Page 131 of Everything Under the Sun

I moved my leg over so my thigh covered the blood.

“Nothing…”

He sat upright, too. “Please don’t lie to me—did I hurt you?” He fitted his hands on my elbows.

I shook my head, thought on it a moment, and fought a dilemma. Which is worse: letting him know that he hurt me, or letting him know about the blood?

I chose to spare his feelings and expose my embarrassment instead.

When Atticus saw the blood, he glanced down at himself, naked in the dim glow of the tiny candles, and saw that there was blood on him too.

“I didn’t expect to…start so soon.”

He kissed the top of my head and pulled me next to him. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You never have to be ashamed of anything with me. All right?”

“All right.”

After a moment, I got out of the bed.

“I’m going to clean up.”

“Okay, love.”

I am finally where I belong, I thought as I left the room.

(What have I done? What have I done…? I thought as I watched her go.)

By the next morning, after I crawled out of bed, I was surprised to see there was no more blood when I went into the bathroom. I shrugged it off, again attributing it to my cycle.

The soreness, however, was not something I could brush off.

“You’re lying to me,” Atticus said as we made our way down to the blackberry bush together—he wouldn’t let me go anywhere without him after the incident with Mark Porter. “Every step you take is more…careful than usual. Don’t lie to me, Thais; I know I hurt you.”

“I’m fine,” I said with a smile in my voice. “You worry about me too much.”

“I don’t worry about you enough,” he countered.

I laughed. “That’s ridiculous!” I stopped and glanced back at him. “If you worry about me anymore, I’ll be a prisoner in that cabin. I’m surprised you haven’t boarded up the doors and windows and put a chain on my ankle so I can’t go anywhere.”

Atticus laughed, shaking his head. We started walking again.

“Y’know, that’s not such a bad idea. At least then I’d know where you are at all times.”

“It’s a horrible idea,” I said promptly. “You have horrible ideas, Atticus. Ridiculous and horrible. I will not be locked up.”

“If I really wanted to lock you up,” he said, “I could easily. You’re very small”—he laughed out loud—“If we hadn’t used all the duct tape on that girl, I could tape you to the floor—that’s how easy it’d be to keep you in that room if I wanted.”

I matched his loud laughter, throwing my head back.

“Well it’s a good thing we’re out of duct tape,” I said.

“For you, I guess it is.” He came up closer and leaned around to kiss my neck.

After picking blackberries and checking the snare traps and the fishing line, I put myself on laundry duty while Atticus gutted and cleaned our meager catch for the day. I scrubbed the bloodstained sheet in the pond, but knew nothing would get it out.

We ate lunch and then went for a swim; carried more dry wood against the cabin to replace what we had burned for cooking and sterilizing water. Then we went for another swim.

I noticed the way he looked at me; I was as aware of it as he was of the way I looked at him. We adored one another; we were the only two people left in the world; we were cut from a different cloth but stitched together by some stroke of luck, some miracle.

---