It's Like This (7 page)

The phone sits uselessly in my palm.

“Niles,” she says, prodding me. “Call your boyfriend!”

I finally find my voice. “I can’t.”

“Whaddaya mean you…Holy fuck.” She shakes her head at me. “Holy FUCK. What did you do?”

I take offense to that, or I feel I should, at any rate, “What do you mean, what did
I
do?”

“Did you fucking dump him? Is that what you were all…you know, about? Holy fuck, why the fuck would you do that?”

“I didn’t fucking dump him!” I defend myself.

“Well, I somehow doubt he dumped you!” she retorts fiercely.

“How the fuck do you know?” I demand.

“Oh, come on! We both know Rylan’s fucking crazy about you. He’d never leave you. Unless you told him to.”

“Oh, we both know that, do we?” I explode. “What the actual fuck, Matilda? This is one thing you don’t know shit about.”

I’m being hurtful. Goddamn it. I don’t want to be a fucking asshole, I just—why is she saying this shit?

“Fine,” she says, breath coming heavy, but siphoned between her teeth at the same time. “Give me the phone.”

Relieved, I pass the receiver to her.

And she fucking dials.

I hear Rylan answer after one ring, but I can’t discern his tone of voice. “Niles?” God. I miss him so much. Insurmountably much.

Til glares at me, then, speaking sweetly into the phone, “Actually, Rylan, this is Matilda speaking—”

She stalks into the kitchen where she keeps her voice low on purpose so that I can’t hear what she’s saying. A few minutes later she rejoins me.

“He’ll be on the next bus over,” she says. And I swear she sounds almost smug.

He knocks. My mom always tells him that he can come on in, that he doesn’t need to knock, he’s family, and he always replies, “But you have a knocker!” Like the novelty never wears off.

I don’t move.

Matilda looks at me. I just sit there. She gets up to answer it. I watch them through the doorway of the living room.

“Tilla,” Rylan says before hugging her.

I stand up nervously. I don’t know what to do with my body. My hands are dangling awkwardly. I shove them in my pockets, and then take them out again.

Ry and Tilla are talking quietly at the door, still. I can’t quite make out what they are saying. He’s got his hand on her upper arm, and they are leaning in towards each other. Sometimes I feel like everyone else in my family knows how to relate to him better than I do. In high school, he came on family trips with us. He’s spent Christmases at our house. Before I moved out he was practically a permanent fixture here. He just fits. And I…

I’m just so frickin’ glad he’s here.

But I still don’t know what to do with myself.

Til heads into the kitchen. Rylan walks through the front hall, towards me, looking straight at me. I can’t move.

He doesn’t stop or slow down until he reaches me. He doesn’t hesitate for a single second, just wraps his arms tight around my body.

I can’t compute this. We don’t hug. Well, outside of sex, though that usually isn’t hugging so much as…grasping. And we tend to cuddle during movies, so I guess that’s pretty similar, and sometimes when we’re out together, he’ll throw an arm around my shoulder, but we never just…hug. I mean, he hugs my sisters, and my parents, but we don’t. I don’t know how to react. He’s got one arm under one of mine, and the other over top of my shoulder. Typical hug mechanics, except that my arms are still hanging pathetic and inactive at my sides, which is ridiculous because I finally have something to do with them. So, tentatively, I hug him, you know, back.

He holds me tighter and I hold him tighter, burying my head in his hoodie because he is here. With me. When everything is so shitty and we don’t know what’s going to happen to Kya or when, and he had every right to say, “Well, gee whiz, that’s too bad…not my problem,” because I’m such an idiot and went and fucked everything up, but he didn’t say that. Instead he came right over and walked into my living room and is hugging me. Because Kya’s sick and we don’t have any of the answers.

I find myself lodging my teeth into his shoulder. My eyes are all prickling and stuff, but I haven’t cried since I was probably like eight, so I don’t know if I’m the type of person who cries, even if they feel like it. I just am not sure I really remember how to, so instead I’m biting him, and pressing my fist into his back, hard, and he just keeps on holding me and letting me hurt him even though I know I should stop and I just can’t.

My eyes are tightly closed because that somehow makes me feel like I’m a little further away from this whole situation with everything than I am, so I don’t see Matilda coming back into the room; I don’t know she’s there until Rylan whispers into my hair, “Nigh, baby, I think you might be starting to freak your sister out…”

My eyes fly open both at his words and the pet name which he has never even once called me before and I see Matilda standing beside us, looking at me like she’s kind of worried I’m going to dissolve entirely.

I extract my teeth from Rylan’s shoulder and slowly relax the hug, even if I don’t really want to. He runs a hand over the back of my head, and kisses my temple before pulling me down, half on top of him, on the couch.

“The movie’s your choice tonight, Miss Attila,” he says, sprawling out behind me on the couch. Matilda shuffles through some DVDs.

“Any suggestions?” she asks.

“Something that doesn’t require us to think,” he answers. His arms snakes around my abs, pulling me back into him. He kisses the back of my neck quickly. “You OK, liebling?” he whispers—another remnant from his high school German endeavour. He doesn’t call me it hardly ever, though. I nod. I’m OK enough. He exhales into my hair, and then shifts himself a little bit higher so that he can see the screen. I’m a mess and I’m exhausted and all I can feel is Rylan, steady and warm behind me.

My phone rings. I don’t respond, so Rylan reaches into my pocket and takes it out and answers it.

“Hey, Shona,” he says quietly.

“So, you’re not Niles,” I hear her reply.

“You wanna talk?” he asks me. I shake my head. I do not have that kind of energy.

“He’s OK,” Rylan tells her, “but he’ll call you tomorrow, alright?”

“He’s right there next to you, isn’t he?” Shona accuses.

“Yep.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to interfere with your spoon sesh,” Shona resigns, peaceably.

“You’re a peach.”

“Give him a kiss for me, yeah?”

Rylan kisses my ear. “Done.”

“Thanks. LOVE YOU, NILES,” Shona half-yells.

Rylan holds the phone to my mouth. “Love you,” I reply.

“Night, Shona,” Ry says, bringing the phone back to his ear.

“Night, Rylan. Take good care of our boy, you get me?”

“I gotcha,” Rylan answers. He ends the call and slides my phone back into my pocket, absently rubbing circles over my side and abdomen with his palm until I’m as good as asleep.

Even though it’s not (even close), he does a pretty damn good job of convincing me everything’s OK.

* * *

We stay awake hiding in the TV until I’m headachey with exhaustion.

“C’mon,” says Rylan, finally. He worms his way out from behind me and flicks off the TV and stands over me, waiting. He offers his hands and I take them, letting him pull me up until we’re level. I don’t feel entirely planted because for a minute we’re just standing there, like, holding hands and looking at each other and I don’t think we’ve ever done that before and so I don’t think I know how. Rylan seems to, though, and he smiles softly, squeezes my hands and gently bumps our fists up against my thighs and kisses me. Lightly, ridiculously lightly, before releasing one of my hands and pulling me along upstairs to my old room, where I strip off my jeans and shirt, brush my teeth. He waits patiently for my toothbrush, and when I’m done I hand it to him and go and sit on the side of the bed. I watch him floss in the bathroom across the hall.

When Rylan returns to the bedroom he starts undressing, unself-consciously. He foots the door closed and sits beside me and I still don’t know what I’m supposed to do. We spent a million hours together in this bed in high school: skipped periods and late nights and Saturday afternoons, like we could never get enough. I guess we couldn’t, because we’re still doing that. It’s just…him and me and this bed only ever equate to sex.

Exhaustion wins and I crawl gracelessly under the quilt and top sheet and curl in on myself. Rylan follows suit, sliding up behind me and slipping his arm underneath mine and pressing his palm to my chest. I exhale a long, shaky breath.

“What are you doing?” he asks me, and I know he’s really asking what’s wrong, but that’s too deep a territory with us. I lean helplessly back into him, knowing I shouldn’t, knowing stuff isn’t sorted and we’re not OK like we’re pretending. Rylan nuzzles the side of my face with his, the roughness of his stubble familiar and soothing.

He squeezes my body tighter against him, into him, and even if he’s not doing anything to turn me on, I’m afraid at any second he might try and that thought honestly disgusts me, because I don’t want it, not even at all.

“I don’t want to have sex right now,” tumbles out of my mouth before I even know it’s there and I cannot believe I did that—that I just fucking
acknowledged
it and with it…everything. Shit. Holy shit. My pulse spikes with terror and fuck I—God, I should have just let him fuck me and then he could have left and then I would’ve known that he’d come back, probably. Fuck…I…

“What the hell, Nigh?” He smashes through my thoughts. I don’t know what to expect. Like, is he going to deny the whole last three years, pretend not to know what I’m talking about? Or maybe he’ll just up and leave: strip my body of his and take off and I’ll be here, alone, again, because I had to go and fucking open my stupid, shitty mouth. He’s still talking but I can barely bring myself to listen because I know whatever he’s going to say is probably the last fucking thing he’ll ever say to me, holy shit, I’m fucking hysterical. Holy shit…

“Seriously, just how much of an asshole do you think I am?” His voice is incredulous or—hurt? He doesn’t pull away, just maybe holds me tighter in place, which makes me feel safe even though I know I can’t be and nothing makes any sense right now. “Shit,” he whispers.

He still doesn’t let me go and yet I’m still waiting for him to leave: to get up and walk out of the door and silently proclaim the nothing we have officially over.

Instead, he’s…he’s kissing my face and I don’t know what is going on because I
told
him I don’t want to have sex right now. I
just
told
him that, so what the fuck is he doing? I never once thought he’d force it; I swore to Shona up and down a thousand times over that he’d never force it: that there’s rough, and then there’s something else entirely. I can’t believe this. He’s still kissing me when I don’t want to do anything like that, not tonight, Jesus, not now.

My neck cranes to look at him, to get him to stop somehow, but instead he fucking kisses my lips, he’s got his hands on my face and his mouth over mine, and I can’t take it, I seriously can’t. I told him I didn’t want…I have never used my size against him, but I fucking do now. I turn halfway around and press my hands into his shoulders, and he keeps on fucking kissing me, so I shove him, as hard as I can, and he fires backwards into the wall the bed is pushed up against.

“I said I don’t want to have sex right now!” I almost scream but stop myself—I don’t want Matilda to come barging in here—so it comes out strangled-sounding instead.

Rylan stares at me from the far side of the bed, eyebrows and face screwed up in wonder, probably disbelieving that I would ever say no to him, the bastard. He shakes his head and sets his jaw. He sits up slowly and leans against the wall, brows furrowed and lips thin.

He makes no move to touch me and I’m so fucking relieved. Instead, calmly, carefully he says, “Niles. Baby. I don’t want to have sex with you right now, either.”

He’s doing that thing where he looks me straight in the eyes, not letting me look away. And, finally—
finally
—I get it. I get that maybe I’ve had this whole thing wrong from the start. That things are kind of fucked right now, and Rylan can maybe be an asshole sometimes, but he’s here, and that should be a big fucking clue, because no matter where things stand with me, he loves Kya and suddenly I’m sure she’s all he’s been thinking of, same as me. I cover my face with my palms and press my fingers desperately into my forehead because I might sort of get it but that doesn’t mean I know what comes next.

“OK,” I find myself murmuring. “Yeah, OK. Yeah. I get it, I just. Fuck. Can you please just—what
do
you want?” It comes out in what could be interpreted as a whimper and I feel my skin flush in embarrassment.

“Lie down,” he directs (and I’m so, so relieved to be released from decision-making duty), “and stop acting like a crazy person.”

I tentatively lie back down, facing the ceiling. He leans over me, one hand on either side of my body.

“I just wanna fucking…comfort you,” he whispers, “but you’ve got to let me, OK?”

I clench close my eyes and nod and for the second time tonight I just feel like crying. His fingers trace my jaw and slowly ease the tension from my body. Finally, he pulls away, lying down beside me.

For long minutes we stay like that, lying there, not touching and not sleeping either. He’s restless. I can hear and feel him shuffling around, then pausing, and then rolling over again. And then suddenly, he pulls me over on top of him, faceplanting me into his chest, my knees curling into his calves. His arms vine around my waist and back and I feel his breath in my hair.

“Is this OK?” he whispers. And I nod frantically because yes, God yes, fuck yes, I need this.

It dawns on me that I like this, this being close to him with no expectations, no time limits or imminent destination. It’s all peaceful and unfamiliar. I don’t want to ruin this, but at the same time I can’t foresee myself ever getting another chance. I force myself to speak.

“Should we…talk?” I ask, quietly.