Caleb

After nearly an hour of watching her hide behind the midnight quiet, Hailey finally let a half glass of moonshine wash the worry out of her blood.

She laughed out loud and I leaned in close, enough to feel her breathing. She looked right at me, eyes misty and wild with all kinds of trouble, and for a split second I swear to God I fell in love with her a little bit. Enough to scare the shit outta me, enough for me to know that even if I said it to her that she wouldn't believe me. I wanted her to. But showing her felt about as easy as telling her, and telling her was damn near impossible.

  "You weren't wrong about the moonshine," she said.  

  "Oh yeah?"

   "It gets better after a while."

   "I'm impressed, I didn't think you'd finish it."

   "Runs in the family. My dad’s a pro.”

   "You're killin' me, Hailey."

    "Why?"

    "'Cause I don't wanna talk about your Dad."

    "Then what do you wanna talk about?"

     "I don't wanna talk."

I pulled her to me ‘til our noses touched, ‘til we crashed together in that sloppy beautiful way buzzed people do.

But I didn't kiss her. Not yet. Not ‘cause I was scared to or anything. Just ‘cause I  wanted to fall in love with the fine print.

I wanted to remember her exactly the way she was, 'cause chances were, I'd never have anything this beautiful, this close to me again. I was alright with losing myself to that kind of sad selfishness for a little while.  As long as she’d follow me, I was alright with losing myself.

"Hailey—"

"I thought you didn't wanna talk."

"I didn't b—"

"Then don't."

She kissed me ‘til I fell back onto Georgia’s old quilt, struggling to breathe in her sweetness all at once. I'd kissed her enough times to think that I could take it, to think that I'd gotten to know her lips well enough to live through the rush, but she damn near killed me in the way she took me down.

Her lips grazed mine at first, slow and subtle, melting like molasses against my mouth. Every other time she’d let me into her atmosphere, I’d get high on those pretty lips but still hold myself together. But tonight I was in pieces over her, millions of helpless little pieces, and she didn’t even know it.

I thought of so many of crazy ways to show her how small I felt without her, how much I’d started to need her to the point where I’d hold my breath whenever she disappeared for too long, but nothing seemed good enough. I didn’t have the words to make her understand that feeling, but I could give her the best, unbroken parts of me as long as she’d take ‘em.

Hailey eased up all of a sudden, like she wanted to see if I’d take the lead or keep following hers. I had my hands in her hair quicker than she could blink and I pulled her back into the kind of kiss that would keep her confident.

She came to me softly, her breath warm and weighted from the moonshine. I flicked my tongue across her lips and she sighed into me. There aren’t too many sounds in the world more beautiful than that.

I wanted her down to the details. From her rough cut hair, to her sideways smiles, to her batty-eyed blinks—every single thing she tried to hide about herself, I wanted. I wanted to touch her, to make her feel something she’d remember, but I didn't know what to do with my hands.

For a while, I let my fingers linger on the edge of her waist, stiff and clumsy like they'd never thawed from the cold room. She took my hands in hers and let me graze the skin just beneath her shirt. I stopped her before I couldn't stop myself.

"I want you to know somethin', Hailey."

She hovered over me, eyes darting back and forth like bullets.

"When you grow up and forget about all this, when you're all old and wrinkly and can't remember that you ever knew a Caleb Evans, or that he got you mixed up in the ugly side of the world, I want you to remember somethin’."

"And what's that?"

"That for a few days outta all the bullshit years of his life, you made him want to keep livin', even if it was just for a little while."

She hid her face in her hands, like they would keep her tears a secret. I held on to her tight enough to feel how delicate she was rattling under the weight of her sadness.

"What kind of girl cries over a compliment? You got a good one too. I'd say you're at the top of my list of good people.”

"I guess that makes me a superhero, then."

"I guess it does."

She lay back down on the old barn floor and waited for me to follow her. The soft light from the propane lamp flickered across her skin like she’d bathed in the afterglow. I froze up just looking at her. I knew she was waiting for me to do something, anything but sit there and stare at her. I just didn't know what else to do.

Me and Marcus never talked about this kinda thing. Him and everybody else in my family just did it, joked around about it, or kept quiet. I didn't know a damn thing about what to do or how to be with a girl, but God I wanted to get it right—at least as close to right as possible.

I settled down next to her and the second I slipped my hands around her waist my fingers went numb. But I held my ground, brushed up against the little patch of bare skin just above her shorts, and prayed. When she pulled me down into another of her kisses I figured I'd done something right for once in my life.

We took things slow for a little while, kissing like we could get drunk off the feeling, ‘til Hailey led my hand higher up her shirt and let me figure out what a woman felt like.

So that's what my brothers were talking about.

I couldn’t get over how soft she was, or how every time I touched her I learned a little more about the Hailey nobody ever saw. Nobody but me. Her eyes would crinkle at the corners when I got things right, and she’d laugh through my apologies when I got the basics wrong.

I'd pull away from her every now and again just to take her in, her grace, her quiet confidence, and she’d look at me like I meant something to her. Like I mattered, and just knowing that was good enough. Somebody somewhere in this world gave a damn, and somehow I’d gotten lucky enough to have her.

Hailey sat up out of the blue and looked at me, lips and cheeks flushed redder than red.

"You’re okay with all this right? With me?"

She straightened the wrinkles in her shirt and smoothed out her hair, but I liked her messy even if she didn’t.

"What?”

"I don’t know, I just—I’m just not gonna be perfect at this or anything,” she said.

"That’s okay. Me neither.”

“Really? You seem like you know what you’re doing.”

That was the best thing I’d heard all day, but I played it cool.

“No ma’am. But I’ll try my best.”

“And I’ll apologize in advance.”

I cupped her face in my hands and smiled right through the worry written on her face.

“For what?” I asked.

“For me.”

“That’s not something to be sorry about. Between you and me, there’s nowhere you’re gonna go wrong.”

“I hope you mean that, Caleb.”

“I’ll tell you in the morning.”

I couldn’t look at her straight for a little while. I guess I thought I sounded cooler than I really did, but I figured she’d let it slide ‘cause I felt her smiling at me and that was enough to make me nervous. By the time I stopped staring at my feet outta shame, Hailey’d taken off her t-shirt and thrown it into a crumpled pile on the floor.

Goddamn.

Seeing almost all of her up close was kinda like getting a second chance at living. I’d spent eighteen years figuring out how to stop feeling things for anyone. I’d let go of just about everything good ‘cause it hurt like hell knowing I’d probably lose it somewhere down the line.

Sure, I was breathing but nowhere close living—just sleep walking through a lot of bad dreams.

But the minute Hailey let me look at her like that, and lose my way in the hollows of her curves, a hundred little reasons to stick around sparked to life in my blood. Even if the best I could do for her was connect the dots between her dimples, I’d be alright with that.

She sat there, legs crossed, hugging her waist, like she was ashamed of it, and all I wanted to do was peel her arms away and kiss her everywhere she hated. There wasn’t a part of her that was less than perfect to me, and I wanted her to know that, even if I wrecked myself trying.

I struggled out of my shirt, hoping the morphine would keep me from falling apart faster than my nerves were. When I popped my head out Hailey was right there waiting for me, eyes big, bottom lip pinched between her teeth, prettier than she knew. I felt like maybe I was cheating her a little bit looking the way I did, banged up, ugly, and bruised in all the wrong places.  

But when I leaned in to kiss her, she reached out and put her hand on my chest, fingers lighter than air, and traced shapes into my skin.

I counted backwards from 100 to keep from kissing her the way I wanted to. If I went down that road, I probably wouldn’t be able to slow down or turn back.  But when Hailey pressed her forehead against mine with that tornado smile still on her face, I stopped counting and kissed her hard enough to send the two of us tumbling backwards.

No doubt that God had shaped her in all the right places, ‘cause I fell into her outline like I was made for it. And she let me.

I’d never tried so hard to keep my hands steady. She let me run my fingers along the tiny slopes of her ears, down the length of her neck. She’d breathe these beautiful little breaths whenever I touched her anywhere for too long. I loved that.

Just watching her quietly lose herself was one of the most unbelievable things I’d ever seen. And I wanted to do it over and over again, just for her.

I loved her waist. Holding it, kissing it, feeling how perfectly she rose and fell the lower I got. The way she arched her back whenever she’d let me graze everything sensitive just above her cut-offs. Sometimes she’d stop me breathing just from how she’d look at me when I touched her. There was this fireball of a woman going on behind those eyes, and I couldn’t believe she let me hold her.

As nervous as she was, she never lost her smile.

Every now and again, I’d panic a little, just worrying about whether or not I’d crush her underneath me. But every time I’d shift my weight off of her, she’d pull me back—like she wanted me as crazily as I wanted her.  God, if there was one thing I hoped was true, it was that, but I didn’t place any bets.

She grazed her fingers along my ears and drove me close to crazy. I kept bracing myself for her, like her hands would hurt me the way my family's had, but she had nothing but care in her fingers.

Nobody’d ever touched me the way she touched me.

Nobody ever made me feel like I was worth anything but her.

Every now and again I'd lose myself to her, so much so that I had to fight back the fear of breaking someone that delicate.  But her skin was too soft not to keep touching.  I wanted more of her, to kiss her enough to make her feel anything close to the way I did.

But the idea of not being good enough for her scared me stiff. So I played it safe and started small, just breathing lightly down onto the nape of her neck, her fingers curled into my hair, squeezing me every time I breathed harder against her skin.  I swear I died a little.

Just knowing that something I did could make her feel anything at all was enough to keep me going. I kissed her across her collarbones and she moved underneath me. I wasn’t too sure if what I’d done was a good thing or not, ‘til her breathing picked up enough for me to feel it.

She slid her hands down my waist, hooked her thumbs into the belt loops of my jeans and pulled me onto her. All the blood in my body came rushing up into my cheeks. She could feel me, almost all of me, against her. Knowing that I couldn’t hide anywhere anymore scared the hell out of me but I kept going, like always.

Without saying a word, Hailey looked up at me like she knew we were standing on the edge of something—something new and terrifying for both of us. The tenderness in her eyes gave her worries way.  I wondered if she saw the same thing in me, ‘cause I felt damn near close to having a heart attack.

I hovered over her, fumbling with the silver button of her shorts, trying to slip her out of them without looking as stupid as I felt. I had a hard time getting out of my jeans as smoothly as she did, but by some kind of miracle we ended up naked and red in the face pretty quick.

God, she was something else.

The way she could stop me from breathing, the way she’d cry a little bit and smile through the worst of things, and the way she made me feel like I was a small part of her for a small part of my life wasn’t exactly perfect, but pretty damn close. And I was alright with that.