The Winter Sister(80)
“Uh . . .” I heard Ben say. “What’s so funny?”
All this time, I’d remembered locking the window as something I’d done to Persephone. But Ben was right—God, he was so right, it felt wonderful and terrible at once—I’d locked the window for her. I’d locked it because I’d loved her, deeply, and I’d wanted to save her from herself, wanted to protect her from boyfriends and bruises and misinterpretations of love.
But still—and here, the laughter dried up, quick as the stopping of a faucet—I had lost her.
The tears flowed again as I collapsed against Ben, boneless as a pile of laundry. For whole moments, whole minutes maybe, I continued to cry, crumpled up in his arms.
That loss—the absence of Persephone—had always been an ache so fierce that, at times, it was difficult to breathe. I felt it now, again, my lungs gasping to keep up with the pace of my tears, and I missed her. I missed how she scrunched up her nose when looking in the mirror, how she hummed whenever she brushed her hair. I missed the pinches and Indian burns we’d given each other, just kids with no understanding yet of bruises, of what it would take to want them, of what it would take to cover them up. I missed movie nights and buttered popcorn, missed rewinding again and again to rehear the lines we loved. I missed kicking each other under the table at breakfast, both of us stifling smiles that threatened to give us away. There were so many things—millions of tiny, essential things—that I’d been too busy living my life to appreciate and cherish. How many times had I crawled into bed with my mother, when my sister, alive and just as warm, had a bed to crawl into, too? She might have pushed me away, grumbled her annoyance into her pillow, but when she placed her hands on my arms or my shoulders or my back, they would have had blood coursing through them, round and round again.
I straightened up, and Ben’s arms loosened as I wiped a hand across my nose. When I met his eyes—eyes that Persephone had gazed into each night, eyes that she’d said she could get lost in—I saw that our faces were very close. I could feel his breath on my lips.
“I know,” he whispered, and his voice was so fragile it sounded like my own. “I miss her, too. I miss her all the time.”
I kissed him then. Without thinking, without understanding, I pressed my mouth against his. I cupped his face and felt the ridge of his scar beneath my fingers. He’d been wounded there, hurt by a parent who was supposed to only love him, and I kissed him harder for that. I could feel his surprise in the shape of his mouth, the initial stiffness of his lips, but then he kissed me back, lifting his hand to cradle my neck, and my nerves became electrified. Something in my body roared back to life.
I gripped him closer, pulling him down with me to the bed. I felt the weight of him, his chest rising and falling in tempo with my own, and I wrapped my legs around him, fastening his body to mine.
His lips were softer than I would have expected, and as our mouths moved together, breathy and slick, I slipped my hands under the back of his sweater, felt the heat of his skin against my palms as I pulled him even closer.
His thumb stroked my cheek as he kissed me and kissed me again, and I struggled with his belt, trying to unbuckle it without unthreading my lips from his. He leaned back then, his breathing heavy and rhythmic, and he peeled off his sweater, undid his belt, and slid out of his pants. I tugged my shirt over my head and pulled my jeans and underwear down together. When he came back to me, his skin already beading with sweat, he wrapped his fingers around the straps of my bra and slipped them down over my shoulders, kissing each inch of my body he revealed.
I didn’t want his mouth that far from mine. I put my hands on the sides of his face and guided him back to my lips. We kissed each other again—and again and again and again—until he finally entered me, and I gasped, his mouth trailing down to my neck, where he breathed hot and hard against my skin.
As I pressed my fingers into his shoulder blades, as I turned my head to run my lips along his scar, I didn’t stop to wonder why tears still dampened my cheeks. I only thought of all the parts of my sister that Ben alone had known—parts secret and mysterious, parts I’d never been able to reach. Then I felt the rhythm of him inside me for the miracle that it was; with every gentle but insistent thrust, he was pushing Persephone back, back, back into me.
25
The lights were still on when I got home. I wiped my feet on the mat and paused at the front door, pressing my back against the wood as the imprint of Ben’s body continued to hum inside me. The air felt taut, as if stretched over too small a space, and I closed my eyes to the accusations I could imagine Mom hurling at me: Where the hell were you? I’ve been here alone for hours, wasting away. I guess it means nothing to you that I’m sick.
But when I walked through the entryway into the living room, wincing in anticipation, I was surprised to find that she wasn’t in her chair. All the lamps were on, casting a buttery glow on the furniture and walls. Even the Persephone constellation, usually shadowed by the nearby TV, was perfectly spotlighted. I stared at it—that angry, silver swipe of my sister’s hand—and quickly looked away.
When I saw the time on the microwave in the kitchen, I knew why Mom wasn’t there. It was eleven thirty-two. I’d stayed with Ben even longer than I’d thought, and Mom was asleep. Of course she was—she had chemo in the morning—and if I had even a chance of enduring her eye rolls and complaints, her acidic comments bookended by silence, then I needed to get some sleep myself.