The Falling, page 9
I felt so restless. I turned over, grabbed a pillow, and put it between my legs, hugging it close. I thought about how it would be really nice to have someone next to me in bed. I like living alone, but there were times like tonight when I couldn’t sleep and just wished I had someone to bare my soul to as the dawn came and quieted us both.
Outside of my family and Elodie, it had been almost a year since I’d had human contact that wasn’t work-related. I had never really had that in large or consecutive doses, but Kael was making me feel a bit like I had a crush on him. That little patter of your chest when they look at you, the uncontrollable spells of word vomit. I didn’t know Kael well enough to actually have a crush, and I hadn’t been around men for so long that I’d forgotten what cute ones can do to our brains. I guess that doesn’t really apply to Brien; he was attractive, but it was his charm and the spreadsheets inside his mind that drew me to him. He gave me attention, told me I was hot and smart and should leave this Army town and move with him closer to Atlanta. His job as a government contractor was ending soon, and he wanted to be closer to his parents. As if they weren’t close enough. His mom knew every time we fought. His dad gave me a worried fake smile every time I talked about my job. He was my longest relationship, and, God, did he make me never want to have another one. He liked other girls way, way too much, and that’s what ended us, all three times. I went back twice out of loneliness, or was it self-pity? I didn’t know, but this was the longest I’d gone without going back to him.
He was the only boy I’d dated since I moved here, since high school, when I barely dated at all. Making out with senior boys who didn’t know my name apart from “Austin’s sister” wasn’t exactly dating. Brien’s manipulative charm was addictive, and I had hoped that one day he would actually understand me and find me good enough for him and his parents, although that day never came. But now, after these few months, the spell had finally worn off and he barely crossed my mind anymore.
I rolled onto my back, sprawling my legs and arms out. I moved my arms up and down like I was making an angel in the snow. I should be grateful I get to have the whole bed to myself and I should stop thinking about men, in general. Not Kael, not Brien, not my dipshit brother, and especially not my dad.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I woke up with my cell phone on my chest. It felt like the heat was on. I checked the time: almost four in the morning. I had to be up at eight so I could run to the grocery store, get gas, and be ready for work by ten. Thinking of my to-do list was stressing me out in the middle of the night, making my brain too awake to go right back to sleep. I rolled my T-shirt up, turned my fan on high, and lay back down, letting the cool air fill the room and brush across my skin.
Opening Facebook on my phone, I went to Elodie’s friends list and typed in Kael’s name. Nothing came up, so I searched for him again. I changed my search to “Mikael Martin” and found a profile with fewer than one hundred friends, which seemed odd to me, but made sense for what I knew of him so far. I didn’t talk to 99 percent of the people I was “friends” with, but I still had almost a thousand. That seemed excessive, having a thousand people I never spoke to have access to me.
His profile picture was a group shot of Kael with three other soldiers. They were all dressed in ACUs and standing next to a big tank. Kael was grinning in the picture, maybe even laughing—that’s how bright his smile was. It was weird to see him like that, his arm around one of the guys. Maybe this was his level-ten smile that I had been wondering about? I zoomed in on it. My stomach tingled. I went back to his profile, but apart from his profile picture and Fort Benning, Georgia, I couldn’t get any information from his page at all. Everything was private. I almost asked to be his friend, but it felt stalkerish to send him a Facebook request while he was sleeping on a chair in my living room.
I clicked out of his profile and went onto Instagram to see if he had one, though somehow I knew he didn’t. I typed his name in and searched, but nothing came up. I went to Elodie’s page like I had on Facebook, and still nothing. So he wasn’t an Instagram kind of guy; I liked that. I closed the app and threw my phone to the empty side of the bed and sat up. It was so hot in my room that I was starting to think Elodie might have accidently turned on the heat instead of the air again. My throat was dry. I could feel sweat on the back of my neck when I tied up my thick, curly hair.
Kael and Elodie would both be sleeping in the living room, so I made sure I was quiet when I walked down the hallway and into the kitchen. I knew the floor plan of my house so well I could easily navigate every inch in the darkness with only a little guidance from the night-light plugged into the kitchen outlet.
I grabbed the jug of water out of the fridge and chugged it until I couldn’t anymore and my throat burned from the cold. Every night when I was a kid, my mom had brought me a cup of ice water to help me sleep. I stopped craving it a few months ago but still kept a jug in the fridge, just in case the need for that comfort returned. I closed the fridge and almost screamed when I saw Kael sitting at the kitchen table.
“Shit, you scared me.” I wiped my wet lips with the back of my hand. “Sorry if I woke you up. It’s so hot in here.”
“I was up.”
I took a step closer to him and it took his eyes raking down my body, down my rolled T-shirt to my stomach and my exposed thighs, to realize I was barely dressed. It was dark in the room, but he could definitely see at least the outline of my body. I pulled my shirt down, attempting to undo the knot I had tied at the hem.
“Why are you up? Were you just sitting here in the dark?”
Kael’s head tilted just a bit, like he was confused by what I was saying, and he looked down at my legs. I immediately felt a wave of insecurity, thinking about the dips of cellulite peppered across my thighs. He looked back up at my face.
“Can I have some of that water?” he asked.
I flushed, wondering how the hell I hadn’t noticed him sitting there as I made my way to my fridge and chugged water out of a plastic gallon jug.
I nodded and opened the refrigerator door. “It’s just tap water. I buy one of these”—I held up the jug labeled Spring Water—“every once in a while, and just refill it with tap water. So it’s not actually spring water.”
“I can handle tap water.”
His sarcasm surprised me. I smiled at him and he smiled back—also a surprise. He took the container from my hand and lifted it to his mouth without touching his lips. I hadn’t been able to see what he was wearing, or not wearing, in this case. He had taken his uniform jacket and tan T-shirt off, and camo pants hung so low on his waist that they revealed briefs I could almost read the label of but knew I shouldn’t try to. I looked back at his face as he took another drink.
“So why are you up? Getting used to the time difference?” I asked.
He handed back the jug and I took another swig. I was still hot, but the kitchen was much cooler than my bedroom. The cold tile felt good under my feet. I checked the thermostat just inside the living room, near the hallway. It was set to seventy, and it felt like seventy in here, just not in my room. Was I getting sick? I couldn’t afford to—literally.
“I don’t sleep much,” Kael finally answered.
“Ever?”
“Never.”
I sat across from him at the dark wood kitchen table.
“Because of where you just were?”
“Not your father’s house,” he said with a hint of irony, but with no trace of humor in his face. Not in the strong, straightforward set of his jaw. Not in his cloudy eyes that were bloodshot from not sleeping.
“Ha, ha.” I rolled my eyes, trying to stop my brain from imagining him in Afghanistan.
“War, of course.” His eyes were on his hands now, not my face. He licked his lips, allowing a small laugh to escape. “I wonder if I’ll just be saying that my whole life, you know, like the Vietnam vets I meet at the VA hospital. Still telling stories from fifty years ago.”
My stomach started to ache thinking about this quiet young man in a war zone, being woken up by shells or rockets or whatever terror he went through, while I complained and whined to myself over unimportant things and the little miseries of my life. Perspective was a bracing slap across the face.
“I guess it’s weird being back here.” He sighed. “Like I’m not sure what to do with myself.”
Between his honesty and the vulnerability cast across his face, I thought I might be having this conversation in a dream. It was like I could read his mind and feel his pain, even though he was doing a good job trying to conceal it. I was an expert in avoidance and knew emotional masking when I saw it.
“Do you have to go back?” I asked, hoping he would say no.
In my mind, an alarm was blaring, screeching to warn me, or maybe Kael, of how I was starting to feel about him. I had known him for less than forty-eight hours, yet I wanted to protect him, to keep him from going back there. To just make sure he didn’t get lost . . . in any of the ways one could. A list ran through my head as we stared at each other for minutes that felt like an hour. Why did I even care? I took his face in, wanting to keep a copy of the way his eyes were steady, not darting all over, his lips were half open, words hesitating to escape. His focus went to the wall behind me. I felt like he was reading my mind, detecting sympathy that might be easily construed as pity. I didn’t pity him. I just felt . . . I couldn’t make sense of what exactly I was feeling. When it came to Kael and the Army, it was none of my business. He knew what he had signed up for. But that was the logical side of my brain; I knew I felt otherwise. I was lying to myself about the consequence of serving, like signing up made it okay, and that emotion turned my stomach.
“I don’t know yet,” he responded, and we both fell silent.
“I hope you don’t.” The words were out before I could care how they sounded.
I hated the idea of Kael at war, so far from here. Hiding in the darkness of sandpits, building makeshift posts only to have them destroyed by rockets in the middle of the night. My entire body got angry when I thought about his life there, so many people’s lives lived and lost there. Part of me felt like I was betraying my childhood, my family lineage of soldiers and airmen, but I guess I wasn’t as patriotic as I was expected to be. Not if this is what it meant. I had never been, and neither had my mother. You couldn’t convince either of us that violence would ever be the solution to anything, no matter what the issue was.
Kael’s head rested on his bent hand. His eyes were fluttering closed.
“I want . . . to stay here,” he whispered, barely coherent.
My whole body heaved. This military life was so unfair sometimes. I wanted to ask Kael if he felt like this was his purpose in life, or what made him join the Army. Everyone had their reasons, but what were his? Was he like most of the young soldiers I knew? Had he been persuaded to join by the poverty around him and the promise of a steady paycheck and health insurance?
“I really—” I started to say, but his eyes were fully closed. I stared at him in the dark and watched his face relax, feature by feature. His eyes stopped swirling behind his eyelids, and I felt myself drawn to sleep as I watched him unwind before my eyes. I drifted off, not caring that I was away from my bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The morning came fast. I had dreamed about my brother, his face bloodied in an alleyway. Our dad calmly talking to a deputy of some sort, myself crying, and Kael was there. We were in another place, a foreign one that I knew I have never seen. It was weird and obviously not realistic, but it stuck in my head as I got ready to leave for the grocery store. Kael was nowhere in sight when I woke up at the table, the sun filling the room. Elodie was still asleep on the couch, lying on her side now and looking much more comfortable than she had before. I skipped showering because I just couldn’t deal with the water going in and out today; it was already going to be busy enough. I did my hygiene regimen, including the skin care I’m trying to get a handle on. That’s part of growing up, isn’t it?
I threw on a navy-blue dress that Elodie bought me when she went to Atlanta with her group of Army wife friends. It was short, but not too short, and had five little fake pearl buttons going down the center of my bust. They were fake buttons and the dress had pockets. Peak Karina happiness when it comes to fashion in one dress. I’d worn it only once, when I tried it on, and now that I was wearing it in my room, my waves took wonderfully to the dry shampoo and were less frizzy than they normally are, and my skin wasn’t peeling from overexfoliating. I looked . . . cute. Pretty, even. Pretty cute?
The dress was a little tight around my hips but not too bad. The skirt was the ideal length. It had thin straps that tied on my shoulders, making it perfectly adjustable. I covered as much of my cleavage as I could, but I also sort of liked the way the top of the dress was shaped, like half an oval, dipping down into the roundness of my chest. The thin cotton was so soft and fell against my hips and flared out at my thighs in little creases, like a cheerleading skirt, but more stylish. I smiled at my reflection and I wished I could bottle this little moment of love for my body and save it for the next time that I really, really needed it—like when I order an outfit online or, even worse, try on clothes for an hour at the mall and leave with nothing but resentment for my body and myself.
Not today. I didn’t feel any resentment as I twirled and pinched my cheeks to see if that viral video actually works. The color doesn’t last more than thirty seconds, so I swooshed on a little bit of the blush that Elodie gave me. I hadn’t bought my own makeup for months. I had priorities, and makeup couldn’t be one of them right now so I lived through Elodie’s hand-me-down, nearly finished makeup. No complaints—she always has great brands. I look at my face one more time, adding a quick layer of mascara and a lip stain. I look pretty rested for a girl who’d slept at the kitchen table half the night. I usually don’t have mornings like this, where I become best friends with my reflection. I should get better at that . . . at least I’m trying.
When I walked out of my bedroom, I was fastening my sandals around my ankles. The heaviness of the platform made it harder to put on while moving down the hallway, but I managed by leaning against the wall. Kael was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, on his phone. He was dressed in his uniform again. Not shirtless, not jacketless, as he was last night, in the dark moonlit room with lavish purple shadows bouncing from his chest, his cheeks . . . the way his face changed as he fell asleep in this little kitchen, and I stared at him until I finally fell asleep there too. I peered into the living room to see that Elodie was still sleeping. I really didn’t understand how she slept through everything. That must be so nice. I wish my brain would allow me the liberty of napping, sleeping in, or even just the minimum of sleeping an entire night without waking up more than twice.
Kael still hadn’t looked up from his phone, and I felt my roaring confidence plummet the more he scrolled. He hadn’t yet seen me put an effort into my appearance, and for some reason, I wanted him to notice. I cleared my throat, lightly stomping my heavy sandals against the hard kitchen floor. His eyes darted up, looking at my face first, then my neck, particularly the little beaded necklace there. He looked at it intensely enough to see the K charm dangling from it.
It felt as if his eyes were studying each single bead, then he moved to the straps on my shoulders. My hand moved up to twirl the beads around, letting myself enjoy this moment. My body slowly filled with confidence again as he quickly moved his eyes to my thighs and back to my eyeline. If I was imagining all this, why did his breathing change? It felt primal, like there was a little hint of something he couldn’t control . . . . It made me feel high.
I wondered who would speak first, or if we would just stare at each other until something broke the tension. Unless I was misreading the moment. I could be inventing this: a flicker of hunger mixed with a look that bordered on desire as he homed in on my face. My lips. He licked his again. My lungs became wild, filled with hornets. My mouth was dry.
Kael stood up and I took a step away from him. I felt the need to protect myself from him, from myself. Not in a dangerous way, just in a this-won’t-end-well way. He stared at the space I put between us like it offended him. I took another step back. My hormones were out of control; this is lust. I hadn’t felt lust in my twenty years on earth. I couldn’t decide if I love or hate the feeling, but it’s definitely lust. Not a stupid crush, no false expectations of love and forever, just a physical attraction to a man. That’s it. Lust.
He finally spoke, pulling me out of the mental rabbit hole I was floating down.
“Are you going to the store now?” He didn’t look me in the eyes. I felt like he was purposely avoiding eye contact. It pissed me off. But it excited me. Lust, lust, lust. Now I see why it’s one of the seven deadly sins. It’s so distracting. And random.
I nodded while walking past him to open the fridge and drink some water before I went out in the heat. He watched me move around the room and I chugged straight from my water jug again. What was the point of acting sophisticated in front of him anyway?
“Is it cool if I come to the store with you? I don’t need much.”
Was he inviting himself to hang out with me? Why couldn’t I help but smile? I covered my mouth and cursed my dream, the one that played a big part in the way I was feeling around him this morning. Damn my vivid imagination.
I nodded again. I couldn’t say much to him, and I knew he never really had much to say to me, so we agreed to a quick shopping trip, back by nine thirty, so I could change, brush my teeth again, walk to work, and not be late.
