Alive | Nick Robinson

Worth

Good or important enough to justify.

Thank you for saving me.

The words make their way into my brain as I flicker my eyelids open, my eyelashes tickling the skin on Nick's neck.

I had somehow wrapped myself around his lean body. His arms enclosed around my body and my head rested on his bare chest. He smelled of peach flavored body wash.

We fell asleep mumbling stories to each other, his time during the summer when he was 11 years old and how him and Emily ate nothing but orange popsicles; stuck their toes in warm mud at a creek, how he caught garden snakes in a shoebox before setting them free. I told him about the time I lived by the beach and everyday I would go into the ocean and try to get caught in a riptide.

I shift and I stare up at him, a bruise is on his cheek and I lift a fingertip softly running my finger across it, down his jawline until I reach his collarbones and start trying to memorize every little freckle he has, every discoloration from the fight, every scar that could have killed him if it was just an inch to the right or left, every single tiny detail I trace with my hands and when I get to his stomach he mumbles something.

"Sorry," I'm about to snap my hand away but he grabs it gently, placing our fingers together and kissing my hand before settling it back on his chest.

Nick still has his eyes closed and the sunlight from the living room windows is grazing over his skin and I could swear he glows just like a flower right before it sprouts into something beautiful. I'm warm, from his body heat and the sun. I don't ever want to move from this second, even with all the bruises and ache on me, I want to be held by him forever. I close my eyes.

I think I fall back asleep because I don't know how much more time passes before I hear a gruff voice standing over us. "Morning."

Nick and I both bolt upright, bleary eyed and staring at an old man. He wears a maroon t-shirt and old jeans with his hands on his hips. He looks amused. Nick clears his throat.

"Fay told me she had guests," The man coughs and covers it with his hand. "Told me about all the trouble you got into it." Nick and I both open our mouth to start spewing excuses but he holds a hand up. "It's fine, get dressed and I'll make ya'll some grub to eat. Fay should be down soon."

He shuffles to the kitchen and Nick shares a puzzled look with me. "Fay lives with her grandfather," I whisper, just as clueless as him at the abrupt awakening.

"Do you think he'll let me borrow a shirt?" Nick's hair is disheveled and his eyes dart to the back of the house where the smell of bacon starts to waft towards us.

I chuckle, feeling more comfortable with Nick after everything that happened last night. "Go ask while I check on Fay," I scramble out of the bed in a pair of Fay's pink pjs. Nick pulls on my wrist until I'm down to his eye level. "What?"

He kisses me. It's quick and soft. "Okay, now go check on Fay." He smirks. I grin at him and bound up the stairs. I pause when I get to the top staring out at a window with leaves smooshed on it. A tree is blocking the view of the backyard and for some reason it makes me think of last night and how easily something is beautiful and how easily it can be taken away.

I had let Nick take a warm washcloth and wipe the blood from my cheek and neck; a stranger's blood. It was nice in a way but haunting in another. I had hurt someone but received gentleness for it. This tree had grown but became something that kept a window shut otherwise all the leaves would fall onto the inside of a home.