When We Met

When I didn’t respond, she huffed. “I can’t see you very well, so I can’t try to figure out what you’re thinking and it’s bothering me.”

I bit back a smile and reached out until the tips of my fingers brushed her stomach. Her muscles contracted at the contact, but she didn’t pull away. I let my fingers trail across her stomach until I found one of her arms, and then I slid my hand down her soft skin and intertwined my fingers with hers.

“Well, then, you won’t be alone.”

Her breathing deepened and she curled her fingers around mine, and my body relaxed at the simple movement. “What is it about you?” she asked.

Even though she’d asked me before, I knew this question wasn’t meant for me. Just her tone told me she’d asked herself that question at least a hundred times, and I wondered what answer she’d started coming up with.

“I told you—”

“When I’m ready.”

I swallowed roughly and nodded in the dark room. “Yeah.”

“And you’re not going to tell me when exactly it is that I will be ready?”

“No.”

“But I still feel safe with you.”

God, I hope so.

Indy cleared her throat and took a step back, her grip on my hand tightening as she did. “The pillow room has a lot of blankets. I, uh, don’t really feel comfortable having you in my room yet—even though you were already in there yesterday. But it’s comfortable up there, and even though it’s probably colder up there than the rest of the house, we’ll be able to stay warm.”

If only she had any clue how many times I’d been in her room. My lips twitched into a smile. “Lead the way.”

After stumbling our way up one flight of stairs, down the hall, and then up more stairs, she suddenly paused in front of me.

“I wasn’t joking when I said it’s full of pillows. We didn’t turn this room into a bedroom. The carpet is covered with dozens of pillows, and there are probably another dozen blankets at least in here. You have to walk very carefully or you’ll trip and go down.”

“Okay . . .” I could see enough so I could make out the silhouette of her body, and the lumpiness of the floor, but that was about it.

She started walking painfully slowly, and after she took a few calculated steps, I took two—and immediately fell, taking her down with me.

“What the hell kind of death trap is this room?” I grunted into the mass I’d fallen into, half of which felt like a pillow, and half of which seemed to be a blanket. At least the landing was soft.

Indy was laughing so hard she didn’t respond for a few seconds. “I told you to be careful where you walked!”

“I was!”

“Obviously not.” There was a rustling noise before the blanket was yanked out from underneath me. “If you find blankets, grab them.”

“You just took mine.”

She huffed. “You’ll find more. Come on, it’s freezing up here, and it’s only going to get worse the longer the power stays out.”

Not wanting to risk standing, I crawled around on the pillows, grabbing anything that felt like a blanket as I moved toward where Indy was already waiting by the window. I could see her silhouette and breaths coming out in little white puffs.

“I think I got five?”

“I got six,” she said as she began wrapping blankets around herself.

Dropping mine, I wrapped the ones she’d collected around her until she was completely covered. “You look like a burrito.”

Her soft laugh filled the space between us. “I can’t move my arms.”

“Doesn’t matter, you don’t need to. At least you’ll be warm.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt of that.” She smiled at me in the dark room before frowning. “But now I can’t make you look like a burrito.”

“I don’t want to be a burrito. I wouldn’t be able to move my arms.”

“What the hell, Kier?”

I laughed and grabbed the blankets I’d dropped. “You’ll get over it.”

After I covered myself, we huddled closer together and talked for an hour about classes, housemates, and why she had always been afraid to say anything to me since she never saw me talking to anyone. Like I’d known it would, that topic led to her asking again why she felt safe with me, and when I couldn’t give her an answer, she stayed quiet for a few minutes.

“I haven’t felt safe in a long time,” she finally admitted softly, and then shook her head. “I don’t mean I’ve felt like I was in danger or anything. I just—I’ve felt—it’s hard to explain. . . .”

I just waited.

“I’ve felt like I was on the verge of destroying myself for so long, and I just couldn’t stop. It made me feel like I was drowning, and even when I thought I had people helping me keep it together, they weren’t. And they never made me feel as at peace as you do just by being near me. This feeling is so different—such a nice change. Like I’ve said, I don’t know how to begin to explain it, but it’s just this feeling I have around you.”

And this was it. That tone. It was the same one she’d had yesterday when I tried to talk to her and she asked me to leave. And I knew at that moment that she was ready to know about all those Saturday nights I’d been taking care of her. I didn’t know how I knew; I just knew wherever this conversation was leading this time, it would lead there. She’d told me she’d felt safe before, but never like that. Everything was different this time.

She laughed awkwardly. “I don’t even know why I’m bringing this up. I know you won’t tell me why.”

“It’s because all I want to do is take care of you,” I said before I could stop myself, and risked a glance at her wide eyes.

“Wh-what? Take care of me?” She laughed. “Kier. You don’t even know me. I’m—I’m a mess. I’m apparently a slut—”

“Don’t. Don’t say that about yourself.”

“You don’t know—”

“Yeah, Indy, I do.” I held her gaze for a minute and watched as she bit down on her bottom lip, like she was trying to stop herself from saying something. “Destroying yourself . . . ,” I mumbled, echoing her words, and let that hang in the air for a few seconds. Taking a deep breath, I looked away as I said, “Indy, you always seem so surprised that you’re hearing me talk—or you say something about how I’m quiet. And yeah, I’ll admit I don’t talk to a lot of people—and last year, we didn’t talk at all. But we’ve talked a lot over the last three months, more than you realize. That’s not the only difference in this year, though. I saw you at the parties at our house last year, and you were never like how you are now. You’re wild; you’re out of control. You’re with multiple guys, and you never remember a thing.”

“How do you know that?” she asked, her voice shocked, but just barely above a whisper. “You’re never there.”

I kept speaking like she hadn’t said anything. “You say you feel like you’re on the verge of destroying yourself, and Saturday nights are the first thing that come to mind, Indy. Because, although no one can stop you from drinking, or doing whatever you want to do . . . I know you don’t like who you are when you drink.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Same reason I know which room is yours. Same reason you stumble into my room at some point during every party. It never fails, you end up in there, and we go through the whole thing all over. You trying to remember my name, me carrying you over here to your room, you figuring out I gave you the bread and wondering why.”

“Safe room,” she mumbled to herself, her mouth forming a perfect O when it hit her. “You leave the water and pills, too, don’t you?”

It hadn’t been a question, so I didn’t answer. I just sat there as her mind worked around the information she’d just been given, and everything she was trying to piece together.

“Are you the one who locks my bedroom door?” she asked after a couple of minutes.

I nodded. “People know you live next door. They see me carrying you out of my house and returning not even ten minutes later alone. I don’t trust someone not to take advantage of that.”