Page 49 of The Ground Beneath Our Feet
This time was different, though.
Normally when we hung out, it was just for fun. I’d jump, I’d feel the adrenaline, but I always knew I’d come back to Earth.
At the moment, though, I just wanted to leave it. I wanted to never have another shitty bastard hurt an animal ever again. I wanted to never see it.
Fucking hell.
And Jessica? God. I had the worst blue balls ever. She was all I saw when I woke up, when I went to bed at night.
I was so fucking frustrated.
She said she liked me. But I needed more. I needed someone who I could trust and who trusted me. Someone who wouldn’t tear out my heart and stomp on it.
I didn’t think she was ready for that. She was still so fragile. She’d only just stopped flinching when I touched her. The skittish look in her eyes was disappearing, but she still felt uneven. Like she wasn’t fully herself yet.
What I wouldn’t give to help her be her full self.
I squinted into the golden, late afternoon sun as I parked in the gravel parking lot. My feet crunched on the pebbles. I bent down to rough up my hands on the scratchy surface. This park had baseball fields next to the skatepark and a super cool set of industrial buildings next door. The skaters made the scrappy noise on the concrete system of jumps, ramps, and railings right next to me. I was waiting for my friends.
I ran down the grassy field, threw my hands down, swung my feet overhead, and completed a handspring, just to get out some energy. Ignoring the twitch in my knee, I leaped over a low tree branch, my back clearing it easily.
When I jumped, I felt free.
But I knew I was teasing gravity. I knew it was law—everything had to come crashing back down.
I saw the guys come up behind me, and I whistled to them to follow. We were gonna do some free running.
An hour later I stumbled into the living room, pale and sweating. Jessica took one look at me and shrieked, “What on Earth happened to you?”
She stood up, scattering Schmedley who’d been sitting on her lap, and ran over to me.
I’d taken off my shirt and wrapped it around my hand to stop the blood flow, but it was soaked through. My pant leg had torn with a cut on my knee—the one that had bothered me earlier. I limped. I had cuts and scratches. I felt foolish and weak.
“What happened?” she asked again.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
“That’s not nothing! What was it? A car accident? Mikey! Talk to me!”
I didn’t say anything, I just leaned against a side table. Elvis thumped over to me and shoved his head under my good hand.
“Come into the kitchen,” she ordered. I limped behind her while she sped ahead.
When I got into the kitchen, she said, “Let me take care of you. I can’t see your knee. You have to take off your pants.”
Before I could react, she shoved my sweatpants down, leaving me in bright blue boxer briefs.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, seeing the cut on my knee.
The muscle on my leg trembled. “You need to sit,” she said, and she brought me a kitchen chair. I hovered over it until I sunk down with a groan.
She ran over to the sink and started dampening towels.
“We need to stop the bleeding.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a first aid kit?”
