Page 89 of The Two of Us

Her eyes are guarded, but she doesn’t say no.

“Why Jason?”

She takes her time answering. She kicks at a lone branch on the stair and blows out a breath. “Matty had colic as a baby.”

I rear back my head. “Really?”

“Right?” She smiles. “You’d never guess it by the way he is now.” She swallows. “But he would cry and cry for hours. Like he was put on this very earth for the sole purpose of crying. Like he already knew a little something about the cruel world he’d been brought into and he was mad as hell about it. And it scared me because I thought that meant he’d be like me. That he’d feel too much, too far, too wide and way too often.”

I nod, encouraging her to continue.

“The world… the world has always felt a bit too heavy for me. I see things or I hear things and I can’t forget about them like other people can. I think I recognized that same thing in you the first time I saw you. It was in your eyes.”

“What was?”

Her smile is sad. “Everything.”

My throat tightens and something soft covers my knuckles. Anya’s holding my hand. And I’m letting her.

“Anyway, when our mom died… the world got heavier. Suffocating. It weighed on me. But when I had Matty, it was like I saw the world differently. I got clean. I saw the good along with the bad. The joy along with the suffering. It stayed like that for a while but then I started to feel it again. The heaviness. It was so loud. And when I met Jason, he said he could help me find the quiet. It lived at the bottom of a glass pipe, but yeah… it was quiet.”

I squeeze her hand and she squeezes mine back.

“I’m an addict, Mara. I know that. I just got a little lost in the quiet I craved so desperately. But the night of the fire…” She shivers. “It was quiet and there were flames screaming all around us. I need to listen to the noise again. I need to feel the heavy. For Matty. I can’t run from it forever.”

I blow out a breath. “I get it.”

“I know you do.”

We chat a little longer before I leave. Anya’s preparing to leave for a rehab program in a few days and I offer to drive Matty to come visit when Ambrose and Laura can’t if I’m still in Speck Lake. We aren’t friends. Not even close. But there’s a unique connection that forms when you love the same people.

For Matty’s sake, I hope Anya will get better.

***

I’ve been standing in front of Ambrose’s door for five whole minutes contemplating whether to knock or not. Anya’s words bounce around my mind. I can’t run forever. It feels like someone’s sucker punched me in the gut. Anya and I share a common thread. We run. We’re runners. Because we’re afraid of how heavy the weight of our emotions can be. How all-consuming. I let my mom convince me that those emotions were too much. That something was wrong with me–that I just needed to “toughen up.”

But for the first time in my life, I don’t want to toughen up. I want to fall apart and I want to do that in the arms of the person I feel safest with.

Ambrose.

It’s this realization that causes me to pound on his door three times.

When Ambrose answers in nothing but a pair of sweatpants riding low on his hips, my blood sizzles and I have to remind myself why I’m here. His eyes are tired, but when they meet mine they spark to life, waiting for me to speak.

“Can I come in?”

He moves just enough to create a small opening for me to slip through. He stares down at me, eyelids heavy and I can’t help my audible intake of breath as my body grazes his. When you’re ready to admit what it is you want, you come find me.

I stalk past the den, past any part of the house that’s occupied by furniture Ambrose and I could become a tangled mess on. I need to keep my mind clear when I speak to him. I can’t be distracted thinking about the things he could do to me on the couches and chairs around us. The things I want him to do.

I contemplate which room would be a neutral location and make a beeline toward the kitchen. Kitchens aren’t sexy.

I prop my hip against the marble counter and Ambrose saunters in slowly, staring at me like I’m not wearing a ratty old Tommy Bahama T-shirt with a coffee stain on it. Something about him is different. Predatory. Like he no longer cares to hide the fact that he wants me. Under the lights of the kitchen, I can see the planes of his chest more clearly. There isn’t any part of me that has inherited my mom’s artistic skills, but in this moment I’d kill to paint the man in front of me.

Ambrose lifts his arms, clenching the doorframe above his head and his eyes darken when he says, “Know what you want yet?”

His voice has an edge to it and I’m reminded of when we were younger. Except this time, I want to cut myself on his edge instead of run away from it.

---