Heart Bones(32)

“It surprises me that you don’t think your father loves you. He seems like a nice guy.”

“He doesn’t know me. This is the first time I’ve seen him in since I was sixteen. I know more about you than I do about him.”

“That’s not very much.”

“Exactly,” I say, facing him full-on again.

Samson’s knee brushes high up on my inner thighs this time and I’m glad he can’t see anything from my chin down, because my body is covered in chills right now.

“I didn’t think there were many people in the world like me,” he says.

“You think we’re alike?” I want to laugh at that comparison, but there’s not an ounce of humor in his expression.

“I believe we have a lot more in common than you think we do, Beyah.”

“You think you’re as alone in this world as I am?”

He folds his lips together and nods his head, and it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever seen. I never would have thought someone so well off could have a life as shitty as mine, but I can see it in the way he’s looking at me. Everything about him suddenly seems familiar to me.

He’s right. We are alike, but only in the saddest ways.

My voice comes out in a whisper when I say, “When I first met you on that ferry, I could tell you were damaged.”

There’s a flicker of something in his eyes as he tilts his head to the right. “You think I’m damaged?”

“Yes.”

He moves even closer in the water, but there wasn’t much space left between us to begin with. It’s deliberate, and so much of me is touching so much of him now. “You’re right,” he says quietly, slipping a hand around the back of my left knee. “There’s nothing left of me but a fucking pile of debris.” He pulls me to him, wrapping both my legs around him. That’s all he does, though. He doesn’t try to kiss me. He just connects us together as if that’s enough while our arms keep us both afloat.

I’m swiftly succumbing to him. I don’t know in what way. All of them, maybe. Because right now, I need him to do something else. Anything else. Taste me. Touch me. Drag me under.

We watch each other for a moment and it’s almost like looking into a broken mirror. He leans in slowly, but not toward my mouth. He presses his lips against my shoulder, so gentle it feels like a graze.

I close my eyes and inhale.

I’ve never felt anything so sensual. So perfect.

One of his hands disappears under the water and finds my waist. When I open my eyes, his face is just a couple of inches from mine.

We both look at each other’s mouths for a brief second, and then it’s like fire shoots down my entire leg.

“Fuck!”

Something just stung me.

Something just stung the shit out of me right when I was about to be kissed and if this isn’t my damn luck. “Shit, shit, shit.” I grip Samson’s shoulders. “Something just stung me.”

He shakes his head as if he’s pulling himself out of a trance. He catches up to what just happened. “Jellyfish,” he says. He grabs my hand and pulls me toward the shore, but my leg hurts so bad, it’s difficult to walk.

“Oh my God, it hurts.”

“Sara keeps a bottle of vinegar in their outdoor shower. It’ll help the sting.”

When he can tell I’m struggling to keep up, he bends down and scoops me up. I want to enjoy the fact that he’s carrying me, but I can’t enjoy anything.

“Where did it get you?” he asks.

“My right leg.”

When the water is just below his knees, he’s able to walk faster. He rushes me past the fire, toward the outdoor shower on Sara’s stilt level. I hear Sara yell after us. “What happened?”

“Jellyfish!” he yells over his shoulder.

When we reach the shower, there’s barely enough room for both of us inside. He sets me down and I spin around and press my hands against the shower wall. “It got the top of my thigh.”

When he starts to spray the vinegar on my leg, it feels like tiny knives stabbing me in the fleshiest part of my thigh. I close my eyes, pressing my forehead against the wooden shower wall. I moan in agony. “Oh, God.”

“Beyah,” Samson says, his voice strained and deep. “Please don’t make that noise.”

I’m in too much pain to dissect that comment. All I feel is pain on top of more pain when the vinegar hits my skin. “Samson, it hurts. Please stop.”

“Not yet,” he says, spraying down my leg to ensure he gets all the sting. “It’ll feel better in a second.”

He’s a liar, I want to die. “No, it hurts. Please stop.”

“I’m almost finished.”

He stops suddenly after saying that, but not by choice. Samson disappears in a confusing flash. I spin around and peek my head out just in time to witness my father punch Samson in the face.

Samson stumbles back and then falls over the concrete ledge of the foundation.

“She said stop, you son of a bitch!” my father yells at him.

Samson scrambles to his feet and backs away from my father. He holds his hands up in defense, but my father goes to hit him again. I grab my father’s arm, but it does little to ease the impact of the second hit.