“Maybe they’re just not as weird as I am.”
“Well, that’s probably true. But it’s also...it’s just that...I’ve never trusted anyone as much as I trust you. Not anyone, not my family or my friends or people who supposedly work for me. They’d sell me down the tabloid river for a dime, but somehow I know you wouldn’t.”
“How? How do you know?”
“Because when you care for me, I feel that caring. When you touch the back of my neck as I’m reading, it’s not just to get my attention. It’s because you want to touch me. You want me to feel that affection. When you ask how I’m feeling today, it isn’t out of fear that I’ll stop making you money, that I’ll stop being famous. It’s out of fear that one day I won’t be here anymore. That I might still decide my life isn’t worth living.” He paused and that was good. She needed a moment to catch her breath, before he continued. “And finally I know it because when I say that last thing, you look like you’d do anything to convince me it is. You’d play a million movies and have a thousand conversations about Clark Kent, just to keep going. And I want to keep going, for you.”
She knew she was crying again. She knew it was in a weird way too. She wasn’t making any sound or doing those little crying hitches. He spoke and her eyes just spontaneously gushed water. It ran down her face in big, stupid lines—so stupid she wanted to reach up and wipe it all quickly before he could say anything about it.
But she didn’t need to. He didn’t make her feel like a fool.
He did something far, far worse than that.
“I want to do thesamefor you,” he said, which sounded so lovely, it really did. He took her in his arms and stroked her hair in that exact way he’d just said. The way that moved her, deeply moved her—and it still did. Those feelings were still inside her. It was just that they came with something else now. A new and startling knowledge that almost made her take a step back.
In order to do what he’d just suggested, she would have totellhim.
He was probably waiting for her to tell himnow. She could practically see it in his eyes—a tentative waiting for all the things that troubled her, and all the ways he could heal them. Somehow, somehow the balance was shifting right in front of her. She wasn’t the one with her hand on the back of his neck anymore. She wasn’t the one who got to care for someone and look after them and make up for things that weren’t her fault.
He was trying to be that one.
She couldn’t let him be that one.
“You already do,” she said, because wasn’t that true? It wasn’t just the kisses and the caresses and the conversations that made her feel so much better. It was the sense offixingsomething. Or if not fixing, then at leasthelping. God, she hadn’t realized how much she just wanted tohelp.
It was probably a compulsion.
Dr. Sanderson would have said,You need to recognize when you’re sublimating the trauma, Enid.When you start dealing with it in damaging ways.But she no longer spoke to Dr. Sanderson, so really what did it matter? What good had all of that done her? It was better to just go on as they had, distracting each other from important things.
She even knew a good way to do it.
A really pleasant, thrilling way to do it that seemed to spark through her the second she thought of it. It wasn’t even a difficult thing, either. She was still completely primed from the night before, and even if she hadn’t been...her face was right next to his throat. All she had to do was maneuver him inside, inch by painstaking inch. And then once that was done she just turned her head a little...
“Are you kissing my neck, or is it just that your face is wet?”
“I guess I’m kind of kissing your neck.”
“That’s...you know that wasn’t the point of this hug, don’t you? I mean you...that is really...oh okay that...don’t do it like that come on Al I was trying to...”
“What were you trying to do?”
“I don’t know. There were...words in it.”
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I see.”
“And I...I really...I know what you’re doing.”
“I think I’m putting my hand under your t-shirt.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that. I’m getting that. But—”
“Do you like me doing that?”
“You know I do. I like it too much. I swear you could stroke my toe with your elbow and I’d go fucking nuts. Why do you make me so nuts?” he asked, but he clearly wasn’t expecting an answer. He was too busy turning his head so she could lick along the line of his jaw, eyes closed and everything just as blissed-out as he’d been the night before. Or almost as blissed as he’d been the night before.
He was still resisting just a little.
“It’s just that...it’s just I want to do something for you. Is that really so bad?” he asked, while she did her best to not hear. It didn’t even take a lot of work, really. Once she got to a certain point her instincts just took over, and suddenly everything was all hot and fierce like it had been the night before.
