He starts to interrupt, but I keep talking.
“I know I’d still see you, and I know you haven’t even said yes yet. I know all of that, but I was still so scared. I was even mad—mad that you would leave without telling me, even though that’s not what’s happening at all. I—I—Câlice, I hate when I get like this.”
He lets me breathe for a few seconds. I’m panting, my hands curled into tight fists in my lap.
“DeeDee, whatever this is and whatever it takes, I’m here for you. I’ll be whatever you need. I want to support you. I want to help.”
“But you can’t.”
Now it’s him raising his eyebrows at me. I lower my voice and try to make it softer, but I can’t stop the way it trembles.
“I...I use people to fill something in me up. I grab on and let them lead me like...like those boats!” I point down to the water. “I jump in, let someone do all the work and the steering and just kind of put my feet on the pedals because I can’t drive a maudit boat on my own, and that’s fine because there’s always another boat to jump in. I know how to make people like having me in their boat for a while, but I...I don’t want to do that with you. Je veux être plus que ҫa pour toi.”
I want to be more than that for you.
“DeeDee.” He squeezes my knee and waits for me to look at him. “You are so much to me already. You are more than enough, and if I need to pedal a little harder for now, I am more than willing to do it.”
He slides his hand around my thighs and pulls them over his own. I let him tug me closer until I’m cradled in his arms.
“It’ll help build my calf muscles,” he jokes. “Just last night, you were saying how sexy you think my calves are. I have to live up to the hype.”
He laughs, and I force myself to join in. “Ouais. I did say that. They’re very nice.”
I don’t know how to tell him what I’m really afraid of. It’s the thought I’ve pushed to the very back of my head, the one that only comes out at the darkest hours of the night, when the numbers on the clock have blurred and my brain has run around in so many circles I can’t hide from the truth anymore: that maybe I don’t need someone else to pedal.
Maybe what I really need is to grow the hell up and learn to drive my own boat.
I don’t know if I can do that when I’ve always got somebody else in the driver’s seat.
Only it feels so good when he holds me. It feels so good to sit here in his arms with the sun on my face and the wind off the river playing with my hair. It feels good and safe and solid to feel his chest rise and fall when he breathes.
“You’re beautiful.” His eyes roam over my face before he leans in to kiss my forehead.
I grab his face and hold it still before he can pull all the way back, forcing myself to memorize him like a photo I’m about to set on fire. I look at those lips that have brought me so much pleasure and joy, from the things they do and the words they say. I look at his scruffy blond beard that’s so cute and so sexy all at once. I look at the line of his jaw and the slope of his nose, the planes of his cheeks and his forehead. He has a face that was made to be kind, made to be open and honest. It’s a face that could turn anyone’s day around, and it’s been making my days better since the moment I met him.
“Zach.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “You are so, so beautiful.”
I press my lips to his and kiss him hard enough to block everything else out.
Twenty
Zach
THREE-DEEP: slang term for a crowded bar or pub where the amount of patrons waiting to be served at the bar is several rows deep
“You’re part of the Taverne Toulouse family now!”
I pat Paige on the shoulder—once, very lightly—before pulling my hand away as fast as I can.
Instead of glaring at me, she smiles down at the sidewalk as we walk to Taverne Toulouse together. DeeDee badgered Monroe into give Paige a regular monthly DJ night, and considering how big of a crowd Paige draws, it didn’t take much convincing.
My roommate and I have been seeing each other more and more these past few weeks. It now feels like I share an apartment with an actual person rather than a ghost with a penchant for electronic music. Paige and DeeDee have struck up something of a friendship, and she always comes out to say hi when DeeDee and I are watching TV or making dinner. I have never seen Paige chat before, and truth be told, DeeDee does most of the talking, but I still find myself watching the two of them in awe.
There’s something about DeeDee that draws people in, like a patch of sunlight on a stormy day. I know she thinks she does it all on purpose, that it’s her survival strategy to make sure she’s never alone after losing so much, but it’s more than that. I know that even if her past had never happened, her smile would be just as warm. Her laugh would be just as infectious. She’d still have a way of making you feel like the only person in the world when she props her chin in her hands and leans closer to hear you speak.
There’s a joy to DeeDee Beausoleil, one that refuses to be extinguished no matter what life throws her way. There’s a fire in her that’s kept her going through things that would have made so many other people quit.
I just wish she would feel that same fire when she looked at me, when she looked at us. The fear and the flames are warring inside her, and I’m pushing myself to my limits as I wait to see which one will win.
“DeeDee hasn’t been over in a while. How, uh, are you guys?”
I resist the urge to do an actual double-take as Paige and I turn the corner of the street.
“We’re...okay?” I do my best to take the strangeness of having a heart to heart with Paige in stride. “I think?”
“Convincing.”
Sarcasm. This is the Paige I know.
“I just...It’s complicated.”
“Very convincing.” I swear I see the hint of a grin as she says it.
“You’re kind of an asshole, Paige.”
This time I’m sure she smiles.
“That’s me. Look, I get it.” She keeps staring down at the sidewalk, a few troubled creases forming between her eyes. “Relationships are...weird, and there’s a point when you need to know where you’re headed. It’s hard when you don’t.”
“Uh, yeah.” It’s taking all my effort not to stare at her like she’s grown a second head. “Yeah, that’s really true. Have you and DeeDee been, uh, talking about...?”
I trail off, and Paige chuckles.
“You?” she finishes for me. “You think I’m going to break girl code or something?”
“To be honest, Paige, you don’t seem like the ‘girl code’ type.”
She chuckles. “I’m not, and no, we haven’t been talking about you. It’s just clear that you two are like, disgustingly in love, and yet you’re being this whole no labels, casual, see where it goes kind of thing. One of you has to be holding back, and I doubt that it’s you.”
She says the last part like I’m the most predictable person in the world. I put a hand on my chest.