Falling Away (10 page)

“I know. I get it. Just…take the truck.”
 

She does. I watch her climb up into my truck, hear the engine turn over with a throaty rumble, and then she’s gone.
 

I go inside, after a while.
 

It’s all too easy to give in to the exhaustion. I don’t know what time it is, and I don’t even care. For the first time in my life, I give in to lethargy. I collapse on the couch, and even though I can’t fall asleep, I just lie there, consumed by guilt and regret and the ache of Echo leaving.
 

All my life, I’ve been active, restless, energetic. Up early before school to hit the gym, and then practice after school. Even off-season I was in the gym early in the morning and I’d usually run a few miles in the evening. I was never idle. Sitting around and doing nothing made me crazy, and crazy made me feel useless and lazy and made my body buzz with unused energy.

But now, there’s no more running, no more football. I could find a new therapist, but I don’t see the point. I can walk. The knee will heal.
 

So I just lie there and pass the hours doing…I don’t know what. I flip through channels, watch reruns and syndicated programming and sports clips. At one point, I even watch old grainy football games from the seventies and eighties on ESPN Classic.
 

Beyond the drawn blinds of the sliding back door, darkness fades to light, and eventually my eyes close.

*
 
*
 
*

When I wake up, sunlight shines bright and blinding. The TV is off. I sit up slowly, swing my feet to the floor, and scan the living room. I spot my keys on the round table that fills the space between kitchen and living room. I spot her sandals on the floor by the front door, her purse on the kitchen counter.
 

She’s in my bed. Her jeans, T-shirt, and bra are in a neat pile on top of the dresser, and she’s curled up on the very edge of the bed. The blanket is rumpled low over her hips, and she’s got one hand tucked under her cheek, the other under the pillow. She’s on her left side, facing the doorway, and I’m afforded a mouth-watering view of the fact that she didn’t bother putting on one of my T-shirts.
 

My hands curl at my sides, and I have to force myself to stay in the doorway rather than going over to the bed. I want to stare at her, want to touch her, want to kiss her. In this moment, that’s the only thing in my mind. Touch her, kiss her, slide into the bed beside her and hold her.

But I see her face, too, not just her breasts, and even in the relaxation of sleep, it’s clear she’s in pain.
 

I rip my gaze away, move to the bedside and draw the blanket up over her shoulders, more to cover her from my greedy gaze than anything else. But when the blanket touches her shoulder, she makes a cute little noise in the back of her throat, twists on the bed to face the other way, tucking the blanket more tightly around her, her feet shifting under the covers as she seeks a new position.

Her eyelids flutter, and I catch a slivered glimpse of her eyes. “Ben.”

I tug the blanket higher around her. “Sssshhhh.”

“I’m in your bed.”
 

“It’s fine. Go to sleep.”

“’Kay.” Her eyes flicker and flutter, and then her thick black lashes sweep against her cheek and she’s asleep again, her breathing immediately going deep and even.

I leave her sleeping and hop in the shower, let the scorching hot water ease the knots in my shoulders.
 

When I leave the bathroom, a towel cinched around my hips, I find her fully awake, lying on her back with the blanket tucked under her arms, scrolling through her newsfeed on Facebook. As I emerge, dripping and hair mussed, she clicks her phone off and sets it aside, her eyes going to me.

“Hi,” I say, moving past the foot of the bed toward my dresser, trying to act casual. Being essentially naked in a room with an essentially naked girl is anything but familiar to me.
 

She just stares at me, and I can tell she’s hunting for words. “Ben…I drove around for a long, long time, thinking. And…I realized something.”

I glance at her, a pair of underwear gripped in my hand. “What’s that?”

“You think it’s your fault.”

“It is.”

“No, it isn’t, Ben. It’s not. She was an adult. She made her decision. You expressed your concern, you offered to let her stay.”

“I should have insisted. I should have…I don’t know. Made her stay. She had no business driving.”

She sits up higher, bringing the blanket with her. “Ben, she knew the risks. She was an ER nurse for ten years. She handled her share of patients injured in accidents just like hers. It’s not your fault. She made the choice to drive, not you. What else could you have done, physically prevented her from leaving?”

“But if it weren’t for me, she wouldn’t have even been here.”

Her gaze finally wavers, flits away from mine. “That’s the part I’m still having trouble with.” She touches the bed at her side. “Come sit.”

“I’m not dressed,” I protest.

“Me neither.”
 

So I perch on the edge of the bed and swing my legs up, crossing my legs at the ankles and keeping the towel pinched between my knees.
 

Echo smirks and then slides over closer to me. “Modest, huh?”

I shrug, blushing. “I guess.”

“It’s cute. It’s not like you haven’t seen me in all my nearly-naked glory already.”
 

I just shrug again and she sighs. “I just don’t know what to think, Ben. I really don’t. It’s so hard for me to reconcile the idea of you kissing my mom with the fact that she was my
mom
. I mean, I get that she’s…that she
was
a beautiful woman. Intellectually, I get that. But she was my mother. But I also know she was…lonely. I guess I’m only realizing that now, thinking about how something like that could happen. I mean, I know Mom, and I know she’s not…I know she wasn’t a cougar. She had class and standards, you know?”

“Wow. Okay.” I can’t help the sarcastic tone.

Echo groans. “God, that came out really judgmental, didn’t it? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that she was twenty years older than you.
Twenty
years, Ben. That’s a significant age difference. It’s an entire generation, literally. But like I said, I’m trying to figure out, just for my own understanding, how she would even let herself get into a situation like that. And I realized, like I said, that she was lonely. I never knew my father, and I have no memory of my mom ever going on a date. Not one. Not in my entire life. She was dedicated to me and to work. I mean, maybe she went on dates or whatever while I was at school? I don’t know. Somehow I don’t think so. And I guess that makes me sad, I mean…everybody wants love, and…and sex, right?” She winces. “It’s even harder for me to think about my mom in that context, but she was a woman, and she had to have those needs, right? So for whatever reason she let her guard down with you. I don’t know. I mean, god, I get it. You’re a great guy. You’re easy to talk to, easy to be around, and shit, I’ll be honest…you’re hot as hell. But there just…there
had
to have been someone more age-appropriate at some point, right?”

I don’t answer right away. “Well…I don’t know what to say to all that. We didn’t talk about anything like that. It never went there. We talked a lot, but it was always…surface stuff, you know? Or it was about my motivation, my injury, my interests and what I’m going to do with myself now that football is off the table. We didn’t talk about you, or my past or hers, or anything except that initial conversation about her dance career.” It’s supremely awkward and difficult talking about this, for both of us. I bite the bullet and resign myself to being totally clear. “Look, it was…not something either of us were looking for. Certainly not me. I was here in San Antonio to play football, and that’s it. I wasn’t looking for anything. But then I got hurt and the only friends I had were guys from the football team. It became too hard to be around them, so I didn’t really have any friends.
 

“And Cheyenne understood that. So, yeah, there was a level of attraction on my part. I never said or did anything, and I never really knew what she thought about me in that sense. I mean, I knew she was older than me by a good bit, but I didn’t know how much until…until that day. And I mean…I was lonely, and I guess like you said, she was too. It makes sense, I guess, why a woman like her would even give the time of day to a guy like me. Because, like you said, she was twenty years older than me. But we were both lonely, and I invited her in, partly just to be polite and partly because, yeah, I wanted the company. I wasn’t…thinking about…trying anything. Like I said, it just…sort of happened. But it didn’t actually happen. You want the uncomfortable details? We were sitting on the couch, and in the process of watching the movie and then falling asleep, we’d gradually gotten closer and closer. And then we woke up, and there was just this strange moment of…
what if
…I guess. It was late, and we were both tired and just waking up, and…our lips touched for a fraction of second. Not even. And then she backed off and I guess she just realized all the different, very valid reasons why that couldn’t and shouldn’t happen. And it didn’t. It was just this one weird moment, and I guess it was probably mostly just me.”
 

Echo doesn’t answer right away, and when she does, it’s not what I expected her to say. “Why are you here, Ben? In San Antonio, I mean. You got hurt playing football. I know that. But…you’re obviously not from here, so…why stay?”

I sigh. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I just…I’m not ready to go home, yet. That means admitting defeat, I guess. I left home for…several reasons. And if I go back—I don’t know, I’ll have to face reality. I’ll have to actually start over. Figure out what the hell to do with my life. It’s like…I have to figure out who I am, now. Because, honestly, football was it for me. Sounds pathetic, now that I say that out loud. My whole life was just about being a fucking jock. And now what?”

“So you’re here avoiding reality?”
 

“Yeah, basically.” I shrug. “Also, I haven’t told my parents I got hurt. They’d be here in ten seconds flat, dragging me home and babying me and I just…I need to deal with this on my own for a bit first, I guess.”
 

“You’re lucky, then.” She says this quietly. “You have both parents, and obviously they’d drop everything to come get you, if they knew you were in trouble.”

I sigh. “They would. And I am lucky. I do know that. And I’ll go back eventually. I mean, I have to. But I can’t, yet. And not just because of the football injury thing. There are other reasons.”

She glances sideways at me. “Care to share?”

I blink and breathe and hesitate. “Just…running away from heartbreak, that’s all. I needed time and space, and it still feels too soon to go back and have to face everything I ran from.”

I feel her gaze on me, so I finally turn my head to meet her eyes with mine. The air feels thick between us, rife with a million unspoken things. The kiss. What it meant, and how deep it went. I don’t know what to say, suddenly, and clearly she doesn’t either. We’re close, physically, now. And we’re both dangerously close to being naked. All that separates us is my towel and the blanket over Echo, and suddenly that doesn’t feel like all that much. And despite the heaviness of what we’ve been talking about, all I can think about is how it felt to kiss Echo, and how badly I want to do it again.
 

“I want to kiss you again,” Echo says, somehow reading my mind. “But…it makes me feel like a skank for wanting you in the midst of all that’s going on. My mom hasn’t been in the ground a week and I’m tangled up with a guy? And then there’s everything that happened between you and her? It’s confusing, and I don’t know how to figure it out. I just know what I want. But I don’t know if it’s right or wrong. And I’m…not used to caring if it’s right or wrong.”

“I want to kiss you, too. I keep thinking about it. And the fact that it’s all I can think about right now makes me feel like an asshole. So I guess…I get what you’re saying.”

“So what do we do?” she asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Go with it, or don’t. Seems like these are the only two choices we have, right?”
 

She fidgets with the fabric of the blanket, breathing deeply, brows drawn down in thought. “Right.”

Her hair is loose and messy around her shoulders, tangled and knotted in places, her skin tan and delicate. I’m staring at her, because I can’t help it. I see her pulse thudding in her throat. The blanket has slipped, baring some of her cleavage. A single gentle tug and she’d be exposed. My heart is in my throat, my mind in turmoil. Fear, doubt, nerves…these war with the raging wildfire of need and desire.
 

She’s attracted to me, and me to her. We’re the same age, in similar places in life. We’ve been brought together by a tragedy, and we can’t seem to stay away from each other. She came back, and she didn’t have to. She could have gone anywhere, she could have dropped off my keys and left. But instead she’s here, in my bed, and now she’s glancing sideways at me, breathing deeply and pinching the blanket between her fingers, and it almost feels like she’s waiting for me.
 

Our gazes meet, and it’s impossible to break away from her stunning, vivid eyes.
 

It’s too easy, far, far too easy to let my doubts and fear and everything fall away. It’s far, far too easy to lean into her, feel her shoulder pinned against the wall by mine as I tilt toward her, barely breathing. And god, she makes it that much easier when her soft warm hand slides across my shoulder and pulls me toward her. So I twist toward her, feeling the towel around my hips loosen but not caring, because her lips are damp and silken and strong on mine, and her tongue is insistent. My eyes are closed, and all I know in this moment is her kiss, because it’s taking my breath and forming the entirety of my universe, and I don’t want it to end, and I know somehow that she doesn’t either. She kisses me desperately, hungrily, our lips scouring over each other’s. We gasp for oxygen and I taste her breath intimate on my mouth, feel her hand sliding from my shoulder to my back and down to my waist.