me with all of my me-ishness, I should've known the fundamental truths of Zelda Besh.
Fun fact: truth number seven read something like "Zelda is heretofore unaware of truths numbers one through six. She knows only that she doesn't know anything."
Perhaps that was the only truth I needed to know. If I accepted this bedrock reality, then I could stop beating myself up about all the things I should've known.
Yeah, that was unlikely.
Why stop now when I could sit wedged between Ash's mother and sister while he did a poor job at pretending he wasn't studying me in the mirror? While my phone burned a hole in my back pocket—and the pit of my stomach—despite being switched off since yesterday morning. While I sewed that parachute together as I hurtled through the clouds toward the hard earth.
There was always a parachute in pieces. With all things, my hands were filled with scraps and I was left to patch them together. I knew what would happen if I didn't and every time, I went on diving out of that plane only to get it together at the last minute. I'd come close enough to hitting the ground enough to know I didn't want to become paint on the earth but I couldn't stop myself from rushing toward it time and time again, as if I was trying to run all the way through disaster.
When Ash flicked a glance at my shoes—hot pink low-tops—and frowned, I responded with a smile. He didn't want to smile back, that much was clear, but his gaze softened. Warmed. Just as I had every single time he'd given me his hard and tough and followed it up with a glimpse at his ooey gooey center.
By now, he'd accumulated a full page of tallies in the "like" column. Even with his scowling and frowning, his growls, his moods, his unnecessary jabs. He was precious under all that grump and I lived for the prize of an ooey gooey center because I knew it wasn't won by many.
Hell, I hadn't expected to win it in the first place. It'd made sense to stay last night as that was a full-on emergency contact type of situation. I'd planned on climbing out of his bed once he was fast asleep and relocating myself to the sofa, far away from the awkward-but-admirable erection he'd pressed against my thigh. Far away from his hungry snuggles.
I'd expected I'd find him in fits of fury this morning, cursing everything and everyone for the disruptions his schedule had incurred. I'd expected he'd pretend all of yesterday's ooey gooey goodness hadn't happened. He hadn't napped on my shoulder or rubbed my thigh like it belonged to him. He hadn't twisted his arm around mine and let all his fear shine through while the doctor reduced his shoulder. He hadn't insisted I join him in bed and he absolutely, positively had not flattened me underneath him and slept like he wanted nothing but me for the rest of his days. I would've been content with that burst of amnesia. I would've appreciated it too, as I couldn't make sense of the alarming rightness of being possessed by him, caged in his arms and kissed on the head while his mother and sister reminded him I wasn't Millie.
And the trouble with all this, the thing I really should've known from the start, was I wasn't meant to like him or his ooey gooey. I was supposed to encounter this man, this beautiful, flawed, tender man…and walk the other direction because he wasn't for me. Not me, not now. Probably not ever. It didn't matter whether his glares gave me the best belly flips or his growls actually raised my body temperature. That fitting in wasn't something I'd experienced once, not in any of my thirty-one years on this planet, and even though we fought and it wasn't always fair, this fit better than anything else, ever.
But this wasn't how I was supposed to start over. I wasn't supposed to argue with a man on my getaway flight and fall into bed with him and then make friends with his mother and sister. No, no, no. I was supposed to leave, figure myself out, make a plan and stick to it, find a place to live for more than a weekend, buy some houseplants and Fiestaware, get militant about organizing my closets. Maybe then, after sustaining both the plants and the crockery, I could allow men into my life again.