Swept Away (9 page)

Instead she listens quietly to his heavy shuddering breaths and waits for him to talk.

He swallows a couple of times, air puffs into the phone ineffectively a few times, but finally he gets the words out. "I was expecting you to still be pregnant," he says.

The suddenness, the cold icy shock, it hits just as hard the second time around.

"Why didn't you have it," he asks quietly, "was it me? You didn’t want—you didn’t want to be attached to me?"

The first thought she thinks flies out her mouth, "you said you weren't ready to be a father."

"—But we'd figure it out. We can figure out anything, you and me, that’s what I said," he finishes gently, like they’re words he has practiced over and over again until they are burned onto his mind for eternally.

Like they'll be burned into hers.

"I didn't—" she stops there because she's dizzy and she can't choke out more words and she hates him so suddenly and fiercely that it's hard to feel anything but this sheer oppressive rage.

"You asked me if the baby was yours."

"You sounded like your whole world had just fallen apart I thought there was a bigger reason than you just being pregnant," he counters. And he sounds so done, so through with it all like he's tried and tried and just can't summon one iota more of strength to see this through and she's crying hard, in wracking shuddering sobs that grate against the inside of her like its shredding cheese.

And he's hushing her and soothing her as best as he can, and saying words like, "it doesn't matter. It's done. It's okay," when they're so clearly lies that she can feel the weight of his deceit through miles and plastic and months of pain breaking over her all over again.

She crumbles onto her ass, knees tucked to her chest and arms wrapped around that as the cordless is squeezed between her shoulder and ear and tears pour down her faces to flood her shirt with salty, aching wet.

When she’s done and she calms it’s his turn. He’s not as loud, or as obvious but he cries just the same it the sound of it pressed into her eardrum hurts her just as much as her pain. She wishes uselessly that she hadn’t run away, that she’d stayed and listened to him, if just for the fact that in person she could tuck him in and hold him close and wrap him safe in her arms.

They stay like that for a long time, the only witnesses to each other’s grief.

“I can’t live without you,” she admits bravely when they’re both as calm as they can get. “I still love you, Michael. This whole time.”

“Who was that boy you were with?” His voice is subdued again but there’s steel underneath that startles her.

“Just a friend,” Amber says, so freakin’ glad it’s the absolute truth, “always only a friend,” she adds as his silence, and doubt, lingers between them.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he says hoarse and low like he had no intention of letting her know but the words are torn from him just the same.

“Me too,” Amber says quickly. Too much has been misunderstood between them she doesn’t want her love for him to be another thing on the list.

“Why didn’t you try to talk to me?” she asks it but she’s not sure if she would have answered had he called. She’d like to think so but she’s been hurt too much in the past for her to volunteer for more pain and that’s what answering his calls would have felt like back then, with her new almost-child still freshly ripped from her through her own decision—which was almost as bad as by her own hand.

“I called so many times at first but you never answered. Your Dad said…well, I’m not repeating what your Dad said, but your Mom said you need some time and space. In my letter—” he chokes on it, pauses, tries again, “I told you I’d wait however long it took for you to want to speak to me again. I told you I loved you and I’d wait an eternity. I said I wanted a family with you and though I wasn’t ready I’d make myself be ready because it’s us, you know? You and me. We were a team.”

Tears burn at her eyes but Amber is resolute that they won’t fall. She’s done enough crying for a lifetime.

“And now?”

“And now,” Michael repeats. “I don’t know, Amber. I really don’t know. I waited and waited until I couldn’t take it anymore. I finished my tour two days ago and flew straight here because…I couldn’t wait anymore.”

He repeats himself again, so broken and small that her resolution trembles and nearly crumbles away.

Chapter Seven

Amber and Michael quietly agree that they both need some time apart to think things through. If Amber had her when, which since when does she ever, she would have told him to forget that they've already spent far too much time apart. But she hears the strain in his voice and knows he needs it. She had her time and now it's his turn.

Michael has rented an apartment in town, only ten minutes down the road from her school, and she takes that as a positive sign that they can fix what misunderstanding and insecurity has broken.

She thinks about their baby all the time. Every single second. But she knows, and she thinks he does too, that ultimately it is better this way. How were they going to take care of another life when they couldn't even manage to do the same for themselves. All these months of anguish and pain, all those years of both of them pretending they didn't feel how deeply and fervently the way they do. All that they could have avoided and didn't.

No, they weren't ready to take on a child and so her decision is something that was hard and painful and she might never let it go completely... but she doesn't regret it.

In her heart of hearts she doesn't regret it. They weren’t ready. If she’s really lucky, one day they will be.

* * * *

Kim corners her after class. Amber’s been expecting it both her new friends have been remarkably patient after that dramatic scene on the green a couple of days ago.

“So…” Kim begins unsubtly. They’re on their way to the lunch hall but Amber would just as soon go back to her room and climb under the covers. She’s been doing that a lot lately.

“His name is Michael Westlake and he’s the only guy I’ve ever loved,” Amber answers for her. There’s so much more she’d like to say but she can’t put into words. Like how he’s always been there for her through times she couldn’t make heads or tails of anything. Like how they support each other, or did anyway, and he never ever asked for anything in return. But then she’d have to get into why she needed that support anyway and out would trot the Mom and Dad freak show and she’s not ready for that. She might never be.

“He enlisted in the Navy straight from high-school.” So straight that he’d had to have his enlisting delayed until he’d passed his GED.

‘And if I’d known about that, I woulda just stayed that extra month and actually graduated with my class. What the hell was the point in pissing my folks off when I had to study for another stupid test?’ Which he’d passed the first time with minimal studying because he was smart and good at school no matter how much he actually hated it with a burning passion.

“We used to write each other while he was away,” Amber says and she sees that ‘Awww that’s so cute’ look on Kim’s face and has to turn away.

It’s not so cute when she thinks about how everything turned out. How her best friend might as well be a stranger for all she knows him, or he knows her.

“During my senior year I went to meet him.” and he wasn’t there so instead she tried to idiotically give her virginity away to some stranger she’d just met while blasted out of her skull. How destined was it that the stranger turned out to be the boy she was madly in love with? And how cruel was it now that she’d felt his love only to have it ripped away.

“We spent two weeks together and by the end of it I was pregnant.”

“Oh, Amber,” Kim sighs, her eyes are watery but she’s not crying and Amber is—well, not happy, but
not
not happy anyway—to see that they’re not burning with pity.

“I had an abortion only I didn’t tell him and I was stupid and I don’t know how I’m going to get him to forgive me again.”

And she doesn’t know how she’s going to forgive him either, for being so vague, for causing her to doubt him, for taking so long to show up. All of those things and none of them at the same time because really it boiled down to how were they going to forgive all those regrets.

Kim folds Amber into her arms, even though Amber is three inches taller than the petite brunette, and strangely enough she feels better than she has in days.

When Kim lets her go, Amber is standing a little taller and that weight that’s been pushing down on her shoulders for the past couple of days is a little lighter.

* * * *

Michael asks her to come over on a Friday night.

Kim and Ryan shoot her worried glances but so far they've been really supportive with very little information to go on and, luckily, the pattern continues.

Amber arrives at his apartment and Michael buzzes her up. Her heart is steady and she's calm as she slowly plods up the steps and for once her brain is quiet. No over thinking, no ruminating, no worrying an issue around and around her mind. Just blessed silence. And then she's at his door and she's knocking and he's opening it and....she doesn't know what to do from here. For once in her life she has no plan 'b.' For once in her life she's going to have to trust and depend on someone else to take care with her heart and soul because she's handing it over to him.

"Hi," Amber says. It's the only thing she can think to say.

Michael smiles at her but it doesn't reach his eyes. He tugs nervously at his ear lobe like he always had when they were children and lets her in.

He looks better. More well rested; the bags under his eyes have faded a little.

Amber looks around the mostly empty apartment and see a life for them both stretched out before them. Michael moving gracefully around the kitchen as Amber sits at the counter, chin resting in her hand as she watches him. He's never cooked for her but he swears he can and anything has to be better than how she burns water when left to her own devices.

There in that empty space underneath the floor to ceiling window, that's where they'll put a couch and spend long comfortable nights passed out on each other as the television blares away in the background.

And over there, that's where Kim and Ryan will hang their coats when they come over to study.

She sees it so clearly.

Everything she’s not sure she’s allowed to have.

She starts the conversation because maybe she’s been quiet long enough, and anyway he’s just standing there staring off into space.

“I love you, I always have and I suspect I always will. Can that be enough?”

He turns to face her and those huge expressive eyes she’s fallen for so many times, those beautiful green-gold orbs she’d know anywhere, they look into her, they say so many things she doesn’t want to hear but listens to anyway because…

Because without him isn’t an option she’s willing to take.

* * * *

Michael goes to her and holds her close for the first time since that disastrous morning on the green. Amber sinks into him, eyes shut, and for the first time in a very long time simply reveling in the moment.

He turns his face to hers and they're pressing cheek to cheek.

"I love you too," he admits opening. It's enough to have her knees weak all over again and he has to wrap his arms around her waist to keep her up. The relief of it is stronger than the grief from before and is affecting her the same way with her limbs no longer taking commands from her brain, instead they're just doing what they want.

He smells so familiar, that odd mix of sweet and spicy that he's worn since forever and she welcomes it.

"Are we going to be okay?"

Michael takes a deep breath, she feels it moving his chest, and considers her question for a very long time. "I want to be," he says, "I'm terrible without you in my life. It was like losing the love of my life and my best friend both at the same time. It really fucking sucked, Amber."

He sounds so young and distraught and
annoyed
that she laughs high and bright before she can stop herself.

Embarrassed she buries her head into his shoulder.

Michael leans back and pulls her up to look at him, some of the color has returned to his uncharacteristically pale face and there’s a glint of life back in those eyes she loves so well. “No, don’t,” he says, “I love your laugh, don’t hide it.”

He cradles her face in his hands and she touches back, mirroring him with her own hand cupping his jaw.

"I missed you so much," she tells him. She doesn't know how to be more truthful than that. "Every single day, I missed you."

Michael bends slow to brush a soft kiss against her lips. It's all comfort and no lust and somehow the simple familiarity of it sears white-hot and she's suddenly, abruptly, desperate for him.

She's just not sure if they should add sex to the mix yet. "You really did it, huh? Just like you promised."

His fingers graze over her bare shoulder making her shiver hard and why oh why did she wear a tank top today?

"What do you mean?"

"You said you'd move out here for me and here you are." Amber swallows back bitter 'what ifs' and tries not to think about what could have been.

He must read it on her face.

"Hey, don't. We messed up, everyone does. We'll be okay." His answer is surer that even he's expected, she can tell by the way his eyebrows raise in surprise and how he freezes, so silently still, as he processes what's just fallen out of his mouth all pretty and neat and ready for forgiveness.

"I want that," Amber says. Unspoken is the 'more than anything else in the world.'

His eyes go wide, pupil eating up all that lovely green and she knows he hears that too anyway.

Hands skirt against the base of her throat and he can't stop touching, they move independently of him like her own limbs have battled for freedom and she doesn't want them to ever rediscover restraint.

Amber mirrors his every touch, pressing her own hands to his sweat-glazed flesh. He's cold and damp so she does her best to warm him up, rubs the sensitive lobe of his ear, trails down to his bobbing Adam's apple and counts the vertebrate in his throat.

"I want that too," he says like a promise whispered low.

It's the last barrier to their caution. The moment it's breathed into life they're stripping each other in tandem like his words were a secret phrase they both had understood to mean 'get as naked as you can. Quickly.'

Her tank is easy to get rid of but her jeans take a little more time. They're tightly molded to her skin and they get caught around her thighs. The matter isn't helped by Michael's sudden fascination with her pale flesh as it’s slowly revealed.

With his eyes on her he's never felt sexier than she does right now. Even looking as ridiculous as she does standing around in a thick uni-boob sports bra with her jeans stuck around her thighs.

He grapples at her ass when she finally kicks her jeans free. His palms cup her buttocks forcefully, lifting her up into his still-clothed embrace and rocking her half-naked body against his long form.

His eyes eat her up. Amber has to close her own so she doesn't get swept away in the intensity of his stare. She moans softly as his hands climb up to the base of her neck, fingers massaging at her scalp and sending rocking waves of pleasure through her. "I don't want to mess this up," the words are drawn reluctantly from her mouth, enticed into being by the direct honesty of his open stare.

"I don't either. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me." His state is so damn raw, so damn sincere she can't bare it.

"Me too," she returns and that's equally as true. Amber doesn't know how they made such a mess of things for so long but she doesn't intend to do it again.