Grace for Drowning

The mall was busier than I expected for a Sunday night. It took us five minutes just to buy our tickets.

"Popcorn?" I asked.

"Jesus, do you want me to explode? Or maybe you've got a secret fetish for larger girls? Trying to fatten me up?"

She had a point. We did eat an awful lot, including the spite dessert I'd insisted upon, which turned out to be far larger than anticipated, but that wasn't going to stop me.

I wrapped my arms around her, leaning in close and cupping her ass. Just the feel of it in my hands was enough to sending something primal rolling through me. Goddamn, I wanted her. "Believe me, this body is perfect just the way it is." I whispered it, but we still drew several disapproving looks. Apparently groping your date in public is frowned upon. I kept my hands where they were.

"Is that right?" she asked, her voice suddenly soft and fluttering. This was hardly first date behavior, but I think we both knew we were well past that. Besides, she was enjoying it as much as I was.

"It is. I think about your ass a lot, you know."

"That's slightly perverted of you," she replied, mock offense with a healthy dose of mischief in her tone.

"Maybe, but I can't help it. I think about how it feels, how it will look when you're bent over in front of me."

Her breath was coming faster now. I'm not sure why, but even that was a turn on. I'd always had pretty good self-control where women were concerned, but there was rarely a time where I didn't want to throw Grace over my shoulder, carry her to the nearest room with a door and fuck her senseless.

"Anyway, popcorn," I said, doing my best to act like I wasn't already rock hard. "You don't have to get any, but I haven't been to the movies in ages and I'll be damned if I'm not eating stale popcorn covered in butter out of a bucket."

"And I'll be damned if I don't steal just a little." She grinned at my expression. "What? Other people's food has no calories. It's a well-known fact."

"Is that right?"

She nodded firmly. "Yep."

"Well, you're the chef, so I'll defer to your expertise."

By the time we got inside, the theater was half full, and the stream of people didn't let up. My chest tightened. It was the restaurant on steroids. People everywhere, no matter where you sat.

I nodded toward the back corner. "Any chance you mind if we sit up here?"

It was a ridiculous request considering there were still great seats free in the middle, but she must have seen the tension in my muscles because she nodded quickly. "Of course."

"It helps to have my back to a wall," I said, by way of explanation. I felt like an idiot. A child. "That way I can see the whole room. I know it sounds nuts, but it makes a difference."

She took my wrist, pulling us to a halt. "Stop saying stuff like that. Nothing you do will make me think you're nuts, Logan. It's fine, really, I don't care where we sit. Whatever helps."

I nodded, grateful.

The room continued to fill. Our section was the worst in the house, but eventually the final stragglers had no choice but to take the seats nearby. By the time the lights dimmed and the screen came alive, we were completely hemmed in. I locked my eyes to the front and wrapped Grace's fingers in my own. I was going to be fine.

It only took a minute for me to realize that wasn't true. It was the darkness that did it. So many dangers lurk in the dark, dangers you can't see until it's too late. The room seemed to swell around me, the flickering light of the projector making ghosts of everything and everyone. A cough, a popcorn rustle, a jostling elbow; my brain struggled desperately to take it all and file it away in the right boxes, but the space was just too big, the stimuli too varied. It all bled together until it felt like the world was a single writhing entity forcing itself steadily closer and closer. I couldn't breathe. Ice ran in my veins.

I closed my eyes and tried to count to ten, but that only made things worse. I could still hear the threats, but now they were totally invisible, and they loomed there in the dark, reaching for me. A cleared throat became far off gunfire, a scraping shoe was an enemy in the brush. My mind was there now, in an earlier time. I could feel the hot desert air on my face, taste the sharp, metallic tang of adrenaline on my tongue. There was smoke on the wind, burning my nostrils. Men lay dead and dying around me, good men, friends, ripped to shreds by gunfire that they never even saw coming. Their screams were like nothing I'd ever heard before, tearing at me like shrapnel. I wanted to help them, but they were beyond help. We were all beyond help.

I reached urgently for my rifle, longing for the comforting weight of it, the fleeting peace of mind that comes with being armed, but my hands only found empty air. I was defenseless. Helpless.

It was too much.

I shot to my feet. Some distant part of me was aware of Grace talking behind me, her voice heavy with concern, but I didn't have space for that right now. My flight instincts had taken over. The people in our row recoiled as I shoved my way past, frightened by whatever horror they saw on my face. It was good that they did. I don't know what would have happened if there had been anyone in my way. At moments like that I'm not in control, my mind reverts to something animal. Someone may have wound up hurt. It had happened before.

As soon as I was in the open, I ran. I ran as though the memories were a physical thing, a snarling beast snapping at my heels. I ran until my muscles ached and my lungs burned. I needed that pain, those endorphins; they grounded me, brought me back to reality. I don't know how much time passed. I had no conscious direction, just an overpowering need to flee.

The streets grew emptier as the shops around me turned to tumbledown houses, then windswept scrubland. When I finally came to rest, I found myself at the edge of a nature reserve. Anthem Hills Park. I always gravitate toward the desert when shit hits the fan. It doesn't make much sense, since that's where most of my messed up stuff went down, but I feel at home there like no other place on Earth.

Footsteps rang out on the pavement behind me. I felt a surge of panic, but it was only Grace. Somehow she'd kept pace with me. She came to a halt a few meters away and doubled over to catch her breath.