Hold My Breath (12 page)

Will’s lips caress, and he pulls my bottom lip between his teeth, applying sweet pressure that bends me against him and makes me want more. My hands circle to his back, and Will leans into me, pressing his hard erection between my legs while his right hand drags up my body, his thumb grazing along my breast and nipple on its way to the taut, wet strap digging into my right shoulder. Will’s fingers wrap around it, and I press into him, wanting him to keep going, the only way I can give him a sign because I’m too much of a coward to use my words. I don’t want to hear myself say I want Will Hollister. I don’t want to know what that means, what it says about me and the kind of girl I am. But I don’t want him to stop touching me, either.

Will begins to drag my strap over my shoulder, and our eyes meet just as fate steps in to stop us from something irreversible. Something we’d both probably regret, even though his eyes right now are telling me otherwise.

I bite my lip, and Will lays his head flat against my chest, and we remain motionless—
soundless—
until we hear my father’s car door slam closed—our bodies hidden by Will’s car parked between us. My dad’s steps slow, and I take a sharp breath through my nose, the sound of my heartbeat deafening in my ears. Neither of us breathes again until we hear the main door for the club open and close.

We lay still for another full minute. Will is the first to move, his arms lifting his body, his head falling heavy against me, like a magnet pulling—not wanting to let go.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

My hands slide away from his hair, and he backs out from my car, from me.

I let him go.

* * *

“
S
ee
, now
this
is precisely why I didn’t ask you to write my paper. Look at me—spent the night out, still got up at a decent hour and
bam
…wrote that fucker in a single day,” Holly says. She turns the shopping cart down the next aisle and sweeps six bags of chips from the edge of the shelf into our cart.

“I cannot fathom how you are a healthcare professional,” I say, putting two of the bags back.

“What? They’re baked?” she says, reaching for them behind my back and putting them back into the cart.

“Baked
flavored,”
I correct.

Holly left her phone at my parents’ house, something we discovered when I sent her half a dozen texts after the lake with Will, only to have my mom carry my friend’s phone up to my room and hand it to me. Luckily, I didn’t say anything incriminating in text, because now that I’m an adult, my mom has no qualms about blatantly sticking her nose in my business.

I also seem to have lost the desire—or perhaps the courage—to share what happened with Holly. Talking about it, even with her, makes it a thing. And I have to see Will for five more weeks of training, and
things
make getting my work done in the pool hard.
Things
also make sleeping hard. And…well…functioning gets hard, too.

“You know, the fact that it was so easy for you to bounce back from, what was it,
seven shots of tequila?
That sorta points to a bigger problem…perhaps,” I say, sucking my bottom lip in and holding my breath, waiting for her reaction.

“First of all, it was eight. And second of all, it means I have a very high tolerance, like a super power. And it also means that you’re a pussy,” she says, the grocery clerk at the line we just entered shooting his head up the second that word leaves her lips. Holly just winks at him, her lips puckering a hint, which makes the old man reach up to loosen his collar.

“That’s, like, the second time you’ve called me a pussy in a week,” I say, my cheeks a little hot from the stares my friend has earned us.
I’m feeling it, too, old man, though for different reasons.

“You know, the fact that it’s so easy for me to call you a pussy sorta points to a bigger problem, perhaps.” My friend shoots me a sideways glance as she delivers her dig, then takes one of the chip bags off the conveyer belt and hands it to our now-mortified grocery man. “Scan these real quick, pops. I’m starving.”

“You are too much. I see why I’m your only friend,” I say, rolling my eyes and tapping my credit card against the pay machine.

Holly laughs with a full mouth.

“Yet you keep coming back, babe,” she says.

“I know, I know…which probably points to a bigger problem, yeah, yeah,” I say, squeezing the bridge of my nose and closing my eyes tight.

We finish buying my week’s-worth of protein bars and super fruits, and my friend’s sack of junk food, then climb back into her Jeep to head to the Swim Club for a few hours of workouts. Needling one another is just our way, and I can tell Holly misses my company just as much as I do hers. She could have just turned around and headed back to the apartment we used to share near campus, but instead, she asked if I needed any help. What she meant was
company
, but Holly and I don’t like using words like that—words that denote love and attachment. Even for our friendship, and even though we both feel it.

I don’t use those words because I’m afraid anyone I say them to will be marked for a tragic death. Holly doesn’t because she was raised in the foster system and doesn’t believe real love exists. Together, we’re a pretty cynical duo. This is also why neither of us has a lot of friends. But we do have each other.

Holly pulls into the Swim Club lot, and I know she’s parked next to Will’s car on purpose. Just seeing it brings a rush of heat over me, one that starts at my thighs and slides up my body until it leaves my lips with a tingling sensation. I can still feel him—feel our mistake.

“You two seemed to be getting along really well the other night,” she says.

I shrug, avoiding her eye contact and lifting my two grocery bags from her back seat, trying not to engage. I think I’ve gotten away with it, too, and then
bam!

“So, has he
always
been in love with you? Or is that a new thing?”

Her question knocks the air from my lungs, and my steps stutter as I round the back of her Jeep. I know my eyes are wide. I know my lips are tight. I can feel it.

“Right, so…new thing then, huh?” she adds, smirking.

I pinch my brow and suck in a short burst of a laugh, acting, then keep walking to the main lobby.

Preposterous. Impossible. Ridiculous. Ludicrous.
I’m saying that and a dozen other similar words with the expression I give her. Meanwhile, though, I can’t say that I haven’t asked myself the same question. Yesterday’s kiss was not something that happens because of a place or circumstances. I may suck at romance, but I know when a kiss is more than physical attraction and hormones, and Will’s touch was almost forbidden—a scent of longing traced on my body everywhere he’d been.

I wanted it.

I walk straight through the lobby to the small kitchen and shove my two bags into the little space left in the fridge around my dad’s cases of water and energy drinks. I hear my friend crunching behind me, and I turn to see she’s brought her bag of chips in with her along with a neuroscience book.

“You sure you can get your studying done out here?” I ask, leading her to the back door, and eventually the deck. Funny how I missed her, but now I kinda wish she’d go home, and take her blunt honesty with her.

“Yeah, I can study anywhere. Besides, I’m sorta hoping Will’s gonna show up, and then I can get a real case study out of this thing,” she says, popping a whole chip in her mouth and wrapping her lips around it slowly, grinning at me as she chews.

I stare at her while I slide out of my shorts, shaking my head and not understanding.

“Ya know, cuz you’re probably going to have a nervous breakdown and all, from him being so in love with you,” she says, laughing out bits of chip through the last few words.

I bend down and scoop up a handful of water and fling it at her, causing her to flee to a chair.

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to fail your neuroscience labs,” I say, turning my back on her and moving to my favorite lane to stretch and splash water on my legs and arms.

“I know that’s not how neuroscience works, Maddy,” she says, her tone full of sarcasm. “I was just making a clever play on words. You don’t need to be such a pussy.”

“Stop calling me pussy!” I shout, this time kicking water at her, the sprinkles pelting the spine of her book as she shields herself with it.

“Quit being one,” she says, sticking her tongue out at me then shoveling more chips into her mouth, crumbs literally falling everywhere.

“You’re like Cookie Monster,” I say.

“Yeah, well Will Hollister’s in love with you,” she says.

I jerk my head to face her, glowering, which only makes her laugh harder, spilling more crumbs on her chest. The only way to escape her barrage is to dive under water, so I go in cold, and my muscles pay for it for several strokes. Eventually, my body warms up and my movement becomes steady. No matter how fast I swim, though, I can’t seem to outpace my friend’s words. They invade my head, probably because a part of me was starting to let the same thoughts unravel.

Is Will Hollister in love with me? Has he always been? And, more importantly, why do I hope so?

* * *

* * *

W
hen I was little
, maybe five or six, I would spend hours over the summer watching my Uncle Duncan work in his shop. Mom and Dad always shipped us up to Michigan for two weeks near the end of July. Two boys, two years apart, our brawls could get taxing when we were home all summer. They had a break when I was in school, even when Evan was still too young, but summers dragged. My mom would begin to use the time-out chairs more and more often, and pretty soon, we’d find ourselves on the train headed up to Grosse Pointe.

Evan always spent his time playing with the neighbor kids, or making cookies and shopping with our Aunt Maggie. All I wanted to do was help my uncle, though. He had a special stool he’d made just for me, a little higher than normal, and it allowed me to lay on my hands with my head low to the table so my eyes could watch him maneuver tiny gears into place, setting them in motion with the smallest sparks.

“You remember what I used to tell you?” he says, jarring me from my trance. I’m no longer the young boy who could barely reach the table, but I am the man whose legs are too long to fit at the same small desk as my only remaining relative, and I still love to watch him work.

“You said if only the heart could be fixed like this,” I say. “I always thought it was weird,” I chuckle. “When I was a kid it made me think that you were Frankenstein. I used to tell Evan you kept bodies in the basement.”

My uncle shakes with silent laughter.

“You always were a little shit,” he says.

My eyes focus on the end of his tweezers, the tiny clip held open by his steady hands as he slowly lowers it to the table, dropping the pin in place just as he frees the gears from their hold with his other hand. The task seems impossible, and success seems futile, yet I hold my breath to listen with him as the tiny machine begins to work.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“Best goddamned sound in the world,” my uncle says, his muscles relaxing as he pulls his glasses from his face and switches off the headlamp he’d been wearing on his head.

I shift my eyes from the watch to my uncle.

“Can I?” I ask, wanting to see it up close.

“Yep. Just don’t turn it over. If those suckers fall out, you’re going to have a crime scene to clean up,” he laughs.

“Got it,” I breathe out a laugh. Careful, I take the watch into my hands, pulling it close, my eyes transfixed on how every tiny piece plays a part.

“You still sticking with that plan of yours?” he asks.

“Not sure what you mean,” I say, my attention on the tiny grooves where one wheel meets the other, the shine of the metal, new parts helping old.

“That one where you think you don’t deserve anything, and where that girl I hear swimming out there doesn’t deserve the truth?”

I look up fast, and my uncle grabs my hands, closing my palm and easing it toward him.

“Don’t drop my masterpiece just because you can’t handle my frankness,” he says, prying my fingers open slowly and taking the watch back into his own palm.

“Sorry,” I say in a quick breath. I blink a few times, still a little stunned from his statement and unsure how to respond. I pinch my brow and move my eyes to his. “I don’t think she deserves the hurt. This has nothing to do with lies and truths. What does it matter now that Evan’s gone? The least I can give her is a happy memory.”

“You really think that’s what’s best for her, do ya?” he says, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his neck.

I think about all of the possibilities, her finding out, me telling her, Evan getting the chance to tell her. No matter how I play it out, Maddy thinking she was Evan’s one and only is always the best…
for her.