Swap Out (10 page)

I find her right hand and sweep my thumb over her palm, my words barely above a whisper. “Things change, fates change. Scars will heal, Zoe, no matter how bad the wound. You just have to want it.”

“And yours? How long did they take to heal?”

I exhale. “A while. But I had help.”

“I didn’t,” she says and I turn my head, my cheek resting on her shoulder so I can watch her face.

“You could.”

“No.”

I chew the inside of my lip, swallowing down the quick and single cutting word. If I survived the ruthless, torturous training during my Indoctrination Course, I can survive her stubbornness, her insecurity and raw fear. I’ve been through worse tests of patience, of resolve. Guys were quitting two or three times a day and screaming their defeat with the squeeze of an air horn, and no matter how bad it got, when my body was crumpling and I knew so much pain from exhaustion it damn near sent me crazy, I wouldn’t give up. 120 of us started indoc, and ten weeks later there were twelve of us left.

Twelve.

Hoo-Yah.

It’s been forever since I’ve said it and for a long time, it was practically the only word I knew.

Yes.

I’m here.

I hear you.

You can’t break me.

And I say it now, but she doesn’t hear me because it’s yelled from a place where words don’t have sounds, only shadows of iron tight promises.

“Well, you may not need any help, but I sure do. Ready to get dirty?” I say quietly, seeing the corner of her mouth turn up and mine follows suit. “Get your head outta the gutter,” I tease more lightly, and her muscles finally relax against mine. I rework our arms and pillow her fingertips between mine, guiding her hands to pick up one half of the skirt steak, then dip it into the egg.

“Oh, that’s gross,” she whines with a chuckle, squirming a little when we lay it in the flour, sprinkling it and turning it over, making sure all sides are coated and a globbed mess covering our fingertips.

“And now, we do it again. Because what good is one round when you can have two,” I say huskily and she shivers, goosebumps appearing on the skin of her neck. We recoat the steak in more egg and then more flour, and when I flick a speck of flour into the oil it sizzles just like I want it to. “Let me do this part,” I tell her and she lets go, and carefully, I slide the steak into the pan; Zoe jumping with a squeak and a giggle when it splatters a little.

I lean over to check her face, seeing her smiling bright and beautifully and I’m quickly becoming a total sucker for it.

“Didn’t get you, did it?”

She shakes her head, and I let my smile show for only a second before I shut it down.

“Then get back to work, slacker, we’ve got more food to cook.”

“Oh my God, you’re such a bully!”

“At least I’m not a Republican,” I tell her, and she gasps.

*              *              *

“I think I’m gonna explode I’m so full.” Zoe sighs dramatically and leans back against my couch cushions, and I chuckle and roll my eyes before stealing one of her few green beans still hanging around and popping it in my mouth.

Halfway through peeling potatoes she had an unconquerable urge for green beans, one I
did
conquer by finding a can of the desired vegetable in my pantry. Thank Christ I went shopping earlier this week and stocked up on stuff. We did still make the potatoes, and gravy, and despite her tweaked palate everything went over fairly well. Or at least for about two minutes while she refused to say anything except how good it was, blah blah blah, lie lie lie, then I finally got the truth out of her: everything is still bland.

It’s not like I’m offended, because I’m not. Dinner was damn good for those of us with a normal sense of taste. I’m just irritated I’m missing clues to discovering the mystery thing she’s obviously craving. I know she’s at her wits’ end about it too, because she rubs her fingers together, her nose wrinkled in confusion and frustration because she can’t find the word for what she wants. Whatever, I’ll figure it out eventually and at least she ate without needing to make a sudden run to the bathroom to throw it up. I consider that a raging success.

“I…don’t want to wash dishes,” I say and collapse back on the couch beside her. “I say we throw the plates and silverware away and burn the kitchen down and call it square.”

She holds out her fist, and I bump it with my own. And of course her next action is a large yawn followed by the need to tuck her feet up, leaning her head against the armrest and burrowing down on her side.

“And on that train of thought,” she starts, then yawns again, “I’m just gonna sell the business instead of hiring a replacement for Kevin.”

I groan and drop my head back. “Thank you,” I say sincerely, “for letting me fire him before he landed me in jail for murder.”

“You really hated him, huh?”

I look at her, my eyes wide. “He was a dumbass. And he ruined—”

“What did he ruin?” she bursts out, and I smile smoothly.

“Nothing I didn’t fix.”

“Oh God,” she whines, barely nudging my thigh with her foot. “Don’t say things like that to me.”

I grab her foot and stretch it across my lap, and when I work my thumb into the sole of her foot she hums, her eyes closing. I stretch back more comfortably, pushing my plate far enough away with my toe that I have enough room to rest my crossed ankles on the coffee table.

“Why don’t you have a dog?” Zoe asks quietly, her voice lazy from sleepiness. “You seem like a dog person.”

I slowly shake my head, switching to her other foot. “I want a bird,” I drawl and when she laughs, the corner of my lips pulls up. “A whole bunch of them, too. Dozen little Parakeets that’ll fly around and chirp so it sounds like Rio. And a parrot I can teach to talk, but he’ll only know good quotes from like John Cleese and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

She giggles. “I’d pay to see that. And every time he goes into his cage he says, ‘I’ll be back.’”

“Cliché,” I chide. “Randomly, he’d just interrupt people and do the Arnold growl. ‘Luca, where did you get your—
Rawrl
.’ ‘Luca, come climbing this—
Rawrl.’
”

“Luca,” she plays along, barely able to get the words out from between her snickers, “when did you—”

“
Rawrl,”
I interrupt and
she bursts out laughing, her head thrown back. “I also want something big, with a large wingspan and some kickass talons, like an eagle or a hawk.”

“Oh, ‘cause what’s the point of having a bird if it doesn’t have large talons?”

“Exactly,” I say emphatically, switching back to her right foot. She settles further into the couch, watching me intently when my voice drops a little more seriously. “Really, though, it’d be…beyond cool to have one just kinda circling around and chilling with me as I’m on a rock, coasting over clouds on a dive.” I feel a smile take my face, because I really do wish I had a bird to fly with me. A partner that can’t fall, and who lives for it as much as I do. “Dogs can’t fly.”

“Birds can’t swim,” she replies, and my nose wrinkles.

“Touché.”

“Maybe you should get both.”

“Nah, they’re too much work. I’d have to feed it and train it and buy it stuff, and my work schedule doesn’t give me the time to spare to take that on. Plus, I still have to get
you
trained and so far it’s been slow goings so I think I’m just screwed on the pet front.”

“Moving past that blatant attempt to get a rise out of me, you’re really arguing that it’s
my
fault you don’t have your dream hawk?”

I snort. “I’ll probably end up just downloading a picture of a bird on my phone and then throw it into the air. Ta da!”

She quietly laughs, then tilts her head at me. “You still do all that stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” she says teasingly, “all I can say is you better not get busted up out there or you’re going to be looking for a new job.”

“Went climbing last weekend, came back just fine.” I bat my eyelashes in a taunt, but Zoe’s face is unreadable.

“Really?” she says flatly, and I nod, looking back to her feet and switching to her left.

I clear my throat. “Scott showed up Saturday morning and we hung out over the weekend.”

She already knows that, in a way, since she’s the one who texted him. And I guess that means she was listening the few times I brought up his name in passing over the last year. But instead of bringing up anything close to the-night-we’re-not-speaking-of, I dig my phone out of my pocket with one hand and open up my photo album, passing it to Zoe once I find the pics he and I took while we were climbing.

Her eyes widen with her smile when she sees them and starts to flip through the pictures: a few selfies taken from above so the distance to the ground below is clear and visible, my face an embarrassing, mockingly-innocent smirk; Scott flipping me the bird from his spot a few feet above me; then another with him giving me the hand sign for “rock on” as he sticks his tongue out like he’s Gene Simmons or something. Douche.

There’s one of us from the top of the tower as we roared: high on adrenaline and testosterone and the satisfaction from being alive. But the last is my favorite, the one he took of me as I faced away from him, looking over the edge of the cliff and catching the full expanse of the scenery.

The sun was setting in my face so I’m nothing more than a shadowed outline, but my head is fallen back, my arms outstretched above me. And perfectly visible, my two middle fingers are raised to the sky in a prayer for fate and the universe to fuck off.

Scott made some crack about sending it into National Geographic and seeing if they’d fund a trip to Nepal, but Zoe is quiet as I silently continue to massage my thumb into the arch of her foot.

Until she says, “Seems like it was a fun weekend.”

I tilt my head.
Eventful
feels more appropriate than
fun
, but I don’t want to say it and bring the elephant tromping into the room.

“Do you ever get scared?” she asks, and I look over at her.

“No.”

“You’re not afraid to fall? To die?”

I shake my head.

“Well, what about…after?”

My brow furrows. “What do you mean ‘after’?”

She looks down, studying her fingernails, and my hands go still. “Do you believe in heaven?”

I swallow, but make sure my voice is steady when I say, “Sure. In some form or another.”

She shifts a little, uncomfortable or restless, maybe both. “What about hell?”

Her eyes flash up to mine, afraid and crazy vulnerable.

I look her squarely in the eye, my palm gentle on her ankle. “Hell is what you make it, Zoe. Self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“What, like if you think you deserve to go there, then you will?”

I shrug. “Sure, plus what it would be filled with. Could be a house in Miami in the summer with no A/C ‘cause you were cheating with the electrician’s wife. Could be ten guys sharing one bathroom ‘cause you were dumb enough to enlist. Sounds like hell to me,” I say, then smile as comfortingly as possible.

“So…”

“No,” I say firmly, then set her feet aside and stand up, gathering our plates. I turn and look back at her, curled on her side with one of her hands tucked under her cheek, and something in my stomach softens at the thought that she’s more than what she looks like, she’s so much more. I shift the plates to one hand and sit on the corner of the table, directly in front of her. “You need to remember that I’ve done worse things than you have.”

“Luca—”

“No,” I cut her off, pointing at her warningly. “I know your bad, you don’t know all of mine. So you don’t get to contradict me on this.”

She swallows and looks down, and I lean forward a little more, my voice dropping.

“If you burn, I burn. But we’ll go down fighting and make it a hell of a ride.”

She peeks up at me, and I smile.

“What do you say, Zoe: if we end up at the Fire and Brimstone Formal Event, want to be my date?”

She blushes. “You got a deal.”

I grin and get up, carrying our plates into the kitchen and quickly rinsing them off. I scowl at the rest of the dishes, then throw away the leftover flour mixture and clean out the bowls, storing the residual oil and wiping everything down. I’m a clean freak anyway, but I’m not even close to letting germs and raw egg fester within a ten mile radius of her.

By the time I’m walking back into the living room, I find that Zoe has finally succumbed to all those yawns and is sound asleep on my couch. I only pause to take in the sight for a moment before heading to my bedroom and turning down the covers, then going back to where she is.

She groans a little when I work an arm under her neck and another under her knees, carefully shifting her more onto her back before I lift her from the black leather. But she doesn’t wake up, just curling closer into me as I walk her into my room, then lay her down before covering her up.