Page 27 of All the Ways You Save Me
Madeline takes an audible breath and reaches out to takemy hand. I remember how Dad held me while I cried, his cheek pressed against my hair, his tears leaving wet patches on my temples.
We were going to be okay, he said.
“He loved her so much. We both did. But I believed him that we’d get through it together. He quit working his second job. I guess he didn’t need to, there were no more treatments to pay for. But instead of coming home in the evenings, he went to the bar in town.” He had friends there, people who knew Mom. People who could console him. So even though I was alone, I understood.
“But the bar bills piled up. He was going into work later and later. Missing shifts and calling in sick with hangovers. They stopped letting him come to the bar, so he started buying the biggest plastic jugs of vodka in the liquor store and bringing them home. He’d fill a pint glass and drink it straight while he stared at the TV.
“Soon, Dad started to look like Mom, but not because he had cancer.” I close my eyes and an image of my dad, the man I’d looked up to for my entire life, comes into focus. He’d grown thin, gaunt, his once strong muscles could barely hold him up. “I asked him to stop drinking, but he couldn’t. When he stopped, he said all he could think of was my mom.” Sometimes, I eyed that bottle and wondered if I were to drink from it, if I’d stop thinking about her too. But the vodka tasted like lighter fluid, and I didn’t really want to stop thinking about her. My memories of Mom were the only thing that could still make me smile.
At least until Jason came along. Jason made me laugh with his jokes and his goofy moves out on the baseball field. One day he invited me to his house to hang out and play video games, and soon, I was going over after every practice. His mom always insisted that I stay for dinner and take the leftovers home with me for Dad.
“One evening during the middle of my junior year, I came home from Jason’s house, and Dad was passed out on the couch. I was pretty used to it—at that point, he’d been drinking for years. But this time, he looked different. His face was deathly pale, his lips blue. I ran over and felt his pulse, grabbed the phone to call 911 with one hand while I did chest compressions with the other. But he never started breathing again.”
Both my parents were gone.
Madeline’s hand runs slowly up and down my arm, and I know she’s silently letting me know that she’s here. She’s supporting me.
“Jason arrived just as the ambulance was taking Dad’s body away. I was fifteen, and the police at the scene said I’d have to go to foster care. But Jason insisted that I come and stay with him.” I stare down at my hands, remembering trying to fall asleep on the basement couch that night, the weight of overwhelming grief pressing on my chest. But for the first time, there were other emotions, too. I felt supported and comforted. I knew I wasn’t alone. “I don’t know what I would have done without Jason this past year. Maybe I would have ended up on the same dark path as Dad, drinking myself to death.”
I turn to look at Madeline. Her eyes are filled with unshed tears. She squeezes my hand and tugs me away from the trailer, past the waves of wildflowers to a clearing under a tree. I shrug off my backpack and pull out the small blanket I’d tucked inside, spreading it across the leaves. We sit facing each other. “You’ll never be alone again,” Madeline says, leaning forward to look me in the eyes. “You’ll always have Jason, but now you have me, too. Forever.”
“Madeline, you mean everything to me,” I tell her, my voice cracking with emotion. “I love you.”
She presses her hands on the blanket between us to lean in and kiss me. “I love you, too,” she whispers against my mouth, and my heart explodes in my chest. I pull back, just an inch,because I need to look in her eyes during the most perfect moment of my life. The breeze picks up and the branches overhead gently sway, shifting the sun across her face. She practically shimmers in the afternoon light, and I can’t believe she’s here, and she’s mine.
“Every day I wake up and think,This is it.I can’t possibly love her any more than I do in this moment.And then I only have to see you waiting in the parking lot to know that love is only a whisper of what I’ll feel for you by the end of the day.” I reach out to tangle my hands in the fiery hair at the nape of her neck, gently brushing my lips against her temple and the freckles scattered across her cheekbone.
And then she turns her head, and our mouths crash together, hot, urgent, perfectly bruising. Her fingers dig into my shoulders, pulling me closer, as I angle my head for better access, sliding my tongue into her mouth. She shifts her weight toward me, and in the next minute, she’s on her knees, climbing onto my lap, straddling my hips, and pressing me into the blanket. My hands drift to the small of her back and then lower, over the curve of that ass that’s been torturing me all day in those tiny shorts.
She leans back an inch, leaving just enough space for me to grab the hem of her T-shirt and pull it off. The blood rushes from my head and straight to my dick as I get my first glimpse of her flushed skin straining against the delicate lace of her cherry-red bra. We’ve made out in the back of the Bronco before, and on the basement couch when Jason was at swim practice, but I always stopped at my hand under her shirt, not wanting to rush her into something she isn’t ready for. But she doesn’t seem to have any interest in slowing down as she reaches for the button on her shorts, popping it open and revealing more crimson lace.
“I want you to be my first time,” she says. “I can’t imagine doing this with anyone else.”
I prop myself up on my elbows. “Are you sure?”
Madeline nods. “I’m so sure.”
“I’ll do my best not to hurt you.”
She leans over to press her body against the full length of mine. “As long as we’re together, you could never hurt me.”
And then she’s kissing me again, and I’m reaching for the clasp of her bra, the waistband of her shorts, savoring every inch of pale skin and perfect curves, every gasp of pleasure and low moan in the back of her throat. I shift my weight so she’s lying with her back pressed to the blanket, and I slide one finger inside her and then another, making sure she’s ready for me, that she’s hot and wet and right on the edge before I pull off my own T-shirt and jeans, fishing a condom from the pocket before I toss them aside. I settle between her legs, and she spreads them wide, opening for me.
Forme.
I ease in slowly, my eyes trained on her face, ready to stop at any sign of pain. But she bends her knees, wrapping her legs around me and urging me deeper. And then I’m moving inside her, and she’s clutching my shoulders, her head thrown back, her fiery hair tangling against the blanket, my name on her lips.
SIXTEEN
PRESENT DAY
Madeline
Maybe some people get one big love, and Adam was mine. I’m hit with a longing so fierce—for the boy I loved, for the life we could have had together—it threatens to knock me over.
“Madeline?” Josie’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “Did you hear me?”
I drag my gaze to my sister’s face on the phone screen. “Of course I heard you.” How could I have missed her telling me thatAdam died, he’s dead.She practically yelled it, and even if she’d been whispering, the words would have ricocheted around my heart. And then she followed that shot with,You need to find a way to finally dig yourself out of the past and move on.
