AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Luke
Iwas panting, but I didn’t care. Clutching the couch, a step. I wiggled my toes, proving I could feel the hardwood floor beneath them. I could put weight on it. It was stiff and I couldn’t walk alone but I could use the muscles.
“I can’t believe you got up on your own!” she said again, her smile taking up her whole face. She looked me up and down, probably so unused to seeing me upright.
Another gentle step. The floor stayed solid.
Pinching pain rather than stabbing. Pinching and poking, small, like a secret, like Jake and I used to do to each other in the grocery store line when we knew we would get in trouble if we pushed each other in public.
“Goddamn,” I said, swallowing the lump that had formed in my throat.
It’d been a wave inside me when the sun had hit my eyes this morning, my mouth dry from passing out. I’d reached for my glass of water but realized I’d left it on the shelf where the records were, across the room. A chorus of fuck, fuck, fuck had rung in my ears, louder than usual, fueled by anger at my useless body, that I couldn’t get a fucking glass, that I could feel my stomach spilling over the same sweatpants I’d worn for a fortnight.
I’d pressed so hard on my feet that I wanted the floor to fall away. Pain was there, but I’d told it to fuck off.
Fuck off, I’d said aloud on the second attempt, and I’d pressed on the coffee table, almost tipping forward until my knees caught the edge.
I’d tensed my quads like I used to when we lifted weights for football, felt them shake. Just when I thought they were going to give out, I was straight. They were straight.
I was up, I was up, and Cassie reached for me, taking my arm, somehow knowing I’d want to walk in a circle, around and around, away from the couch, the room its own little country.
Her steps with mine were strong, slow.
She beamed at me. My chest felt wide open.
“You don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to,” I offered. “Do you have anywhere to be?”
“No. Here,” she said, steering me toward the stereo. “Let’s put on some music. What do you want?”
I didn’t know at first, but then the smell of motor oil drifted toward me from another time, the vision of my dad’s hands tapping along on the hood while he examined an engine. “I’d like to request,” I began, and took another step with her arm now around my waist, “ ‘Spirit in the Sky’ by Norman Greenbaum.”
