Breathe Me || Completed

10.0 - Going

The moment I close the door to my room, Samantha locks it and tackles me onto my bed.

I feel lightheaded with love, dizzy with it. We roll over each other like puppies fighting over a toy, making my bed creak and moan with our pressure. Samantha kisses my neck, gently at first, then harder and harder with her teeth like she's trying to rip my throat out.

"Samantha," I mutter. "Sammy, stop it. You're gonna leave a bruise."

"So what?" Samantha presses her lips to my throat and starts to suck on my skin. It feels like heaven but I have to push her away. She lands on the bed with a little grunt, her eyebrows furrowed. "Hey," she says. "What, is this another Ryann situation?"

I blink at her.

"Where you kiss me once and then never talk to me again?"

Ouch.

"Don't say that." I sidle closer to her, wrapping my arms around her thin waist. She keeps her hands in her lap, glaring up at me. "I love you, okay? And I'm . . . I'm glad we're doing this. I just can't have marks on me, that's all."

"Why?" she scoffs. "No one is staring at your neck, Sally."

I rub her spine with my fingers, wishing I could make her forget about it. "I just don't want to have to explain," I tell her. "We have to be quiet about this, okay? I'll . . . I'll tell my parents at some point. Just not now."

Samantha dodges my lips when I attempt to kiss her again. She slips off the bed and onto the floor. "Doesn't matter anyway," she says. "We won't be here that much longer."

For a second I'm confused. Then I remember the game.

She pulls my laptop off the desk and takes it out of its sleeve. Typing in my password, she says, "I think for today we should figure out a way to print the directions. Once we're done with that we can start thinking about bus or train tickets."

"Samantha." I sit down on the floor next to her. Her energy is stormy, virulent as she pulls up the bookmarked google maps tab of our route. "Don't be mad."

"I'm not mad."

"I just don't know how they would react . . ."

"Like I said, doesn't matter. I say we leave Friday."

I stare at her. "Sam, can we take a break from the game for a second? If we're going to be together, we have to confront this at some point."

"It's not a game," is all she says.

"Sam."

"It's not. I'm going. I'm leaving on Friday."

"Sammy, you can't."

"Don't tell me what the fuck I can and can't do," she snaps. "I can. We already planned everything out. I know where I'm going. I have money. I have a plan." She glances at me. "I have you. Don't I?"

Doesn't she?

"Samantha," I sigh. "You're not thinking this through. You think you have a plan but . . . what happens once you get to California? What then? You're fifteen. There's nothing for you there."

She glares at the computer screen, her shoulders hunched protectively around herself. "I'll find my dad. He said I can come stay with him any time I want, that's what he said, before he left. So that's what happens."

I place my hand on her thigh, rubbing my finger up and down with the grain of her jeans. She won't meet my eye. "It's never that simple, Samantha."

"How would you know?"

"When was the last time you heard from him?"

"None of your fucking business."

"You don't even know for a fact that he's in California, Sammy. You don't even know if he's alive."

She jumps suddenly to her feet, looking down at me with the menace of a lion staring down its prey. She is shaking all over, her frail bones jutting from her skin with anger. Her face is red as a cherry, her eyes wet and shadowy. She can't seem to find any words. Her mouth moves, lovely lips curving and contracting without sound.

Then she shouts, "Fuck you! You don't -- You -- how dare you fucking say -- My dad is not fucking dead! He's in California and I'm going, with or without you."

She stomps out of the room and slams the door shut behind her.

With or without me.

Just a few days ago, all I wanted was for her to go. I wanted my room back, my confidence, my solitude back. I didn't want to have to know her, to have to know all the ways she'd changed and all the things that had happened to her.

But now that's all I want.

Sally, Sally, Sally, you're being ridiculous. You're not thinking . . . but . . . the way she mutters my name, like I'm the aurora borealis, like I'm the grand canyon or a double rainbow. Sally, Sally, Sally, she said like she could summon me inside of her, bring me into her with words alone.

You hear it all the time: oh, young love. It never lasts. You don't even know how to feel yet. You don't know anything.

If I don't know anything else, then the one thing I'm sure about is that I love her.

But . . .

But literally everything else. All the other things in my life, all the other people, my friends, my parents, my sisters . . . don't I love them too?

I know there's a wrong thing and there's a right thing. This should be easy.

It's just not.

I climb into bed and yank my covers up over my head. God, tap me on the shoulder. Whisper in my ear. Tell me what I'm supposed to do.