Risk Your Heart

"No," I said.

I started to crawl away. He grabbed my hips. I struggled, but he yanked me by the ankle, reminding me of Vancouver. I got caught up in my sweats, and in the moment I paused he tackled me. Drew let his body completely cover mine like a lead blanket.

"You're not going anywhere, my pretty," he said in a good imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West.

I surged up, surprising him. The move gained me a little space, and I wiggled away a few feet.

"Not so fast, Princess Leia."

Drew rolled me over, straddled me, and pinned my wrists on either side of my head. "You can't get away from me that easily, baby. No excuses." He kissed my forehead. "No hiding." He kissed my cheek. "No pretending I don't love you." Drew bit my bottom lip softly and gently pulled it out a little.

"No keeping part of yourself tucked away from me, Lee. Fuck me, Leah. Right now. You're sorry? Prove it. Fuck me with all of you. Fuck me for all you're worth."

That also shouldn't get me so hot.

"Make love to me, baby. Forget your brain for a minute. Let your body tell me what it needs."

My chest surged up toward him.

"Yeah?" he asked. His voice was hot with want. Volcanic.

Drew didn't want to let go of my wrists. I could tell by the way he used the top of his head and one of his hands still holding my wrist to push my sweatshirt up. I wasn't wearing a bra.

"Oh, fuck yeah," Drew said.

He pulled one nipple into his mouth, and gently rolled it between his teeth.

It was my hips that surged up toward him this time. My center was already flooded and hot. I couldn't possibly want him more than I did in that moment.

"Hurry," I whispered.

Drew let go of my wrists so he could put both hands on my breasts and mound them up. He was greedy, sucking them into his mouth one after another.

He was mumbling something, but I couldn't tell what. It vibrated against my chest.

"I missed you, Lee. I missed you so much. Please don't take yourself away from me again. Please, baby, don't. I love you. I missed you. You have no idea how much I missed you."

Drew put his ear to my heart as if he was assuring himself that my heartbeat was good and strong. I ached for him.

Then Drew put his mouth over my heart. He pursed his lips against that spot in the center of my breast and just held them there. He lazily caressed one breast, occasionally playing with the nipple, pulling it, turning it, running his fingernail across it, as if he couldn't help paying attention to try to please me, but for him, everything was focused on his lips pouring goodness through my sternum and into my heart.

In that moment, I knew that I loved him. God help me, I loved him.

I swallowed a sob.

His head came up quickly.

"What, baby?" he asked.

"Nothing," I said. "I just think you're the hottest thing since sliced bread."

"Sliced bread isn't all that hot," Drew said. "Unless it's toast."

*

Drew came over every night after that. We stopped all the texting during the day. There was no blindfolding me with gauze, or tying me up with rope, making me kneel, or using a spreader bar.

There was a sort of normality that was so new for me it was weird. Drew loved cooking, and he was good at it. Which was nice because macaroni and cheese sucks as a staple, and if Drew was going to see me naked every night I definitely didn't want to get fat.

The last day of summer was fast approaching.

I tried to ignore it. Until one day I was in my car, on the way to the supermarket, when that old Don Henley song, "The Boys of Summer" came on the radio. 'After the boys of summer are gone....'

The line seemed to resonate and hang in the air long after I turned off the car. The last day of summer would be our three-month anniversary, wouldn't it? The day we met seemed like a long time ago. Eons. It seemed like a million years ago.

I felt like I'd known him forever.

We had fallen into the easy pattern of boyfriend and girlfriend, and there was no reason to mess with that. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to tell him that fall was a time to fall back. I didn't have to tell him I needed more space. But something had to happen, I just didn't know what.

I was barreling toward...what?

Sometimes the unknown is scarier than anything we can possibly imagine.

I was in the store, getting milk out of the cooler when it hit me hard. Even if I scaled back on the relationship, even if I scaled back to the point where we were just friends, eventually Drew would die, and I would be alone.

I stood with the cooler door open for a while, until a Hispanic woman with three kids kindly asked me to move out of her way.

I walked to the front of the store to pay for my groceries on automatic. Wasn't there a song that came out a few years ago called, "Sleepwalking" by a band— what was their name—something, something on the horizon? How often had I downshifted into automaton mode this past month? This summer? This year?

I didn't even remember driving home and crawling back into bed. I think I put my groceries down on the dining room table and left them there. Ut-oh, milk.

I'll just stay in bed for a while, maybe a month or two.

Another snippet of a song pile-drove itself into my head. 'Second verse, same as the first.'

Shit.

Perhaps it's time to go back to therapy. Again.

Yeah.

Drew picked that minute to call.

Oh, joy.

"Hey, little slave," he said when I answered, sounding disgustingly cheery. "Guess who just found out he gets the evening off and would love spend the evening getting off?"

"You know, it is really hard to be depressed around you. You suck."

"Well, I'd like to, which is why I called you. What's wrong, baby?"

"Nothing."

"Oh-ho," Drew said. "I know that nothing. That's the nothing that's really something. I'm coming over." He hung up.

"Bring chocolate," I said to the dial tone.

I was unwashed. My hair was a mess. I was frowning, which makes me look awful more than anything else. Yet when I opened the door and Drew was standing there, my body lit up. The chemistry snapped between us, an electric, tingling, buzzing, amazing shock of goodness.

"You suck," I said again.

Drew frowned. "Okay. I guess I'll just take this triple chocolate Hagen Daas ice cream away with me then," he said. He turned around.

I snagged the back of his shirt.

"But you may have some redeeming qualities," I said. "And you may be psychic."

I reeled him toward me. It was like pulling in a squirming marlin trapped in a lifesaver, because he wiggled around, fighting against me in a silly way.

"No, no," Drew said. "You don't appreciate me. You obviously have a good sulk on. I don't want to ruin it. I can eat all this ice cream by myself."

I wrapped my arms around him from behind and rested my head on his upper back. We both relaxed.

"Hand over the ice cream and no one gets hurt," I said.

He turned his head and neck back to look over his shoulder at me. "Baby, we all always get hurt. But that's the thing. We get through it together."

I shoved him away. I gave him a swift kick in the ass, booted him out the door, slammed it, and locked the deadbolt. Drew's a lot stronger than I am, but I had the element of surprise.

"I hate you!" I shouted.

It would have been more effective if I weren't laughing.

"There's a thin line between love and hate," Drew said. "And I'm pretty sure it gets tipped in the favor of the one who's holding the ice cream." There was a slight pause. "I brought plastic spoons, so I can start without you."

Bastard.

Worth thinking about though.

My door unlocked, and Drew walked in.

"What?!!!" I sputtered. "What the fuck!" I couldn't believe it. Drew sauntered past me and into my kitchen. "How did you get a key?"

"I bribed your landlord."

"You have GOT to be kidding me."

Drew turned around; his smile was so big, it wasn't the cat that ate the canary. It was the cat that ate the entire tub of Hagen Daas in one bite.

"That's illegal!"

"Which must be why it cost me so much to bribe him," Drew said.

"You-you-you—"

"You're stuttering," Drew said.

"You're incorrigible!" I exclaimed.

"That's just one of the reasons you love me, right?"

"I never said I loved you," I said.

We both stopped short.

"No," Drew said quietly. "You didn't. As a matter of fact, you made it very clear, more than once, you probably never would. But I'm an optimist, you know, to infinity and beyond, and all that. I'm a patient man. I can wait."

"You're just hoping to wear me down—"

"Yup."

"And ply me with ice cream."

"Damn right," Drew said. "Is it working?"

"No."

"Fuck."

I smiled and crossed my arms over my chest. His eyes followed the motion. He licked his lips comically.

"I guess I'll just have to turn up the charm," Drew said.

"Oh God, don't," I said. "You'll kill me."

When I said that, it reminded me of what put me in the funk in the first place. My expression must have fallen like some puppeteer cut all the muscle fibers in my face, because Drew put down the ice cream and embraced me in a hug.

"My darling, sweet, incredible love. Please talk to me. Please, honey. Tell me what's wrong."

This guy really stinks.

I took a deep breath and shook my head, no, against his chest.

Drew let me go, put the ice cream in my freezer, and came back and took my hand. He gently led me over to my big, overstuffed armchair in the corner of my living room. Drew sat down on it and carefully pulled me into his lap.

He rubbed soft, slow circles on my lower back.

"You just totally stink, you know that?" I asked.

"That's how guys are," he said peacefully. "I'm sorry. I was wrong. It's my fault." He tilted my chin up and looked at me. "What did I do?"

I burst out laughing. How could I not love him? He's going to break my heart when he leaves. And everyone leaves. My dad abandoned me. My mom left me. My Dom died. Everything in life was temporary.

I buried my head in his chest. He smelled fantastic.

"What's that amazing scent?" I asked.

"Eu de Dove's Men soap and serious concern," Drew said. "Don't make me put you over my knee and spank you," Drew said. "I'll like it."

I looked up at him. He was smiling. He had a killer smile. Drew stopped smiling when he saw the seriousness of my expression.

"Don't make me beg you, baby. Can you tell me what's wrong? You need to play twenty questions?"

I shook my head. "Just give me a moment."

He nodded, and I rested my head against his chest again. When I breathed in, I realized it wasn't just his soap, and his concern, and his care that smelled so great. It was him that wormed its way up into my senses and short-circuited everything so I all I could think was yes yes yes yes ooooo yum awesome yes. It was Chemistry with a capital 'C'. It was shaking his ass to Pitbull. It was everything about him. And I was bound to fuck it up.

Is this what PTSD was?

Drew stroked my hair.

I really could hate the guy. The being nice was almost harder to take than all the years of people being mean to me.

We stayed like that for what seemed like a long time. A wind blew up. It howled like a pack of wolves singing a song for the dead.

Which reminded me, again, what had brought this oh so fun mood on.

"You're going to die, and leave me alone, and I can't have my heart have that kind of pain, I just can't. I want to say you won't die, or you won't die before me, but you will, I just know it."

"You're probably right," Drew said.

"What?" I jerked up and slapped him on the chest. "You counsel people? This is how you counsel people in church? You really do suck. Fuck you."

I tried to get up from his lap, but he held me tight around the hips.

"I believe in honesty, Leah. I'm never going to lie to you. Not on purpose. Not if I can help it."

I stared at him.

Weirdo.

"Leah, we're the same age. Men tend to have a seven-to-nine-year shorter life span than women, so statistically there is a good chance that I will leave this plane of existence before you will."

"You're really good at this counseling thing. I feel better already," I said.

"But here's the thing. Even if I die before you do, we're still going to be connected. Just because someone dies, doesn't mean their energy just...leaves."

Drew took off his wedding ring. He rolled it around on his palm, held it up, slid it between his fingers. It had faded so far into the background for me I forgot he still wore it.

"I'll never forget her," Drew said, obviously talking about his wife. ""No one will ever replace her. She's out there, somewhere, and I know she understands that. You see, in my heart, I feel like, in some ways, some days, she watches over me. So I had to move on, but it's not like the connection dissolves. I have to live my life, but it's not like she died on purpose. She didn't leave me.

"Sometimes I feel Brittany with me. When I'm really sad, or when I can't sleep late at night for no reason. Once, when I was in the ambulance, and I was working on this little girl who was having an asthma attack..." Drew choked up a little bit, and I thought he wouldn't be able to go on. "We weren't able to get her airways clear, and there was no way we were going to be able to make it to the hospital. It was that 'do or die' moment. I felt Brittany with me. It was like she was right there, hovering over my shoulder, telling me it would be okay."

Drew paused.

"Did the little girl make it?" I asked.

"No," Drew said.

We were silent for a minute.

"I'm not going to be around forever," Drew said. "No promises."

My head thunked against his chest, like commands to my neck no longer worked enough to hold it up. He rubbed my back again.

"But whatever happens, I'm not letting go of the energy between us. Quantum physics says energy is neither created nor destroyed. It simply changes form. You can apply heat, and it dissipates into a larger volume container. You can put it through an electrical conductor and it goes from one place to another, you can change the chemical element combinations and it appears in a different way. But it doesn't disappear. I believe it's like that with friends. I believe it's like that with death. And that's part of what I choose to call God."

I made a gagging sound.

"You can think what you want, Lee. But that helps get me through the day. It helped get me through the senseless death of my wife and the fact I couldn't save her."

I teared up, and I tried to blink them away.

"It makes me a better person to think that way. It helps me to serve others. It makes me happier. I choose to be happy. It's a choice. It doen't matter what happens to someone. People win the lottery, or they lose limbs, whatever. They can still...revert to old attitudes or ascend to better ones."

"I just can't lose anyone else."

"Fine," Drew said. "Make yourself miserable. I'm your Dom. I order you not to be miserable. Or, I order you to be miserable only when I allow you to be miserable."

I let out a little laugh, but it was more like a sob.

"I'm just trying to protect myself," I said. "I can't work when I'm a basket case."

"I know," Drew said. He changed his voice to a slight Texas drawl and did a perfect Dr. Phil accent. "How's that working for ya?"

"Perfectly."

Drew did his Tom Hanks, and that other actor voice thing again. "'Buzz, you're not worried, are you?'" Then he paused. "'Me? Oh no, no, no, no, no.'"

I made another disgusted sound. "Toy Story again."

"You could learn a lot from Toy Story," he said.

I rolled my eyes.

"Or movies in general," he said.

I rolled my eyes.

"Keep doing that and you're going to get punished."

Mmmmnnn. I bit my lower lip.

The idea that I didn't deserve the joy blindsided me, like a huge metal beam swung from a crane at full speed that I had no idea was there until it knocked me down.

Suddenly I felt like a little kid. I felt vulnerable before, but this was a whole new level. This was being a fish in a plastic bag that had more holes than material. My lip trembled, and I bit it for another reason.

"Oh, baby," Drew said.

He rocked me. Subtle motions, back and forth, that seemed to go on outside of time.

"All I can say," Drew said, "is that for me, it helps to have faith. To believe that everything happens for a reason."

Really? Like there can be a reason for all that? A reason a father would purposely set a daughter up at an art store, embarrass her, betray her, abandon her, set her whole life on a path of ruin?

I shook my head against his chest.

No greater plan could be that cruel.

I was strong. I survived. Yes, my Dom's death threw me. I'd get over it. No big deal.

It was easy to languish in Drew's embrace. I concentrated on feeling grateful.

"I can't," I said a while later.

"Say that enough and you'll make it true," Drew said.

"Go ahead, try philosophy with me, see how far that gets you," I said.

"Baby, I hate to say it, but I have to go."

I grabbed him tightly.

He did an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. "I'll be back."

"The movie impressions are getting old," I said. It would have carried more weight if I could have said it with a straight face.

"Too bad," Drew said. "I'm the Dom."

He stood up, with me still in his arms, and then carefully set me back down in the chair.

Drew gave me a kiss, long and gentle.

"Baby," he said.

He walked to the door. His wedding ring was still on the side table.

"Drew, wait!" I yelled.

"What?" He asked. He turned around to look at me.

"You left your ring," I said. I picked it up and held it out to him.

Drew looked at me like I hadn't understood a single thing he had talked about. His expression was sadder than I had ever seen it, and he shook his head slightly.

"I'll get it back," he said. Drew turned around, and without another word, he stepped out of the apartment closing the door quietly behind him.

I hung my head.

There were moments when I really hated myself. I don't think I ever felt worse than I did at that moment.

*

I woke up to the sound of my air conditioning sputtering. When it conked out, the absence of sound, the eerie silence, reminded me of solitary confinement. I jumped out of bed and checked my phone.

Forecast. Morning: One hundred degrees by nine am. One hundred percent humidity by ten a.m. The rest of the day, rain. Tomorrow: rain. Day after tomorrow, rain. Day after that, rain. Then rain. And rain. And more rain. Two weeks, rain.

I think I should build an ark.

No, wait, that would entail work.

But, at least by tonight the temperature would drop.

About friggin' time.

I got dressed, picked up my laptop, went to Panera Bread Company. Cold air conditioning. Wi-fi. Salads. Smoothies. Is life good or what?

Or what.

I missed Drew.

Yes, I had seen him only last night, but it's not like we left on a Grammy-award-winning note.

I took out my phone. Opened my text message screen. What to write? Hhhhmmn. Dear Amazing Man, sorry I'm completely fucked up. Love, Guess Who?

Yeah. Nice.

I hung my head.

Whaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

I had a lot of work to do.

I sucked my mango smoothie and fantasized about sex.

Not helping.

I called the air conditioning repair guy. I knew the apartment manager had called him and I wanted to see if I could get a real idea of when he would actually make an appearance. He wouldn't be able to get there until five o'clock.

Yeah. Nice.

I focused on work. I had an alcohol ad I was supposed to fix. There was a cruise ship that I was supposed to Photoshop fireworks on top of.

In the back of my mind I knew I was not giving my work half the attention it deserved. Talk about sleepwalking and just dialing it in on the robotic setting. Finally I couldn't stand it anymore.

I packed up my laptop, put a to-go cap on my smoothie, wiggled into my oh-so-elegant three-dollar-on-sale, look-like-a-garbage-bag rain poncho, and got into my car. I just drove around aimlessly. The rain trickled down to a drizzle and then stopped.