A Tub of Cold Water

My hand pressed against his cheek, my thumb rolling under to his jaw to keep his mouth sewn to mine by the force of our lips. I tugged the fingers locked in his inky curls, yanking them like you’d yank on your shirt. I wanted him to possess me, to fill me and take advantage of me. Especially if this was a dream.

His hand at the nape of my neck, his hand at my hip, gripping and rolling his thumb into the bone, and his tongue battling mine were the only things real in this moment. Just him, just me, just our mouths moving in sync together. That’s all there was.

I shifted my face down to press a thick kiss to this scar covering a jagged line down his clavicle. His lips landed just at my hairline, his breathing quick and heavy and hot against my chilled skin. The hand that was gripping my nape was thrown around the back of my neck and his fingertips were trembling against my clavicle. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I carried on with my own heavy breathing, my own arrhythmic heartbeat that hammered in time to his.

“Dreaming about me?” he whispered with a jagged laugh, all breathy and uneven. “Do you do that often?”

A blush crept through my cheeks and made its way down the side of my neck as well as warming my ears. Tongue snaking out, it slicked against my bottom lip before I cleared my throat. “Only recently. What are you doing here?”

Against my skin, I could feel him grimace. Sawyer pulled back only enough to press his forehead against mine, he tapped his finger against my temple twice, “I’m not up here.” He turned that same finger to point at the ground for a few seconds, “I’m right here.”

“Not a dream?” I shook my head to the time of my words. God, please let this be dream. I take back my complaints about it being one. I can’t believe I made the first move, or that it even happened at all. “Are you sure?”

He chuckled and sobered in the same second, yet still not pulling away. “Do you not want this to be real?”

“Were you here last night? Did you come back in here?” I asked as I glanced up from beneath my lashes, his eyes becoming that pale jade that sucked the breath from my lungs supernaturally.

His mouth filled a line where I was hoping to find a smile. He pulled back now, his hand releasing my hip as he turned my chin one way then the next, his hand lifting my shirt off my hip to check for low bruises. I cleared my throat and his fingers dropped the thin cotton before lifting his eyes back to mine.

“My rib got the worst of it,” was all I thought to say. I gulped before trying to slacken my throat a bit, stop it from tightening up on myself. “What are we doing?”

Looking around us, his shoulders lifted for a prolonged second before turning his head back to mine. “Standing in your bedroom. I thought it was pretty self-explanatory.”

I took a quick glance around and flicked my gaze back to his. “That’s not what I meant. I meant here as in, this current situation here. As in—” I broke off midsentence and broke out of his embrace. Taking a few steps away from him, I found that without his arms around me, the room was darker and colder than a few minutes ago.

“As in?” Sawyer echoed, attaching a pitch of question onto his tone as he swiveled around to watch me. I couldn’t face him for what I said next, though.

“Why now?” my eyes locked onto my bed, staring at its rumpled, unkempt state. After a couple seconds of silence, my voice hardened and found stability. “Why now? Why not then? Why not before?”

Still, he was silent like the covering darkness outside, silent like my house at this certain moment in time, silent like he was paused. Just as I was about to turn to look at him from over my shoulder, his growling whisper erupted from his place.

“Before what?”

Spinning around, I pinned him with my stare, full of something close to hate. Not hate towards him, but hate towards the point I was trying to make. “Before my life came to this! Before I lived day to day fearing that it would be my last. Before when you’d look at me and talk to me. Before things were complicated.”

“Things were always complicated, Aubrey. Whether you choose to acknowledge that then or now, it’s how it was. I’m sorry I didn’t step up and try to be your savior, but that’s what you have Skye for.” Sawyer convened enough sarcasm and resentment to drip like acid on his name.

Shaking my head, I turned my face to the floor, my arms wrapping around my torso to conserve my warmth. I didn’t know what to say, besides the fact that I really wished this was a dream. I also wished I hadn’t opened my big trap, retracting the one thing that spoiled this moment. I stared at my purple-grey-black plaid duvet and fled the thought of diving beneath it.

Raw resent in my voice, I finally found the power to lift my eyes to his. “Don’t talk about him like that, with that tone. He’s saved my life. As for complicated, they weren’t—not compared to how they are now.”

“What do you want to me to say to you? I’m not a psychic. I’m a boy from school. I’m not scary, I’m not open, I’m not this person you’ve conjured in your dreams.” He patted his chest twice, “I’m just Sawyer.”

“I never asked you to be more than that. You may not have noticed, but I’m not one of those bimbo fan-clubbing girls that follow you around school because you’re like super cute.” I mimicked them the best I could with their valley-girl accents and squeaks between each new pitch.

Rising a ghostly smile of approval, Sawyer’s eyes lit up minimally. Before either of us could giggle or say anything more about the matter, a boom came from upstairs. “Aubrey! Where the fuck are you? Come out before I drag you out!”

Shaking in my spot, my muscles released a jumpy spasm and before I could realize much more of it, Sawyer’s arms wrapped around me protectively. Tucking my head beneath his chin, he breathed, “Stop. I won’t let it happen again.”

“You were here?”

I could feel him nod by the way his chin dug into my head and stopped. It wasn’t Skye who plucked me delicately from the stairs like I was cracked porcelain. It wasn’t Skye who coddled me in my bed at two in the morning. It wasn’t Skye who skimmed his lips against my cheek, against my forehead, against my hair, against my lips. “I know, baby, I know.” How had I missed that? How had I missed him?

The booming steps made their slow assaulting way to the stairs, each step so loud it sounded like a troll stamping around my front room. My fingers tightened into his evergreen V-neck, tugging it closer to me as my limbs shook with a shiver of fear, a continual, slow bout on each individual limb and muscle. “Oh, God,”

Walking me backwards, Sawyer held me upright until my bed met my lower back and pushed me onto the mattress. His hands framed my cheeks, his lips puckering against mine before he walked backwards into the shadows of my large bedroom. I had to rip my eyes away from his disappearing figure to meet my father’s eyes as they came into view from the river of light the upstairs hall created through the open door.

“What are you still doing in bed? It’s eight-thirty, for God’s sake. Dinner was done an hour ago. God and my laundry. I needed you to get it down here and done. What the hell have you been doing in bed all day?”

I straightened up, pushing my shoulders back, which put a strain on my cracked rib and forced a quick gasp and a muffled cry on my part. Shooting my hand to the rib, I inclined on myself and tried to remember how to breathe properly. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. Do you still need the laundry done?”

“Yeah,” Chris said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the top of the stairs. “I have two baskets up there by the stairs. I’ll bring them down here. Do you want soup? That’s what I made. I’ll heat it up and bring it down for you.”

“Um, sure, dad. That sounds—that sounds great.” I couldn’t keep the quiver out of my voice, but I knew he didn’t expect me to. He graveled over the power he possessed. I couldn’t say I blamed him; he was a powerful man in business and one at home as well.

He moved off up the stairs and came back down two minutes later with two baskets filled to the brim with dirty, foul clothes and a bowl of cream of chicken and rice balanced on top. He set down the baskets and carried the bowl over to me, holding it out for me to grab. Staring at it, I held my trembling hands out for him to drop it into, but he swayed to the right and placed it down onto the table.

“Th-thank you, daddy. I’ll have your laundry done and folded and up by your room before I go to sleep.” I said with efficiency and without any and all quiver. I was damn proud.

Staring at me, I realized that he was waiting for me to take a spoonful of this homemade soup, anticipating it. My eyes stared through his as I dunked the spoon and pulled it up, tendrils of heat swirling and wafting up towards my face. Standing rigid, he gave one subtle nod and I pushed in the spoon end. The metal and liquid both burned my tongue raw before I swallowed down its wrath of heat.

Crossing his arms over his chest tightly, his chin jerked up toward the low ceiling. His hard, solid voice came out rough and gruff, “Well?”

“It’s delicious.” I gave off the most artificial smile I could muster, taking another spoonful of the glorious soup. And then another, and a few more after that before Chris’s smile tipped the edges of his lips.

“Good.” He said pleasantly before turning on his heel. No “Goodnight”, no “See you tomorrow”, no “Sweet dreams”. No, none of that. Once at the top of the stairs, he pulled the door closed and started his slow, easy retreat up to his bedroom and away from me until tomorrow night.

Setting the soup down on my nightstand once more, I looked around for Sawyer, half wanting to call out his name, half wanting to accept that this encounter was nothing more than a dream. I decided on the latter as I hopped off my bed slowly, careful not to disturb my injured rib, and made my way over to the basket.

My body still ached, every step made my chest throb because of the damn cracked rib, but with that twelve hour sleep, the pain had dulled in comparison to the haze I now felt.

As I wrapped my fingers around the handles, I pulled up on the basket to lift it. And that’s when I felt it—the shooting spider web pain that climbed up my sides. I dropped the basket and went down onto one knee, like I was swearing an unholy oath—or better yet—like I was proposing to this basket as it was my means of instant death. I released a scream that I smothered into dirty, musky laundry and closed my eyes as tears started to swim down my cheeks like Olympic gold medalists.

“Ahh—”

My scream was cut off by a chilled hand wrapping around my mouth, a soft “Hush” by my ear as the unused hand snaked around my stomach and pulled me back into the lean body. Tears continued to swim down the curves of my cheeks and over the pale, ethereal wrist that was in my line of vision. One hand reached up and wrapped around the skin, my own pale flesh not even worthy to compare to his as I twisted slowly so both knees landed on the hardwood.

I shoved my face into the bend of Sawyer’s neck. My sobs muffled by his skin as he wrapped his arms around my head and smothered me into him. My nails dug into his shoulder blades as rivers flowed from my eyes and soaked into the cotton of his shirt.

Shifting, Sawyer sat down into the hardwood and pulled me into his lap, where I wound my legs limply around his back and he reached his hand behind him to pull my tied fleece blanket around the both of us. Sagging against the cushion of the couch, I shoved my head deeper into his neck and absorbed his spicy, minty-clean scent. Sawyer rolled from side to side, rocking me until my tears stopped flowing and my sobs quieted.

Unlike Skye, Sawyer didn’t make promises that he couldn’t completely live up to. Unlike Skye, Sawyer didn’t try to kiss my pain away. Unlike Skye, Sawyer didn’t hush me and tell me how beautiful he thought I was. Unlike Skye, Sawyer didn’t try to be a caretaker, didn’t try to be a boyfriend, didn’t try to be a protective parent. He tried to be my anchor. Not someone I could depend on, but someone who would let me sob out my frustrations and incoherent jabs about the world. He stayed quiet, his eyes focusing somewhere over my head and on the plum painted walls.

Still rocking me back and forth, I pressed my forehead to his cheek and curled one arm around his neck and pressed my hand to the collar of his shirt, my fingers curling into cotton. I could feel his eyes shift onto my tear stricken face. “You done?” he whispered with a gentle undertone.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I mumbled hoarsely, “I’m done.”

Shifting me slowly, he sat me down on the rug in his place before moving towards the baskets full of stenches of sweat, air freshener, and dinner fumes. It was disgusting and I give him props for approaching it brazenly.

“I thought you had left.” I let the words roll off my tongue, but I could feel the happiness that filled me because he was still here.

Glancing briefly over his shoulder, Sawyer shook his head, lifting the basket easily as he looked around and headed in the direction of the laundry room. “I gave you my word, and that’s something sacred to me.”

“Oh.” I mumbled to myself, my fingers twisting around each other in my lap as I stared into the grain swirls of the hardwood. He’d told me that he wouldn’t let it happen again. I trusted him. Calling after him, I guiltily said, “You don’t have to do that.”

I could hear him turn the knob on the washer, followed by the whoosh of water filling it up angrily. A couple seconds after that, he walked out with water dripping from his fingers and his raven curls pushed off his face. “Yes, I do.”

Shaking my head, I stubbornly replied, “No, you don’t. It’s my chore. I’m more than capable of handling it.”

He raised one dark eyebrow to my comment, a watered-down smirk tugged at his lips. “Are you so sure?”

My eyes narrowed down on him as he moved over to kneel before me, his eyes smiling where his lips didn’t. He was silent for a moment, just staring at me intently and probingly. When he finally did speak, though, he whispered his reply. It was slow, leisured, and it sucked the very breath from my lungs like I’d never breathed before in my life. “Is it so bad that I want to take care of you? I want to do something right, amend for all of the bad. Let me do this.”

“I already told you,” I whispered through a somewhat choked voice, “I’m not a charity case.”

He tipped his head to the side, so much to the side that his stare must have been vertical. “I’m not doing this to earn brownie points. I’m doing this for me, to help make your life a little bit easier, to protect you from hurting yourself further. I’m doing this for you, Starlight.”

“Starlight,” I tested the word off the tip of my tongue, balancing it. “I like it.”

This produced a smile from Sawyer, one that didn’t hold sarcasm or malice, one that didn’t hold prejudice or faint happiness. No, it was a real smile.