How to Keep Rolling After a Fall (14 page)

“Of course.” I remember what he was like at the rugby match. “I'm not surprised.”

“It's amazing how much the same everything feels in the water. Part of it's just the obvious. I can't see my legs, and I can't feel them. I don't have to think about them. But I think it's the weightlessness that does it. In the water, I feel like I can do everything I used to do.” He grins. “Like beat you to the opposite end of the pool.”

I shake my head and hug the board. “That's not a fair race. I'm a good swimmer. I even used to do some of the ocean races.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “Not a fair race?”

It's all the warning I'm given before he takes off, with no wall or floor to push off, just the sheer force of his upper-body strength, and I'm left in his wake. I toss the kickboard aside and bound off the floor to get started, but even though I really put in a lot of effort, I can't catch him for the life of me.

He easily beats me to the wall, and that's where I find him, hugging the cement lip, laughing and smiling in extreme self-satisfaction. His eyes are sparkling, and his cheeks are flushed. His chest heaves above the water, his breathing sexy and labored. I end up only inches from his slick body, and my own struggles to breathe evenly have very little to do with the race.

I look at him as I hold on to the wall, and before long, his laughter fades. “It was only a race. Why do you look so defeated all of a sudden?”

It takes me a long minute to answer him, and I bob in the water, staring at the shifting surface, trying to work out what I want to say. Eventually, all I come up with is the truth. I look him in the eye. “I can't pretend away the thing that made me try to kiss you a couple weeks ago.”

His face transforms, and his eyes end up looking pained. “Nikki—”

I shake my head, not wanting to hear the excuses again. “I know what you said, about needing to focus on your personal situation, but I can't buy into that. You're probably one of the sanest, most together people I know, and I don't—”

“Nikki.”

This time his voice is insistent, and I shut up.

“Do you know why I asked you to turn your back?”

I shake my head.

Pax looks at me, saying nothing for a minute, seeming like he's struggling with his words. He looks down and away from me, something I'm not used to from him. “I had to cap my catheter, all right?” he says quietly.

After another minute, he shakes his head and continues to stare into the distance. “It's all fine and good at, like, arm's length. But someone gets close enough, and there's no hiding the gory details.” He looks back at me and lifts his chin. “Here's the reality: I can't tell when I have to pee. There's a tube that comes out right above my hip, and except for the brief periods of time when I can cap it and try to ignore it, I have to use artificial plumbing. Real sexy, right?”

I'm kind of shocked at his brashness, but it's not like it's some big news flash to me. I mean, I Googled
paraplegia
weeks ago to get a better sense of what Pax deals with on a daily basis. “So?”

“So. Sure,” he responds, shaking his head “It's no big deal to talk about. But don't act like it's something you'd actually want to deal with. Who would? I have to, and I can accept that, but it's not like anyone else is obligated to deal with this crap.”

When he looks at me again, his eyes are scared and uncertain. “So I haven't asked anyone to. Since all this happened, I haven't let any girl get close.… Not close enough to … touch me.”

I inch closer to him. My hand finds his rib cage under the water. Slowly, I slide it down toward his hip, keeping my eyes locked with his, my fingertips grazing the end of the plastic tube before my hand comes to rest on his hip. “It's such a small, insignificant part of you,” I whisper, feeling pain squeeze my heart. Because I'm touching Pax and I like it. I'm close and I want to get closer. And I'm afraid that at any second he's going to tell me to stop.

For whatever reason, my reassurance angers him. “Bullshit. So maybe this one thing doesn't seem like a big deal, but what about the rest of it? It's stuff you don't want to hear about, stuff you don't want to think about. You don't want to deal with UTIs, and kidney stones, and pressure sores, all the stuff that's just part of the package.”

Pax exhales a long, trembling breath and struggles to meet my eyes again. “And Christ. God knows you're ridiculously hot, and trust me, in my head I think about things, but I don't even know if I can…” He winces in embarrassment and gives up on the topic.

It makes me blush, too, thinking about Pax thinking about me in that way. But it's not a bad feeling, not at all.

He turns his whole body away from mine, crossing his arms on the edge of the pool and resting his chin atop them. “I've accepted it,” he whispers, “and it's fine for me. There's nothing I can't live with, because at least I get to live.” Pax finally looks at me again a long moment later, sounding sad and defeated. “It's different, wrong, to ask someone else to come to terms with it, one hundred and ten percent. Especially someone so…” His eyes flash back and forth between mine, blazing and intent. “You probably have no idea what you look like onstage. But you're so damn vibrant and beautiful and … whole.”

Suddenly, tears prick my eyes. “This is ridiculous. You seem hell-bent on seeing only the good in me, yet you expect it to work some other way for you. I can't accept that.” I sound like a stubborn child. “I don't want to.”

Approaching him again, I press my forehead against his bicep and wrap my arm around his arm. “You are funny, and positive, and capable. You are strong, in every sense of the word.”

He swallows hard and turns his face away from me, but I press on.

“You're beautiful, too,” I tell him. I find his hand with mine and lace our fingers together again. “It's not just the parts of you that you'll show me. It's all of you.”

Finally, he turns back toward me, his face right above mine. “I don't—”

I press all the way against him. I twist his body so he has to face me. Then squeezing my eyes shut, I beg him, “Please don't make a fool of me again.”

The gentle rhythm of the water presses my torso flush against his. And this time, my lips make contact with his. Softly, I kiss his lips, one time. “Please.”

His body trembles against mine, and I know it's from fear and not the cold. I squeeze his hand tightly.

“I want to, Nikki.” His eyes are filled with torment. “God, I want to, but…”

Then, with a shaky sigh, his mouth crashes against mine as in a single instant he pushes his fears out of the way and grabs for my hips with his free hand. Our lips part at once, and I wrap my arms around his neck, fingers inching upward, getting lost in his damp hair at the base of his head. I pull him toward me, holding on for dear life just in case he tries to pull away again.

But he doesn't. He holds on to me just as tightly as I hold on to him, shifting back against the wall so my body floats on top of his. Our kiss deepens as Pax finally lets me in, the way I know he's been wanting to.

We kiss and we kiss, and every now and again, my legs bob forward, grazing his, or float out behind me, useless and unimportant. Legs don't matter anymore. Pax's arms are enough to keep me afloat.

 

Chapter 10

The car's heater is going full blast, and I'm wrapped in Pax's arms, damp and warm. He parked the car at the end of my block, but I haven't even thought about opening the door.

“Last time,” Pax has said twice now before kissing me good night. But it hasn't turned out to be the last time, and I end up with my back pressed against the seat, the weight of his torso on mine, as he takes my face in his hands and kisses me.

His lips are soft and teasing, and I can feel him smiling as he moves his kisses to my jaw. “I'm sorry. You started it.…” His mouth is on my earlobe, and chills are rocketing down my spine. “Now I kinda don't want to stop.”

Well, me neither.

I eagerly pull his face back to mine and find his mouth while my hands grasp the open collar of his shirt, my fingers twisting in the soft material, clutching him to me. Pax's hand is grasping my knee … and soon his fingers are pressing into the soft skin of my inner thigh … and I'm pretty sure the windows are starting to steam up … and I really need to get out of this car.

“I gotta go,” I whisper, planting my mouth against his a final time and smiling up at him. “I'll call you tomorrow.”

His eyes are soft and sparkling as he tells me good night, and I reluctantly straighten my dress, leaving the warmth inside the car and stepping into the chilly early-October night.

The cold air, and reality, hit me like a bucket of water over my head. Looking toward my house, I see a curtain flicker against the front window, and the dread I've been pushing away fully consumes me. With Pax, in the city, in the pool, it was easy enough to pretend I was in the midst of some kind of dream. There's no more pretending now, though, and it's time to face the consequences. With shaking hands, I pull my phone out of my purse, feeling my heart hammering as I look at its face. Two missed calls. And it's eleven thirty-seven. Shit.

Shit.

My feet drag through the crushed shells of the driveway as I approach the front door, even though it would definitely be in my best interest to hurry. On the other hand, what's the point? What's done is done. So am I, probably.

I slowly open the door, and as I step through, both of my parents rise from the couch in unison. My mom's hand is like a claw around her cell phone. “Where the
hell
were you?” Her eyes fall to my festive pink shoes, which are dangling from my hand, and then take in my bare, dirty feet.

I'm quiet for a minute. “Philadelphia,” I say meekly.

My mom steps closer, her palm pressed against her forehead as if she's trying to keep her brain from exploding right out the front of her head. “Philadelphia?”

“Yes.”

“You show up way past your curfew, in a tiny dress, carrying your shoes. Your hair is wet, and makeup is smeared all over your face. You left us with no idea where you were, and then an unfamiliar car drops you halfway down the block an hour past your curfew, and you really think an acceptable answer is ‘
Philadelphia
'?”

She's right in my face now, and I say a silent
thank you
that I popped a piece of Big Red gum pre-good-night make-out session with Pax and that she hasn't added “and I think I smell beer” to her litany of crimes.

I take a step back and away. “I went to dinner in Philadelphia with Pax,” I elaborate.

My dad's voice is as hard and emotionless as steel. “We gave you a chance. This is what you did with it?” He looks utterly baffled, as though he's come to realize that in addition to being awful, I'm also pretty damn stupid.

“Can I please just explain?”

Pax's intentions for the night had been so good and pure, and I'm devastated that my memory of it is being tainted by their perceptions of what I may have been up to. I wish they could have been there, on the corner of the city block, when Pax told me why he took me out in the first place. But they weren't, and now I stand here scrambling to formulate something that will even come close to passing as an acceptable explanation.

“No, I don't really think you can,” my dad says as if he's biting back something bitter. “This is not the type of person it's going to be okay for you to associate with going forward, Nicole. Not if you care anything about reinstating any sort of good faith or trust around here. We're not going to allow a social life, not like this, again. With people who seem to support and encourage bad decisions.” His eyes flicker to my neck, and I'm suddenly pretty certain there's a red mark or two from when Pax got a bit carried away saying good night.

I feel incredulous, inappropriate laughter bubbling up in my throat.
Bad decisions?
He was hoping to motivate me, for Christ's sake. Although I've tried to keep an even keel with my parents, suddenly, I just can't. “You don't even know him! You're just looking for a reason to come down on him, come down on
me
.”

“Watch your tone.” My mom is seething. Her lips are a thin white line, and she shakes her head. “This kid? Absolutely not.”

“No!” I scream right back at her. “This is not okay. Just
no
.”

The cruel reality sinks in. They're trying to take Pax away. They're trying to take away the one thing that is good. The
one
person who doesn't look at me the way they are looking right now.

Emotion crashes over me, and my voice breaks “No.” Suddenly, I'm sobbing. “Just no. You can't.”

My parents seem stunned into silence by my loud, passionate outburst, which I can't manage to tame. “You can't just write him off, remove him from my life, without even knowing him!” I shriek. My rant is almost indecipherable, garbled by tears and fury. “My God, these weren't
his
bad choices tonight!”

“So you acknowledge that you continue to make bad choices?” my dad interjects drily.

“That's not what I meant! You want to know the specifics, fine.” I shake my head furiously. “Pax didn't have some shady plan, and he wasn't trying to get me in trouble. He was trying to get me to care about my future again. He was trying to get me to think about it and get motivated to make plans for myself. That's all! I wasn't paying attention to the time, and I didn't leave with enough time to get home, but that wasn't something he did.” My shoulders shake as my chin hits my chest, sobs racking my body. “You can think I'm a terrible person all you want, but it's not fair to think that of him.”