Jamb: (13 page)

Garrett’s rolls
his tongue in his cheek as he stares at Zane like he’s going to kill him.  So I ask Zane.  “Can we?”

“Sure can,” Zane smiles.
  “If you come out of the ring looking like road kill, then your relationship has major weaknesses and you shouldn’t be together.”

Garrett rolls his eyes.  “And this is supposed to be done later on—a lot later—with the Addo, to
show him that you are meant to be bound.”

“Sean didn’t have to do it,” I say.

“He’s Simple and his Binding is only symbolic anyway,” Zane says.  “Our rules don’t apply to the Simple.”

“What if we do
this…and I…you know…”  I shrug at Garrett.  “Pulverize you?”

Garrett laughs.  “You won’t.”

“What if you pulverize me?”

“I won’t.”

“But it can happen, right?”  I ask and Zane nods.  “So what if it does?”

“If
you can hit him three times, then your relationship has too many problems and you’re not compatible for each other,” Zane says.

“Robin d
ecked him twice,” Zaneen offers. Zane shrugs.

“
She did, but like I said, it doesn’t count.  It has to be three.  Three
times and you’re not compatible.  Tapping each other once or twice is totally normal.  As long as you’re not bludgeoning each other.”

“Let’s try,” I say, but Garrett shakes his head.

“Uh uh.  I’m not even interested in trying to hit you.  I’d rather wait until we do it for the Addo.”

“
Aren’t you even curious?” I say.  “Besides, don’t be cocky.  What if I’m the one crushing you?”

“That’d be fine.”

I lean in close to him.  “Don’t be afraid,” I whisper.  “Don’t you want to know how amazing we’re going to be together?  I do.”

“Alright,” he says, but the way he backs across the mat with his arms dangling at his sides, I can already tell, he’s going to let me do all the swinging.

“We’re gonna do this for real?” Zane jumps to his feet.  He stands between us like a referee we don’t even need.  “Okay then, let’s go.”

Zane backs away and Garrett stalks me in a circle,
more like he’s play-chasing me than trying to fight me.  But just like I expect, he doesn’t take any of the easy shots, even when I’m wide open.  And the problem is that I can’t bring myself to take a shot either.

“Booor…ing!
” Zaneen howls from the wall, but all I see is Garrett’s face, well, his smile—saying,
go ahead, I’ll take it. 
But as we walk in our tight circle, I can’t think of anything I want to do less.  I don’t know how we’ll ever prove our relationship to the Addo.

I finally stand still, dropping my arms, frustrated.  “I can’t do this.”

“It’s okay,” Garrett says.  “Try.”

“I can’t,” I say. 
I want to cry.  “What if it means that we’re not compatible at all?”

Garrett’s face is suddenly vicious as his arm comes up like a sledgehammer, swinging right fo
r me.  I drop back and he misses.  But his lips glide up my arm instead, the soft feathery touch of his kiss tickling me. I return a punch that completely misses too and Garrett grins an
I thought so
grin.  I smile and deliver a kick that only thunks down on the mat, but I lurch close enough to his chest to breathe him in.  Then, I  give him a smile before I send him an upper cut that he easily avoids.  His fingers slide along my forearm in a caress instead.

“Stop holding back,” Zane shouts from the sidelines.  “Quit trying to make him look good, Nals! 
Let’s see if you’re really supposed to be together!”

I step into one of Garrett’s punches and twist out of his range only at the last second. 
He spins me and I drop backward.  Off balance, I expect to crash into him, but the back of my head falls right into his waiting palm; my eyes travels up his chest to his soft gaze; his body dips over me and then his long kiss, strokes from my throat to my collarbone before he pushes me back onto my feet again.

I slide in close and try to land a
jab to his stomach, but I miss.  He throws a hook that slides past my face and I turn back at the last millisecond, my lips making a damp trail from his cheekbone to his ear.

“Fight harder,” I whisper.  “Don’t you want to know?”

We speed into the violent dance.  We spin, harder and harder, coming together although we can never land an actual blow, until I swear I am melting right into Garrett and he is melting into me.  It’s like I can feel him moving beneath my skin, his hands touching me inside, cradling around my heart, tickling my stomach.  I laugh and throw my head back.  Nothing feels as good as Garrett does in my veins.  When I look back at him, he’s laughing wildly too.

“
C’mon, Rebel, let’s go all the way.  Don’t hold anything back.”

I am positive nothin
g can happen now.  I can feel him deep in my bones.  The way we’re moving in this crazy synchronicity, we’ve got to be the most compatible couple on Earth.  Garrett kicks and jabs and uppercuts, but I am easily out the way every single time.  I return with hooks and round kicks and elbow jabs, and he dodges everything, effortlessly. 

U
ntil he grazes my forehead. 

My body lurches
at the contact, and in shock or surprise or instinct, I’m not sure which, I throw myself into the last punch.

And m
y fist lands square on his eye.  My knuckles sink into him, feeling the bone surrounding the socket. I pull back before it shatters, but agony shoots through me.

And
the pain doesn’t come from my knuckles. 

It
comes from the look on Garrett’s face, as he reels backward, away from me.

***

“Oh my God!” I shriek, leaping forward.  Garrett falls onto the mat, stunned and holding his eye.  I drop onto my knees beside him, my entire soul crumbling.  I can see the bruise starting already, through his fingers.

“You got me, Rebel,” h
e tries to laugh.  My entire body floods with grief.  He felt it too, how perfect we were, and how easy it was, until I felt his slightest touch.  And then I returned it with miserable accuracy.

“Aw, come on, you two!” Zane booms, jumping onto the mat.  Deeta, Zaneen
, and Milo follow him over, standing in a huddle around us.  “You only made contact once!  It doesn’t mean anything!  Nobody’s perfect.”

But I didn’t just tap
Garrett.  I didn’t even just hit him.  I slammed his eye so hard that it’s beyond just black and blue.  There are sickening streaks of green spreading beneath the skin.

“Everybody
wants
to be the perfect couple,” Deeta echoes sadly over my head.  I know she’s trying to be comforting, but her tone and her words and the fact that I’m sitting beside Garrett while he holds his eye means that
we aren’t. 
What I want to scream, what nobody knows, and what might not even matter now, is that
we were. 
For the first few minutes, we were so incredibly in sync that he was me and I was him and I’ve never felt as close to another human being in my entire life.  It was perfect and flawless and then, somehow, I hit him.  It just seems impossible.

“They’re right,” Garrett says, trying for another smile and succeeding this time.
“No couple is perfect, even if they are perfectly matched.  But still, that was pretty dang incredible, up to the last punch, don’t you think, Rebel?”

“Yeah,” I croak.  T
he incredibleness sinks and the shame is what floats up and clogs my throat. 

Zane
hauls Garrett to his feet.  Garrett throws his arm around me, grins, and then winces, his fingertips gingerly touching his eye.

“You need some ice, buddy,” Zane says and
as we leave the gym, nobody tries to joke or laugh or talk. I want to run away, but there is no place that I could go that could make me feel like I’ve escaped this. Garrett is usually where I go to feel better.

I want to throw up.  Just throw up and throw up and throw up until I’ve gotten all of
whatever caused this out of me.  But I keep walking.

And
Garrett takes my hand.

“We’ll go talk to the Addo,” he says.  “But this isn’t so bad
, Nalena.”

“The skin a
round your eye is turning green.” I can’t let go of his hand.  The least I can do for him is to hold his hand, even though now I feel like he’s hanging onto his Jezebel.

“All this means is that our relationship has a weakness that could create pain.”

“In you.  You’re the one that got pounded, so it means that
my
weakness will cause
you
pain.”

“Nalena,” he pulls me to a gentle halt, even though everyone else keeps walking.  “Listen to me.  We’re in this together.
  Besides, it was my fault.  I hit you first.”

“
You hardly touched me, and I pounded you.” I sniffle and he kisses my temple.

“We’ll go talk to the Addo,” he says.

CHAPTER EIGHT

With Brandon and the Totus and everything else Addo’s got to worry about, I
am humiliated when Garrett tells his mom we need to speak with the Addo.

“
What happened to your eye?”  Mrs. Reese asks.  I’m standing at the side of the door because I can’t stand to look her in the face.  Especially because she’s staring directly at what I did to her son.

“Nali a
nd I sparred together,” he says, “to determine compatibility.”

“That’s what happened to your eye
?” It’s not hard to hear the concern in Mrs. Reese’s voice.  Or the desperation in Garrett’s.

“Yeah.”

“Alright.  Go talk to Freddie and tell him I said,
quo
.”

“Thanks mom,” Garrett says and
I hear her whisper back, “Good luck.”

***

There’s nothing worse than knowing you need luck.  I don’t know why people think that saying ‘good luck’ encourages anybody.  Saying
good luck
is really like saying
you’re doomed, but I hope you get a miracle. 
And right now, it feels like I could be in the driver’s seat of a truck loaded with rabbit’s feet and crickets and wishbones, and still plow into a wall.

That’s why
I just shut down.

I don’t think as Garr
ett leads me to Freddie’s suite.  I’m not even impressed by how it is more highly guarded than Fort Knox.  I don’t think when Garrett tells Freddie
quo
and Freddie lifts an eyebrow and looks at me and then back at Garrett, as if we’ve just confessed to nailing all seven sins. 

I don’t think as Freddie leads us to his bedroom and through what I think will be a bathroom door, but isn’t.  I don’t think as we go down a hall that I know is booby trapped in a thousand different ways, or when we open the door at the end that leads to three more hallways and then two and finally ends with the Addo opening
a door.  I don’t care about anything, except finding out why I’ve just bashed the one person in the world who is my entire reason for living.

I send a frantic stream of thought to the Addo. 
We need to talk to you.  We were in the gym and Zane said we could try to fight to see how compatible we are and we did and I could feel Garrett, Addo, like in my blood, I could feel him and I was so happy and we were laughing and we couldn’t hit each other at all.  We were fighting a long time and neither of us could do anything, it was like trying to punch yourself in the face, and then it was the last punch I was going to throw and…

The babble just streams out of my brain,
all at once, before I even make it to the couch.  The Addo throws up his hands.  He takes a look at Garrett.

“What’s the other guy look like?” he says.

Garrett points to me and I collapse on the couch in a pile of miserable sniffles.

“Oh boy,” Addo says.  “Ok, now I get it.”

The Addo shuffles over and hands me a box of tissues.  My eyes, aimed at the ground, only see the box and the Addo’s sandals.  I’m too ashamed to even look up.

Garrett sits down beside me and his warmth spreads along my arm and leg that he touches
, but I feel like I don’t even deserve it anymore.  I’m going to miss it so much when he’s gone.  When he finally realizes that his black eye wasn’t a mistake and that I’m not worthy of him.  I never was.

I sob.

“Okay, so I can see that one’s going to putty,” Addo sighs somewhere beyond my right elbow.  From the corner of my eye, I can see his sandal-encased feet, making a V.  I assume he’s waiting for the next round of sobs to burst out of me.  “I think I’ve got the gist of it, but why don’t you give it to me again, Garrett, just to be sure we hit all the bells and whistles.”

Garrett recounts what
happened in the gym and ends with, “I skimmed her forehead.  It was me, Addo.  I hit her first.  She just responded.  I saw it in her face.  She didn’t even mean to do it, it was just a knee-jerk thing.  She came square on and I’m pretty impressed,” Garrett even chuckles, like he’s proud.  “My girl could
total
somebody.  I knew it was coming and I still didn’t expect her to hit me that hard.”

“So what’s the problem?” Addo asks and I lift my head to ask him if he’s nuts.

“I almost
crushed his eye socket,
”  I say.  Addo’s bottom lip squashes against the top one.

“I can see that,” he
finally says.  “That’s why I’ve got you on my team.”

“This isn’t funny.”

“Oh,” Addo says.  “Well, this kind of thing happens.  The really unfortunate part is that you’ll have to try to clock him again, when you are asking to be bound.”

“That’s part of the reason
we wanted to talk to you,” Garrett says and I whirl around to look at him.  I can tell by his expression, that he’s not asking Addo how he can get out of our relationship.  He’s actually going to ask about Binding.

“We’re not talking to him about that right now!” I
tell him.  “I almost broke your skull, Garrett!  That’s what we’re here to talk about!  You’re not Binding to me if I’m going to…
break you
!”

I sob like a complete tube and, of course, Addo laughs.

“I see you’re making up your own rules, as to what happens when Contego Vieos spar,” Addo says, his palm tapping my knee.  “There’s no such thing as a perfect couple, so if that’s what you were shooting for, kiddo, you’re lucky that this is all you got.  I’ve seen worse.  And that’s saying something, considering that Garrett looks like he’s caught a case of the sub dermal barf-worms.”  Addo pauses, studying Garrett.  “It’s got to be your ability to heal that’s stopping your whole face from swelling up.  Otherwise, you’d look like a rotten watermelon.”

“Cou
ld you stop making fun of him?”

“Oh, yes, that’s right.  You’re still feeling testy,” Addo says, waving a finger between us.  “Still Vieos. 
You see?  That’s a good sign.  A smash-job like this doesn’t mean that you’re not meant to be together, just so you know.  It doesn’t mean that you won’t succeed in staying together either.  But, it doesn’t mean that you will, either.  All something like this tells me is that you’re normal.  You’re young and in love and you didn’t expect to ever find a weakness in how you felt about one another.  Now you know.  You’ve got a weakness and it can be a doosey.”

“
How do I fix it?”

“You think I know
anything about fixing a relationship?” Addo chuckles.  “I don’t even know what’s going on in twelve of my Curas! 
Knowing
is always a good start, though, and I’m not sure something like this means you need to
fix
your relationship as much as you need to
understand
it, so you can see things coming at you more clearly and get out of the way.  But these things happen, kids.  It’s an unfortunate side effect of having to live in close proximity to the same people you happen to love.”

“
Understand it?  I clobbered him!” I say.  “What’s there to understand? I could’ve killed him.”

Garrett takes my hand.  “But you didn’t kill me.”

“And he started it, didn’t he?” Addo asks.

“I did,” Garrett
says.  “My knuckles went across her forehead.  That’s what triggered it.”

“You didn’t
hit
me,” I argue.  “It’s totally different.”

“Not really.” T
he Addo whirls his fingers in the air.  “But that’s a clue.  Garrett started it and Nalena ended it.  You’ll both have to choose differently next time, if you don’t want to clobber or be clobbered again.”

“
Choose what differently?  That doesn’t tell us anything,” I say.  “What good does that do, when we don’t know what the problem is?”

“I don’t know what good it does.
” The Addo grin.  “Then again, what good is anything, unless you know it is good?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Probably nothing,” Addo says.  “Would you two like to stay for lunch?  If you do, I’ll have to make something more fun than what I was going to have.”

“I just want to go lay down,” I say, and Addo sighs.

“Spinach barley soup, then.  Goodness.  I was really hoping to avoid it.”

***

Once we get out of Freddie’s apartment catacombs, we walk back toward my room slowly.  Nothing the Addo said really changes anything, even though it doesn’t sound as hopeless now.  There’s still some big rusty cloud in our future, just waiting to drop a tsunami worth of garbage on us, but at least we know it’s coming.  Kind of.

We make our way through the courtyard and
that’s when I see the bench that Zane, Robin, Zaneen, Milo, and Deeta, have dragged over beside my suite door.  They’re all sitting on it or standing around it and Deeta waves wildly the second she sees us.

“
Wow, you really did get him,” Robin says, staring at Garrett’s eye.  Then she smiles at me, like it’s an accomplishment.  “Sic.”

“We’re
heading over to our place,” Zane says.  “We’re going to have a contest to see who can make the biggest and best pancake.”

“Doesn’t it just depend on who’s got the biggest skillet?”
  Garrett says.

“There are rules,
G,” Zane says slyly.  “The winning pancake has to be flipped, without the help of any utensils besides the skillet;  it cannot be ripped, torn or dropped; it has to be cooked all the way through and golden brown, with no burnt parts; and it has to taste like buckwheat heaven, even without syrup.”

“What’s the catch?” I
ask.  Garrett laughs. 

We follow the crowd back to Zane and Robin’s place.  Garrett tugs my hand.

“I’m still glad we sparred at the gym,” he says.  “I’d take another black eye in a heartbeat, if I could feel you inside me like that again.”  A puzzled look drifts over his face and he tips his head with curiosity.  “You felt it too, didn’t you?”

I nod with a tiny giggle.  His eye is just blue now, not so purple
, and I’m relieved it’s getting better fast. 

“Does it still hurt?”

“Not bad,” his whisper drops to a sexy timbre in my ear.  “I don’t really feel like making pancakes, though.  Do you?  ‘Cause I’d rather get rid of everybody else and just go back to your suite.”

At the same time, his ha
nd slides up my back.  Although I’m fully clothed, his touch makes the fabric a non-issue.  The heat of his skin still seems to connect with mine and I want to close my eyes and just soak in the trail of Garrett’s hand as it glides up, just under my ribs.  His fingers rest there with a firm grip that sends an unexpected, happy groan from my lips.

Milo and
Zane stop and turn, mid-stride, even though Robin keeps walking.

“What are you doin’ back there?” Zane asks.  Milo glances at me
, then Zaneen.  He chuckles and she tips her head at him with a grin.  Deeta misses the whole thing.  She just shakes her finger at Garrett and I, with a smile.

“Somebody better talk to the Addo a
bout Binding very soon,” she says.  “That’s all I’m saying!”

“That’
s never
all
your saying,” Zane laughs.

Garrett tugs my hand a little to slow me up.  We drop back a few feet
from our friends and he wraps an arm around me, which sends such a relaxing wave of warmth through me that melts my muscles.  He chuckles when I sag against him.

“When y
ou do that, and I’ve got about as much chance of staying upright as a shoelace,” I tell him.

“Feels good, doesn’t it,” his voice is so
husky and intimate that my stomach trembles.  All my senses seem to raise up and angle toward him, like how plants reach toward windows.  And the way my senses stretch, but remain totally unsatisfied, is excruciating.  Garrett is a sunlight I can’t quite touch.  The pane of glass between us is that we aren’t Bound yet.  He exhales fiercely as he lets go of me, running his hand through his hair.  He feels it too.  My body is suddenly trembling like I’m a frackin’ drug addict.

“T
hat,” he says with a weak smile, “is why Deeta’s right.  We need to go back and talk to the Addo about Binding.  We can’t be worried about the weaknesses that might come.  And I don’t know how long I can handle not being…married.”

My body—and I mean, all the senses that are screaming for him,
my muscles that go to caramel beneath his touch, and the way my bones feel as hollow and flimsy as paper straws when he moves away from me—
that
is what powers the little nod I give him when he mentions Binding.  But my brain.  My brain is blabbing something else.

My brain goes totally monkey
-mode, swinging from one worry to the next. 
Binding.
 
Sex
.  Being tied together.  For
months
.  His black eye.