‘You still wanted to escape him, though?’
His question shifts the focus back to our conversation, when I was about to wrap it up. ‘It’s more complex than that.’
‘How so?’
I hear it. The silence. The hospital room filled with equipment, the beeping, the gentle throbbing of pulse monitors. The quiet nothingness of all the staff as the baby was pulled from my body, not breathing.
‘I had some personal stuff. It was easier to move on from it when I wasn’t in town.’
‘Your boyfriend?’
‘He was part of it, yes.’ I can’t smile dismissively like I want to. My memories are making me heavy. ‘It’s not something I like to discuss.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s difficult and sad.’
‘Try.’
I sip my coffee, my eyes shifting to the view. The day is turning grey, the sky thick and leaden. Maybe keeping our baby a secret is part of the problem. Perhaps I would have recovered from that grief more quickly if I’d been open to discussing it.
‘I had a baby.’ I fix him with a stare that conceals the trauma of that. ‘A stillbirth.’
I swallow. The lump in my throat won’t shift. Great. I’m going to cry. I dig my nails into my palms beneath the table, trying to hold the emotions at bay.
‘It was the hardest thing I ever went through. I felt alone and bereft and like an abject failure, and there was no one I could talk to, no one who’d understand, and I just wanted—needed—to escape. Every moment I spent in Sundown Creek made me feel like I was drowning. We had a funeral service, a small one, and spread his ashes over the creek bed.’ Salty tears fill my eyes. ‘I left town the next day.’
‘How old were you?’
‘I’d just turned nineteen.’
He’s silent. I feel the weight of my confession, I feel his response, even when he doesn’t frame one. After a moment he stands, putting a hand out to mine, silently urging me to echo his movement and stand. I do, his touch a comfort no words could offer.
‘I’m sorry.’ I don’t knock the platitude back. I need it. He drops his mouth, kissing me slowly, and it’s only after a moment I realise I can taste salt in my mouth; I’m crying, unchecked, my tears joining with our kisses. His arms wrap around my middle and lift me, his lips never leaving mine as he carries me, body to body, through the penthouse and into his bedroom.
I’m still wearing his shirt. He pushes it up, over my head, without bothering to undo the buttons. It’s not necessary. The shirt is too big. It comes away easily. I’m naked beneath. And as if he understands my need for obliteration he kneels before me, his mouth seeking my sex, his tongue tormenting me as his hands hold my hips, keeping me where I am, so the warmth and power of pleasure begin to drum through me, rollin
g like waves I can’t resist, dragging me away from the pain of my memories into an ocean that is clear and forgiving, an ocean where there’s no blame, no hurt.
I hold his shoulders, my orgasm coming gently at first, tingling the tips of my toes and the edges of my fingers, before tearing me apart with its blinding intensity. I hold onto him as though he’s an anchor of sorts, and perhaps he is, or maybe it’s this gift of pleasure that’s tethering me to an earthly certainty I didn’t even know I needed.
My breathing is tortured, my body spent in the same way as when I ran a half-marathon a few years ago. He stands slowly, tangling his fingers in mine, his stare direct. And he does that, simply looks at me, for a long time, his jaw clenched so a muscle throbs at its base and I stare right back at him, as if hypnotised or something.
I once heard that intense pain understands intense pain, that there’s something innately bonding about it, and I wonder, briefly, if there is a shared experience, something between us that resonates on a level we can’t understand, as though my consciousness and his consciousness are communicating beyond our spoken words.
How else can I explain this? I feel like he gets it, gets me, and I haven’t felt that in such a long time.
‘I want to fuck you.’
The words are incongruous if taken at face value, but the tone in his voice fells me at my knees because it’s hoarse and deep, like he’s hurting because I’m hurting. I stare at him, my stomach in knots, my mind spinning, as though I’m about to step off the edge of a cliff.
‘Please.’ Like he needs this as much as I do. I bite down on my lip and I nod, surrendering to this heady rush, knowing it will obliterate the pain of my confession, knowing it will push my memories back into the recesses of my mind.
* * *
I have no words for her, afterwards. I can’t say anything, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it, that the feelings aren’t there, demanding I let them in, just this once. I stroke my fingers over her naked back, appreciating the softness of her skin, the indent at the base of her spine before her body swells to form her buttocks.
I am filled with a sense of guilt. Not because her grief is my fault in any way, but because I’ve been so wrapped up in my own shit storm of a life that I failed to realise she was navigating her own sadness.