Deeper

Even before, when they’d spent every spare moment they could together, it hadn’t been like this. She’d eaten at his table and brushed her teeth in his sink, slept in his bed and watched TV on his couch, but she hadn’t lived with him. They hadn’t been together for so long without a break, the way they’d been here.

Bess ignored him as she ducked under the water and let it hit the sore spot between her shoulders. Her entire body ached here and there, and bruises had blossomed in strange places. She and Nick hadn’t been rough, just frequent and abandoned. She touched one spot, an already yellowing rose on one hip, and remembered Nick’s teeth had put it there. She filled her palm with shower gel and scrubbed her skin, reminding herself to pick up a net sponge at the store. Her knees and calves prickled with hair she’d been too busy to shave, and she reached for her razor. The shower had a built-in seat and she used that to prop up her foot as she scraped the blade along her soap-softened skin.

The shower door slid open and she jumped, cutting the back of her ankle. The water stung and she looked up, annoyed. “Ouch!”

“You okay?” Nick leaned in the opening.

Bess touched the wound. It left her fingers briefly crimson, but the water quickly washed away the blood. “I’ll be okay.”

“Can I watch you?”

Refusal rose to her lips, but she shrugged. “Sure.”

Self-conscious from his attention, Bess fumbled through the rest of her routine. She’d been looking forward to a long, hot shower, but finished quickly instead and turned off the water. Nick handed her a towel matching his. Bess wrapped it around her chest and stepped out onto the bath mat.

“I never watched a girl shave her legs before.”

She thought about telling him she wasn’t a girl, but didn’t. “Was it everything you ever dreamed of?”

Nick chuckled and moved out of her way as Bess went to the sink. “Sure.”

She brushed her teeth and rubbed her skin with lotion, then hung up the towel. He was still wearing his towel. “Are you planning on getting dressed at all?”

“Sure.” Nick glanced into the bedroom, then back at her. “My clothes…”

“Oh. Right. You can toss them in the washer while I’m gone. We probably should do the sheets and towels, too.” Bess pushed past him and into the bedroom, where his clothes lay in the same pile they’d stayed in since she’d first stripped them off. Behind her, Nick came into the room.

“Yeah,” he said. “Well, it’s not just that.”

He toed the pile. Bess looked up from the drawer where she was pulling out a pair of panties for the first time in two days. She stepped into them, then reached for a bra.

“Oh,” she said, feeling really stupid. “They’re all you have.”

Nick nodded. The breath suddenly wheezed out of her, and Bess had to sit on the edge of the bed. Her stomach tumbled and she pressed her hands to it. She tried to take slow, even breaths, but heard the whistle of her own gasps anyway.

One set of clothes. This seemed more important, somehow, than the fact that he didn’t sleep or eat or breathe. One set of clothes only, nothing more, because Nick had nothing more. Was it what he’d been wearing when he…? Bess shuddered and clapped her hands over her eyes.

The bed dipped beside her. Nick put his arm around her shoulder, and though she meant to resist his touch, Bess turned and buried her face against him. She didn’t weep. This wasn’t grief rearing up inside her, stealing her breath and turning her guts. It was something else. Fear, maybe, that she was insane. Fear of the unknown. Fear he’d go away again without letting her know, and this time she’d have no secret hope harbored within her of ever seeing him again. If he went away this time, she’d never be able to convince herself he would come back.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said. She released her grip on him and looked up. “Don’t be sorry.”

He touched her softly under the chin. “Believe me, Bess, it freaks me out a little, too.”

“I’ll buy you some more clothes when I go out.” She got up, needing action to force away emotion. “You’re about Connor’s size.”

She turned, to see him looking stunned. She paused with one arm through the sleeve of her blouse. “Nick?”

“How old’s your kid?”

“Connor’s eighteen,” she said. “Robbie’s seventeen. They’re what my grandma called Irish twins. Eleven months apart.” Her old habit of babbling caught up with her, and the wider Nick’s eyes got the faster she spoke. “Nobody would ever mistake them for twins, though. They barely look like brothers. Connor’s dark and Robbie’s light, like me…”

She trailed off. Nick had stood and gone to the window to stare out. His shoulders hunched as he gripped the windowsill. Tension vibrated in every line of his body.

“Nick?”

“I didn’t think,” he said. “I know you said it, but I really didn’t think about it.”

Instinct told her to go to him, but old habits couldn’t completely change. She imagined, instead, the silk of his skin beneath her comforting touch. Nick bent his head, his voice a low rasp.

“Tell me how long it’s been,” he said.

How could he not know? She had counted every day since the last time she’d seen him, one by one like bricks in a wall. How could he not remember, unless the passage of time had meant nothing?

“Twenty years,” she told him without pause. There was no point in trying to soften it.

Nick’s body jerked before he got himself under control. He half turned toward her, a tight smile pulling at his reluctant mouth. “So he’s not mine, at least.”

“Not yours?” Bess’s breath skipped in her lungs. “Oh, Nick. No. He’s not. Did you think he might be?”

Nick shook his head. “No. I don’t know. When you said you had kids, I thought…I mean, I knew you might. I thought you must have gotten married and stuff. I just didn’t think…Twenty years…” He trailed off and his mouth twisted again. He blinked rapidly.

The sight of this breakdown, however valiantly he fought it, destroyed the old reserve. She went to him and took him into her embrace. He buried his face against her neck and clutched her so tightly she thought her ribs might crack. She held him while he fought the sobs.

“Shh,” she soothed, her hands rubbing his back comfortingly. “It’s all right.”

Nick shook his head against her. Heat pressed her skin, but though his shoulders heaved, apparently he could no more shed tears than he could sweat or ejaculate.

“I don’t know where I was,” Nick moaned, so low she could barely hear him. “Where the fuck was I, Bess? For twenty fucking years?”

“I don’t know, baby,” she whispered. “But you’re here now.”

He pushed away from her and stalked the room, stopping to grab up his boxers from the pile and shove his legs into them. He turned as she watched, and his face had gone dark. Storm dark.

“Didn’t anyone look for me?” he demanded, throwing out his hands. “Didn’t you care where the fuck I went?”

She blinked, trying not to be offended by his sudden wish to blame her. “I cared. But I didn’t know you were…gone. Not like that.”

“Why not?” He advanced on her to grab her by the shoulders and shake. His fingers dug into her skin. He’d leave more bruises.

She couldn’t explain to him how hard it had been to find out where’d he’d gone or how easy it had been for her to believe he didn’t really want her. “I asked about you, but nobody knew anything. I waited for you, but when you never came I thought you didn’t want to. I didn’t know you couldn’t. Nobody knew.”

He let go of her and paced as she watched. He turned to look at her, answering his own question before she had the chance. “You mean, nobody cared.”

She’d cared, but Bess said nothing.

“I was that much of an asshole, huh?”

“I never forgot you.”