Dreams of 18(48)

More awake and present.

Most of all, he’s interested.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like when I see him making repairs around the cabin. He starts with the front yard. He opens that padlocked garage and gets all the tools out before getting down to business.

I watch him through the dirty living room window before walking out on the porch. I have been cleaning up around the house in my spare time. See, I had to do something while he was suffering and I couldn’t make it better for him.

So I tried to do other things that might make his life easier. I threw out all his liquor bottles while he was throwing up in the bathroom and I did his laundry while he was shaking in his bed with the cravings.

Oh, and I’ve been baking up a storm.

I love to bake. A love I discovered when the Edwardses moved in next door and Brian told me that his dad sucked at baking. He could cook but he couldn’t bake. I thought it was adorable. But then, I find every little thing about Mr. Edwards adorable.

Found. I found every little thing about Mr. Edwards adorable. Not find.

So yeah, I took up baking because the man I used to dream about couldn’t bake. And I haven’t looked back since. Not to mention, being a hermit and living indoors 24/7 becomes a lot easier if you’ve got things to bake and things to clean up and launder around the house. I actually gave our housekeeper back in Connecticut a tough competition.

Long story short, I’ve been doing things around the cabin to keep myself busy and not think too much about how Mr. Edwards is suffering, but this is the first time in days that he seems interested in these things.

“What are you doing?” I ask him from the sagging top step.

He stops in his cutting, more like hacking, the shrubs that seem to have grown to almost my height. “Making things better.”

His voice is so low that even the wind could carry it away. But there’s no wind in this part of the world. Everything is quiet and lonely so I hear him.

I hear him and I bite my lip, giving him a smile.

Mr. Edwards though? His eyes go to my mouth for a second before he turns away almost violently and gets back to work.

Oh well.

He’s still grumpy, but at least he’s not throwing up. So for the next couple of days, we make things better. Together.

We fix things, clean things. He clears out the entire backyard, front yard. He fixes the porch steps and I dust the furniture, mop up the floors, wipe up the dirty windows.

And because I’m the stupidest person ever, I cut my finger on the one that was cracked and squeal like someone’s trying to kill me. It doesn’t even hurt that much but for some reason, I chant ow, ow, ow until he’s right next to me.

Not only that, he’s holding my hand.

Yup.

I don’t even know how he got here so fast because he was out back, standing on a ladder, pulling out ivy and things from the roof. But now, he’s here, right next to me, clutching my wrist with his long, dirty and smudged fingers, staring down at the cut on the pad of my thumb.

“What the fuck happened?” he asks with a frown.

I try to ease it, that frown, I mean. “It’s nothing. Really. I was just being a drama queen.”

He lifts his eyes, his fingers flex and move, almost caressing the delicate skin of my wrist. “You’re bleeding.”

I swallow.

I so want to look down where he’s holding my hand and see if those fingers of his are leaving dirty prints on my pale skin. God, I hope they are.

Instead, I do the appropriate thing.

I wave my other hand and tell him, “It’s…”

And then, I trail off.

Because man, he’s close to me. So close that I just got the whiff of his thick smell: musky and outdoorsy. The scent I’ve been living with for the past few days. I get a waft of it here and there. I smell it in the hallway, the living room, the kitchen, the room that I sleep in, which is right next to his.

But this is the first time that it’s so strong that I’m drowning in it.

I don’t want to come up for air.

“It’s what?” he asks when I don’t complete my sentence.

But then, I complete it and I wonder what the fuck I’m thinking.

“It hurts,” I breathe out.

He frowns and tugs on my wrist. “Come on.”

But I resist moving. “I, uh, it’s…”

I leave my thought hanging again because it doesn’t make sense. Nothing about this is making sense. I’m not supposed to act this way. I’m not supposed to lie to him when it’s not hurting at all. Or at least, not very much.

“Violet,” he warns.

I raise my hand – the one he’s holding – between us and almost whisper, “Will you make it better?”

“What?”

Oh God, I’m crazy but whatever. He’s close to me and I can’t breathe without breathing him into my lungs and he’s touching me – only the second time he’s touched my skin – and I want more.

A little bit more.

“I… I read it somewhere that when you’re bleeding from a cut and it hurts a lot, it’s always good to suck off that blood with your mouth. It stops the pain and the blood right away.”

By the end of my stupid, transparent lie, I’m all heated. I bet I’m red and the pulse at my neck is jittering so much that he can see it.