Текст книги "These Battered Hands"

Автор книги: Laurel Ulen Curtis

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Goodbye.

I’d known we’d have to part ways as she got ready to head for training camp. I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk to her and see her and touch her every day, but I’d expected the send off to go differently than this.

We were wrapped in each other, and her face was tucked firmly in my throat. It felt real and right—except for the way she shook, chattering in my arms as though she couldn’t control it.

Her body strung tight to the point of breaking, she squeezed at my waist and tried to burrow closer and closer until finally, all of that tension broke.

Her body sagged and melted, but it wasn’t in a good way. She didn’t feel closer to me, connected to me, in the moment with me—she felt distant and gone and like she’d finally settled on the wrong side of a decision.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

I looked up at the unexpected words and pulled back out of her arms to see her eyes not on me, not open and honest, but on the ground. I kept mine on her and searching, willing her to lift them and look at me on her own. To come back into herself and the connection she knew we had with one another.

“Can’t keep doing what?” I asked when her eyes refused to meet mine, a lead ball taking over all of the empty space in my stomach.

I knew where she was going, but some naive part of me hoped I could stop it. That she’d listen to me and herself and realize that each word she spoke came directly out of someone else’s mouth.

“Us.”

“Us,” I repeated, rolling the word on my tongue and flicking a tone of disbelief off the tip.

“Come on, Nik,” she whispered, her tongue flashing out to lick the dry of her lips. “I’m leaving for Olympic training camp. The back and forth, the arguing, all of this…” She pointed between us. “Sleeping with my coach,” she added, her voice hushed even more. “What about all of that seems healthy for focus? People are counting on me.”

I knew people were counting on her.

I was one of them.

But my interest was completely different from everyone else’s.

Unable to hold my tongue anymore, I asked the unthinkable. Something no person had ever dared to ask an athlete right before they headed to Olympic training camp.

Was any of it worth it?

“Why are you still here?” Her muddy, moist eyes jumped to mine in question. I didn’t make her wait. “Still doing this? Because from watching you, from feeling you, I can’t figure it out.”

Her eyes jumped around furiously, trying to find her clarity, trying to find an answer she’d lost a long time ago, but potential tears never fell.

“I can’t just be done. I don’t know how I know, but it’s not over. Something is supposed to happen. Something significant.”

Her words turned desperate, and her tone reeked of pleading. “It has to happen. You don’t swim twenty-one fucking miles across the English Channel just to get in a boat fifty feet from the shore.”

Accusation bled from her eyes, and distress and desperation morphed to anger. “I can’t quit now.”

“I’m not telling you to be done.” My mind reeled, and hurt poured around my heart like fresh, wet cement. “Jesus, you think I’d expect that of you?”

“I don’t know!” she yelled, confused and feeling trapped in her skin. I could see it in the agitated frenzy of her movements and the flush in her chest. She felt like she had no way out, no way to maintain both facets of her life and everything about it killed me.

It killed me to know she couldn’t commit to something I felt so strongly about.

But mostly, it killed me to know I couldn’t have her.

“What am I supposed to think when you say things like that?” she accused.

That I loved her.

God.

That was what she was supposed to goddamn think.

The words lodged in my painfully clogged throat, and I couldn’t say it though. Not like this, not out of anger or spite or some last ditch effort to control a spiraling situation.

When I said those words to her, there would be no reproach or consequences. It would be me and her, and she’d damn well know before I said it.

“I want what you want, Cal. Not what your Dad wants or what’s expected or what you think is the only option. I want you to be fucking happy, and I don’t want it tomorrow or next week or four fucking years from today. I want it now, this moment, and I want it goddamn always.”

“Goddammit!” she yelled, pulling at the skin of her face and turning away from me. “Why are you so good at putting everything together and making sense with your words when mine get jumbled and confused and come out all wrong all the time?”

I thought back to the many zingers she’d delivered in the past and couldn’t say that I agreed. I never thought she’d had a problem yelling at me about what she felt, but maybe this was her way of telling me that’s what was happening now.

I scrubbed a hand down my face and willed myself to calm down.

“Tell me what’s going on, Cal. You just explain, and I’ll listen.” She turned back to me and her eyes searched mine. “I’ll listen,” I reiterated. “Okay?”

“I don’t want it to be over,” she whispered her heart splattered plainly across her entire face.

“Neither do I,” I agreed, coaching myself to keep my spot, my distance, and not pull her into my arms.

“I just need time.”

I expelled a heavy breath.

“Time to go to camp and concentrate on that and nothing else. I can’t think about you or anyone else.”

All I could bring myself to do was nod, wanting so badly to argue but knowing I’d do anything for her at the same time.

Even if it meant doing the one thing I had no desire to ever do.

“I can give you time,” I forced out on a whisper, feeling my jaw hardened with frustration as I said it.

My words sliced open her chest, letting the relief, air, and bloody evidence of her turmoil spill out all over the place.

I worked to calm myself, knowing that she relied on me to be the calm one, the collected one—the one who could rationalize that not right now didn’t mean not ever.

I started to form words several times, but none of them seemed like the right ones. When I finally spoke, it was to spew the only thing I could think to ask that didn’t include begging and a profession of love.

“You know the exact mileage of the English Channel swim?”

She was surprised at first, but nearly instantly settled into the escape my simple question provided. She could concentrate on what was coming without me making it even harder for her, and the knowledge of it washed her pretty face with ease.

I knew I’d done the right thing.

She waved it off. “I wrote a paper once.”

Awkward and uncomfortable we stared at one another as she rubbed the fingers of her hands together in anxiety.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, turning to leave without a touch or a hug or a kiss on the lips.

I’m not.

I couldn’t change what was happening, but I wouldn’t even if I could. Every moment with her was just a piece of the ultimate puzzle that we’d eventually get solved.

I didn’t try to stop her, knowing this wasn’t the end.

It wasn’t for her, and it wasn’t for me.

It was just a pause in time.

Just a little time—

Off.

My gymnastics, my mood, my rhythm and tempo, and the way I tumbled—all of it had turned straight to shit.

Even Beam was feeling and looking wrong, several falls a day clouding my vision and throwing me for a complete loop.

And Coach Banning, the Olympic Team Coach, had noticed. But she wasn’t the type to yell and demand, and for that I was thankful. Instead, she’d pulled me aside with a kind word—and a kick in the pants. Get doing or get gone. She wasn’t mean, but facts were facts. Girls were lined up across the country just waiting to take my spot, and if I wasn’t cutting the fucking cake, there was no reason to keep me.

Still, as nice as she was, I didn’t end my talks with her feeling uplifted at all. I felt down and out and on the last leg of survival.

I always found that to be one of the most interesting things of the Olympic system, having to go from training with someone you know and trust to a stranger for one of the most important events of your life.

It was practical, that I knew, the impossibility of every individual team member bringing a different coach to the table nearly undeniable, but I still wasn’t a fan.

The way I felt right now and the intensity with which I wanted my own coach reinforced it—I seriously wasn’t a fan.

I missed Nik on all of the expected personal levels, but I truly missed him professionally too. He had become the strongest pillar of my support system and my go-to guy for advice. He had a head for the sport—both mentally and physically—and I trusted his instincts implicitly.

And, as a result, camp as a whole was a struggle.

I was grouchy and introverted and sullen at all the wrong times.

Which basically meant all the time.

The other girls noticed, since living and training and eating and sleeping together made it hard not to, and they tried their best to help. But without the ability to explain, without the comfort of his voice, I hadn’t been able to find any kind of composure. And without those things, they hadn’t been able to find a way through my brittle fucked-up shell.

There wasn’t enough time for me to have a meltdown and do what I was supposed to do—which meant I needed to pick one.

We had a week to get to know one another, to mesh and jive in a way where our support was unconditional. We were used to competing against each other, but we’d be expected to be cohesive in the team competition and lift each other up.

But I didn’t even want to be in the gym anymore, each day feeling like nothing more than a rigorous chore rather than the absolute privilege it was.

I thought again to the country-long line of muscular, vertically challenged individuals.

A ridiculous amount of girls would have traded all of their worldly possessions to be here, and I couldn’t even find it in me to be thankful.

That kind of selfishness disgusted me even as I couldn’t stop it.

“What’s going on with you?” Jillian asked when I slammed my hand into the chalk bucket for the fourteenth time.

I hadn’t exactly been a Chatty Cathy with any of the girls, but Jillian was the first to cross that dreaded line into crazy person territory. There was only one current resident.

And that was me.

My head dropped forward and pulled at my shoulders. Eyes clenched closed tightly, I took a minute to take a deep breath so that I wouldn’t snap at her.

“Is it that obvious?” I asked her, looking up from the chalk into her twenty-one year old face and the blond hair that surrounded it. Her hair was in a messy bun on top of her head and pieces fell out from the gathering, splaying and curving down each side of her face.

A smirk pulled at her lips, skewing her features to one side and immediately cluing me in to what kind of person she was.

“Only if you’re the chalk bowl. Or watching you. Or in the same building. Or, I guess,” she shrugged, “alive.”

A smart ass. She was a total smart ass.

For the first time all week, I smiled, the sound of someone poking fun at me like music to my ears.

I laughed. “I just…have some stuff going on in my personal life.”

I wanted to talk to someone about it, but I knew I couldn’t tell her. The very last thing I could do was tell anyone.

“You have a personal life?” she scoffed as her body went back on a step as though I’d shoved her.

A startled laugh nearly turned into a chortle before I got control of it. She’d somehow hit the nail on the head without actually knowing any real information at all.

“Wow. I guess you’re right. The problem is sort of in wanting one.”

Her gray eyes narrowed, and I could practically see the wheels turn in her head as she calculated.

“Well, today’s almost over. You should probably just give up,” she suggested, ripping off the velcro of her grips and tucking them into one another. “I’ll give up with you. We can go condition instead.”

I turned to face her fully, smiling with my eyes and letting one corner of my lips pull up in solidarity.

“I don’t think, in all the speeches I’ve ever received, anyone’s ever suggested that giving up is the answer.”

She waved it off with both hands. “They obviously haven’t seen you in this state.”

I shook my head and looked to the other end of the gym where Coach Banning worked individually with one of the other girls. The decision didn’t seem possible, the fact that I was already walking a pretty thin line with the coach and committee weighing heavily on my mind, but in the end Jillian made it for me. She packed her grips away and gestured that I should do mine, and then began the walk over to the floor.

She pulled a mat over, crab walking it from side to side in order to be able to manage it herself, and slammed it down, the crack echoing and rippling through the gym until everyone looked on. She ignored them beautifully.

I needed her to teach me how to not care what people thought.

I was constantly considering what my parents and coaches and the media would think, often going beyond consideration and caving as a means for cohesion. And when you let people grow accustomed to compliance, it’s virtually impossible to escape that expectation when you finally decide to have a mind of your own.

I was learning that the hard way.

Gesturing for me to go on one side, she went on the other.

“Come on,” she demanded with a wave of her arm, sinking into an oversplit with ease.

I smiled again, a small bubble of laughter just peeking out from the opening of my lips. “You’re demanding.”

“I’m your friend.”

Nik’s words rang soundly in my head, the idea of giving in to Jillian and her friendship kind of the same as the way he told me to think about love.

Calmly, I sank down on the other side, settling into the splits both figuratively and literally, and this time I didn’t feel the need to go slow.

Because I’d been warming the muscles for a while now, and the stretch didn’t seem to burn nearly as much.

I could have a friend here. I could have Nik at home.

For the first time at camp, I felt like that might be true.

For the first time here, I didn’t feel so—

Alone.

I’d spent way more time than this in way more isolated situations.

And yet, with Callie away at camp, I was literally feeling like I’d never been on my own before. Eating meals felt like a chore and tumbling at night wasn’t even an option. Normally, that was one of the things that helped me. Helped me piece together philosophical meanings and distinguish right from wrong.

Greased the wheels of my emotional discord and made my whole system work again.

In this case, I wasn’t sure what was cause and what was effect. I felt mixed up and emotionally incomplete without Callie around to prove to me what felt right and what felt wrong. I would have used tumbling as a way to sort all of that out in the past.

But tumbling nights weren’t my thing anymore. Not since she snuck around to watch me, and certainly not since we’d made love on that very floor.

Now they were our thing.

And so it seemed the solution had become a part of the problem. A stalemate of sorts where the only key was miles and miles away at Olympic training camp.

I’d considered sending her an email or a message, desperate for some kind of contact, but in the end thought better of it.

She’d asked me for space before she left.

The least I could do was respect it.

I’d been coaching some of the younger kids while she was away, and they were fun and dedicated to the sport. Talkative and loud and not at all flirty.

Which was a very good thing.

Adaptable to change and altogether amenable to all of my instruction, they made my job easy.

I was thrilled to know that Callie was coming back tomorrow.

Besides missing her challenge in the gym, I’d just missed her period.

Somewhat manic in my excitement, I searched for something to do. Something that made me think of her but left out the whole knife twisting in the chest. Motorcycle rides and trips to the beach considered and quickly rejected, I finally ended up here.

A swirling red and white pole twisted outside, and bad fluorescent lighting buzzed and hummed overhead.

A hipster-looking guy approached the chair behind me, unfolding a piece of fabric and looking me in the eyes through the aid of the mirror.

The plain black cape ruffled and rustled roughly in front of me as he shook it out, floating onto my lap and settling like a blanket over my body.

Around my neck it tightened, the feel of hands hooking it at the back of my neck and the way they had to weed through the hair making it even more obvious what I was there to do.

“Yeah,” I confirmed when the barber asked what I was after again. “Short.”

A decision made on a whim out of boredom and loneliness, I knew the results wouldn’t go unnoticed.

And assuming that notice came from the right person, there was a definite appeal.

“Been growing it out?” he asked, finger combing through it with curiosity but keeping his opinion tucked well beneath the belt.

I looked at the long clumps of hair, the way they clung to the side and the front and did it in large numbers.

I remembered Callie admitting how stupid she thought it looked, and how she’d somehow managed to make me feel like that was a good thing.

“Not on purpose,” I admitted and justified all at once. I’d never been conscious of its appearance before, but Callie made me that way.

It wasn’t about vanity though. It was something more. It was about a combination of laziness and escape, hiding behind the hair and the curtain it provided for my protection from the outside world. I got less attention with it long and loose and stupid looking.

Cutting it off was like opening up an invitation to the wolves and admitting that I was ready to handle whatever happened as a consequence.

It was a good analogy for the way I’d handled my relationship with Callie, hiding and settling and accepting both milestones and rejections as they came.

But I wanted to be done with the rejections, even if that meant my belief and tenacity had to live inside my mind and heart temporarily.

I watched as he cut and combed, hacking at some sections with what seemed like a machete and selectively trimming at the very ends of others.

A transformation took shape, the grieving kid my parents left behind falling away to reveal the son my mom was proud to have.

All at once it felt like more than the hair, spiky and neat and unobtrusive in its positioning.

Out of my face and eyes, it cleared my vision in more ways than one. I could see what I needed and wanted, staring me in the face and demanding to be taken.

I didn’t feel inhibited by obstacles. I felt free.

Free to take what I wanted whether her universe wanted me to or not.

When Callie came home, she wouldn’t just be on her way back to the gym and her family and a coach who cared about her enough to let go.

She’d be coming home to a guy who loved her enough to hold on.

And I’d do my best not to—

Let go.

Camp finally behind me, I had the opportunity to move on—go in a direction I wanted if only for a little while.

And the direction was clear.

I was homeward bound.

An already normally welcome concept, today’s version had me damn near beside myself.

I couldn’t wait to see Nik even if the way we’d left it was awkward. I couldn’t wait to hug him even if as I was leaving I’d pretty much told him not to. And I couldn’t wait to bask in him and his affection for as long as I could get it.

I’d worried briefly that he wouldn’t forgive me or give me the opportunity to make up for my mistakes, but the truth was, that wasn’t Nik. He wasn’t the kind of guy who held grudges.

What he was, was the kind of guy who understood me inside and out, even when the things he had to accept were my misgivings and transgressions.

And I was fully committed to making it up to him. I planned to do my best to show him how I felt without holding back and questioning motives and calculating consequences at every turn.

I didn’t expect that I’d be perfect right out of the gate, but I had no doubts Nik would both recognize and appreciate an effort.

My mom had been pretty set in the notion that a month without him would be nothing. But after a little over a week, I knew with utter certainty that I disagreed.

I missed his smile and the lips that created it.

I missed his lively blue eyes and all the ways they told me what he was feeling or what he hoped to get from me.

I missed the way he poked at me and then harnessed the anger he’d created in order to use it for our passion.

And I missed the way he talked to me like everything I felt, no matter how ridiculous, wasn’t, in fact, wrong, but instead couldn’t be more right.

My eyes searched the gym, expecting to find him somewhere on the floor.

His motorcycle sat in the parking lot, shining in the sun and confirming his presence before I ever went inside.

But I didn’t see him among the sea of other people. A rainbow of leotards faded and rolled into itself, mixing and matching and swinging across the spectrum as I scanned from one side of the warehouse to the other.

Disappointment sank my shoulders momentarily until the hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

“Hey, Cal,” his smooth, rich voice whispered behind me, pulling my body toward his with the force of a flesh-sensitive magnet.

Ripples of sensation returned to my long-since numb chest and spread to my limbs, making my skin tingle and crackle with life and excitement.

A week-long trip to Olympic training camp, and the thing that sparked my mental and sensory pleasure was an everyday voice.

I turned to face it quickly, nearly tripping one foot over the other in the process.

My eyes bugged out, nearly all the way out of my head, the sight of his hair shorn to nearly an inch short surprising me enough to make me curse.

“Fuck.”

“Shhh.”

A laugh burst all the way from his chest as he urged me to quiet, the little ears and prying eyes of our meeting spot not even remotely appropriate company for a dirty mouth.

I’d gone over it in my head all week and all night and all the way home. I’d listed each thing at the sight of his bike and the swing of the front door as I’d entered.

I’d even gone over it again as I’d searched the gym for his face.

But as I stood there facing him, the list of things I’d missed was obviously one short.

“I never expected to miss your stupid hair,” I said quietly.

He grinned, the change in his face turning him into one of the most handsome guys I’d ever seen. His voice was a whisper and his being nothing but a vessel of affection. “I knew I’d miss you.”

His words touched me even as his hands didn’t, but I’d had enough.

I knew I shouldn’t and all the reasons I couldn’t, but nothing could have stopped me from wrapping my arms around his shoulders in that moment.

Not anything.

He hugged me back without reproach, squeezing and breathing me in with ease and comfort and a face devoid of regret.

But he’d never cared about the consequences of our feelings. Not for himself anyway. His concern was almost always solely for me.

“Cal,” he whispered into my hair, his arms cinching around me just a little bit tighter.

For once, I didn’t have the willpower to let go, the dream of having him and everything that meant taking over my mind and outweighing any form of structured thinking.

Nik took the lead, pulling me away from him, but keeping his hands on the upper half of my arms.

My smile was goofy—I could feel it—and the cool skin of my arms heated through the fabric of my shirt at his touch.

“How was it?” he asked, genuinely happy for me and my accomplishments. I could tell in the size of his eyes and the way they pulled me in as if on the business end of a lasso.

I shrugged my answer because that’s all I could do.

It hadn’t been bad, and it hadn’t been good. It’d been pretty damn neutral.

“I made a friend,” I offered, hoping to touch on something positive rather than dampening the conversation.

“You?” he fake-scoffed, shaking a hand out in front of him and squinting one eye. “Friendly?”

“Stop,” I told him with a playful shove. “I’m all kinds of friendly.”

He raised just one skeptical eyebrow.

“Okay, so I actually made a friend by being the direct opposite of friendly.”

His eyebrow descended to normal and then pulled in nice and tight, his confusion understandable.

“Jillian—”

“Kristone?”

I nodded. “Yeah. She’s a real pain in the ass. Kind of like you. Poking and prodding and making fun of me every chance she gets.”

He smiled and I mirrored it.

“So she was awesome?”

“Yeah,” I agreed, my smile growing with each bounce of my nod. “She reminded me of you. Less philosophical speeches though.”

“You love my speeches,” he insisted and I did.

Not necessarily at the time he was giving them, but eventually.

“Nik—” I started as a fidget took residence in his body. His hands came together and apart and his feet bounced just slightly up onto his toes. His eyes were pleading and demanding, the way they always were when he really wanted me to listen.

“Tell me we don’t have to stay here today, Cal,” he breathed out finally, looking from me to the gym floor and back again. “I just want a few hours of you and me and nothing else in between. I don’t want it to be about gymnastics or your parents or the things we want or don’t want or can't have. I just want it to be me and you.”

His hands tightened into fists as he forced out another breath. “But I understand if the answer is no, okay? I know you want time and distance until you finish this…maybe even after. I don’t know. And I know how important this is for you—”

But it wasn’t.

I’d made him feel that, even amidst the confusion and unknowns and fear and freak-outs, but the truth was, I realized in the scheme of things, a third Olympics wasn’t all that important to me at all.

It was important to my dad and my mom and all of the gymnasts who looked up to me in the world. It was important to the media because my age made me a sensationalized story, and it was important to my National teammates.

But the only part important about it to me was finishing what I started and giving it the best I had to give.

By my standards, I was allowed a few hours to myself.

And in my mind now, anything that included me, included Nik too.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I broke in, sparing him the expense of telling me everything was okay that wasn’t.

Happiness overtook his face, all of the lines and curves of its structure so much more exposed now that he’d gotten rid of the hair.

Short spikes shot up from the top, and the sides were clipped tight to the frame of his trim face.

Hammers beat out a rhythm in my chest as we turned toward the door and ran, his hand reaching out to take mine just before we reached the exit.

Somehow, the moment of caring about everyone else had passed and all that mattered was touching him, holding his hand, feeling the connection I so desperately craved.

I never looked back as we hit fresh air, the morning sun shining directly into my eyes the entire way to his motorcycle.

I curved my free hand around my eyes for protection but never slowed until we got there.

He handed me the spare helmet nearly immediately, shoving his own on his head and climbing astride the bike in what felt like record time.

I waited for his okay before climbing on behind him and settling into his back, the warm scent of his skin and laundry detergent rushing into my nose with each inhale.

He felt like heaven in my arms, and I made sure to let myself experience it. The body heat and life that pulsed through all of his visible veins and the way he crowded me back when I pushed into him.

I didn’t hold back or hold out or try to keep myself contained. Instead, I let my heart bleed all over the white of his cotton, staining it with red marks of love and lust and admiration.

Because I did admire him. Who he was, how he acted, and his consideration for others.

Nik was a great person, no matter what category of relationship he was to me.

He’d been through enough in his life, but he put other people first without question and never belittled a feeling or circumstance.

If you felt it, Nik understood it—or did his very best to get to that place.

His back pushed back into my chest and cheek as we rode out of the parking lot, so I turned my head and touched the back of his shirt with my lips.

They pressed to his body firmer and firmer as I lingered there, the decreasing speed of our drive forcing my body forward and into his.

We were only a couple of blocks from the gym when he pulled over into a parking lot and shut off the engine. I was curious, but he didn’t give me long to wonder, prompting me to climb off, pulling off my helmet and his own and slamming his lips into mine.

My breath left me in a whoosh as I sank into the feeling, a humming buzz turning my mind to drunken chaos.

His lips felt like the answers to every question I’d been asking, every emotion I’d been missing.

He filled my half-full heart up to bursting, taking his time, twisting and turning his head, and sinking deeper and deeper into my mouth and my mind.

No fervor seemed great enough as I tried to match his tongue stroke for stroke, the way his hands skirted down my body bringing the rest of me alive.

Thumbs pulled at the skin of my cheeks as he leaned into me, pulling my face toward him first, and then moving his hands to my hips to pull in my body when it didn’t automatically follow.

Breath left my lungs in pants, the supply of oxygen dwindling more and more as time without air passed.

“Nik,” I whispered as I pulled back and gulped in a fresh dose of life-sustaining nothingness.

His forehead landed on mine immediately, and his ragged breathing outdid mine.

“I missed you, Cal. More than seems right or necessary, but it’s true. I don’t know how it got this bad, but apparently I’m my very own version of Danny Zuko.”

I shook my head against his, not understanding virtually any of the words he was spewing.

My head still spun from adrenaline and lust, and I probably wouldn’t be able to make sense of anything for the next few minutes. But that didn’t stop him from attempting to explain.

“The bad boy’s long gone, and the hopelessly devoted version has taken his place.”

“I don’t think you were ever bad,” I argued, missing the point completely by focusing on the first part of his statement rather than the last. He was just as lost in me as I was in him, completely willing to leave behind the person he was in order to become the person he was when we were together. It was a humbling notion and one I wanted to recreate within myself.