Page 17 of Zeppelin
I should have brought towels too.
I unfold the quilt. It’s twin sized at best. When I flip it over Zeppelin’s powerful shoulders, it barely covers any of him.
He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t shiver. He stands there, frozen. Is he so cold on the inside that the outside doesn’t even matter? I don’t know what’s happening, but I can see that it’s painful for him.
I don’t know how my hands fall away from the blanket to cup his face, but somehow they’re there, stroking down his frigid cheeks, caressing his drenched beard.
My gut spasms as his eyes slowly focus, like he was deep inside himself, lost even, and he’s just fully coming back.
My mom has said more than once that looking into the eyes of a person who means something to you and noting how they reflect joy, light, life, and love back at you because they see all the goodness in you even when you can’t see it in yourself, is one of the most precious blessings in life.
I stumble back, raking my hand through his beard and tugging too hard before I catch myself. I blink, sure that I didn’t mean to see that or think it. I can give Zeppelin a fraction of that because heneedsit. He’s not a bad man and someone should tell him that until he believes it.
I saw how he looked at my mom every time she gave him a tender word. He has the rough love of men all around him, but has he ever known anything soft and tender? Did he have a family? What was his life like growing up? I keep getting the feeling that it was basically just him and Jack, and if that was true, how much worse is losing him and plunging headlong into that feeling instead of icing himself off from it so he doesn’t have to feel anything at all?
My heart picks up as a violent shiver rocks me. I blame the cold. I blame it for the tingles that rip through my upper thighs and peak my nipples under the thin tank and raincoat. I blame itfor imagining me holding a soft, precious newborn, a child who will undoubtedly be the love of my life and the most precious thing in the world, and sharing that with the man right in front of me so that we both feel whole. My stomach flips and flops, spinning a little sickeningly.
If Zeppelin shut everything out until he couldn’t anymore, maybe he’s not the only one. I know that I’m constantly ignoring and shutting down how he makes me feel. It’s different than anything else anyone has ever done to me, and different can be scary.
He’s looking at me unlike anyone else.
I don’t even know how to explain it.
I just know that it’s true.
His eyes are so much like Jack’s, but Jack never studied methisintensely. Jack never offered to be by my side, and honestly, I doubt he would have considered it for a second even once he knew about the baby. I didn’t want that either. He might have offered what support he could, but he wouldn’t have come out here. He wouldn’t have helped plant a garden or sat through dinner with my family lending me silent support. He wouldn’t have spent the night, and he wouldn’t have stood out here in the pouring rain just because he needed a single breath that hurt less than the previous one. Jack would never have broken down. People say that with men, they’re often brutally honest. What you see is what you get. It’s uncomplicated. For Jack, that was mostly true.
For Zeppelin?
I’m not sure it is.
And that leaves me breathless, grasping for lines and boundaries so I can slap them up to keep myself from slipping past them. Rules will keep me at bay. They’ll keep things from getting messy and prevent me from wanting to be closer than I should be.
I release Zeppelin’s beard and step back, stuffing my hands in my pockets. I ball them into fists, shuddering at the icy clench. “Uh, morning. You do realize that you’re outside in the pouring rain and it’s freaking cold out here? Please tell me this was a planned thing and not some sleepwalking travesty.”
He rolls his shoulders back, raises his hands and slicks them through his hair, dislodging a shower of raindrops. “I’m soaked.” He blinks, bewildered.
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen his hair anything less than perfect. It’s mussed and messy, and maybe because he’s drenched, he appears younger. “You are.”
I bend to pick up the quilt he dislodged. I wrap it around his shoulders again, smoothing my hands up his arms because I can’t help myself.
“Come inside. You need a hot shower and something to eat. It’ll be a miracle if you don’t get some kind of sickness from this.”
He coughs, clearing his throat roughly, swallowing painfully. Not because he’s proving me right, but because he doesn’t know what to say. Or, because hedoesand he doesn’t know how to get it out.
“Shit was so much easier when I didn’t feel much of anything,” he spits out like the words have a bitter taste. “I don’t know, Ginny, I just couldn’t breathe in there. I’ve been thinking.Missing. Aching. I want it to stop. If it doesn’t stop, I’m going to go insane.”
I tip myself awkwardly into a hug, wrapping my arms as far as they go around his shoulders. The blanket is between us, and my raincoat, but I can feel the way his wet clothes squish down until there’s no give against hard muscle. My breasts slam against his chest and a familiar ache that I don’t want to think about surges through my thighs. My stomach flutters, my skin warms, and my breath shallows out.
“I know it must feel like that. All the thoughts, the pain, that crushed in sensation like your ribs are going to burst your lungs. You want it to go away and it just won’t. You can’t make it stop. It’s the worst.”
“Have you ever felt that?” He stands like a pillar of stone, his skin so icy that no warmth jumps the gap between us.
“Sort of. As a kid. When my grandpa died. I didn’t have fully formed emotions, though, and I had no idea what death truly was. You can only explain it so far to a child. I think you might have a lifetime of buried hurt coming to the surface. I don’t know how to deal with that other than to talk to someone you trust, or a professional. I’m not a guy, so it’s different for me, but I imagine if I had that feeling, I’d want to go punch something, or workout hard. Run until I can’t breathe. Then maybe have a heart to heart with somebody wise. Tyrant, maybe? I don’t really know anyone from the club that well, but I’ve heard Bronte say enough times that he’s the kind of man anyone would gladly follow straight to the dark.”
“Physical pain is a good substitute,” he agrees woodenly, like his jaw is so stiff and cold it isn’t working properly. “Crow owns a tattoo shop. I might go get some work done.”
Jack didn’t have many tattoos and if Zeppelin has any, they’re not on his arms, hands, or neck—the only visible places I’ve seen.
