Page 65 of Hold on Tight

“That was good,” he said. “No, fucking great. That was fucking great. Thank you.”

“So you got to be my first, and I got to be your first.”

“Do you think of me as your first?”

“Yeah,” she said. Quietly. All the kidding around gone out of her voice. “I do. Maybe I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Sam, but no matter what happened after, no matter how weird it was, you can’t deny we had sex.”

“I shouldn’t have denied it. In the PT’s office.”

“You were—”

“A grumpy asshole,” he finished with her.

“You’re not as grumpy now.”

“A lot has changed,” he said. And thought about it. Everything that had come to pass since he’d met her. The new legs, training for the triathlon, working toward going back into the army. How much of that would have happened if it hadn’t been for her and Sam? He’d been so stuck, so stuck in his vision of himself as broken. “You and Sam got me back on track. I’m grateful to you in so many ways.”

There was a strange expression on her face.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m grateful, too,” she said.

“What’s changed for you?”

“Wait here a sec,” she said.

She got out of bed and wrapped herself in her robe. She thumped down the stairs—he took advantage of the moment to get up and throw away the condom—and came back up with a stack of drawings in her hands. She laid the pages in his lap.

They were colored pencil and watercolor, that strange mixture of pale and vivid. Although they were soft and vague, he recognized immediately who she’d painted.

Jake and Sam. Running races, playing pinecone baseball, sitting together on the Ferris wheel, suspended above a city of murky color.

He grazed a finger across Sam’s hair. She’d painted it with so much love, each brushstroke, almost each hair, distinct. And they looked alike, man and boy.

Father and son.

“These areamazing,” he said. “You’re amazing.”

“I don’t know about that, but you got me thinking. And if I turn out not to have a job after Monday, maybe I’ll try to find something a little more about design and a little less about programming. Another way to shake off my dad’s influence.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Jake said.

“About what?”

“About shaking off your dad’s influence. You’re on the other side of the country.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not far enough,” she said. “Anyway, the point is, I’m grateful to you, too. Thank you.”

There was something in her voice now that he recognized. He became aware that she was still standing up. Wrapped tightly in her robe. “You’re trying to get rid of me again!”

“Sam asked me about sleepovers, earlier. I just—I don’t want to build expectations for him that we can’t live up to.”

“You’re kicking me out.”

“Are you mad?”

He thought about that. He’d have no right to be mad, would he? She’d been honest with him, every step of the way. As he had with her. And tonight, when he’d convinced her to let him stay, he’d known he was using sex to muscle his way in.

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