White Rabbit(60)
I manage a dazed nod. My eyes feel like they’ve been scrubbed with a wire brush, but I can see again. My left ear is ringing, my temple throbbing hotly like a drumbeat, but I’m pretty sure none of the damage is permanent. “I’m … I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding.” He sounds scared.
I flip down the visor and looked at myself in the mirror. My face is pale, and dark blood oozes from an ugly gash above my left ear. “A chunk of cement got me, I think. When the bullet hit the wall—”
“No,” he cuts me off urgently, pointing to my side. “Here! You’re bleeding here!”
I follow the line of his finger and my eyes bulge, my stomach flopping over. My tank top is torn open on the left side, stained a deep crimson with blood that gushes from a jagged laceration just beneath my ribs. My brain feels like it’s suspended in a jar somewhere, and I lick my lips. “I don’t … It doesn’t hurt.”
In a flash, Sebastian drags the tank top off me, yanking it over my head and chucking it into the footwell so he can get a better look, his face gray and serious. The wound is ugly, the amount of blood nauseating, but it’s clearly not an entrance wound. “It’s not from a bullet,” Sebastian declares, his voice actually wobbling with relief. “It looks like you cut yourself on something.”
“Maybe a piece of glass, when I fell,” I mumble distantly. The incised flesh looks puffy and grotesque, swollen lips drooling my life out.
“We need to clean it, like, now.” Sebastian fixes me with a look. “I cut my hand on old glass once, and it got, like, zombie-movie infected. I was on antibiotics for weeks.” He punches open the glove box, digs inside it, and comes up with a bunch of McDonald’s napkins and a small tube of hand sanitizer. “No lie, Rufe, this is gonna suck, so … you know. Try to think happy thoughts, okay?”
“Okay,” I say weakly, staring in horror as he squirts a thick glob of jelly onto his fingers and the close air in the Jeep fills with the stinging aroma of pure alcohol.
Imagine someone tickling your ribs with a blowtorch, and you’ll have the edited-for-TV version of my experience in having an open wound cleansed with hand sanitizer. I’m ready to hand over state secrets by the time Sebastian is finishing up, stuffing the gory napkins in a leftover Subway bag and capping the empty bottle of disinfectant. Peering down at his handiwork, I see a hot pink zigzag carved into my skin—a grotesque laceration that’s embarrassingly small for how much drama it’s caused. Still, every breath feels like a knife between my ribs, and it’s an effort to remain stoic.
“You okay?” Sebastian arches a concerned eyebrow.
“I should have picked the zombie infection,” I manage, blowing out through tight lips. “Is there going to be a round two, or have you finally run out of sulfuric acid?”
“All done. And I’m real proud of you, Rufe,” he adds, with warmth. “You only called for your mommy twice.”
“Oh, ha ha, fuck you.” I can’t help laughing a little bit, though. “How come I’m the only one who fell on dirty hobo glass? Life isn’t fair.” Taking one of the few remaining clean napkins, I wipe the blood off my temple. “At least I didn’t take a bullet or anything. I guess I should just be glad I’m still alive.”
“Don’t even joke about that.” Sebastian shudders, his eyes darkening. “When that wall blew up and you went down, I thought … I just thought—” He blinks, hard, and looks away. “Don’t make jokes.”
“You’re right.” The memory of actual bullets whizzing through the air, inches from my actual head, makes my palms slippery. “You have to admit, though: It’ll make a great story to tell our therapists someday.”
Sebastian looks back at me with an odd expression, like someone trying to smile for the first time in his life. Then, after a weirdly full silence, he leans across the center console and lightly touches my sensitized flesh, bending closer to have another look at the cleaned-up injury. “It’s stopped bleeding, I think. And it actually doesn’t look as deep as I figured. You better wash it again at home, though—like, with actual soap and stuff—and go see a doctor. You’ll probably need stitches.”
“Better than needing a coffin,” I rejoin before I can stop myself.
He doesn’t say anything, just looks up at me, and I become suddenly aware of how close he is—of how his hand is resting on my bare skin. Sebastian’s eyes are deep and lonely, the air between us redolent of citrus and vetiver, warm from his body. The silence stretches out, and the longer he looks at me, the faster my pulse starts to beat. He leans up, his face moving in, and his other hand touches my chest—fingers hot against smooth muscle—and my flesh starts firming up everywhere, everywhere, goose bumps taking me like a plague. Softly, he murmurs, “Rufus, I…”
And then his lips touch mine, and my heart rockets up, down, up, and a Pandora’s box inside of me springs open, releasing every treacherous emotion I’ve spent the past weeks trying to incarcerate. My guts twist in both directions at once, air pushing out of my lungs, until I feel myself starting to tear in half. I push him back as hard as I can, fresh tears springing to my eyes, and my body trembles all over. I can hardly speak. “Don’t. Fucking don’t, Sebastian. You have no right.”