Chalk

19

We ended up in the shower, all the dirt and dust and chalk and fear from the day washing down the drain. It was kind of fitting and I wondered if he knew we needed it, walking us silently to my bedroom with our lips still locked and my legs around his waist. I never wanted to do anything ever again except kiss Edward, the high I was getting from it was zinging through me like a taser, burning off all my nerve endings and leaving me feeling numb and fuzzy.

I still had no recollection of exactly how it had happened, but that rock had beaten the shit out of us. Edward had a huge bruise blooming on his shoulder, another on his hip, and I had a one on my forearm that looked like a flower with a deep angry, red center and purple petals. It wasn’t exactly my ankle that had been hit, as I’d thought, but my calf that had taken the brunt of the rock. The back of my leg was marred by another bursting bloom of color. Add those bruises to the colorful display of scrapes and bumps and gnarled fingers, and I was a sight to behold.

I peeled myself carefully out of my clothes once I’d peeled myself off his face, sore and exhausted even though it wasn’t due to any exertion today. I hadn’t climbed at all, and I’d barely even walked. I hobbled into the shower and Edward followed, the steam swallowing us in seconds.

He didn’t try to kiss me under the water like I thought he might. Instead, he washed me thoughtfully, nonchalant and intent, as though his erection wasn’t pressing against my thigh. Then he leaned against the shower wall and watched me wash my hair, his arms crossed over his stomach and the steam obscuring his face before pulling me close again. We stood under the hot water for a while together, my face pressed to his chest, letting the hot water relax all those tightly coiled muscles and I was glad to hear that his heart had resumed it normal plodding beat rather than the frantic hummingbird I’d listened to the entire way back to the car.

He made my sugary lilac colored towels look completely indecent, tucked tight in around his waist and doing absolutely nothing to disguise anything. Plucked me from the bathtub before I’d even gotten my towel secured around myself and sat me on the countertop to rub more of his all-purpose green goop on my bruises. His fingers were soft and warm and he massaged the spot on my arm and the muscles of my hand with his magical-goo, standing between my legs. When he moved onto my leg, he finally let me wash the blood off his face. The cuts were actually quite small once all the blood was gone and I dipped my finger into the jar, smearing the salve across them gently.

He deserved a little of his own medicine.

I pushed on his shoulders, tugging him around so that I could get a good look at the bruise on his shoulder. It was enormous, stretching from the tip of his shoulder to the middle of his back, an angry mottled mar across his skin. I tucked my fingers into the magical goo and rubbed it soft but gentle into the bruise, amazed at the variety of color that was springing up just under his skin. Purple and green. Yellow and scarlet. While I rubbed, I took the opportunity to admire.

There was muscle everywhere I looked.

I didn’t even know half of them even existed. One solid bunch of them anchored at the base of his skull and splayed down his neck, anchoring to his shoulder blade. Small sets knit together his ribs and others curled across his torso to root in at his abdomen. I paid some attention to the bruise on his hip, more magical goo and soft rubbing. This one wasn’t as large as the one on his shoulder, but was stained an angry eggplant color in the center right over the crest of his bone. He winced when I touched it, yelping as he jumped away, and looked at me accusingly before examining the damage himself.

“Damn,” he muttered, poking at the discoloration with his fingers. When he looked at me still sitting in my towel on the edge of the vanity, his mouth mashed up to the side as though he was biting the inside of his mouth. “I’m gonna go, I guess. Can I call you tomorrow?”

It was endearing how he asked the question, as though we hadn’t just had a conversation about our relationship less than an hour ago and I was pretty certain that boys called their ‘girls’ whenever they wanted to. His hair was darkened from the water, eyes bright from the steam and I knew I’d spend the entire night alone in bed having nightmares about that rock if he left now.

“Don’t,” I blurted, catching myself only after it was out of my mouth and tried to cover what sounded like desperation with a healthy coat of justification. “I mean . . . you don’t have to go.”  

Lame.

He gazed at me thoughtfully for a moment before his mouth widened as though he’d just seen right into my head. “Today was a little scary, huh?” He totally had me pegged.

“Well, yeah. It didn’t scare you?” I was shocked, gripping the edge of the vanity in my aching hands. Edward shrugged and I tried not to stare at the curling trail of hair that was disappearing into his towel.

“It’s happened to me before. This time was  . . . different, though.” He eyed me carefully and I slid to my toes, dripping water from my hair. I was barely tall enough to see over his shoulder and found myself staring at the two bumps where his collar bones met up.

“Stay. Please.”

His adam’s apple bobbed and it took an entire minute for him to answer, I know because I counted each one of my bated breaths before he nodded his head with an exhale. I managed to pull on a t-shirt and some underwear, crawling into bed to the sound of Edward rummaging around in the kitchen. I thought he was trying to feed himself but he returned with a few lumpy packages wrapped up in dish towels, offering one to me. I took it from him, lifting the fabric away to reveal a bag of frozen peas.

“Thanks, but I really prefer mine cooked.” I tried to hand it back to him and he grinned at me.

“Ice pack. That leg of yours is gonna be hurting tomorrow.”

He winced as he climbed across the bed, a sound low in his throat and his fingertips delicately hovering off the blanket. When he fell to his side next to me, his body stretching warm and damp all along mine, he rolled me onto my stomach and situated the bag of peas on top of my new bruise that graced the back of my leg. It hurt for a moment until the chill seeped in between the muscles and I sighed into the pillow I had bunched up underneath my chest. I watched Edward position an ice pack that looked like frozen corn underneath his shoulder before he lay back on it. There was something to be said for the vegetables, they molded themselves the contours of my bruise as though they were hugging me.

“The peas were kind of a stroke of genius,” I told him, watching as he settled the last pack across the bruise on his hip.

“Jasper, he’s full of those.”

I picked up his hand that was nearest to me and pulled it toward my face to inspect it. I was used to how terrible my fingers looked after a shower, the pruning of my skin making them look a million times worse that they actually were but Edward’s looked as though they were about to fall off. Cratered clear through several layers, his calluses gone that milky white color that water gave to skin when it was water-logged. It almost seemed as though he’d dipped his fingers a bowl of acid, letting the chemical ravage his skin until there was nothing but that smooth stuff that’s left behind after a burn. No wonder it looked as though it hurt when he touched them to anything, even the soft chenille blanket I had thrown across the bed. It was the first time I’d gotten a chance to really look at his hands and it took me about two seconds to come to the conclusion that he could probably rob a bank and not leave a single fingerprint behind.

“You could rob a bank if you wanted to.” I rubbed my thumb softly across the bumps at the base of his fingers, the skin built up and rubbed off so many times it was smooth as silk.

“Hardly,” he chuckled, letting me manipulate his hand in front of my face, eyes twitching in the corners when I touched the pads of his pitted fingertips. “I doubt I’d be able to hold onto anything right now.”

Bummer.

Next