Page 40 of Brash for It
He nods, accepting this as a fact we don’t need to wrap in ceremony.“Walk?”
It’s cooler now.The day let go, finally.We cut down the block, past porches where people lean back in plastic chairs and let screens do their talking for them.Fireflies stitch green commas over the ditch water.Somewhere, a grill pops and hisses.The night smells like cut grass and memory.
I slide my hand into his and he doesn’t flinch like some men do at public touch.He squeezes once, matter-of-fact, as if to say this is how it should be.We walk in a rhythm that our bodies learned in the last month without asking for permission.
“Tell me something true,” I request, because I want to know more.
He thinks.“When I was fifteen,” he shares after a beat, “I rebuilt an engine for a 1970 Chevelle with my dad in our driveway and thought I’d invented calm.I didn’t.But it felt like it because every project he did with any of my brothers resulted in lots of yelling and cussing.When it was my turn, I was determined to stay calm.We did it and fuck, it was fun.I’ve been chasing that version of quiet since.”
“I like that.”I kick a rock; it skitters, sparks briefly against asphalt.“My mom used to read to me out loud even when I was too old for it.Thick books.She’d give everyone different voices, even the boring rich men who only talked about property law.That was my calm.”
“You got her voice in your head still?”
“When I need it.”I smile into the dark.“Sometimes it sounds like Trina now when she tells me to breathe.Which would make my mom laugh.”
We loop the block and head back.The house looks like itself—plain, square, exactly the size of the life we’re making, concise.Inside, he kicks off his boots and I do the same.He clicks off the porch light so the moths can regroup and make worse decisions somewhere else.
In the bedroom, I sit on the edge of the bed while he brushes his teeth.I stare at the notebook on the nightstand.A LIFE THAT CAN’T GET TOWEDstares back in my own handwriting, and I am both the girl who wrote it and the woman who is going to live it.
He comes out, shirt off, jaw clean, eyes tired in a way that doesn’t scare me.I stand, intercept him, and press a kiss to his chest, right over the place that keeps me steady at night.He lays his palm between my shoulder blades for a second, there and gone, and something like gratitude arcs between us without needing a name.
We trade places and I scrub mint into my mouth and spit it out and think about all the words I wanted to say today and didn’t, all the words I said and wish I’d said better.When I come back he’s turned the bed down and left the lamp low.The room is easy the way it only gets when a day was hard and you didn’t lose it.
We slide in.He doesn’t reach for me, and I love him for it.I don’t make him wait long, though.I turn, tuck my face into the curve where his shoulder meets his chest, and let his arm come around me like it’s been doing since the first night.
“Thank you,” I say into his skin.
“For what.”
“For not making me smaller so I’d fit.For not wanting me to be a puppet.For helping me figure out the next thing and encouraging me to keep going.”
“Wouldn’t know how to make you anything but you,” he remarks.“Wouldn’t want to.”
He clicks the lamp off settling back into place.The room breathes dark.His hand finds my hair and starts that slow, absent rhythm my nervous system recognizes now.The restless part of him that rolled in the door tonight is quiet.The frantic part of me that thought I was unlovable is, for this minute, convinced otherwise.
“You’re wanted,” he whispers.“By me.Don’t forget that, Kristen.”
I hold it like a warm coin in a cold palm.It buys me sleep.
I don’t dream of Brian.I don’t dream of doors that won’t open or codes that change.I dream of a road that runs along water and the feeling of my body leaning into a curve with a partner who guides me but doesn’t demand from me.
Morning edges in the blinds at some point.The AC sighs.A bird tries a song and gives up.I wake before Kellum which is unusual and stay still because it feels like stealing something good to be awake and quiet while he sleeps.He looks different when he’s not holding the world up with his shoulders.Younger and older at once.Softer without being soft.
He cracks an eye and catches me staring.“What,” he rasps.
“Nothing,” I whisper, and decide on being up front.“Something true.”
He grunts a laugh.“Go.”
“I’m still jealous,” I admit, embarrassed and brave at once.“I don’t want to be.I don’t want to make you carry that.But I am.I’m working on it.”
He considers.“I can take it,” he states.“Just don’t feed it other people’s stories.I’ll always give you the truth even when it’s hard.”
I nod against him.“Okay.”
He tightens his arm and the day begins the way it ought to: with honesty and coffee and a plan, not certainty.We don’t have certainty.We have the next thing.The list saysDMVin ugly letters because I’m still putting it off.The lines are simply out of control and I hate waiting when I could be working or spending time with Kellum.
At the shop door, he kisses my forehead and then my mouth, quick, and it still turns the whole day three shades brighter because I was not expecting that at all.“You’re wanted,” he reminds me on a whisper, “By me.”Then he leaves me to work.
