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“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked as she wriggled hard up against me.
“I want to not talk about it.”
“Okay.”
And we just lay there, too close and yet not close enough. My head was a mess that needed clearing. My heart beat steadier with her beside me, but my head was so fucking loud. My father’s voice yelling. Mum’s fighting. Paris screaming. Glass breaking. Time gave the memories an echoey feel to them. And yet I was still at risk of drowning in them.
Finally, I had to get out of my head and see what drivel would come out now.
“Barlow?”
“Lombardi?”
“You ever feel like just everything’s going to shit, no matter what you do?”
“Yeah, I guess…” she said slowly.
“Like, you’re just going along in life, and you get thrown a curveball and you have to re-evaluate everything.”
She was my curve ball. Life was on track. I knew who I was, and I’d accepted my lot in life. And then she came along, and I was suddenly constantly battling with myself.
I felt her hand slide into mine. It might not have been the first time she’d held my hand, but it still surprised me for a moment. Surprised me that such a tender, sweet action would ever come my way from someone who hadn’t birthed and raised me. I forced myself to relax and took comfort from her.
“Do you want to talk about that?” she asked me.
“I don’t know. It’s just this feeling I have. I haven’t really worked out what it goes with yet.”
More like I refused to acknowledge what it went with because then I’d have to acknowledge what it meant. If I touched Piper, if I let it go beyond this platonic hangout, then I risked hurting her. I would hurt her. No matter how hard I tried not to. If I didn’t touch her, then I felt like I was going to implode. She drove me crazy with any number of things I refused to name, no matter how many nancy words I’d started using unironically.
“Is it Maddy?”
Her tone wasn’t pressing. There was no expectation that I answered. She was just trying to help.
“I don’t think so. I’m getting used to her. As much as I’d get used to any kid in my life.”
“You don’t want kids?” She sounded surprised.
I was surprised by her surprise.
“You think I’d be a good dad?”
“That’s not what I asked.”
I turned to face her, leaning my head on my hand. She rolled her head to look at me and there went that tension. Air crackling. Slight tingle across my arms. Thump of my heart in my chest. She looked at me like I wasn’t the guy I knew I was. She looked at me like she saw a different guy.
“There’s a difference, you know,” she said softly. “You can still want them even if you think you won’t be any good at it.”
I rolled onto my back and took a deep breath as I looked at the stars. “First, I’d need to work out how to be with someone long enough. You don’t just have kids without thinking of the consequences. They deserve better than that.”
She moved in closer and put her head on my shoulder. “Yeah. But so do you.”
How I wished that were true. “Is that a compliment?”
She elbowed me companionably. “I’m serious. You can want something even if you think you’re not good enough or it’s not good for you.”
If only she knew how well I knew about wanting something I would never be good enough to have. If only she knew how intimately I understood that feeling. How deeply I felt that right in that moment.
“Because you’d have experience with that.”
