Binding 13

"Why?" I laughed loudly. "What good was moving downstairs going to do if the sky was falling?"

Joh

"Ah, see," he chuckled, tapping his head with his forefinger. "In my naïve, six-year-old mind, I was thinking that if the sky did in fact fall, it might break the roof, but it couldn’t possibly break the downstairs ceiling too. I'd have a better chance of surviving on the ground level."

"You were a clever, little fella, weren't you?"

"I was something alright," Joh

"Wow," I snickered between fits of laughter. "That's survival at its finest."

He gave me a wolfish grin. "Original boy scout right here."

"Were you in the boy scouts?"

"Like fuck I was," Joh

"Ah, definitely not." I shook my head, stifling a giggle. "My survival skills are terrible."

Joh

His expression shifted then, growing more intense.

Unable to take the heat, I turned my face away and glanced at the clock on the dashboard.

It read 8:25.

God, how long had we been sitting here talking?

"Tell me something," Joh

His question caught me off guard.

"I, uh –" clasping my hands together, I cracked my knuckles and exhaled a heavy sigh, "I needed a change."

"A change?" He arched a disbelieving brow. "Halfway through your junior cert?"

"It's complicated and sort of private…" my voice trailed off, and I turned my face to look out my window, though all I could see was darkness outside.

I wasn’t comfortable with the direction this conversation had taken.

Every time I thought about my old school, a fresh batch of terror enveloped me.

My reasons for being here weren't something I was willing to talk about with anyone.

"Hey." I felt his fingers brush against the back of my hand, his voice closer now, soft and probing. "Where'd you go?"

Startled by the contact, my head snapped back, my gaze flickering from his face to where his thumb was still grazing my hand, smoothing soft circles over my knuckles.

It was only a harmless touch meant to capture my attention but what surprised me most was that I didn’t immediately pull away.

The awareness that I liked his touch was unsettling, but not nearly as unsettling as the urge I had to flip my hand over and entwine my fingers with his.

"Shite." Yanking his hand away, Joh

His hand automatically shot to his thigh again.

"Sorry," he grunted and it was a noticeably pained sound. Clearing his throat, he added, "I shouldn’t have done that."

"It's okay," I whispered, chewing nervously on my bottom lip. "I don’t mind."

He exhaled a hard breath and then ran a hand through his hair with his free hand.

"No, it's not okay." His gaze drifted to my mouth and he expelled another hard breath. "It's not fucking okay at all."

"It is okay," I tried to comfort him by saying. "Don’t be mad over it."

"I'm not mad," Joh

He so was mad.

My gaze flickered to his right leg, the one on the floor, and then to where his knuckles had turned white from the pressure he was using to knead his thigh.

Distracted by the sight, I blurted, "What's wrong with you?"

Joh

"You had an icepack on your leg at school earlier," I stated, gesturing with my hand to where he was still digging his fist into his thigh. "Are you hurt?"

His gaze followed mine to his thigh and he quickly yanked his hand away.

"Jesus," he grunted, looking appalled, "I didn’t realize I was doing that."

"You've been touching yourself since we got in the car," I a

"Jesus Christ!" Joh

I immediately regretted my choice of words and began to back pedal. "I mean, not touching yourself. Obviously, you weren't 'touching yourself' touching yourself –"

"Please stop talking," Joh

I closed my mouth and nodded.

Shifting his body gingerly, he sank back down in his seat, flinching ever so slightly at the movement.

I watched in silence as he fastened his seatbelt and inhaled a deep breath, expelling it slowly.

"Just to be clear," he stated after a long pause of silence. "I really wasn’t feeling myself up or anything like that. I'm just…"

"Sore?" I offered, remembering his words from that day.

His gaze locked on mine, wary now.

"Yeah," he admitted with a pained sigh.

I nodded in understanding. "You have an injury?"

Joh

"I have something, alright," he muttered under his breath, and then released another agitated sigh before blurting out, "I fucked my adductor muscle when I was sixteen. It was brutal. Nothing helped, and it was compromising my game. I was in constant pain, Sha

He sounded angry with himself which pushed me to ask, "And you're mad because?"

Joh

He was quiet for so long that I didn’t think he was going to answer me, but then he mumbled, "It's not healing."

"Your leg?" I whispered, concern bubbling up inside of me. "Or your stitches?"

"Both?" he offered with a resigned shake of his head, then whispered, "All of it."

This was a strange admission between two relative strangers, and I got the distinct feeling that Joh

He looked a

Either way, I had the biggest urge to comfort him.

"Well –" pausing, I twisted in my seat to look at him, and gathered my thoughts before saying, "it usually takes a lot longer than a few weeks to recover full from an operation. You're not a machine, Joh

"It's been ten weeks," he shot back, his tone taking on a hard edge, mirroring the frustration in his eyes. "My surgeon told me that I'm on track to full recovery, and my GP cleared me to play after three weeks. It was supposed to be a minor procedure but it looks fucking horr –" Joh

"You were given the all-clear to play after three weeks?" I frowned. "That doesn’t seem like a long enough time frame for your body to heal," I heard myself respond, tone gentle.

"Yeah, well, I was," he huffed.

"Joh

He shook his head and muttered, "You don’t get it."