Warm water pounded down on my back as I dropped my head to my knees. I needed a timeout, a few minutes to breathe without Nick's—my husband's—gaze following my every move. We'd slept for a couple hours, but his embrace was too warm and I was too grimy from the flight, the boat, the sex, all of it.
Timeouts worked for me. Even saying that word over and over helped quiet my mind. Timeout, timeout, timeout.
That's what my therapist called it, a timeout from all the things I'd used to keep me numb.
And, yeah. Therapy. As much as I'd fought it, skipping out on therapy wasn't an option.
Not after a big, big bottle of sleeping pills. Not after a paring knife dug three ditches in my right wrist. Not after the pills turned my cheeks hot, and nothing, nothing at all hurt anymore, and then the blood pouring from my arm turned my limbs cold and the fear crept into the edges of my consciousness. Not after waking up in the adolescent psych ward at McLean Hospital. Not after telling Shannon I'd never speak to her again.
Matt was a lot of things but he wasn't a pushover, and he tolerated my unrelenting hatred of every psychiatrist in Boston. He tolerated it, but he never let me stop the search.
Rhonda Brissett wasn't a pushover either, and she told me under no uncertain terms that I was finished with sex. And drinking. And pills. And cutting. All of it, it was over, if I had any interest in counting another birthday.
I did, I really did.
She let me run away but only because she believed I couldn't recover in Boston. It was the land of bad decisions, bad memories, bad people. That first year in Hawaii, when I discovered the taste of true loneliness and homesickness, we had phone sessions every other day.
But then, when the second year rolled around, I found fire.
Maybe the fire found me. I still wasn't sure, but Rhonda and I cut our calls to twice a week.
That fire, I understood it, and it was wild to think this way, but the fire understood me, too. I found new patterns in the geologic record, quiet signals in the volcanic noise, and I feared nothing about those explosive mountains because I recognized their fury. For the first time in my entire life, I was smart and accepted and good at something, and I wasn't suffocating with the sense that I was a used-up piece of trash anymore.
By the time I graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa—a full year early because I couldn't get enough of my studies and I couldn't go home—Rhonda and I were down to once a week. I was still on the sex-drugs-danger-to-myself timeout, but that didn't figure into my daily life. Men didn't register on my radar. Neither did women, despite my roommate's repeated suggestions that I give her a whirl. When the occasion called for it, I sipped a beer but rarely finished one. There was, of course, some Portuguese moonshine, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
And everything didn't hurt anymore. Plenty of things hurt often enough to notice, but it wasn't everything and it wasn't always, and that was an eternity away from having my stomach pumped and my veins patched.
It was three years ago when Rhonda started nudging me toward relationships, and she revisited that topic when we spoke in late December, after Angus's death. It was the first time we'd connected in eleven months, and she reminded me that I'd survived and I'd keep surviving. Oh, and I needed to get back to work on the whole 'interacting with humans' thing. I wasn't good at relationships. I wasn't good with people—some called me prickly, others preferred bitch—and I was only able to get away with that because I was fucking great with volcanoes.
But I didn't always want to get away with it. I'd regretted leaving places without saying proper goodbyes, and moving on to new adventures without committing to staying in touch. I'd worked with a dozen field study and laboratory teams, lived in six cities, and finished one and started another doctorate degree—geology and geophysics, and atmospheric, oceanic, and planetary physics, if you must know—and I could only count my friends on one hand. None of them knew about sleeping pills or paring knives or Shannon abandoning me in a psychiatric hospital for a month. And even those friends teetered closer toward acquaintances than individuals willing to bring me chicken soup when I was sick or celebrate my lobster-boat marriage.
I didn't know how to do relationships. I didn't even know how to start the conversation, and for that, I came off as aloof, disinterested, pretentious. But the one thing I did know was how to be destructive. I knew how to burn not just bridges but boats, villages, and churches. Burn it all down before it burned me too.
"Knock, knock."
My gaze whipped to the door, but it was still shut. Thank God. I needed a few more minutes before dealing with my I-dare-you-to-marry-me husband. I really did run headfirst into catastrophes.
"Erin?" he called. "You've been in there for a bit, darlin'. Everything okay?"
I held up my hand and stared at my water-pruned fingertips. Maybe I'd lost track of how long I was taking for this timeout.
"Yeah, great," I said. "I was pretty dirty. Taking some time to get clean, you know?"
"I'd apologize for that, but I wouldn't mean it so I'm not going to." His laugh rumbled from the other side of the door, and it sent a curl of warmth through me. "Want some help?"
"Ummm." I stared at my toes and the tile and all the water that I was wasting. "Not really."
There was a pronounced thunk against the door, and I imagined it was his forehead dropping there. He wanted me to say yes, to invite him in and wow him with sensational shower sex.
I didn't come equipped with that feature.
"Take your time, darlin'," he called. "I'm not going anywhere."
Eventually, the water ran cool and I found my way off the shower floor. I scrubbed my hair and skin, maybe a little harder than necessary. When I stepped out, the wide bathroom mirror caught everything. The red welts from my scrubbing, the fingertip-sized shadows along my ribs and backside that would darken to bruises, the love marks on my breasts and belly. My hands skimmed down, lightly touching each one. It was as if I didn't know whether they hurt until I poked them.
They didn't. None of this hurt.
I finger-combed my hair and changed into the t-shirt and undies I'd snagged on my way into the bathroom. Bright sunshine was peeking through the curtains in the bedroom and it shot warm, glowy fingers of light to Nick's bare abs. He was leaning back against the headboard, the sheets bunched around his waist. Naked underneath, of course.
He offered me a lazy smile while he rubbed a hand down his chest. I leaned against the wall, watching as that hand followed the dark trail of hair beneath the sheets. Slow and unashamed, he stroked himself. No taboo to be found. I tugged my lips between my teeth, a silly attempt at concealing my smile.
"Clean?" he asked.
I didn't have an answer ready, not when a single word was packed with filthy suggestions. Instead I shrugged, and dropped more of my weight onto the wall. The top of my foot was skating over my calf. His eyes followed my foot while he stroked, a little faster now, as if the slide of my skin could turn him on.
Nick held out his free hand to me. "Come back to me," he whispered. I pushed off the wall. "Be here with me, Skip. I need you."
I took his hand, and he yanked me to the bed.
"Want you," he whispered into my hair. "Want that pussy."
"That word is awful," I said, cringing. "Say something better."
"Bite your tongue, wife," he said. He brought my ring finger to his lips, kissing it as if he could force me to acknowledge that our vows were authentic. That they were more than a dark-of-night dare. "And now I want you to explain to me what's wrong with pussy."
His hand slipped under my shirt and moved down my belly with all the leisure in the world, and his knuckles brushed back and forth over my panties. I didn't like that word either. Panties. Ick. It sounded delicate and precious and girly. And it wasn't that I abhorred girly things or took issue with being a girl, but I did hate the stereotypical nature of it all.
Pussies and panties and the rest of the socially ingrained shade machine that stomped all over the strength and power of women. It was amusing how much of the universe was on board with regulating and governing all over women without recognizing that we all came from pussies. It was good enough to give you life, but not good enough for a little dignity, right?
The goddamn patriarchy. Fucking obnoxious.
But here was the problem with all that: I wasn't upset about panties or pussies right now. It was moments like this one that made me wish I wasn't aware of the inner workings of my every thought and reaction. At least not this much. If I was blissfully ignorant, I wouldn't know that I was winding myself up with this self-righteous rant because then I could gather my indignation and breathe through the tightness in my chest.
It was easier to argue and lash out than it was to admit that I was afraid. Afraid that he was a solid wall of muscle, and could hold me down without trouble. Afraid that he'd be different this time. Afraid that I'd read him wrong and he wasn't a kind man. Afraid that I was new to relationship sex (also, relationships), and doing it all wrong. Afraid that I wanted this, and I wanted to enjoy it.
Afraid that I liked him. Maybe a lot. Maybe more than I could manage.
I was scared and that wasn't an emotion I willfully accepted. I'd spent years kicking fear's ass and purging it from my life, and I didn't give a single fuck if that meant I'd pushed everyone and everything far enough away that I never had to risk feeling anything.
And within the span of a single night, a necklace brought me to my knees, my sister blew a hole through my confidence, I'd revealed the worst of myself to a stranger, and then I married him. Fear was everywhere.
"You're going to give yourself a headache if you keep thinking that hard," he murmured. He tucked me into his side and ran his thumb down the center of my forehead, smoothing the tension bunched there. "Now I'm the curious one. What's wrong with pussy?"
I shrugged, and my shoulder bumped against his hard chest. "I don't like the sound of it. If you're going to talk about my dewy petals—"
"Oh, stop right there, darlin'," he interrupted. "Dewy petals?"
"Yep," I said, peeking up at him with a teasing smile. I softened a bit every time he called me darlin'. There was nothing to be afraid of when I was someone's darlin'. "Petals sounds so much better than pussy. Whenever I hear pussy, I think of warm pudding. That's not sexy. Have you ever met warm, sexy pudding? I haven't. I want to be a flower instead."
Nick's arm curled around my shoulder and pressed me flat against his chest. "I want to study your brain," he said, laughing. "You're accessing regions the rest of us don't even know about."
His fingers were drawing circles on the small of my back and his cheek was on my head and his heart was beating against mine and my breath caught as I felt everything faster faster faster. I was trembling from the inside out. It started under my breastbone before engulfing my stomach, and it was about to take over my entire body. It had all the makings of an anxiety attack but instead of breaking out into a cold, clammy sweat, I melted against Nick.
This wasn't panic…it was anticipation. I wanted to be here with Nick. I had to reach far back to get my hands around that sensation, and in doing so, I recognized that I'd never chosen to be close to someone in this way. Not the right kind of choices, not really. Only Nick. This was different, and completely overwhelming.
"Wouldn't that involve cracking my skull open?" I asked, struggling against the quiver in my voice.
Nick's head bobbed against mine. "Nah, we don't need to do that. Technology, it's advanced a bit," he said. "Now tell me about the other words you don't like."
"Twat is awful. Pure awful," I said. "It's a rather shabby term. It's not particularly dirty but it also doesn't carry any reverence. My dewy petals"—he snickered at that—"deserve more respect than twat. When most Americans say twat, it sounds like they're choking on a chicken nugget. It sounds better with certain accents, but that's not the word for me. Twat is in the same category as snatch, as far as I'm concerned. At least cunt is revered."
His hand moved down my back, slipping under my undies to caress the skin there. "You're saying you prefer cunt?"
"Shannon hates that word," I murmured. "But you probably know that."
"Don't do that," he said. "I've never told Shannon that my grandmother believed, right up to the day she died, that my mother was trying to have her deported. I've never agreed to steal a lobster boat with Shannon, and I definitely haven't married her either."
He ran his nose along my neck with a needy growl. Fuck, I liked that sound. It screwed with my feminism to admit this, but I liked reducing him to his basest instincts. I liked him hungry for me, and desperate to kiss and bite and growl and fuck. Or maybe that was exactly how feminism was supposed to go.
"Can we go back?" I asked. "What were we talking about before the pussies?"
"Me wanting you," Nick said. "I always want you."
"How can you say that? You met me last night, and—"
There. I'm doing it again. Burning everything down before it begins.
I nodded to myself and blinked up at the ceiling before grabbing another condom from the drawer.
"Come here," I said, pulling Nick on top of me. I ran my palm over the tattoo on his bicep. It was a circular maze, one larger than my entire hand, with spear points that seemed to form a compass. It was just like the compass on my wrist, but layered with mythology and ancient history. "What's this all about? I really hope I didn't marry one of those faux-tribal tattoo guys. That would be terrible."
"Terrible?" he repeated, laughing.
"Completely terrible," I said. I held up the condom, glancing at it as if to say, Put this on now before I talk myself out of it for entirely irrational reasons. "The only thing worse would be Chinese characters on your ankle that translate to something entirely different than you think."
He rolled the condom on while I wiggled out of my shirt and undies. "It's the Mayan calendar," he said. His thumb was passing over my nipple, and I really wanted his mouth there. "I got it after my grandmother died."
"You were really close to her," I said. "Could you maybe, um"—I jerked my chin in the direction of his thumb—"uh, use your mouth instead?"
"I'd be happy to," he responded with a sharp nod, and then turned his attention to licking my nipple. That was surprisingly simple, and I was only halfway to bursting into embarrassed flames. "You can ask for anything at all, lovely."
"Mmm, okay," I mumbled. Still halfway to self-immolation.
"What's on the back of your shoulder?"
"Alis volat propriis," I said. "She flies with her own wings."
"Mmmm, that you do."
He levered up on one arm, and smiled down at me as he pressed against my center. This cock of his was an exaggeration. It was the kind of appendage guys pretended they had, and they made sure everyone heard all about it, too.
"I still want you, you know. All these weird things you've said? They just make me like you even more," he continued. His grin said that he knew all about the living legend he had in his pants. "Not the nipple licking thing. That wasn't weird, but the rest of it, the dewy petals and the twats."
I brought my hands to his hips, tugging him closer. "There are tornadoes in my head sometimes," I said, my words growing progressively sharper as he pushed inside me.
"I know," he said as his lips met mine. "But your storms, they don't scare me."