“You’re always apologizing for yourself. Hesitating. But I can’t think of a person I’d rather keep my constant, Liney.”
How could I not hesitate when this could turn sour or deadly at anymoment? What if I say the wrong thing and the freezing sting of rejection comes flowing through my veins? These lavender dreams are too precious to waste. My chances at happiness have always been cut short. Why would this be different?
“I…” I catch myself from apologizing for my apologies. “This is new. I’ve never…known someone. Not like this. I wish I had your confidence.”
Bridget gives my waist a squeeze. Can she feel my racing heart?
“Confidence is easy. It’s turning belief into action, even if it’s false to start,” she says. I can feel the smile on her lips as she kisses the back of my neck. “The real trick is letting in the fear enough to be honest without it taking over.”
This is too much. Bridget will have me saying foolish, ruinous things if she keeps up.
“It scared me at first,” she continues, settling her jaw against my shoulder. “How intensely I wanted to stay close to you. But it’s only grown as I’ve known you. Your laugh and your blush and your dreams. How you talk about crabs and jellyfish and fish I can’t pronounce. How kindly you listen. Do you know how few people listen well?”
I shake my head, then rest my cheek against hers. There’s so much I want to tell her. But it’s a terrifying prospect, one I was never raised to admit.
Instead of words, I make a weak soup for Bridget with the supplies I can scrounge. She sips at the soup to be polite, but it might as well be seawater: thin, briny, with chunks of dried fish floating on the surface.
The night drops fast in the November skies.
“That means good weather, right?” Bridget asks, pointing at the streaks of scarlet clouds.
“Yes,” I say, but all they herald to me is blood.
Bridget performs a valiant effort pretending to be content with sleeping on the chesterfield. But I’m not wasting the few days we have uninterrupted on separate sleeping arrangements.
When she slides into the covers behind me, presses her body against my back, it’s home. One arm wraps around my middle while the other rests above us, playing with my short curls. I watch a sliver of moonlight dance in and out of view with each passing cloud out the window.
It dawns on me, lying beneath silver light interrupted by red with each passing rotation of the light above, that I’ve never been loved before. Love isn’t ownership or fear. Not even the fear of losing someone. While this love is new, it’s stronger than the brittle surface of Elle’s.
My sister’s care has stretched too thin. Every new act of protection reveals cracks that show something rotting underneath.
I dream of pacing around the chesterfield. Of scratching underneath it, where the basement’s trapdoor remains untouched. Despite my not cranking the mechanism tonight, the red light continued to flash across the island until sleep overtook me. The mechanism does nothing.
My tongue is thick as honey when I try to speak.
I get out of the bed. Bridget isn’t lying behind me in the dream. It’s a relief, though I miss her presence. The less I see of her here, in the unreal, the more I can count on her being real.
A light comes through the cracks of the trapdoor. It burns brighter until my bleary eyes hurt and my heart races and I scream.
The noise carries through into the waking world, strangled at the back of my gummy throat. Bridget’s turned away from me, and her form shudders awake in surprise.
“What? Where?” she calls out, turning to hover over me, inspecting my face.
I shake my head. I can’t get the words out. My rabbit heart beats in triple time. I can’t get enough air.
“B-breathe,” I stutter. “Can’t—”
Bridget tugs the blankets away and grabs my hands. “Push into my hands,” she says, softer now. “Push to breathe out, pull to breathe in.”
I push my palms into hers, interlock our fingers, and pull her back, until my gasps catch step with her rhythm. The physical action grounds me. I slowly breathe deeper. My head breaks through the surface of fear, and then I don’t need to concentrate to breathe. I release her hands in awe.
“How did you know to do that?”
Bridget shrugs, looking almost sheepish in the dim light. “It felt like what would help.”
“I’ve never recovered that quickly.” I’m in awe of her as she settles down next to me, the danger subsided.
“What happened?”
