Beautiful Boy(21)

"I forgive you."

I leaned forward, trapping her chest against mine, and attacked her  lips. Her warmth filled me, igniting an inferno deep in the pit of my  stomach. My arms wrapped protectively around her waist while she  maintained her hold on my face, our bodies pressed firmly together. I  swear I could hear her heart beating inside her chest, pounding against  mine as if our hearts were trying to meet-collide.

When my lips parted, so did hers, and our tongues met, working together  as if we'd done this our entire lives. As if our mouths, our bodies, our  hearts had always belonged together. Two halves of the same whole,  finally reuniting after a lifetime apart.

Her hips began to roll. She pressed her pelvic bone against mine, and  the inferno in my gut turned into a reckless, inextinguishable fire,  capable of complete destruction. It decimated my thoughts and charred my  instinctive nature. But then she moaned, her lips vibrating against  mine, and it proved to be the bucket of water needed to bring me back to  the moment.

I pulled my mouth from hers and buried my face in her neck. Hot, muggy  breaths billowed around me as I panted against the T-shirt at her  shoulder, the material soaking up the heat and scorching my face.  Novah's fingers trailed to the back of my head where she began  scratching the short hairs beneath her fingernails. It soothed my mind,  but did nothing to help ease the erratic beats of my heart.

"I'm sorry," I murmured into her shoulder.

"It's okay. I'm still here if you want to finish talking. I interrupted  you; I shouldn't have done that. But if you're done talking, I get it.  I'd understand if you can't tell me more."

I longed to look her in the eye. Desire clouded my mind and left me with  the need to strip her of her clothes and bury myself in her. But I  couldn't do anything. Instead, I kept my face hidden and tucked her  against me with my arms firmly wrapped around her back.

"I did a fifteen-month tour in Afghanistan. Really, you're only supposed  to be gone for twelve months at the most … and then home for twelve. But  with everything going on over there, it didn't quite work out that way.  When I was done, I came home for six months, and then they shipped me  off again-to Iraq. And I only came home because our convoy was blown up  by an IED. I was sent to Germany for medical treatment, and then back  here to the States."

She lifted my head from her shoulder and searched my eyes for  something-I didn't know what. But I met her gaze and let her look for it  anyway.

"I'm sorry, Novah, but I can't say more. I can't relive it. I do enough  of that in my head. The nightmares sometimes don't stop when I'm awake,  and they haunt me everywhere I go. So if you can't succeed in making me  see the good in things, don't take it personally. I have a hard time  seeing past the horrible memories to find anything worth looking at."

Her lips pressed gently to my forehead before she leaned over and  grabbed her phone off the blue bench seat next to us. Still in my lap,  she unlocked her phone and then began to swipe the screen.

When she turned the phone around for me to see, a photo of a headlight  filled the screen. I finally pulled my arms out from behind her and took  the phone, examining the picture in front of me. It awed me. Rich light  from the setting sun hit the glass at such an angle it made the  headlight appear to be on, shining like it was driving on the street  instead of left behind in a junkyard.

I swiped the screen to find the next picture. Two old, rusted-out  Beetles sat side by side with high weeds surrounding them. Nothing else  was in the shot. It appeared as if these two cars were sitting alone on  the side of a highway-old and deserted, but they had each other. The  next was of a stack of tires with a lone Osprey perched on top, looking  at something off to its side.

"Wow, these are amazing," I said as I continued to move through the  pictures before pausing on one. Forearms propped on the top of a  beaten-down truck, forehead pressed against the dirty windowpane. It was  a close-up, not even fully catching the back, but it was known by the  posture that the person in the picture had been bent over. It was of me.  She must've taken the photo while I leaned in to check out the interior  of the early model Chevy truck.

My gaze lifted to hers. Her genuine grin seemed more evident in her bright eyes than on her pouty lips.         

     



 

"When you first got here, you talked about these cars and these things  like they were trash, left aside for something better. Discarded because  they were useless and unwanted." She licked her bottom lip and then  clamped it between her teeth for a moment. "Is that something you can  relate to?"

The rain hitting the windshield grew louder, even though I was aware the  clouds were passing and the rain had slowed. But right then, being more  exposed than ever before, it became the only sound I could focus on,  making it seem louder and angrier as it pinged off the roof of the car.

"If that's how you took it … "

"That's not what I asked, Nolan. I want to know how you feel? I can't  show you something if I don't know what you see when you look at it."  Her soft exhale licked my cheek and then fanned across my entire face,  adding to the already overpowering mugginess inside the car.

Unable to talk with my gaze set on hers, I turned my head toward the  window. "In 2003, my parents moved to Tallahassee and my dad announced  his candidacy for the presidential race. That was before I was sent to  Iraq. To him, having a son in the Army, fighting for our country, would  boost his likability. It meant he was relatable to the people with  family members overseas, while at the same time, gave him credibility to  those who opposed the war. The whole, ‘see, I understand your fear,'  while at the same time saying, ‘I don't want this war to continue,  either, because my son is over there.' Although, I doubt he had much  fear, nor did he really care how many tours I did."

"That can't be true. He's your dad."

I glanced back at her, ran my fingertip down her cheek, and stopped at  her jawline. "My father's whole life has been in politics. To him, it's  all about winning the race, looking good to the public. It's never been  about being a good dad. I was never anything other than a prop. The  all-star football player. The kid with perfect grades. The all-American  boy to the all-American dad. It's all I ever was to him. And when he  decided to run for the big house, I became the warrior, the hero, the  soldier. Never was I ever just his son."

Tears filled her eyes and trailed down her cheeks in fat drops as she whispered, "I'm so sorry."

"You have nothing to apologize for." I held her face in the palms of my  hands and swiped my thumbs beneath her eyes. "I've never known anything  different, so I have no idea what I'm missing out on. It's always been  this way, and it always will be."

Her fingers wrapped tightly around my wrists. She held me to her as if her life depended on my touch.

"He had to drop out of the race after the accident, which sucked because  he was actually ahead in the polls. It was right before the primary  election in 2004. He wasn't very happy about it, which pretty much set  the mood for my recovery. I'd gone from being his son who was off  fighting for our country to being the son who had cost him the White  House."

"He didn't care that you were injured?"

I tried to smile, but the poor attempt failed. It left my chin quivering  and forced me to close my eyes, preventing her from seeing my true  reaction. "He cared in his own way. But I'm sure he would've preferred  it if my accident had happened at a different time. Had it happened  earlier, he could use my disability in the race. If I'd been blown up  later, after he won, then he could've used it to gain sympathy, and  possibly used it for talking points depending on his stance regarding  the war."

"If it happened in 2004, why did it take you eleven years to come back here?"

"Mostly because of my mom. But I had years of rehabilitation, therapy,  doctors appointments. I've gone through more prosthetics than I can  count. More shrinks than I'd like to remember. And once the dust began  to settle, I went to school. I got my business degree-which irritated my  dad to no end. He wanted me to go into politics like him, but it's  never interested me."

"What is it you wanted to do?"

"Honestly? I don't know. Growing up, I had lots of things I wanted to  do, but none of them were ever good enough for my dad. I loved  photography, but he said it was a dead-end job. He said it was fine as a  hobby, but he'd never pay for school for me to take pictures. So when  he sent me off to the Army, it wasn't that big of a deal, because it's  not like I had much else to do. And the Army afforded me to go to  college, without having stipulations on what I went for."

The waning light in the sky had finally vanished, leaving us cloaked in  utter darkness. It made the melancholy running through her hard to see,  but it was palpable in her deep, full breaths, the slow, long exhales,  and the gentle way her thumbs stroked over the tops of my hands.