Hold Me Like a Breath (27 page)

The smells of burned coffee, frying grease, and bacon soothed me too. And the slightly tacky, slightly waxy feel of the fake-leather padding on the booths when I slid in across from him. The new familiarity of Shanice's greeting and her admiring appraisal of my dining companion.

He let me order for both of us. Didn't even comment about the glycemic index of honey.

We were safe.

I pressed my toes against the inside of his bare calf—needing the contact, needing to feel my skin on his and ground myself in
this
moment, not in the imagined danger replaying in my head.

“Maeve—” Char kept finding reasons to say my not-name. Kept finding reasons to touch the back of my hand. He traced a faint line of mauve there. “Is this from today? The wall? I'm sorry.”

It could be. Or from holding his hand any one of a dozen times. Or neither, some other minor unknown cause.

“I'm fine.”

I needed to examine my elbows, my knees. Maybe after I'd done that I'd be able to let this go. Forget and focus on Char. Convince him, convince myself I wasn't lying.

“I'll be right back,” I said.

I locked the bathroom door. Someone had written “Never Promise” on the wall in red marker. It stood out among the faded black ink of lewd drawings and initials + initials. The girl reflected
in the scratched and smeared mirror was paler than I liked. She chewed her lip. I made her stop. I pushed up the three-quarter sleeves of her green-and-yellow-striped shirt, pulled up the hem. Unbuttoned the pants her brother had left for her in an apartment that would never be her home, and pushed down the waistband to examine her knees.

It wasn't bad. It wasn't worth being this upset. Sixteen days ago it would have meant a CBC and probably pushing up the timing of my infusion by a week. Now, it meant being a bit more careful. Cautious. Monitoring my energy level and calling Bob if I felt off. It wasn't ideal, but I wasn't out of options.

I fixed my clothing. Finger combed my hair. Practiced smiling in the mirror.

Shanice was carrying two plates of heart-and-honey toast when she pulled me aside on my way back from the bathroom. “Babydoll,
I approve
! And is his father single?”

I laughed. And with the laughter, forced myself to let go of the last piece of me that was still tied in a knot. I could fixate on nothing—on a car backfiring—and let it ruin one of the fewer-than-twenty-four days Char had left, or I could enjoy this moment. Enjoy him.

Shanice winked as she set down our plates and walked away humming.

It was a choice; happiness and caution weren't incompatible, but happiness and fear were.

“Wait until you try this toast,” I said, sliding in beside him. “It's way better than those candy bars whose wrappers are always crinkling in your pockets.”

I loved his sheepish smile. “You noticed those?”

I poked his shorts pocket to demonstrate. “Crinkle, crinkle. So do you feed your sugar habit
before
you meet me in the morning, or after we say good-bye?” He ducked his head and I laughed. “Both?”

He nodded, and I slid two of my hearts onto his plate. “Good thing
you're
not the diabetic.”

Two bites and a toast-heart had disappeared behind his lips. He nodded his approval. “Can I make a cheesy joke about ‘You're so sweet, you don't need any extra sugar'?”

“Yes.” I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Please do.”

“Want to go to the library?” Char asked as we paid the bill. His tone was neutral, but he looked away from me and crinkled the wrappers in his pocket as he pushed open the door to the diner.

“You remember I hate surprises.” It was hard to take that first step back outside. Hard to forget the newspaper article, hard to forget the car backfiring, hard to forget that safety was a lie I was telling myself.

Char smiled at me from the open doorway, where air-conditioning rushed to mingle with muggy air. “I remember everything you say.”

I took a deep breath and stepped outside. “Then why do you want to go there?”

“I promise, it's just a library. There's a book I want to find.”

I opened my mouth, but he smoothed a hand along my cheek, tapped his thumb against my lips. “Before you ask ‘what book?'
can I say wait and see? It's not really a
surprise
, just that I want to … Okay,
the book
is a surprise, but—”

I moved his hand from my face and tried to think of ways I could suss out whether this was a trap without looking like a freak in case it wasn't. “Is it a biography?”

“What? No.” His forehead wrinkled in adorable confusion.

“A book about science? Medicine? Current events?” There was no way to be more specific, and the highly specific details wouldn't be in print yet anyway. Or maybe even ever. It's not like the Zhu or Vickers Families were going to sit down for candid interviews about their work on artificial organs. The thought of Garrett writing a book about his and Carter's double life almost made me smile. Actually, now that I thought about it, Nolan would probably love to pen some unreadable erudite tome about his struggles to work
within
a Family while promoting the Organ Act.

Char interrupted my musings with a laugh. “No. Nothing like that. Nothing that would bore you, I think. It's a children's book.”

I studied his face; it was earnest, concerned, eager. And this was
Char
. I trusted him. “Now you've got me intrigued.” I looped my hand around his arm, loving the way his pulse beat beneath my fingertips. “Let's go.”

We separated in the entryway, promising to meet back up in fifteen minutes. He turned left to enter the Children's Room; I turned toward the stairs that spiraled up to a reading room. After a quick stop at an info desk for directions on how to log on to the Internet, my fingers were flying. Pulling up a
half-dozen tabs on the Organ Act, googling mentions of the vice president, Nolan, conspiracy blogs about the murders, my own name. There was so much I needed to know, and I couldn't stop ping-ponging between topics, skimming, gulping down bolded text and diagrams, bracing myself against the romanticized characterization of me as a tragic princess cursed with fragility. Pausing at a picture of Nolan walking down a Capitol hallway with a senator from Utah. Freezing on a blog that featured a re-creation of the crime scene so realistic I had to blink and blink and gasp before I recognized it as a Photoshop mash-up of other pictures from the media. That wasn't the dress Mother had been wearing the day she died, and her hair was shorter in the picture. Our foyer was no longer that shade of gray. Father wasn't that tan. It wasn't possible there had been that much blood.

The honeyed toast threatened to climb back up my throat. How could anyone spend their time creating something so gruesome? For fun? I jammed a finger on the power button, ignored the protest of the man next to me, “Hey, you need to shut it down first!” and staggered out of my chair.

Char found me halfway down the stairs. It was as far as my legs had carried me before I'd needed to sit. To think about anything,
anything
, but my mother's face beneath a mask of blood.

“Hey. Maeve?” He sat down next to me and settled his arm around my shoulder. The warmth and weight of it was an anchor, holding me in the present. “You okay? Is it your blood sugar? Have you tested it?”

I leaned my face against him and nodded. “I just did. It's fine.”

“Then what are you doing sitting here?”

“These stairs are beautiful, aren't they?” They were. The walls and the curves, the column they created, and the gilt paint on the domed ceiling at the top of the spiral. I needed to focus on beautiful things right now. Safe things. Innocent things.

“Yeah, they really are. I love how you notice things like this.” His face was so close to mine. Then closer. His hand moved from my shoulder, slid up my cheek and into my hair. I turned toward him, and my own hands crept out to tentatively settle on his arms. My face tilted up as his eyelids drifted shut and his lips parted …

Footsteps echoed on the steps below us and we both jumped. Laughed nervously, then pulled on smiles.

He stood first, then held out a hand to help me up. “I found the book I wanted to show you, but let's find somewhere more comfortable to read it.”

An older woman with a large-print edition of a romance novel smiled as she passed by. I wanted to frown at her, blame her for ruining what was almost our first kiss, but I didn't. When I kissed Char, I didn't want it to be so I'd forget bloody pictures and nightmare memories. I wanted it to be about him,
us
.

Leaning against floor pillows in the Children's Room, Char pulled out a book with a yellow cover. “They're Chinese fairy tales,” he explained. “I didn't know any. I wasn't really a fairy-tale kid. I called my mother and asked if she could tell some, but she only remembers fragments of a few and couldn't keep straight who'd been turned into a carp and who had the magic pot. I thought we'd read some together. What do you think?”

There were times my heart seized up with terror, times it
sprinted from nerves. Then there were those times it seemed to climb upward and block my throat. The moments when I felt so much but couldn't say a single word. Probably because I was feeling
too
much, and would say far, far more than what was acceptable about my feelings. Words with four letters. Sentences with three words. Emotions that couldn't be taken back at the end of a month, would change every day until he left, and cloak him with guilt as a parting gift.

“I just thought …” Char lowered the book, glanced at my panicked face, then hastily put a hand over the red dragon that curved across the cover. “Sorry! I didn't see that. You said you liked fairy tales …”

I swallowed down my heart and the feelings behind it. Picked up his hand and kissed his fingertips. “Would you read me one, please?”

That night ended not with a kiss, or on the phone with Char, but with a call from the vice president.

“It's my, uh, aunt,” I said when my cell rang a few steps from my building.

“See you tomorrow.” He raised a hand like he might touch my face, then hesitated and waved instead.

I stood on the other side of the apartment building's door and watched him walk away. I hated the idea of him being out of my sight. Too many people had disappeared from my life, their absences echoed with the good-byes I never got to say. I couldn't handle adding his name to that list.

“Hi, Bob,” I said, juggling the flowers I was holding and catching the last notes of his ringtone.

“Hello, Penelope Maeve. How are you holding up?”

“I saw an article about Father,” I admitted. “Sometimes I hate freedom of the press.”

“I know, Penny, I know. Today is one of the few times I wish I could cut the First Amendment right out of the Constitution.”

“Can't you?” I teased. “As a little vice presidential prank? You should at least call the IRS and make sure those reporters get audited this year.”

“Consider it done.” He chuckled, but it trailed to an awkward pause before he cleared his throat. “I'm going to ask again, and I'll probably ask every time we talk—are you sure you don't want to come to Connecticut?”

I couldn't quite manage an automatic
no
this time. In less than a month Char would vanish like smoke, and I'd be left alone, burned by his absence and too aware of how empty and lonely my life had become.

“Maybe. Not yet. But I'll think about it.”

“Please do. I'd love to have you. Kelly and Caleigh would love to have you. Imee too.”

When he'd finished asking how I was and I'd finished promising to be careful, I hung up, plugged my phone in to charge on the bedside table, and curled up in the living room's big chair with my family notebook.

I started by documenting everyone's favorite movies.

Father: Braveheart

Mother: You've Got Mail

Carter: The Hangover

Then I settled into some more narrative memories.

When Carter was ten, he desperately wanted a dog. Al and the other security guards used to have a German shepherd that patrolled the perimeter of the estate, and Carter was constantly getting in trouble for trying to play catch with Trigger or sneak him cookies. One time he even tried to hide the dog in his bedroom while Al was in a meeting, and Trigger just about scratched the door down to get out. If there'd been
any
chance of him getting a dog, that would've ruined it, but it was already hopeless because Mother “didn't like things that shed.” Father took pity on Carter and bought him an ant farm instead. Only it got knocked over when he, Mick, and Garrett were playing something that involved hockey sticks and soccer balls and was definitely against the rules. The escaped ants drove Mother into near hysterics … and Carter too. He climbed on his bed and shrieked, while Garrett and Mick howled with laughter and I tried to herd up and rescue as many ants as possible before Father brought in the vacuum
.

I bought him sea monkeys for his birthday that year. We named them all after different types of soda: Pepsi, Sprite, Dr Pepper, 7UP, Sunkist. Dr Pepper was obviously the smart one. Sunkist and 7UP were the rejects, since neither
of us liked those flavors. We totally pretended we could tell them apart
.

Carter always said that the first thing he was doing after college, once he had his own place, was getting the biggest, sheddingest dog in the world …

I put down my pencil and looked around the apartment. Would he have moved here full time in three years when he graduated? Would he have gotten a dog? Should I, since he couldn't? Questions like these drained all the energy from my limbs, drained all the color from the room.