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“Whatever insurance gives me will have to go right back to my mom. She insisted on loaning me the down payment. I couldn’t say no to that or the shrink,” Ali mumbled, shaking her head.
Cornell paused to let Mowgli sniff at a tree. “What do you mean?”
Ali shrugged. “Therapy. I went. I don’t know how I feel about it. I think I hate it.” She kicked a small rock. “Not sure I see the point. All she really said was I need to focus on grounding myself.”
“What do you mean?”
Kicking a small pebble, Ali sighed. “Like teaching myself to stay in the moment. Three things I see, two things I hear, one thing I feel, or something like that. It’s just a lot of talking. A lot.”
Cornell didn’t know what to say. This must be so fucking hard for her, he thought. You can talk to me is what he wanted to tell Ali. Please, talk to me. It wasn’t that Cornell wanted to know what happened, even though on some level, he needed to. But what he wanted more than that was to help Ali. How can I help her if she won’t talk to me?
“See how you feel,” he told her.
Ali sighed as they continued. “I feel good.” She tugged at his shirt to stop him again. “That’s basically what she said. Good memories. Focus on them. Make them. But I don’t just feel good with you. I feel better.”
What Cornell felt as Ali wrapped her arms around his waist was out of sorts.
God, I want to kiss you and never stop, he thought, imagining the way her full lashes fluttered shut as his face leaned in. He wanted to hear the sound of the last breath that escaped her mouth before he stole the other ones and feel the morph of Ali’s mouth into a smile against his own, the way she always closed out a kiss.
Cornell didn’t feel right doing it. So he pressed his lips to her forehead. There was the smallest jut of her head backward bringing an immediate internal cringe as he pulled back. Even that’s too soon.
“I’m so happy you’re home,” he said, taking her hand.
They walked around the neighborhood in silence before heading home. “Don’t,” Cornell told Ali as she approached the kitchen sink. “I’ll take care of it.”
Ali turned and nodded. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Unclipping Mowgli’s leash, he heard the bathroom door shut and the shower start.
“I don’t know, man,” he said to Mowgli as he turned to the sink.
All Cornell wanted was to crawl into bed beside Ali and pull her to him, try to absorb anything making her uneasy. Be her rock, right? Isn’t that what Bobbi said? I’ll be her fucking mountain.
When he finished the dishes and went to their room, Ali had already changed, right into his clothes, and Cornell had to stop himself from pausing at the sight. More normal, he thought.
She yawned, plugging her phone into the charger on the nightstand. It was nearly ten.
“Tired?” he asked from the bathroom as he brushed his teeth.
“Exhausted. I got up early.”
Cornell rinsed his mouth with cool water. “We’re early tomorrow. I’ll try not to wake you up.” He glanced over his shoulder, watching Ali as she climbed into bed and under the covers. “I’ll come back for you after practice.”
Ali fluffed a pillow, lying on it facing the bathroom. “I’ll drive myself.”
“You sure?” Cornell asked, drying his hands and face on a towel. He pulled off his clothes, tossing them into the hamper. “I can—”
“Yes. I’ll drive myself,” Ali repeated.
Cornell nodded, flipping the light switch off in the bathroom, leaving the bedroom pitch black.
Ali cleared her throat. “Could you leave that on and just close the door a little?” she asked, the tinge of nervousness to her voice striking Cornell hard.
His hand flew back to the switch before he shut the door to the bathroom halfway. In the dim light, Cornell could see relief paint Ali’s face. My girl’s afraid of the dark, he frowned before asking, “Is that okay?”
She nodded and closed her eyes, lying back down against the pillows. Cornell glanced around the room, torn. His whole body ached to hold Ali, just as he might any other night. Before, he would crawl into bed, meeting her in the middle. He would drape an arm across her, wind his legs with hers as she slipped an arm around his waist, rubbing his back until they drifted off. Ali’s soft touch and melodic breath was a lullaby Cornell never knew a guy in his thirties would need.
“Lie with me,” Ali whispered sleepily.
Cornell ran a hand over his face and climbed in beside her on his side, facing her. She didn’t make any move closer to him, and he stopped inching toward the middle, leaving a small amount of space between.
With the light glowing out of the bathroom behind him, Cornell studied Ali closely, trying to focus on the fact that she looked relaxed and not on edge as she drifted off beside him. He tried not to harp on the fact that her arm never went to his back or that her legs never found his. But most of all, Cornell tried to ignore the way she lay with her arms folded up, her right hand wrapped around her left forearm fairly tightly for someone who was falling asleep.
Moving a piece of damp hair from her face, Cornell swallowed heavily. What he wanted to ignore the most—what he needed to but couldn’t—was that maybe Ali would be holding on to a piece of Graham for longer than either of them could ever dream of.
