GIN AND JUICE pt 6

Your ears wouldn’t stop ringing. When Shawn’s lips pressed against yours, the moment blocked out sound and light and all you could do was feel his soft mouth molding itself to you. At first, you were terrified, shocked by his action, but when he curved his arm around your back, pressing you against him, your muscles yielded to him, melting against his chest.

Sharply inhaling through your nose, you moved your lips against his, tilting your head and opening for him. He sucked your bottom lip into his mouth, rolling his tongue along the seam. You moaned, starving for physical contact, and threaded your fingers in his chocolate curls. Pulling him infinitesimally closer, you curled your body around his, wrapping your legs around his waist, clinging to the contours of his clothed body.

You’d been avoiding contact with others for so long—touching no one physically or emotionally—that this kiss felt like a tidal wave crashing into your body. It was overwhelming. He was overwhelming. His hands ran up and down your back in an intoxicating motion, edging to the hem of your shirt and running his rough hands along the bare skin just above your jeans.

He was all you could smell, all you could touch, all you could taste. Notes from his cologne, bergamot and leather, filled your nose and when his tongue massaged yours, you could taste the Jack Daniels still lingering in the back of his throat. It was a heady combination. You fingered the hair at the nape of his neck, obsessed with the short curling ringlets there, making him shiver and pull his mouth away from yours.

Breathing heavy, his eyes were glassy when he laid his palm against your cheek. You’d never been this close to his face. He had a notched scar on the right side of his mouth, like a dimple he’d cut there himself. His skin was smooth, tanned from all the hours in the sun, and he had just a hint of stubble. Tilting your head in awe, he closed his eyes as you ran your hand over them and across his face, his long lashes tickling your palm. He inhaled through his nose and bent his head, resting the crown against your chest.

“Where did you come from?” he breathed, a soft prayer on your body’s altar. You weren’t sure if you were supposed to hear it at all. Resting your cheek atop his head, the same question floated in your head, wondering how in the world you had gotten here from a spilled beer and a bottle of gin.

The moment was quiet and the exhaustion from the stress of the evening was pressing on you. A yawn escaped your lips. His silent laughter vibrated against your chest. He looked up at you, that trademark blinding smile plastered on his face, and wrapped his arms around your middle. He maneuvered the two of you off the floor, somehow keeping your legs wrapped around him, and walked you to his king-size bed.

“Are you okay with me staying here tonight?” you asked, a blush creeping onto your cheeks. He set you down on the edge of the bed and walked over to his dresser. Rummaging through one of the drawers, he hid his face from you when he said, “it’s no problem.”

When he turned around with a t-shirt in his hand long enough to be a dress, you saw that his face was touched with pink as well. The two of you looked like blushing idiots. “Do you want to change into this? It’ll be more comfortable than your jeans.”

You took the shirt from him and walked into his adjoining bathroom. Closing the door, leaned against the counter, gripping it with white knuckles, and stared at your reflection. What just happened? Now that you weren’t touching him, all of those anxious feelings returned, hitting you like a runaway freight train.

You took a cleansing breath and reviewed recent events. When you got his drunk texts, the level of dread that washed over you was incapacitating. The idea of him drinking and drinking and drinking, of emptying another gin bottle, was vivid in your mind. What if he spent another night passed out in the bathroom? What if he didn’t wake up? What if no one was there to find him? You were the only one who knew how bad it could get. The only one who knew that the blackout wasn’t a side effect of having a good time; the blackout was a craving, a high so potent for him that he chased it. So, you ran to him. When you got here, things happened so fast that, by the time he was attached to your face, it seemed like the night was always supposed to end this way—with you in his bed.

The nervous energy in your stomach bubbled. You looked down at the shirt he’d given you. It was a university t-shirt meant to look like a football jersey. Like his football jersey. “MENDES” blazed in bold letters on the back. God, you never thought you’d be one of those girls with a player’s name on her back, and yet you never thought a football player could be considerate, charming, and fragile either.

Another calming breath. You could do this. You’d already done more for him and with him than you’d allowed yourself to do for anyone in a long time. Stripping off your shoes, jeans, and wrinkled top, folding them neatly, you slipped on Shawn’s massive shirt. You splashed some cold water on your face, secured your messy bun, stole some mouthwash, and braced yourself before opening the door.

Shawn quickly scrambled to a standing position from the edge of the bed. You both froze and stared at each other. While you were in the bathroom, he had gotten ready for bed, removing his shirt and changing into some loose sweatpants. His chest was smooth, save for a dusting of chest hair in the center, contoured with firm muscle. You could feel his eyes on your bare legs, moving from ankle to thigh and causing you to smooth the oversized t-shirt over your body. His eyes snapped up to yours and he started to move toward you. Meeting him in the middle, you stopped him at an arm’s length and ran your hands over his rippled abdomen, fingering the grooves between the hard muscle. It was like his skin was a magnet for your hands, impossible to not reach out and touch. He hissed, closing his eyes and sharply inhaling through his nose, and cuffed your hands at the wrist, stilling your motions, “if you keep doing that, I’m not going to be able to sleep tonight.”

Your eyes widened at his implication, closing your fingers into fists. Leading you to his bed, he let you choose a side and crawl in, giving you a wide berth when he made his way between the sheets. You laid your head on the pillow and locked eyes with him. He smiled, crinkling his tired eyes, and reached his hand out. Weaving your fingers together, your clasped hands rested between the two of you, linking your bodies together more intimately than your lips had earlier. Somehow, when you touched him, a wave of warm comfort and buzzing energy flowed through your body. It was like nothing you’d ever felt before, and as you closed your eyes, exhaustion finally overtaking you, you wondered if, now that you knew you could feel like this, if you’d ever be able to let it go.

* * * * * * * * * *

The hangover was always the worst part. He could feel the pulse in his head before he opened his eyes. Groaning, Shawn tried to move his leg, but realized it was pinned against something smooth. Something smooth and feminine.

Oh, ****.

The night before came rushing back to him in a brightly colored, Jack-flavored wave. His eyes slammed open, light rushing in and aggravating his already pounding head. When his eyes adjusted, so did his body, and he realized that she was curled into his chest, legs intertwined with his. She must have moved during the night, not satisfied with just their hands touching. Or perhaps he had pulled her in. Ever since he’d asked to touch her last night, after that first press of his fingers against the bare skin of her hand, he’d felt like she contained a magnet, drawing him in just below his ****** bone, a fish hook stuck between his ribs. He laid there, arms wrapped around her body, her head resting on his shoulder, and thought about the night before.

Shawn had always wondered what it would be like if someone found out about his habit. His vice. His hunger for the peaceful, numbing bliss of a world he didn’t remember in the morning. He had imagined fear or panic or an anxiety even more intense than what he already experienced on a daily basis. He had imagined living with a ball and chain attached to just one more person trying to make the most out of an opportunity to extort him. He had imagined a prison.

I wanted you to forget me, she had said, and, I was trying like hell to forget you. When he had heard those words, it was like some invisible barrier between him and the world had shattered. The sudden and immediate relief he felt was palpable. The tension he had braced himself against never came. In fact, a bowling ball of stress seemed to roll off of his shoulders at the idea that someone knew his secret. Or maybe it was just that she knew his secret.

This girl with the wide blue eyes and the body that fit against his knew what no one else did and her first instinct was to protect him, not only from others but from himself. It was such an alien feeling that when faced with it last night, he allowed his body to take over before his brain could corrupt the moment. That’s when he’d asked to touch her. That’s when he’d run his hand across her cheek and felt the heat from her blush underneath his fingers. That’s when he’d pressed his lips against hers and lost himself in the feeling of being laid bare in front of someone for perhaps the first time in his life. He wanted to lose himself in that feeling over and over again.

He looked down at her in the light just starting to peek through the blinds. In sleep, her face was perfectly smooth, a soft mask covering the anxiety that roiled beneath the surface. She’d been so scared last night on the floor. When he sat down next to her, he could feel the tension coming off of her in waves. He’d felt responsible, listening to her talk about the whispers and the people who’d seen her carry him, even though he hadn’t known she knew his truth, his stupidity had still brought her here. Bringing his hand up to her face, he fingered a lock of hair that had fallen against her temple and smoothed it behind her ear. She stirred beneath his hands, furrowing her brow and inhaling deeply. Her brow creased further before her eyes popped open suddenly and a look of sheer terror settled in her face. The silence shattered.

She screamed.

Shawn immediately leapt from the bed, panicking at the sudden onslaught of sound. Her eyes were glazed over, not really seeing the room or him or anything around her, blind to all but her fear, emptying her lungs of air. She had backed herself up against his headboard and was cradling her knees against herself when she ran out of breath, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes refocused on him, his arms outstretched with palms down, as if approaching a frightened animal.

“Oh my God,” she croaked, pressing the heel of her palms into her eyes, “I’m so sorry.” He relaxed his posture and slid to sit on top of the comforter on the farthest edge of the bed from her. She slowly lowered her hands to look at him, lines of deep mortification touching her face. Lowering her cheek to her knees, her eyes sought forgiveness. “I get startled in new places. I’m so sorry, so, so, sorry,” she closed her eyes, clearly expecting horror or rejection, “should I leave?”

“What??” he asked, incredulous, “why would I want you to leave?”

“I woke up in your bed and screamed at you,” she said, point blank, like his mind should have immediately made the decision to kick her out. She was shivering, energy depleted after the sudden burst of anxiety had overtaken her. He raised his hand and reached out to her, “if I asked to hold you, would you believe that I don’t want you to leave?”

She locked eyes with him, a tentative, but hopeful, expression on her face. Taking that as an affirmative, he settled himself against the headboard beside her and held his arms open, an invitation for her to move into him. She crawled to him, curling into his side and resting her cheek on his shoulder. Still trembling, he gathered her tightly against him, having read somewhere that consistent pressure helped to calm the body’s fight or flight response, and lightly ran his fingers through her disheveled waves.

“So,” he said, barely louder than a whisper, afraid to shatter the moment between them, “do you want to talk about it?” She took a deep shuddering breath. He could feel the wet spots pressing against his shoulder where her tears collected.

“I’ve struggled with anxiety for most of my life,” she ran her fingers along the contours of his chest. He had to hold his breath to keep from shaking against her fingers. “It’s just something that has always been a part of me. I don’t have one of those triggering sob stories or focal point, it just is what it is. I get scared. I’m shy.”

He caught her hand, pressing each of his fingertips with hers and tracing lines to connect with her palms. It took her mind off of the pressure of the moment, focusing on his fingers instead of her truth. “I’ve been avoiding real connections with people my whole life. My mom is my best friend; my dad’s not around. Avoidance and isolation is the only way I know how to make the thought spirals subside. Sometimes, in crowds, like the quad after 10:30 classes end and everyone is on their way to lunch, all I can feel are the 400 pairs of eyes creeping up my arms, legs, body, and face.”

The words poured out of her. Her insecurities (I feel like an alien), her doubts (I’m not sure I can finish college like this), and her worries (what if I can’t ever control it) floated in front of him, a dark and twisty river flowing between them. “When I met you, it was like a sledgehammer beating against the concrete walls I’d built around my body,” she confessed, unable to look at him, “when we talked that first night, the night you don’t remember, I felt like I could see the boy you are, the boy behind the man you wrap yourself up in to shield yourself from all of the pressure. You didn’t call it anxiety, but I could see parts of myself reflected in your eyes.”

“That’s why you ran after we met,” he said, finally understanding the truth of it, “why you lied so desperately and so poorly.”

“Yes.”

They both stilled at this last confession. He brought her hand up to his mouth, placing a chaste kiss at the base of her thumb. She lifted her head, searching for some kind of answer in his face. He grazed the back of his fingers down her cheek and smiled at her, “I’m glad you came back.” A single tear fell from her chin, splashing against his still bare chest.

“So,” he said, breaking the intensity of the moment, “what do you usually eat for breakfast?”

* * * * * * * * * *

After a quiet breakfast in Shawn’s room—burnt toast with lots of butter for you and a full-on scrambled egg whites and turkey bacon situation for him—you left him to get ready for football practice. You’d slipped on your jeans and tied his shirt in a knot at your waist to at least pretend it fit.

You had told him that you needed to go back to the library to finish the assignments you’d abandoned to save him last night, which made him look appropriately chagrined. As you were leaving, you swore that you’d heard him mumble “I like my name across your back.” Your cheeks flamed and you thought about taking the shirt off and throwing it at him, but decided that you liked the scent of it too much to give it back.

“Can I see you later? After practice?” he’d asked as you crossed the threshold onto the porch. “Maybe,” you replied, trying your best to sound coy. How did girls do this? “Text me!”

Getting in your car and starting the engine, you looking into the rearview mirror and realized that you didn’t recognize the person starting back at you. The girl in the mirror was smiling wide, with teeth, like an idiot. She looked like someone who was a hundred times more well-adjusted than you felt. You buzzed with the energy of last night and this morning, riding a kind of high that you’d never felt before. He’d awakened a part of you that you didn’t know had ever been sleeping.

Which is how you found yourself, not at the library, but hiding high in the stadium waiting for football practice to start an hour later. You sat on the concrete, behind the bleachers, with a copy of Wuthering Heights open on your lap. Stealing glances down at the field every few minutes, your breath hitched when you saw him run out of the locker room.

Shawn wore a red practice jersey, setting him apart from the rest of the team in blue. He was in pads, accentuating his broad shoulders, and the tightest white football pants you’d ever seen. He started his warm up throwing a football to a teammate at different intervals, just to loosen his arm. He looked so carefree, a smile plastered on his face, as he looped around, pumped the ball back, and let it soar dozens of yards down the field in a beautiful, straight spiral directly into the hands of his receiver.

“ATTABOY, SHAWN!” you heard the coach shout from across the field, all disappointment from yesterday’s game wiped from memory. He threw several more passes, all hitting their targets from various distances, before running over to the sideline for water. He poured some over his head, whipping his head back and shaking out his wet curls. The excess water hit a player seated on the bench, another player in a red jersey.

The other red jersey threw his helmet on the ground, a loud CRACK tearing Shawn’s attention away from what he was doing and toward the angry player. They started shouting at each other. You got up on your knees and leaned over the bleacher, straining to get a better idea of what they were saying. Other red jersey got right up in Shawn’s face, you could see red moving from his face to his ears, rage overwhelming him. Shawn just stood there, his fists at his sides, silently shaking.

The other players were circling up around the two of them, obviously expecting a fight, and the coaches watched at a distance, waiting for whatever was going to happen to play out. Your view was slowly being obstructed by more and more players getting involved in the fray, so you leaned even more over the bleacher in front of you, hoping to catch just a few words of what the other red jersey was yelling about. Though you still couldn’t hear, your view was clear as day when you saw Shawn twitch his still shaking fist. Like watching something in slow motion, you saw him step back, your chest filling with dread, and throw a punch, landing on other red jersey’s jaw with a sickening crunch.

“SHAWN!” you screamed, your voice flying high and echoing in every corner of the stadium. Too late, your hands flew up and covered your mouth as you felt 150 pairs of eyes turn to look at you.

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