About Four A.M., I Guess

I can’t open my eyes. My first thought is, I’m dead. I draw in a deep breath to reassure myself. The pain surges through my body like an electric current. I suppose that’s a good sign. I wouldn’t feel anything at all if I were dead. Whatever Becky gave me knocked me the fuck out. If it would’ve kept the pain at bay, it probably would’ve been more useful. I try with all my might and manage to open my eyes. It feels like I’m prying open a rusted trapdoor. It’s nighttime. I can see the moon outside. What day is it?

I work on sitting up. I barely manage to get about two inches from the towel on the mattress. I grunt and continue trying. Jesus. If this is what getting old feels like, I hope I die soon. I make it to five inches. I’m almost up. I feel a hand on my chest, pushing me slowly back down.

“You need to rest,” comes a soothing, sleepy voice from my chair next to the bed. I figure that this is who the hand belongs to. “What do you need?”

My throat is dry. When I try to talk, it sounds the way sandpaper feels. “Water.”

Megan’s fingers traipse across my chest as she stands from the chair. She moves toward the kitchen. I watch her walk in the moonlight. She’s wearing one of my ratty old T-shirts. It clings to her hips as she walks. It’s too bad I’m all racked up. I can think of a few things I’d much rather be doing right about now. I tear my eyes away from her before I get myself in trouble. She returns to the bed a moment later with a bottle of water and she kneels by my side and gently eases her hand behind my neck, bringing the bottle to my lips. I drink slowly, like a baby bird, because that’s all she’ll let me do. When she thinks I’m done, she eases my head back onto the pillow and puts the lid back on the water. She sets it on the floor beside the bed and starts to ease back to her position in the chair. I grab her by the wrist, lightly. She stops and looks down at me.

“You don’t have to sit in the chair,” I tell her in my gravelly voice. “You’re not a sentinel.” She hesitates for a moment and I let go of her hand. She starts to say something in response.

“Don’t worry,” I say, cutting her off before she has a chance to speak. “I won’t bite and I promise I won’t get fresh.”

She gives a slight smile and crawls into bed next to me. She lays on her side. Her hand holds her head up as she watches me. She’s silent. I’m not sure if she’s waiting for me to say something.

“How long have I been out?” I ask, giving in to the pressure of her eyes upon me. It’s the first thing that comes to mind.

She cranes her neck to look at the clock. “Thirteen hours.” Her voice sounds throaty. It’s intoxicating. I want her to keep talking but she doesn’t. She goes back to looking at me. I stare at the ceiling, trying to come up with something to say. I can’t decide where to go from here. The silence is making me uncomfortable. At the same time, it’s oddly serene. I need to break it and fast.

“You didn’t have to stay here,” I tell her. I try to maneuver myself up to a sitting position. She gently pushes me back down again.

“I know I didn’t.” The silence fills the room again. I decide to let it stay this time. I figure it’ll go on like this until one of us falls asleep. I continue staring straight up at the crown molding. I can feel her eyes burning into me. It makes me uneasy. I try to let it slide, but it gets more and more disconcerting with each passing second.

“Why are you staring at me?” I ask, finally letting my irritation boil over. Looks like I was wrong about the silence.

“I want to know about you.”

I try to mask my surprise at her request. I fail miserably. “What?”

“I said, I want to know about you,” she tells me. “I want to know every little thing. Who are you? What are you all about? You’re certainly a different person since the last time I saw you.”

Little does she know how wrong she actually is. I’m still the same person I ever was. Just a lost boy who found his way. Now I make a living at it. I decide not to delve into this with her. The last few days have been strange enough. I haven’t been a target in a long time. I’ve never been ambushed where I live. I’ve almost always been the hunter, not the game. This is foreign territory. And even when I was a target, I knew who my assailants were and I knew why they were trying to take me out. This whole scenario is like having a blindfold superglued over my eyes. Frankly, I don’t like it but, admittedly, I’m a little bit intrigued. I gotta start by figuring out the source of the mint green envelope. I start to sit up again and Megan gently places her hand on me to keep me at bay. Her hand is warm on my bare chest. Warm and soft. I want her to move it lower. Unfortunately, that’ll lead to other things, and at this point, other things would probably leave me dead. One more reason I have to find Bruiser and cave his head in. He ruined what might have been a perfectly fantastic night. I clear my throat.

“You want to know me?” I ask, turning my head and feeling every single vertebra in my neck pop like the fourth of July. Megan’s expression doesn’t change but she nods. I move my face slowly toward hers. Her already sleepy eyes close even further. I can feel her warm breath on my face. She parts her lips and her tongue creeps out over them. I’m a fraction of an inch away from her soft, supple lips and I take a deep breath, inhaling that sultry, sweet smell of hers. I reach up and take her hand. Her eyelids flutter. I whisper, “That’s too damn bad. I’m not in the mood.”

I take her hand off of my chest and set it down on the bed between us. She opens her eyes, and to my surprise, she doesn’t look the least bit shocked. I smile at her and she gives me a half smile in return. I feel like I’ve been shortchanged.

“You know, Levi,” she breathes, and stretches out on the bed, arching her back and slowly moving her perfectly perky breasts up toward the ceiling. My T-shirt pulls tight over her chest, allowing me a teasing look at her covered nipples. It also pulls up from her hips toward her shoulders. It doesn’t move up a lot, but it moves up enough for me to catch a glimpse of green underwear in the moonlight. I swallow to put my heart back in my chest. She lowers herself back to the bed before she continues, “When I was younger, I had quite the thing for you.” With that, she puts her head on her pillow. I raise an eyebrow. There’s nothing at all that I can say to that. All I know is that I can see myself getting close to this girl. Real close. And in a real short time.

I gotta decide if I want to let that happen.