Dreams of 18

He stops in his cutting, more like hacking, the shrubs that seem to have grown to almost my height. “Making things better.”

His voice is so low that even the wind could carry it away. But there’s no wind in this part of the world. Everything is quiet and lonely so I hear him.

I hear him and I bite my lip, giving him a smile.

Mr. Edwards though? His eyes go to my mouth for a second before he turns away almost violently and gets back to work.

Oh well.

He’s still grumpy, but at least he’s not throwing up. So for the next couple of days, we make things better. Together.

We fix things, clean things. He clears out the entire backyard, front yard. He fixes the porch steps and I dust the furniture, mop up the floors, wipe up the dirty windows.

And because I’m the stupidest person ever, I cut my finger on the one that was cracked and squeal like someone’s trying to kill me. It doesn’t even hurt that much but for some reason, I chant ow, ow, ow until he’s right next to me.

Not only that, he’s holding my hand.

Yup.

I don’t even know how he got here so fast because he was out back, standing on a ladder, pulling out ivy and things from the roof. But now, he’s here, right next to me, clutching my wrist with his long, dirty and smudged fingers, staring down at the cut on the pad of my thumb.

“What the fuck happened?” he asks with a frown.

I try to ease it, that frown, I mean. “It’s nothing. Really. I was just being a drama queen.”

He lifts his eyes, his fingers flex and move, almost caressing the delicate skin of my wrist. “You’re bleeding.”

I swallow.

I so want to look down where he’s holding my hand and see if those fingers of his are leaving dirty prints on my pale skin. God, I hope they are.

Instead, I do the appropriate thing.

I wave my other hand and tell him, “It’s…”

And then, I trail off.

Because man, he’s close to me. So close that I just got the whiff of his thick smell: musky and outdoorsy. The scent I’ve been living with for the past few days. I get a waft of it here and there. I smell it in the hallway, the living room, the kitchen, the room that I sleep in, which is right next to his.

But this is the first time that it’s so strong that I’m drowning in it.

I don’t want to come up for air.

“It’s what?” he asks when I don’t complete my sentence.

But then, I complete it and I wonder what the fuck I’m thinking.

“It hurts,” I breathe out.

He frowns and tugs on my wrist. “Come on.”

But I resist moving. “I, uh, it’s…”

I leave my thought hanging again because it doesn’t make sense. Nothing about this is making sense. I’m not supposed to act this way. I’m not supposed to lie to him when it’s not hurting at all. Or at least, not very much.

“Violet,” he warns.

I raise my hand – the one he’s holding – between us and almost whisper, “Will you make it better?”

“What?”

Oh God, I’m crazy but whatever. He’s close to me and I can’t breathe without breathing him into my lungs and he’s touching me – only the second time he’s touched my skin – and I want more.

A little bit more.

“I… I read it somewhere that when you’re bleeding from a cut and it hurts a lot, it’s always good to suck off that blood with your mouth. It stops the pain and the blood right away.”

By the end of my stupid, transparent lie, I’m all heated. I bet I’m red and the pulse at my neck is jittering so much that he can see it.

He can see everything.

He can see that I’m lying and I’m making things up. It’s in his eyes that are curious and narrowed and that are circling over my features.

Circling and circling until I’m convinced that he can decipher all my thoughts and my emotions. The entire history of them. The entire history of my crush and obsession.

“Is that what you read?” he rumbles, at last.

I glance at his lips, the ones I got to kiss for about ten seconds, ten months ago. So soft looking against the backdrop of the beard. The beard I’ve never even gotten a chance to touch. Probably never will.

That somehow helps me keep up with the charade. The fact that everything is so complicated and impossible between us. Not that I want things to be possible – I don’t have a crush on him anymore.

Right?

Right. But still.

“I did, yeah.” I nod as I stare at him, pretending to be innocent. “So, uh, will you make it better?”

“You want me to make it better?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Because it hurts.”

“It does. So much.”