Chapter Ten

Here to Fall's Tumblr: here.

Chapter Ten
 

TPOV

I wasn’t sure if I should have been more relieved or embarrassed by the fact that I’d shown up at Allison’s apartment and basically fallen apart right in her fucking doorway. 

I couldn’t really classify it, but I think the fact that I’d told her this huge chunk of my past, this part of me that I kept hidden from most people—and the thing that haunted me most—that it somehow evened the playing field.  Like that one singular moment where I’d admitted my own weakness was the last cog that needed to be shifted for her to trust me completely—or, if not completely, at least more than she did everyone else. 

If I was totally honest with myself, I couldn’t let go of Michael’s death.  It just ate at me, and I didn’t have an answer as to why, I just knew that it did.  It stayed with me.  Every day.  And it was more than just me finding him, of that image being engrained forever, it was the why—it was my father; it was just everything.  

But waking up in her bed the next morning, it was one of the lightest I’d felt since walking into his apartment all those years ago.  Six years of weight that seemed lighter with just one night with her.  A night where we had done absolutely nothing but talked, or nothing but me talking and her just listening, and a few kisses that were so chaste I couldn’t recall a time when I’d kissed a girl so softly. 

I knew there was something in her past she was hiding from me just like I’d hidden Michael’s death from her.  She solidified that much when she said we had more in common than we thought.  It wasn’t loss like I’d lost Michael, but it was something like that, something that had been taken from her.  Her telling me was too much for that one night, but I hoped that my breakdown—because that’s basically what it fucking was; it’d just reached a point where I couldn’t hold onto it all anymore—would give her the assurance she needed that she could tell me whatever she needed to, as well. 

She was normally very nonphysical—I could count the number of times she touched me since that night in the alley when I nearly fucked everything up on one hand, and they’d all been very recent—so even I was surprised when she held me.  I couldn’t bring myself to be that ashamed about crying on her then either.  Her hands felt incredibly good and soothing and comforting, and exactly what I needed.  I wanted to feel her little hands on me all the time, and it was like the absence of them now that I’d felt them was almost worse than never feeling them at all. 

I knew things had to be slow, though.  I knew that sex with her was a topic that had some sort of huge warning sign over it, and that her past was most likely involved in that.  I knew that she didn’t do the dating thing and that a lot of the shit we were doing was new to her.  I thought she handled everything that came along pretty well if she was that sheltered or afraid or whatever.  She acclimated to things well, or just hid the fact that she was struggling with it really well. 

I’d debated and berated and fought with myself ever since the first date about what our first kiss would be or should be.  I wanted to kiss her on the very first date—that awkward and strange yet completely enlivening and delightful evening—but I knew she wouldn’t handle that well, or thought I’d be asking for something I wasn’t.  So I kept holding off, wondering and waiting when that time was right, and it hadn’t come until that night.  The opportunity had been there plenty of times, but it just never seemed like the right moment.  It was quiet and dark and comfortable and easy, and that moment after I’d asked, I knew it had been the perfect time because she was in a position where I thought she felt… strong, or not strong, just… needed or helpful—the whole evened playing field thing—I think she thought or felt that we’d been on par and equal with one another, and so asking for the kiss, and kissing her, was mutual.  It was something she wanted as much as I did right then. 

I won’t lie and say I didn’t want more, because I did.  I wanted to erase every bad experience she’d had—whatever made her apprehensive and wary about physical shit—in one night.  Not that I’d be, like, the fucking great white hope of sex or something, but just… I wanted to make it up to her; I wanted to make up for all the shitheads who had made her feel that way.  I wanted to show her that the physical side of relationships didn’t have to be one-sided, but she wasn’t ready for that. 

She was into the kiss, she wanted more of it, her lips were soft and completely addicting from the second mine pressed to hers.  It was amazing how much those few… They couldn’t be called platonic, there was too fucking much flowing through me to make them anything other than romantic, but it was so gentle, so affectionate and intimate that, shit, the amount of everything that was poured into it… 

At the same time, whether she knew it or not, her body wasn’t angled at all toward mine.  Or it had been to start, but she was pulling away the longer we kissed, like her head subconsciously knew that she wasn’t ready for anything else.  So I backed the kisses off again and went back to the barely-there ones instead of deepening them more.  I don’t think she was disappointed at all, I think the level we got to had been fine with her for the first time, but I also don’t think she realized that she’d been moving away the whole time. 

It was difficult to know sometimes with her because she was up-front and mouthy and then shy and bashful and all nervous and shit.  That was both a good and bad thing, because really, I wasn’t an adult.  If I was all about honesty at the moment, I didn’t have responsibility for much.  I didn’t have to be the one to make the big decisions or the choices, but it was sort of liberating in an odd way to know that I had to do that when it came to her.  To know when her head was saying yes but her body was saying no, or vice versa.  Or to just know to slow the fuck down and not do what my dick was telling me. 

When I woke up in the morning, I realized that we were both unintentional cuddlers.  I remembered falling asleep with only our foreheads touching, and when I woke up I was all twined with her and her hand was on my chest, and I let out the longest fucking sigh of my life.  I wanted that hand there all the time; I never wanted her to move it.  And I was pissed at the same time because I knew the minute she woke it’d be gone and she’d probably, kinda freak.  Even though we’d slept in the same bed and had this rather large leap in intimacy, waking this way was probably gonna be too much for her, and I didn’t want that to happen.  I thought we’d gotten to a great place and I didn’t want this to fuck it up.  So I tried to be as careful as I could, to back up and give us some distance, but I couldn’t bring myself to move her hand.  I made sure that our bodies weren’t totally touching, but the hand stayed where she’d left it. 

She was adorable when she woke, and I found that was something I wanted to see all the time, too.  I could happily wake up every morning to see that.  She was a slow riser, shifting and pressing her head into the pillow and dozing before she actually ever woke completely.  Her hair fell over her face and I couldn’t resist moving the strands, gently pushing it back behind her ear.  Her face pressed into my hand while she was still half-sleeping, and I smiled when she settled again.  I dozed for a while, and when I woke fully she was gone.  Her side of the bed was still warm, so she hadn’t been gone long, and I could smell coffee brewing on my way to the bathroom.  I wasn’t really taking a lot in, but it had the smallest fucking shower I’d ever seen.  

I hadn’t intended on meeting the roommate on my way out. 

“Mornin’, lover boy,” she said, smirking.

“Hey… Jordan.” 

“Have a nice night?”

Well she obviously had the wrong idea, but I couldn’t blame her.  I was in my shorts and a t-shirt, and I had to come from somewhere because the couch hadn’t been slept on.  I also wasn’t going to get into it with her about why nothing had really happened last night. 

I cleared my throat.  “Uhm… it was nice, yeah.”

She snorted.  “Nice, huh?”

“It’s not like that.”

“Uh huh.”

“Really.”

“Sure,” she said, winking at me.  She didn’t press it and went back to her own room, so I let it go for now.  If Allison wanted to have the discussion with her later, that wasn’t my business. 

Allison was sitting on the couch with her mug propped on her knees when I came out.  “Hey,” she said quietly, “there’s coffee.  I think you know where the cups are.”

“Thanks,” I said back and headed for the kitchen. 

It was always sort of a gamble how things would go—I hadn’t known if she was going to acknowledge the previous night or not.  I hadn’t really thought we’d discuss the kissing, but I dunno…

I mulled over how to really approach the entire subject while I poured the coffee, and I didn’t really have a definitive plan by the time I made it back to the living room.  I sat down next to her on the couch and nearly burned my tongue on the fucking coffee.  I risked a glance at her, but she seemed completely nonchalant and just cool with everything. 

We sat there in relative silence for a few minutes before I jumped headlong into the conversation with the brilliant: “So, your roommate thinks we slept together last night.”

Allison turned her head toward me slowly as I was berating myself internally already for that completely lame and stupid start. 

She smirked.  “We did sleep together last night.”

“Yes, but she thinks we did a lot more than sleep.”  She turned her head back to the TV and I just kept the verbal drivel going.  “I didn’t correct her.”

Her head swiveled again.  “It’s cool.”  And the head was back to the TV.  “She’ll ask me about it later anyway.  I can tell her then.” 

I sort of choked on my coffee and she looked at me.  “I didn’t mean I’d tell her about your brother,” she assured me, and I nodded thankfully while wiping coffee off of my chin.  “I just meant that I’d set her straight.  It doesn’t matter anyway, she’s not gonna tell anyone or whatever.  There’s no one to tell.”

“No,” I backpedaled, “I just meant that I didn’t really know what to say to her.  I mean… Fuck.”  I ran my hand over my face.  “God, I don’t know what I meant.”

She was smirking when I sighed and looked at her again.  “It’s cool, Tyler.”

Why was she handling this so much better than I was?  I was the one who was supposed to be all cool and collected and helping to avoid her freak out over the cuddling and shit, and… ugh.  I sighed again and looked into the coffee cup like it could give me all the answers on how to regain my cool.

“Thanks again for listening to me last night,” I said—probably not the way to regain the cool.

“You’re welcome.  Thanks for, I dunno, trusting me with it.”

I didn’t look over at her; the coffee was much easier to talk to in this instance.  “I liked kissing you,” I followed with—so not the way to regain the cool—epic cool fail. 

I risked a glance in her direction just out of the corner of my eye.  She was smiling into her own cup of coffee.  “I liked it, too.  It was nice.”

Nice was good. 

Nice was awesome. 

I loved nice. 

“I was thinking maybe I could take you out to dinner tonight.  Someplace nice.  Wherever you wanna go.  To thank you for last night.”

She was still smiling.  “You don’t have to do that.  I didn’t do it for that.”

“I know.  I still want to.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I dunno, where do you wanna go?”

“I’m not picky, Tyler.”

“Allison,” I warned.  “I want you to have a nice dinner.”

She chuckled.  “It’s not about the favorites thing.  Why do you want to take me to dinner?”

“Because,” I said as I shrugged, “that’s just… what you do when you want to thank someone.  You take them somewhere nice, or… whatever.”  I waved my hand.

She hmm-ed and I looked over at her.  “So, like… I should dress up?”  She looked slightly nervous about that. 

At least there wasn’t an argument.  

“No, just normal.  I’ll figure it out.” 

I needed to get her something other than dinner, though.  Maybe a present—something that wouldn’t make her freak out about that, either.  So jewelry was probably out, or she’d think I was saying something I wasn’t.  Fuck, maybe I’d ask Jordan.  Low-key restaurant was better.  And the present, the totally-noncommittal-but-I’m-thanking-you present. 

It was sort of strange how the morning progressed.  I thought it would be awkward or something, but it wasn’t.  We didn’t really talk about anything else, but we hung out on the couch for a while before getting ready for the day.  I had to be at work at ten, so I got dressed while she showered.  I figured that would be the only time I’d get Jordan alone, so I rapped on her door quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s Tyler.  Can I ask you something?”

The door literally flew open and I backed up a step when she was suddenly right there.  “Depends.”

“Ok.”  She didn’t say anything else, so I thought that meant I could ask.  “Uhm… I want to get something for Allison.  A thank you gift.”

“As in ‘thanks for a really great night’ gift?”  She leaned against the doorframe, smirking. 

I furrowed my brow.  “No.  Something else.”  That was not her fucking business.

She didn’t say anything.  I stuck my hands in my pockets, starting to think this was a really bad idea, but I wasn’t gonna tell her what happened last night.  I cleared my throat while she stared at me. 

“Yeah, so, I have no idea what to get her.  I thought maybe you would have an idea.”

She studied me for a minute before answering, back to flippant and sarcastic.  “What do you get the girl that has nothing…” she mused to herself for a second before looking back at me.  “New sheets?”

It wasn’t the sarcasm—I could deal with that—it wasn’t the teasing either, because I was a big boy and I could handle being teased, too.  It was just the appraising way she said everything, like I was constantly being judged.  And I got that, too, really—I mean I knew she didn’t know me at all.  Her view of me was probably pretty shitty at the moment because I’d fucked her friend over and stalked her and shit.  But… I thought in the last few weeks I’d at least shown I wasn’t a complete dick.  I was coming to her, too, asking for her help.  It wasn’t like I came out of the bedroom with a big smile on my face and smacked her on the ass, bragging about what a good lay her roommate was.  I thought I was being decent. 

I understood why she was doing it all—she was protecting her friend—and it was obvious that if I had been a complete dick, Allison probably would have needed someone to watch out for her like this.  So I tried to keep my frustration under control. 

I smiled gently instead.  “She doesn’t need new sheets.  Her sheets are completely clean, or if they aren’t, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t last night.”

“Uh huh.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Ok, lover boy.  We’ll go with that for now.”

Yes.  We would.  ’Cause it was the truth. 

Jesus fucking Christ. 

“Right, so… any ideas?” 

Hey, I was getting my answer here.  I would not be deterred, no matter how annoying she got.

She smirked again.  “Well, Allison’s not big on stuff.  Never has been.”

“Ok.”

“You should get the girl a wallet.”

“What?  A wallet?”  That was the grand suggestion I’d been waiting for?  A wallet?  

“Yeah, a wallet.  Because she constantly has cash, ya know, stripper and all?  And she never has anywhere to put it, so she just stuffs it in her pockets.  It’s stupid.  And dangerous.  Girl needs a wallet.”

“A wallet,” I repeated, dazed.  And annoyed that I’d actually asked her, gotten up the nerve and put up with her shit, and then… a wallet.  

“Yeah, lover boy, a wallet.  What good would getting her some stupid trinket or something be?  What’s she gonna do with that?”  She shrugged and didn’t seem to appreciate my lack of enthusiasm over this gift suggestion and promptly closed the door in my face.  If I hadn’t already been dazed and annoyed, I might have taken offense to that.

I think I literally stood there in the hall for several minutes trying to digest what Jordan had just said.  Then realized I was really fucking stupid because this was not an average girl, and yeah, I was coming at this at the wrong direction entirely.  I walked back to Allison’s room and sat down on the edge of the bed and just took a look around the room.  I hadn’t had a chance to do that last night, and it hadn’t really even registered that I was in her room and could have taken advantage of the information that was just sitting out here for me.  

The room was small, but not super tiny.  The walls were white and bare with some paint and plaster peeling in places—that was par for the course in this area of New York.  Her bedroom seemed to fare better than other rooms of the apartment.  The kitchen was tiny and the living room was an average-ish size.  I had no idea what Jordan’s bedroom was like, but the bathroom was small and the shower had to have been made only for people Allison’s size. The peeling plaster and paint in Allison’s room was more prominent in the other rooms of the place, and there were water spots in a lot of the rooms.  I wondered if the roof leaked.  The whole apartment was fairly large for Hell’s Kitchen, though.  Places in New York that weren’t super-swank and expensive all kinda looked the same, but this apartment was a little worse for the wear.  I’d have to ask her at some point what rent was like in this place, because for the size I would have thought it’d been astronomical, even with the condition.  

The bed took up a corner in her bedroom, and she had one up on me because she had a bed frame, and there was the usual shit you find in bedrooms: dresser, lamp, mirror, nightstand, bookcase.  The dresser was old and secondhand, paint worn and wood dented; truthfully, it looked a lot like Aidan’s, and we were no strangers to secondhand furniture—I refused to even entertain the idea of asking Aidan where he’d acquired our couch; I was sure it was a place that I didn’t want to know.  There was an old wooden framed armchair in one of the other corners that she obviously used for storage instead of sitting.  It was a blaringly loud red-orange color, and from the small section not being utilized by the crap on it, it had a distinctly disgusting 1970s patterned design on the seat with colors that were never meant to go together.  It was a very odd piece of furniture stylistically, but it was certainly eye-popping.

I think I was less thinking about an idea for a gift anymore and just trying to get more of an idea of the girl herself.  

I wandered over to the beat up bookcase because I was a book person and maybe our taste in books was similar.  That’d be a potential gift idea.  Her books didn’t seem to have a theme; I couldn’t narrow down one thing she liked over another except for the recipe books.  She seemed to have the largest number of those, all different kinds, like she collected any kind of recipe she could get her hands on.  There was other random crap on the bookshelf, but it wasn’t my room, and I didn’t want to invade her privacy and look beyond that.  

She had a lot of candles all over, most half burnt and obviously well used, all over the room—the dresser, the nightstand, the bookshelf.  The last corner by the closet had a long, cylindrical object that I finally deduced was a rain stick, and it seemed an odd item given the other stuff in her room.  

Used.  Everything in the room was used.  Nothing looked new.  The bedspread was hideous, not accounting for taste, and clashed completely with the armchair, but at least they both had a 70s vibe going.  

So… she liked recipes and candles, and throwing articles of clothing and other various shit on chairs.  Other than that, her room had very few personal touches.  

Even her room was hard to read.  

I may have thought that the wallet idea was impersonal and stupid when Jordan suggested it, but looking around, she wasn’t a student, she wasn’t a kid, she didn’t have a career path, and hobbies weren’t strewn around the room.  The room was functional—tiny personal touches, but mostly functional.  Getting into the mind of a stripper—not an easy task—and practical was key.  Jordan was right.  A wallet was functional and useful and served a purpose, it solved a problem that Jordan perceived Allison to have.  She didn’t seem like the purse type, and it made more sense that she’d like to have her cash on her, protected.  And for someone who dealt in cash only, it was really kinda perfect.  

It just didn’t seem to scream ‘thank you’ to me.  

I sat there racking my brain for something else and tried to figure out what I’d get a non-stripper if I were trying to find a gift for them instead.  If I was dating some undergrad instead, what would I have gotten her?  I probably would have known infinitely more about the undergrad by this time and would have had more to go on.  I would have known about her hobbies and habits; didn’t have that luxury here.  I could have tried to be thoughtful and shit, or I could have copped out and bought her flowers.

Flowers.

A functional, useful, no-frills girl who just happened to also be a stripper probably rarely got flowers.  I wondered if she’d like that kind of gift or would have the attitude that they had an expiration date and really served no purpose whatsoever.  I wanted her to know that I was grateful for what she’d done for me last night.  And to me, the flowers weren’t really about their limited timeframe.  

I didn’t really know Allison—still—after spending a significant amount of time with her, but small things were making themselves known.  

I jumped when she came back into the room and looked appropriately guilty, although I hadn’t really done anything to feel guilty for.  I hadn’t snooped, just… I wanted a peak into her life, the parts she wouldn’t tell me, the parts about her.  

She smirked at me.  “Find anything worth stealing?”

I chuckled.  “Nah.  I haven’t cased the bathroom yet, but there might be something in there to steal.  Some cough medicine or Sudafed that I can make methamphetamines with.”  

“Knock yourself out.”   She gestured in that direction.  “Bathroom’s all yours if you wanna shower or whatever.”

“No, I gotta get to work.  If I don’t leave now I’ll be late.”  I pivoted around her, realizing that this was probably rather awkward for her given that I was forcing this conversation because I’d been in her bedroom and she was standing there in only a towel.  It was also distracting.  I needed to go to work.  Work, yes.   

“Ok, so… I’ll see you tonight, then.  I’ll come by at…  When should I be here?”

“Uhm, well, I work tonight.  Until ten.”

“Oh.”  Well that put a slight crimp in my plans.  

“I mean, is that… too late for dinner?”

“You wanna go to dinner after?”  

“Is that bad?”

“No.  That’s fine.  I just didn’t know if you’d wanna go that late.  That’s fine.”  That probably sounded just as desperate as I imagined it did, but she smiled, so it must not have been that bad.

“Ok.  So, I’ll see you here at ten-thirty-ish?  Eleven?”

“Yeah, I’ll be here.  Then.”  I shifted on my feet for a second, debating.  I really wanted to kiss her goodbye, but advancing on her in the towel, I didn’t know how she’d take that.  So I’m pretty sure I moved really slowly, so she either thought I was coming in for the world’s slowest kiss, or I was shit at surprise if it was something else.  

She stayed completely still, like her feet were glued to the carpet.  She had one hand holding the towel together where she had it folded over and the other was fidgeting with end where it met her upper thigh.  Christ, her legs were sexy.  

I didn’t get too close—I thought that’d make her uncomfortable.  I leaned in carefully and her eyes were glued to my mouth, so she wanted it, too.  She got a little impatient when I was closer and she leaned into the kiss, but it was still soft, and I made it short.  She let out this little exhale when I pulled back, like there was a sigh laced in there, and all I wanted to do was do it again—and then kick the door shut and unwrap her from the towel and lay her out all over the bed—but I forced myself to step back and keep moving until I got out of her apartment.  

I wasn’t even sure I said goodbye, actually, but I didn’t trust my voice, and I didn’t trust myself to actually stop if I didn’t leave.  

Fuck.




One (Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) |   Two   |  Three  |  Four  |  Five  |  Six  |  Seven  |  Eight  |  Nine  |  Ten  |  Eleven  |