When I finally put down my pen, I looked at the time. It was nearly two in the morning. I had written all through Repentance, all through evening snack and bedtime, and well into the night. I knew that I ought to go to bed at last, to try to get in at least a little sleep before Rehabilitation kicked off yet another early morning.
But that’s not what I did. Instead, I walked down the hall and knocked on Abe’s door.
“Coming,” he called quietly. A long moment passed, and I pictured him on the other side of the door, probably getting out of bed, transferring into his wheelchair, coming across the room to open the door for me.
“Did I wake you up?” I asked when we were facing each other.
“Of course not.”
It was wrong that we’d both spent the past three nights awake and alone when we could have spent them awake and together.
“I want to talk to you,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.” Abe gave me a tight smile. “Do you want me to leave the door open, so nobody gets the wrong idea about what we’re doing in here?”
I blushed as I recalled saying that to him when he’d been in my room. I’d been so worried that someone would think I was doing something illicit, when really that hadn’t been the right thing to worry about at all. “I don’t care what ideas they get, actually,” I replied, and I closed the door behind me.
What was more relevant, actually, was that being behind a closed door with just Abe and a bed was giving me ideas. But I wasn’t going to go into that.
“So what do you want to talk about that can’t wait until the morning?” he asked. Even with his door closed, he kept his voice quiet, and I did as well.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” I said.
“That’s very Revibe of you,” he said. “Let’s hear the rest of it. You’re a terrible person, hardly worthy of being alive; you wish I’d never had to suffer through being exposed to you—”
“None of that,” I said. “Screw that. I wanted to explain myself.”
“Well, that’s not very Revibe of you,” he said. “Who said you’re entitled to explain yourself?” But I could tell he was teasing.
“Me,” I replied. “I said I’m entitled to it. The other night, Abe, I panicked, but I swear it had nothing to do with your wheelchair or your dad and everything to do with you. I like you. I like you a lot, actually. But I don’t like myself very much. And I was scared that I’d ruin you somehow, the way I’ve ruined so much else. Enough bad stuff has already happened to you. I didn’t want me to happen to you, too.”
“Winter,” he said, his clear blue eyes so full of sadness.
“Literally just last night,” I went on, “I started to believe that maybe I’m not predestined to destroy everything I touch.”
He bit his lip, then said, in a voice even quieter than before, “It would be a pleasure to be destroyed by you.”
I felt shaky.
“My sister has this theory,” I told him, “that people are like houses. Some are fixer-uppers, some are trophy homes, some are that stifling childhood house that you grew up in. And I want you to know that you are…”
“A broken-down hovel made of metal?” he suggested.
I looked at him. Abe’s house was like a little doorway that almost everyone walked right past. Maybe it hadn’t always been that way, but it was now, since the wheelchair. But if you opened the door and went inside, you’d find a beautiful room, and then another, and then another. And if you stayed there, you’d discover hidden stairways and crawl spaces, enormous attics and basements. The house would expand around you, and no one on the outside would ever think that so much richness could lie behind such a small door.
“You’re like a home,” I told him. And then I kissed him.
Abe sighed gently against my lips and made a wordless sound in the back of his throat. He kissed me back carefully, slowly, in the way that one might taste a very small and very strong piece of dark chocolate. I rested my forearms on his shoulders and leaned in closer, deeper.
“This can’t be comfortable for you,” he murmured, opening his eyes a little bit.
“I guess not.” I hadn’t really been thinking about it before he said it, but I was bending over him, my upper back stooped.
“This might be easier if our mouths were at the same height,” he pointed out.
“Okay.” I stood up straight. “What do you suggest?”
“You could sit on my lap again,” he said bashfully.
“Like when you rescued me?”
“I hardly rescued you,” he protested.
“You helped.” I sat down on his lap. He wrapped his arms around my back and pulled me tightly against him, so I could feel the pounding of his heart. I snuggled my head into his shoulder and kissed his neck, and he smelled so good, so unlike anything else, that it was intoxicating. I could have stayed there for hours, or forever.
And we did stay there for a long time, before I suggested—and I thought about it for a number of minutes before I finally willed myself to open my mouth and say it—“We could move to your bed.”
I felt his arms stiffen around me.
“Or not,” I added hastily.
He pulled back, and I looked at him. I couldn’t parse the expression on his face.
“What’s wrong? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking a lot of different things,” he said, his voice an octave lower than I was accustomed to. “I’m thinking how much I like you.” He reached out and played with a strand of my hair that had come loose from my ponytail. “And I’m thinking that I don’t want to screw this up.”
“You’re not screwing it up,” I said.
“Winter, I’m a paraplegic.”
“I know that.”
“So there are some things in bed that … I can’t exactly do. Or I can, but they’re more complicated for me. Even just the process of transferring from my chair into my bed is complicated. It makes me look pathetic and helpless and weak. I don’t want you to see that.”
“Look,” I said, “we can stay here. We don’t have to go to your bed. And even if we do, I don’t have to watch you get into it. There’s no right or wrong way to do this; we can do whatever we want. But if the only thing holding you back right now is that you’re scared I’m going to think you’re pathetic and weak and I’m not going to like you anymore, then that’s not a good reason.” I paused. “Can I ask you to just trust that I’m not going to make fun of you or criticize you?”
He gave me a half smile. “I can’t trust anyone.”
“Me neither,” I said. “So I guess that evens the playing field.”
“All right.” He gave me a little nudge. “On your feet.” I stood up, and he wheeled himself over to his bed. “So here’s what I do,” he said, “and I could be better at it, but whatever. I get my chair right next to my bed. And then I put one hand on my chair and one on the bed. And then I use my arms to push myself on here.” Now he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked at me, waiting for my reaction. I didn’t give him one. “Okay,” he went on, “here’s the even more embarrassing part. Now I have to use my hands to, like, scoop up my legs and place them on the bed.” He did so. “And now I have to scooch myself backward with my arms … And now I can lie down.” He sank against the pillows at the head of his bed and looked at me again, his face red.
“Okay,” I said. “So can I join you?”
He gave me a beautiful smile.
I lay down on the bed beside him, and he pulled me close against him. “You are crazy not to think that there’s something wrong with me,” he whispered into my ear.
“You are crazy not to think that there’s something wrong with me,” I pointed out. “Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you how much is wrong with me.”
“Like I said, I don’t trust anyone.” He kissed my forehead and commented, as much to himself as to me, “I can’t believe I’m here right now.”
“Neither can I,” I agreed. This was not the behavior of the girl who once locked herself in her hotel room, lest she unwittingly sneak out and kiss Janak Bassi.
“I want you to know, you’re the first girl I’ve done anything with since I got my chair,” he said. “I mean, there’s been no one I asked out. No one I kissed. It all just seemed so complicated and impossible. And now it seems … possible again.”
It was funny, I thought. I wasn’t glad for anything that had happened to either of us. I wasn’t glad that Abe’s father was a thief, or that Abe had tried to end his life, and I wasn’t glad that I’d lost my spelling bee title and my chance at going to a top-tier college, or that people all over the world would go on believing I was a racist for as long as they remembered my name.
But if none of that had happened, then we would never have been here together tonight.
So while I wasn’t glad for the things that had happened to us, I was glad that they had brought us to this place where I’d never even known I’d wanted to be.