianca. She sang songs with me the whole time they worked. I was stuck upside down and she spent, you know,foreveron the other side of the car just telling stories and singing. And asking me to sing.” I hear the shrug in her voice, minimizing the experience. Making it palatable. Something she can fold up and store deep inside her. She’s grown up without a mother, for fuck’s sake, and she’s boiled it down to a casual story.
My heart—a shriveled, bloodless thing—twists upon itself like a dry sponge. The pain’s unbearable.
“You must have been terrified.”
My words feel solid in the space between us. Each one a pointless ping against her cold skin.
“I wasn’t alone, you know? Bianca was there.”
“What about your dad?”
“What about him?”
“Where was he throughout this?”
The hard huff of air she lets out tells me that it’s not her favorite subject and I let it lie.
Her sniffle—quiet though it is—makes me move toward her in a flash. I don’t need my eyes to know where her body is. Our shapes are black holes and hers draws me straight in. I wrap her in my arms and she responds by clamping herself around my middle, face pressed into my chest, giving me the fiercest hug of my life. I give it back. Take it, return it. Touching, holding. It’s so much more just now. Is it the stillness? Is it that hanging above the world like this, we’ve developed a new gravitational pull? Not towards Earth, but each other.
I can’t let her go just now.
“Thank you,” she whispers.
“There’s nothing to thank me for, love.”
“There is. You’re here.” It comes out muffled against my shirt. “I’m not alone.”
I tighten my arms and hold on to her for dear life. With a lurch that’s almost sickening, I fall, hard and fast.
It’s almost a shock, when I take stock, that the lift is still suspended, still dark and quiet, aside from the loud thumping of my heart in my chest.
She’s given me a gift just now, by opening up, showing me her tender insides, and though I can’t begin to explain why, I’m compelled to reciprocate.
“Eddie, my brother, was twenty-six.” I let the words spill into the chill air, my arms around her, our connection rock solid. “I was two years older. I worked in the City.”
“Here?”
“London. In finance. I was a right bastard.” I make an ugly noise. “An entitled little prick with no fucking clue what it meant to live and work and be…human.”
“I doubt you were that—”
“Come on, Jules. You’ve seen how rotten I can be. Trust me when I say that this is me deep in my shiny, happy phase. I was a young white prat who cared about three things: making money, playing rugby, and going down the pub with my mates. Add in frequent, random, heartless shags and that was my ideal life.” I pause, giving her a chance to judge me. “Ebenezer Scrooge is spot on, actually. That was me.”
Her body shakes with what I think is laughter before she unwinds her arms and shifts back, leaving me cold, bereft. We’re each on our own side of the lift now and, although we’re less than a step from one another, after all the physical intimacy, it feels as though we’re worlds apart.
