All Broke Down (Rusk University 2)

“I told you I would shut you up the next time you apologized.”

He slides his hand around to cup my jaw and kisses me again. Once. Twice. And a third time. Hard. Then soft. Just my bottom lip. The corner of my mouth. His lips play over mine like he’s trying to uncover every possible way to kiss me and check them off the list one by one. I open my mouth immediately when his tongue flicks out, but I taste him for only a second before he pulls away, wincing. He falls back against his pillow, and I notice for the first time that one of his cold packs has fallen on the floor, and the other is lost somewhere in the couch.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurting?”

“Because then I would have had to stop.”

My heart is a spinning top in my chest, and now that he’s not kissing me and things are slowing down, I can feel myself about to topple out of control. I shake my head and get the ice packs back where they belong.

Now I just need to get everything else back where it belongs, too.

Except I’m starting to think that the idea of “belonging” anywhere is false. We go through our whole lives thinking that we belong in one place and not in another. We think certain ideas and actions have to be relegated to the tiny little boxes we place them in. What if we just react instead? What if we take whatever the world gives us and instead of focusing on what it isn’t, we enjoy what it is?

I lean back against the couch and don’t think as I begin to talk. I tell him about my journalism major, and how social media is changing the way news happens, changing the way the world interacts and reacts. He tells me about football, and how it’s been the only thing he’s wanted since a coach plucked him out of a standard PE class his freshman year. He pulls the rubber band from my hair, and I lay my head back as he spreads the long strands out over his chest. He combs his fingers through the waves carefully while he tells me about going to the state championship with his high school team and then losing.

“Before that . . . the world felt so damn small. Like a pair of shoes that didn’t fit right. We lost and there were all these guys on my team, some I liked and some I didn’t, and they were all crying and falling to their knees, and I was just standing there staring at the stadium around us, and all the people that came out to see these two tiny schools duke it out. And it didn’t feel like I lost. Instead it was like I kicked open some door, and crawled out of my cage, and could stand up straight for the first time in my life.”

“So that’s how you knew I was suffocating. That had been you, too.”

He picks up a lock of hair and twists it, and I shiver again.

“I think we were suffocating in different ways, but yeah. I guess that was it.”

His hand in my hair has me so relaxed that I could fall asleep right there beside him on the floor. I close my eyes and turn my head to the side to rest against the cushion. Quietly, I ask, “You don’t feel that way anymore?”

“I didn’t. But lately the world is starting to feel pretty f**king small again.”

“So kick open another door.”

He continues playing with my hair with his left hand, but his right slips down to drag a knuckle over my cheek.

“I’m trying.”

I WAKE UP when his roommates come home, but Silas sleeps right through it. I take them both in the kitchen to explain what happened.

“Hold up,” Torres says. “Silas is doing community service? Is this because of the whole arrest thing? Or the fight with Keyon? Is Coach making him do it?”

“No. He’s doing it because he’s trying to get better.”

The other roommate, Isaiah, is more serious, more intimidating. “Better from what?”

“I don’t know. Something has him all stressed-out, though. And now he’s hurt on top of that, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t add to that.”

Torres cracks the knuckles of one hand against his other palm. “We got this. Silas is our boy. You don’t need to worry about us, Captain Planet.”

I roll my eyes, and go back out to find my keys where I left them on the coffee table. Silas looks younger when he’s asleep. I mean, he’s still beautiful and powerful, but that dangerous quality that had both repelled and attracted me from the very beginning is missing.

Or maybe it’s just because I’m beginning to understand him. When I look at him now I don’t see the sexy stranger with bloodied knuckles. I just see Silas.

I remove the cold packs from his knees that have melted and gone soft. I take them back into the kitchen and return them to the freezer. Torres is gone, but Isaiah is there watching me.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks.

“Because he’s my friend.”

That’s what I say. I’m nowhere naive enough to believe things are as simple as that.

“Silas doesn’t know how to be friends with girls. Either he’ll break your heart or you’ll break his.”

I don’t have an answer to that because it’s the fear in the back of my mind that I haven’t allowed myself to voice. But I’m not sure that’s a good enough reason to stay away anymore. If I let all my fears become locked doors, then it will be exactly as Silas said. My life will get smaller and smaller until nothing else fits except me and the empty space from all the things I’ve let pass me by.

I’m figuring out what I want by trial and error, and maybe that’s not the best way, but it’s all I’ve got. All I know is that I need to be my own person, someone shaped by my desire, not fear of disappointing the people who are supposed to love me.

I just have to stay realistic, and I won’t get hurt. From the very beginning, Silas has told me to keep things simple. That’s the only reason I can do any of this. Because as long as we’re just having fun, I’ve not made any irreversible decisions.

I’m just . . . exploring. Whatever is happening between Silas and me is a stepping-stone between the old me and the new me I’m working to find. It’s meant to be temporary. As long as I remember that, we’ll be fine.

I’ll be fine.

I say goodbye to Torres and Brookes, and then make my way home still thinking about the things that Silas and I talked about. He’s different than I expected him to be. So different. His tidy room. The gentle way he touched my hair. The hurt and the hope in his voice as he talked about football.

Silas might be less refined than Henry. Less traditional. Less open.