This War Paint

Jane


What was that? What the hell was that?

I could still feel his lips on my knuckles, gently kissing them, so gently that it was as if I’d been the one fighting my whole life, not him. It was as if I’d punched David Armstrong the day before, as if I’d ever used my knuckles for anything but politely knocking on peoples’ doors.

My heart was in my throat, beating a million times harder and faster than usual, adrenaline coursing its way through my veins like acid. I was choking on air. I was sitting next to Fraser as he lay on a hospital bed and wondering if I might pass out at any minute. I should just get up, stroll down the corridor and find an unoccupied bed of my own. I stayed put though because something in me had me rooted to that uncomfortable plastic chair as totally as if there’d been chains on my arms.

Something, something which had a lot to do with Fraser and his lips and his imploring black eyes. I blushed thinking again about the moment he’d kissed my knuckles, already my stomach overrun with feelings I’d only ever experienced with him for split seconds at a time. It was longer now. The butterflies were still there even if it had been ten long minutes since he’d done it – done the deed.

I’d been kissed by boys before. By Jeremy Cole at the tenth grade dance, by Jack Williams when I’d shared my juice with him in kindergarten, by David Armstrong in that bathroom at a party I didn’t even want to be at. On the lips, on places much more intimate than just my hand. This was a first though, the first time I’d wanted to kiss back with just as much passion, the first time I’d had to restrain myself from leaning forward and kissing him senseless.

I fisted my hands, trying to erase the feel of him from every pore of my being. He was watching me as I did this with concern in his eyes like I was the one lying in a hospital bed. He had no idea nor would he ever understand how much he had scared me. Terrified me. When the Doctor had talked about him not pulling through, the chance that things might not work, the percentage of overdosed patients who didn’t make it, I was hazy with panic. I paced the waiting room with other anxious relatives, blending in perfectly with their depression. Nobody would have guessed that I was just a friend, barely a friend, and the nurse kept me updated by telling me my ‘boyfriend’ had just gone into surgery.

I was relieved that in my bed attire with a sloppy shirt and oversized cardigan, with my hair scraped back and make up free complexion, nobody recognised me. Or nobody put two and two together. I was just a patient’s worried girlfriend, not Jane Hathaway the girl who’d taken a relative stranger to hospital. A stranger with a bad-as-sin reputation and drug problems. It was a relief and a curse to be left with only Fraser and the all-consuming worry eating at my insides. It was too much like years ago waiting around for the doctors to tell me what the hell was wrong with my mother.

Only this was more potent, it held a danger I didn’t know even existed in this world. The notion that he could be gone from me made me physically sick, so far gone with worry that it was almost impossible to stay stabilised. I wanted to leave but I needed to stay. When Fraser woke up – I was determined that he would wake up – I was going to be there by his side to let him know that the whole world wasn’t against him no matter what he thought. Or what he’d been through.

I wasn’t even going to dwell on the possibility that this was self-inflicted, only having the energy to deal with one bombshell at a time. It was there, though, in the back of my mind, a haunting thought. I didn’t know exactly where I stood on suicide – if I thought it was selfish or a decision that person had a right to make – because my sheltered life had never demanded me to even contemplate it. But as it was shoved down my throat I understood it didn’t even matter where I stood. It would crush me if he’d tried to do this to himself, preconceived ideas or not.

My knees had almost given out when the nurse called me over, telling me that my boyfriend was out of surgery and recovering in a room down the hallway.

“He’s just to the left of the waiting room in ward E3, apparently the surgery was a great success and he should make a full recovery. It’s such a shame that he felt he had to do that to himself isn’t it? It’s okay though dear I’m sure it was completely out of your control. Some women are married to serial killers and never suspect a thing, how were you to know he was suicidal?”

I opened and closed my mouth, clutching the end of my ratty t-shirt, wanting to reach over the desk and strangle her with it. I was exhausted with both worry and lack of sleep. My nerves were shot, my brain in overdrive and there were tears already collecting in my eyes. This nurse was nothing but a gossip who’d undoubtedly report to others in the staff room later about the sorry state a relationship she’d seen today. She knew nothing. Not about my relationship with Fraser or about how he’d overdosed or anything about the boy who lay unconscious in ward E3.

But then, I realised with a start, neither did I.

That didn’t stop me from hurtling myself down the sterilised hallway to find him alone in a room, the four white walls enclosed around his body too much like a prison. He looked so small there as if he’d shrunk in the surgery or they’d mixed up the patients entirely. He looked vulnerable lying in those crisp cream sheets, tucked up and folded perfectly like a present ready to be unwrapped. I stole over to him, sagging into a chair already present adjacent to the bed, grabbing a waxy hand in mine and squeezing fiercely. I don’t know what I expected him to do but the nothing I got was worse, so much worse.

Soon my eyes hurt from staring so intensely at him, the bright lights of the hospital draining me as if I was their power source. I rested my head carefully back on the hard wall and gave my pupils a well deserved break. It was too much just watching his face, immobile with unconsciousness, so peaceful looking he could have been dreaming. Getting progressively drowsier, my mind flashed back to hours earlier when I’d arrived with Fraser almost falling off of my arm. The quick flurry of doctors and nurses who swept him away from me. The jolted conversation I’d had to Dad, telling him Lolly needed me, lying with a skill I didn’t know I possessed.

It scared me how easily they had come, the lies. Straight off my tongue, no second thoughts, only the burning need to stay in that hospital for Fraser. I knew Helen wouldn’t breathe a word of what had happened but I texted anyway as an after thought when Fraser had successfully had his surgery. She would worry, she had a good heart.

I’d meant every word when I’d told Fraser that I was fine staying with him. I didn’t tell him that there was nowhere in the world I’d rather be than right there, by his side, as we rode out this particular storm. He was special to me in ways I’d never understood but knew suddenly didn’t matter. I liked him. I liked him more than I should, I was so fascinated by him and yet terrified too. Only he had this power over me. And only he was this reckless with it.

“It was so stupid of me,” he breathed suddenly, snapping me out of my reverie. “I shouldn’t have taken drugs when I was in that state – I knew better. Fuck it I’m usually an idiot but I’m safe enough to make sure I never overdose like that. I know people who’ve died from it, people far better than me, and I thought I’d learned that lesson a long, long time ago.”

Fraser shook his head, the mouth of a dragon just peeking out of the cover, crawling up his neck. I had to stop myself from reaching out to trace it, any excuse to touch him again. I needed it though. So I rested my palm lightly on his chest covered with the cream sheets, careful not to add too much pressure.

“Hey, you promised me you’ll stay away from them, it doesn’t matter what happened as long as you’re okay now.”

“I got fired Jane. I was so fucking angry and upset because I lost my job,” he snarled, the corners of his lips turning up oh so slightly. “I can’t survive without it. Hell, how am I even going to pay these medical bills? I should have just done another shot, finished the job properly.”

My throat seemed suddenly swollen as I gasped down a whole new lungful of sterilised air. No. No way had he said that. My hand over his chest curled the sheets into a fist, my free hand coming to rest on his exposed bicep.

“Don’t you dare Fraser Swank. Don’t you even dare.”

He blinked up at me as if surprised to find I was still here – he’d been doing that every five minutes for the past hour. I wasn’t going anywhere, not unless I could bring this boy with me, and I didn’t care if he didn’t quite get that.

“Well fancy that,” he murmured to himself “Jane Hathaway knows my full name.”

“You focus on getting better so then I can kick your ass for being such an idiot!” I fumed, completely ignoring his previous words.

It took a couple of seconds but there was a smile battling its way onto his rugged face. The laughter lines peeked out, telling me that while he may not smile often it was often enough for me.

“I’d like to see you try it sweetheart,” he said, smile twisting into a smirk. “Haven’t you heard? I took out Florence’s Golden Boy.”

“I heard it was an unfair fight, you took him by surprise,” I held my poker face.

“Your sources are horribly biased. I’m quite the street fighter,” he gloated, eyes burning into me with an intensity I chose not to decipher. Not yet. Not quite yet.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I cracked, grinning like an idiot under the horrible lights of the hospital room. He grinned too. And I became aware that my hand was still smouldering into his large bicep swaddled in tattoos, the other curled so intimately atop his chest. Hooded eyes were suddenly bringing me in, lacewing and reeling my body down to his. I glanced at his lips, wondering if the beautiful sensations from earlier would be even better on my own lips. Not my hand. A real kiss.

“Jane,” he whispered half a moan.

“Yes?” I whispered back, my breath dancing with his.

“You’re tired. Come on.”

And just like that the spell over my treacherous body was broken. Fraser shifted away, his hulking body suddenly larger than life rolling over to the furthest side. When I just stared at him he rolled his eyes and let out a deep grunt.

“Get in Jane, there’s plenty of room in this bed for the both of us and my dying chivalry won’t allow me to let you sleep on that plastic piece of shit a moment longer.”

I bit my lip, looking at the space with dubious eyes.

“Really it’s fine. It’s actually quite comfortable,” I tried, finding the aspect of sleeping beside Fraser suddenly overwhelming. It shouldn’t be like this. The guy probably didn’t even like me in that way – he was so different from the other boys in Florence why would he share that stupid trait?

“Don’t make me make you. Even in this weakened state I probably could,” Fraser threatened lowly, dark eyes trailing over my indecisive face.

“No, I can’t.”

“Sure you can.”

“No,” I shook my head “I can’t.”

It was too dangerous. For my emotions and my body. What if they betrayed me again? What if I did something both of us would regret? I was here as his support network, his friend, not some girlfriend. He probably had one around Florence somewhere, if the rumours were anything to go by then he had many.

“Jane,” Fraser peered up at me imploringly. “I can’t bear the thought of you being uncomfortable waiting here with me.”

He took my hand from his bicep gently, always gently, and pressed my knuckles once again up to his lips. “I won’t touch you if that’s what you’re worried about; I just want you to get some proper sleep.”

This time the moment his lips touched my skin my reaction was outwardly different, I was stoic, but inwardly was even worse. I very nearly jumped on him just so that my lips could taste his, just once, just quickly; just to see if it was even half as sweet as that.

Instead, I let my body shrug off the heavy cardigan and slip under the folded covers with him. Our sides were pressed together, volts of electricity running from every synapse that touched. I had to suppress the urge to curl up into him to turn my head away, the pillow and mattress moulding to my stiff body like heaven.

In almost no time at all I was asleep, the toll of my worry and anguish and lust and heartbreak finally winning over. Instinctively, just before I drifted off, my hand found his just under the cover and twisted its way into his fingers. I felt his sigh wash through my hair, wondering if I had hurt him, just as there was nothing but dreaming.