Page 77 of Courtroom Drama
Damon and I exchanged letters all summer. Better on paper, he absolutely was. It was crazy how much he had to say in those letters, more words exchanged via the post office than we likely would have in person all summer. He wrote about the training he was doing to “getfit” before school started, which was mostly running and push-ups. He told me all the cute new things Kara was learning, including all the new words she adorably mispronounced. He told me how boring it was without me there, which I secretly relished.
In the final week before my scheduled return home, I took Echo out on an afternoon ride on one of the back trails. It was my favorite ride, alone with her through the tree-covered path. The ancient evergreens and mossy earth made it feel like I could be somewhere far away, anywhere else with so many varied options of different life circumstances. I loved the idea of that. Each time I was out on the trails alone, I’d imagine up a new life. Me as the only daughter of a lonely widower who doted on me as the last living love of his life. As one of six kids in a chaotic brood where I always had someone to play with. Me as an Olympic equestrian, looking out at adoring parents from the podium as the national anthem played in the background. It was one of my favorite things about camp, that they trusted us to go out alone.
Thirty minutes into the ride, something spooked Echo—a speedy rodent or snake that rustled through the brush and across our path. She bucked. I fell backward as she spun, hitting the side of my face on the dirt, a tree root protruding just enough to split the skin of the right side of my forehead, just below the hairline.
Echo calmed fairly quickly, though I was too afraid to climb back on. I took hold of her reins and limped back to camp (over an hour on foot), all the while dizzy from the pain in my head and worried about the amount of blood still dripping from my forehead. I grew fully terrified only when I arrived back at camp and one of the counselors ran to me, eyes wide and panic-stricken.
“She’s lucky she didn’t pass out,” I overheard that counselor say to another. “Or worse,” the other said back. They called my parents, and two hours later, I sat with a stitched forehead from the called-in doctor and an ice pack pressed to it as I watched my mom’s burgundy Corolla pull up from the office window. Something explosive happened inside me when I saw Damon bound out of the back seat toward the office before my mom had even turned off the engine.
He came.
Even at eleven, I knew how monumental it was that he showed up for me. That this was and would continue to be something rare.
“We were chatting at the mailbox when the call came,” my mom said as she stepped in. “He insisted on coming.” She said this before even asking if I was okay or evaluating my head. I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed or impressed with Damon, but either way, I immediately knew I needed him there, perhaps more than her. That I needed him in a way I didn’t yet know to be scared of.
I only cried for the first time with the good side of my face burrowed into his neck.
I didn’t quite understand it yet, but I loved him then. I loved who he was to me, what he gave me. I loved that heknewme. At eleven years old, having someone know me was like being chosen by the sun.
Standing in front of him now, watching his chest slowly rise and fall, his eyes invading mine, I know for certain that I loved him at eleven. Before I knew what it meant.
I don’t know that I ever stopped.
I need to sit. I take my seat on the edge of the bed once more. He sits beside me. My body is on fire as I watch him raise his hand to my face, cup it. It takes great effort not to nuzzle into it like a cat arching into a back scratch. I stop breathing when he gently rubs his thumb along the scar at my hairline and I know he’s back in that memory with me. “Do you still ride?” he whispers, and it sounds likeDo you still love me?as if he’s just seen my thoughts.
I look to the carpet. “No.”
He releases his hand back to his lap. “Why?”
Why.
I could say it’s because my parents wouldn’t take me any longer or because I lost interest after I was thrown. But I know these aren’t the real reasons. I now know it’s because the last day I rode was the day I knew I loved him, and I can’t untangle the two.
Since he’s come back into my life, I’ve tried so hard to suppress not only the bad at the end but also the good. The parts that were too good to ever fully get over.
I watch as his free hand swipes forward and back three times along his jeans, over his thigh. Damon is grainy and textured, making me want to run my hand across him just to see what his coarseness feels like against my skin. I try desperately to shake the thought.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks, his voice huskier than usual.
I nod.
“I don’t know how to act around you. I don’t want to get you—us—in trouble. And I get it, it’s serious trouble. We could be held in contempt. I want to respect your dedication to this case. I want to respect our complicated past. I don’t want to promise things I can’t give. Like right now, I want to kiss you. But is that okay?”
My heart thumps against my sweatshirt—the same one I was wearing when we kissed in the presidential suite. I think of the rooftop again, sitting in his lap and pressing my lips to his, my hand against his groin. Most kisses I’ve had in my life have felt like a means to an end. The way Damon kisses, though, is deliberate. His lips move with intention and purpose, as though the kiss itself is an exploration of sense. A kiss with him is like sitting side by side, placing the pieces of an elaborate puzzle, each slow movement another found piece. I just don’t yet know what the finished picture is.
I inhale. He smells like sexual attraction feels.
Unable to resist, I lean in and kiss him.
I feel his breath catch and then release heavily into me. His hand goes immediately to the back of my head, under my hair, and presses firmly. I tug at the front of his T-shirt, collecting a small mound of fabric in my palm. He pulls away softly and leans his forehead against mine. “You deserve it all,” he murmurs. I lean back in, seeing him—us—clearly for perhaps the first time.
His other hand curves around my face, under my chin. He presses his tongue against mine and it is firm and searching. I wish in this moment I could bottle the comfort of him to uncork when emptiness sometimes takes me over.
He leans into me, his chest firm and drumming against my palm. He moves his lips from my mouth to my neck, grazing the skin of my cheek, then chin, as he goes. I close my eyes and tilt my head back. Iinhale, intoxicated by how comforting his smell is. How everything about him is so good. I grasp for him—my fingertips pressing against his back, his biceps, his neck. He lets out a low sort of growl, and the hunger of it sends an electric shock out from my base in all directions.
I find it hard to think as he plants his lips on my neck, his teeth grazing the curve to my shoulder. Despite the bliss of it, doubt creeps in. We’ve tiptoed around our past, never addressing what happened. Perhaps we don’t need to, I think, as his tongue gently traces up the length of my neck to my ear, sending my body into an outbreak of goose bumps. It was ten years ago, after all. So much has happened since. Perhaps the past is gone and we don’t have to revisit any of it. I’d accept just about anything I told myself right now, just to keep his tongue on my skin.
He takes my earlobe between his teeth and tugs, the action forcing my eyes to roll back. I lean into him, desperate for more of him, for all of him.
