I almost want to tell him, it’s got nothing to do with anything he’s said. It’s because he came to me wounded. It’s because he’s Kelly, and I can be completely honest with him. I can strip away my mask. I can do something I’ve always wanted, and it won’t matter, because of who he is. Because someone else already hurt him first.
It’s only a few steps in the bright-white moonlight and I’m in front of him, and he doesn’t know how hot and panicked I feel. It’s a terrible kind of exhilaration knowing I’m finally going to breathe.
It’s still control when I let go, because I choose to.
Kelly doesn’t know my chest and palms are sweating because it’s my knee I bring up into his chest without restraint. I pull it up hard and fast like there’s no such thing as hesitation. Like there’s nothing but open air above my knee, instead of a body unprepared to part with the breath in his lungs.
The sound Kelly makes as he falls is like a seal barking. Like the Mediterranean monk seal, if you’ve had the great fortune to sail near enough to see them, during a Primer vacation with your best friend and both your families.
It’s a sound I’ll never forget, even though when I try to mimic it back to the fallen body before me, I know I don’t get it quite right.
I bark again, and it’s closer this time.
The air is mostly still after that, but there’s a crackling sound, like a storm is coming, like there’s electricity snapping in the air instead of short clicks that Kelly must hope will somehow turn into full breaths. Or words.
They might. So I hike up my knee the way I did before, only nothing breaks its momentum on the way up. It comes high without interruption, and then I bring my foot down hard onto Kelly’s back.
From his hands and knees, he collapses all the way down and immediately rolls on his side, but I don’t know why. His arm doesn’t shoot out to grab my leg. He doesn’t raise his hand in a silent plea for me to stop. His eyes find me but they keep roving, like they’re looking for something inside his head instead of in the brilliant night with a high, crisp moon and static-filled air.
It’s interesting, at least—the way he doesn’t even try to crawl away. And the sound he’s making, like a body that’s forgotten how to function. His mouth is gaping and there’s nothing blocking his airways, but even with an abundance of air around him and with what I’m sure are still working lungs inside him, he can’t breathe. He’s writhing on his side, but if I close my eyes I wouldn’t know for sure that it’s a person in front of me.
“That’s enough for now,” I say, but I’m only talking to myself. I make the energy sparking through my extremities coil back to the center and settle deep inside where it has always stayed.
Where it’s safe.
Control. Even when I don’t need it. Even when it’s only Kelly.
That’s the key. That’s the way to ensure there will always be a next time.
I squat down in front of him and then get comfortable on my knees. The grass is soft and the ground is like a cushion beneath me. It gives so that I sink into it just the right amount. There are no wayward stones, no hard places. Even the Whitmans’ soil is immaculate, like what they have is more powerful than money, and far less tangible. You can’t see it; you can only experience it.
“It’s nice, right?” I ask Kelly when he finally lets his head relax, the veins in his neck thick and spidery from the way he stayed so tense.
It’s like his whole body’s rebooting. His eyes aren’t swimming anymore, but they’re watering now, and he keeps squeezing them shut and then releasing them. Maybe it helps, but I don’t see how.
He can breathe now; I can tell because the rest of his body relaxes, one region at a time, and then he remembers the rest of the pain. The arm that was beneath him snakes back around his abdomen, and then the other arm joins it for added protection.
I reach for the hem of his shirt and he doesn’t shrink away. I pull it up, pushing his elbows out of the way. He grimaces but I hardly hear the groan, and when I see his skin, it’s a kaleidoscope. Around his torso and across his ribs and around to his back, what should be consistent brown skin is covered in orbs that have gone purple and something that’s more orange than red around the rim, sometimes even a green that I rub to make sure it isn’t painted on.
With his shirt pulled up, I can see how much he’s still struggling, either to breathe or with the pain.
“Tariq.” He barely gets the word out, and it’s broken up into too many syllables when he does.
I delicately return his shirt to its proper position and sit back.
“What about him?” I ask.
Kelly just looks up at me, curled on his side on the Whitmans’ lawn, with wet streaks down his face. He doesn’t bother saying anything else, choosing instead to breathe. I blink and look away.
“You should probably get going soon,” I say through a deep exhale. “I have to get back to bed. Cherish will miss me. Brianne might come to check on us, and she’ll be terrified if I’m not there.”
There’s a strange sound again, and I look back at the crumpled boy on the grass in front of me.
Kelly’s chuckling—or trying to. He’s turning his forehead into the soft grass and letting his shoulders quake to make up for the air he can’t spare on real laughter.
“You’re so dumb,” he tells me. When he gasps, it’s involuntary, and then he coughs, and he pulls his whole body into his core, like there’s a string tied around his waist and someone in heaven is trying to hoist him up.
I wait until the fit is finished, and then I trace one of the streaks on his cheek while he watches me with one eye.
“They love Cherish.” His voice is low and hoarse. “Not you.”
“Cherish and I go together,” I say, and I don’t let myself breathe for a beat or two so that my chest doesn’t rise or fall. So there’s nothing for Kelly to notice. Because I can be completely honest with him but that doesn’t mean I will.
“Not”—he starts and then closes his eyes—“the way you think.”
My neck tenses, and I exhale through my nose, as slowly as I can manage.
If he’d said we didn’t go together, I would’ve known what else to say. Or I’d at least imagine bringing my fist down on the bull’s-eye the colors on his side have made and watch the aftermath.
If he’d said we didn’t go together, it would mean he doesn’t know us, that nothing he says matters, because he’s outside writhing on the grass and we’re on the inside, and we are something he can’t understand.
But he didn’t dispute that Cherish and I go together. He said not the way I think.