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And then I start to run.
It’s really more of a jog because I don’t want to burden my lungs, but it’s fast enough to get my heart-beat racing. I focus on the muscles in my legs and on controlling my inhalations and exhalations, trying to distract myself from the heavy burn that quickly settles in my chest. I count the houses on the street and then I count each truck that I run past, segmenting them in my mind by make.
The one thing that I didn’t count on was deciding where to run to, but my feet seemed to find their way there all on their own.
I have been jogging for a while with a couple of walk breaks in between, and now I’m standing outside of my mom’s soon-to-be-former home.Mysoon-to-be-former home. I can’t see any of Mitch’s changes from the outside so I walk up the driveway with the nervousness of an intruder and peer in through the window at the front. I feel a cold, sharp sensation spread across my chest, but it isn’t anything serious – it’s just because it looks different in there. It matches up to the photographs my mom had been leafing through the night that she told me that we would be moving in with Mitch. It looks nice in there, but it doesn’t look like my home.
I don’t know if it ever did really.
I walk down the driveway and I count how many steps it takes to get to the bottom of it from the porch. It’s less than I expected. Then I stop my stalling and bite the bullet. I look up at Tate’s former home.
It’s basically the mirror of my mom’s. They aren’t big houses but they have all of the important bits. They look kind of quaint and it gives me a funny feeling near my heart. Nostalgia. I can’t believe that, after three years of not seeing Tate, I am now feelingnostalgia. How can he still evoke these feelings in me? I thought that our bond had been severed.
It’s after dinnertime when I dawdle back to Mitch’s place, so the air is extra cold and it’s getting dark enough for people to switch on their Christmas lights. I mull over what Tate must have done in the time between him leaving and then re-entering my life. Obviously he lived with his mom and step-dad for a bit. Then, at some point before he could legally live on his own, he lived with his dad. Where did he go to school? Technically, once he was back with Mitch, he could have come back to his former high school with me. Why didn’t he?
I startle when I reach the curb in front of Mitch’s driveway. Tate is sat on the step in front of the door just beneath the porch,with his elbows resting atop his knees, and he’s looking down at his open palms. He’s wearing denim jeans with a biker jacket and he has a large box packed in a white grocery bag on the floor to his left. On his right sits a small bouquet of roses.
He notices me when I’m halfway up the drive. His head snaps upright, and then he picks up the bag and the flowers as he stands, his eyes never leaving mine. I don’t know what the protocol is for this moment because I don’t even know what this momentis, so I walk up the porch until I’m right next to him – my shoulder to his chest – and I fish the key out of my pocket.
“I thought you had a key,” I say as I slide my key into the lock, twist, and pull down the door handle. I open the door and step inside, and then I look back at Tate over my shoulder to silently invite him in. He has to walk in side-ways to accommodate the box bagged up in his hand and – let’s be honest – his giant shoulders.
“I didn’t want to come inside whilst you weren’t home. This place is more yours than mine,” he replies. He closes the door with a backwards push from his deltoid and then he starts following me into the kitchen. I feel weirdly wired. I’m nervous because I don’t really know what’s going to happen whilst our parents aren’t here, but I’m excited too, which makes me embarrassed for myself, because I’m not sure if I’m being strong and self-indulgent or simply weak-willed.
I also can’t help the liquid heat that swirls in my stomach when I realise that Tate didn’t deny still having access to a key. I kind of thought that Mitch might have confiscated it from him, so the knowledge that he can freely enter this house whenever he wants is alarming – but, for some sick and twisted reason, I like it.
Tate sets the bags on the table and he moves around me to flip the switches on the heating dashboard, then opening a cupboard and grabbing a vase. He walks to the sink and fills it with a quick,long spurt of water, before setting it in the centre of the table. He tears the cellophane off the roses and pours the feed sachet that falls from between the stems into the water. Once he pulls open a drawer he mass-snips the bottoms of the stems with a pair of medium-sized handheld shears, and then he places the roses in the water. He crumples the cellophane in his hands and takes it to the outside bin, not looking at me the entire time.
I swallow dryly and, in my brief reprieve from his presence, I take the opportunity to literally smell the roses. They are a dark wine red colour and the petals are still mainly tightly compacted together in puckered buds, having not yet blossomed. I feel a warm, slightly painful constriction in my chest as I think about Tate buying these for my benefit, for no other reason than the fact that roses are beautiful.
No, it’s more than that. Roses are romantic.
“Are you running again?” Tate asks as he re-enters the kitchen. He’s being suspiciously normal, which I find disturbing. He peels the bag down over the brown box and I have a sneaky feeling that whatever is inside it is there for me. That warm sensation in my chest from earlier does a resurge but I try to keep my expression neutral, so as not to transmit how shamefully deeply my body enjoys this affection. When I don’t respond Tate continues talking. “I always thought that you would join the track team but you never did the try-outs, even though you had the stamina for it. I like your outfit by the way,” he says, looking up at me from beneath long black lashes, and a dimple flashes on his cheek when he crooks me a small smile.
The micro-biomes in my tummy are flustering. It’s hell in there. A fire has broken loose and every bit of my body is partaking in running, screaming chaos. I’m wearing leggings that are no doubt sucked six inches deep in my ass, and I have unzipped my waterproof jacket to unveil my halter-neck top that is damp with sweat, making it fit snug.
I cross my arms over my chest. I am deeply at war with myself right now. It’s a cross-fire betweenindulgeandhave some pride. The irony is that whilst I’m beating myself down, for some reason it feels like Tate is the person lifting me back up.
Tate comes around to my side of the table and rests against it, spreading his legs apart and holding himself up with his palms flat on the surface behind him. If I take two steps forward I will be nestled right against the protruding muscle of his-
“Tell me what you’re thinking, River.”
I scramble for whatever was in my brain before I started thinking about his… body. I’m not going to lie, it takes a few seconds.
I think that maybe some female honesty will repulse him enough to high-tail and leave me to my sexual frustration in peace, so I say, “I don’t know how to talk to you anymore. I don’t reallywantto talk to you anymore. But when I do start talking to you, I feel like I’m talking to the old you, and that makes it easier. But then that makes itharder, because I shouldn’t want to talk to you. You became a really unforgiveable person, and I don’t know if I want to let that go, even if you were only sixteen.”
To his credit, Tate looks as though he is trying to understand what I’m saying. His brow is downturned in contemplative irritation and his shoulders look a little tenser than they were a minute ago. He pushes off the table, somehow closing the little gap between our bodies with the sheer size of himself, and he gently clasps my shoulders in hot engulfing palms. He stoops a little so that I can look at him from a more even level. He speaks hushed but hoarse, and the words scrape down my sternum.
“What the hell are you talking about, River?”
I narrow my eyes on him. It’s fascinating how things that are detrimental in one person’s life can be completely forgotten in another’s. Maybe he literally doesn’t remember. To be honest, ifhe doesn’t, I’m not going to remind him, so I shake my head to sayforget about itbut he isn’t giving up that easy.
“Seriously, River, I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you think that I ever wanted to hurt you, there’s been some misunderstanding. It fucked me up when things ended like they did. If I could go back and wipe that day out of our lives so that things could have stayed the way they were, I would. Trust me, IwouldRiver.”
His death grip on my shoulders is now crushing me into his torso. He doesn’t seem to mind my post-run sweat rubbing into his clean cotton shirt so I lean in further, and he instantly notices. His eyes hold a dark glint for one long moment and then he brushes my jacket from my shoulders, down my arms until it hits the floor. He doesn’t let his eyes flick to my body – instead, they hold onto mine the entire time.
“I want to pick up where we left off,” he finishes. His hands slide into mine and he tugs them so that my arms are wrapped around his waist. Then he moves his own back to my collarbones, slowly guiding them until they are wrapped around both sides of my neck.
“Will you strangle me if I say no?” I ask breathlessly.
