Page 75 of Between the Lines

I sigh, tuck my arm beneath her, and tug her to me.

Holding Claire only furthers my hypothesis that our hearts are meant to be one. The beat of hers against mine seems to stutter until they thump in tandem. The way she fits to me, molds herself there until there is no longer she or I, butus, awakens something in me with a click I can’t quite understand.

We lay in the quiet. Her heart beating against mine. Her breath warming the space between us. The need that dominates them all is to hold her tightly and never let her go.

“I know you just finished it…” she says, her index finger tracing aimless pictures on my ribcage. “…but would you like me to read it out loud to you?”

My breath stutters. My heart, that has been in pieces since I was seventeen years old, somehow reforms with that one question.

“I think I would really love that.”

The copy remains at my bedside, tucked safely into the drawer at all times. It is well loved, torn and tattered, but I refuse to replace it. I hand my most prized possession to Claire. She finds the inscription inside the front cover, and traces her fingers over it:

All we have to decide in this life is what to do with the time that is given to us. Make the most of what you’ve been given, my strong boy.

Her breath catches, and in turn, she leans up and catches me. Right there in the palm of her hand. Right there, in the wells of her eyes, that I know without question lead straight to her heart.

And as,When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of the Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating is eleventy-first birthday…pours from her mouth like silk, I know that my heart no longer belongs to me.

thirty-one

claire

I should have knownthere would be consequences. Life runs on a yin and yang system. The good is always eclipsed by the bad’s shadow; sometimes I wish I could be like Peter Pan and figure out how to get rid of mine.

I don’t swallow down the fear when I awake in Nathan’s bed. Instead, I ignore the distant vibrating that I know comes from the cell phone in my leggings pocket, the one that’s somewhere on the floor on the other side of his bedroom. I discarded my pants in the middle of the night because Nathan Harding is a hot box.

I was his anchor throughout the night. I read to him on and off, in the pockets of awakeness as he dozed and startled. Sometimes, he’d ask me to pick up where we left off. Others, he simply burrowed into the space beneath my breasts, and let me hold him and run my fingers through his hair. I can’t really say I slept much in the in between. I was too busy counting his breaths. Memorizing the slope of his face without his glasses, which I’d taken off after the second time he’d fallen asleep in my arms.

His hair is a disheveled mess now in the golden morning light streaming in through the uncovered accent window. His face is buried against my stomach, his warm breath tickling against thepatch of skin above my thong where my T-shirt has ridden up. I take him in from this angle—using me as his safe space. He looks so young. So uninhibited by the horrors of a world that only serves to bog him down with death and diagnosis. The weight of it has no place here.

I trace my fingertips through his unruly mane, marveling at the softness. This time though, he stirs. His breath hitches, and his nose presses into my bare skin, and it takes everything in me to stifle a moan.

He starts to maneuver his body into being awake, big stretches while still holding onto me that manage to cover the entirety of this king sized bed in the process. I stifle a giggle. I can’t help it. This prim and proper man awakens like a toddler. Right down to the grunts.

“Mmm. Stop laughing at me.”

He says this straight into the exposed strip of skin, and my giggle catches in my throat.

“I can’t help it,” I say to the top of his head, still running my fingers over his hair, stealing moments for when they inevitably run out. “You’re not a morning person.”

“No.”

“Was that apout?” My whispered question comes out as a chuckle when his lips frown against my skin.

“Yes.”

In the midst of all this, while his eyes are still glued shut in defiance, Nathan worms both of his strong arms around me and squeezes tightly. I don’t hold back my little groan of encouragement. In fact, I wiggle my leg between his, wondering for a moment if I can morph us into one being. In doing so, I notice how hard he is, right up against the inside of my thigh.

His arms around me shift so that his hand can mold around my butt, squeezing in those slow circles like he’s building up the anticipation to?—

“You aren’t wearing pants.”

It comes out breathy, raspy, like he’s just swallowed a glass of shards. My body betrays me, scooting into his touch as his fingertips trace the outline of my panties right up along the band of my thong as it disappears from my center up between my cheeks.

“I took them off while you were sleeping,” I pant. “You’re a hot box, but I didn’t want to stop touching you. It was my best option.”

Nathan lets out a noise that’s part moan, part groan, and all desperation, and tucks his nose beneath my shirt as he pushes it upward.

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