At first the bed just felt too large. Then the room was too cold. Then the house was too quiet. And I actually think that last one was the real reason I couldn't sleep. It was just like the first day after getting home from a tour, when you go from being around a noisy bunch of guys just about every hour of every day to what felt like absolute silence.
I missed the noises of Chris.
It was about one in the morning when I finally gave up and got out of bed, throwing on a pair of boxers and a long sleeved T-shirt with 'Motocross 1989' written on the front in fading letters. Which was kind of ridiculous because it was reasonably warm in the house and no one else was home, but it was more comfortable this way regardless. Sometimes it wasn't other people I was hiding myself from.
I headed downstairs and went into the living room first, turning the stereo on, not too loud, just enough to break that unnatural silence, then hit up the kitchen for something to snack on. Chris was the undisputed master in keeping us stocked with junk food, that was for sure, and this was one of those times I was thanking him for it more than cursing him for it, even though there was rehearsal again tomorrow that would probably be longer and harder as we all got used to it again. There was a lot to do and not much time left to do it; at least we all already knew the choreography even though we were horribly rusty, still.
I sat down at the dining room table with a bowl of ice cream and a few gingersnaps and picked up a couple of the envelopes, leaving sticky fingerprints on them as I opened them. The first one wasn't even really for me. Well, half of it was, asking me if I was still going to sing and if we were coming back when I came home. But the other half was asking the other guys what it had been like to do all that stuff on TV without me.
That was when I realized that I didn't know the answer to that, at all. That I didn't even know what all they'd done, though they all had made comments lately about how much press they'd had to deal with during the past two months. And I remembered that it was all available to me any time, to catch up on like I'd been intending to all along. When I was ready.
Looked like tonight was the night.
I slouched against the arm of the couch, fresh bowl of popcorn in my lap. It wasn't like I was sitting down to watch a movie or anything, but I was hungry and I had a pretty strong feeling I was going to need something to do with my hands very shortly.
The first tape I watched had to be the unedited, uncommentated copy of the entire press conference the guys had done just the day after I'd been checked into rehab. It only took about a minute for me to realize with a brief lump in my throat that it had been Steve who'd stood quietly in the back and taped the whole damn thing. My own brother.
I was hardly listening to what they were saying, at first; they all looked like hell. Every one of them. And I wondered what they'd gone through the previous night that they'd probably never tell me. None of them had slept, that much was clear.
"At this time we're not releasing the name of the facility Joey has been admitted to," said Lance. He looked exhausted, like the rest, but his voice was steady. He was being the rock, I realized. When the rest of the guys were just barely hanging on, Lance had been a rock for them that first day. I knew the all-business façade was a coping mechanism for him, but I bet it had been encouraged.
And now he couldn't leave it behind.
I felt a familiar wave of guilt wash over me, that I had been the one responsible for making him the way he was now, for changing all of them. That my own poor choices had changed four other lives so drastically. That however they turned out now, whatever bad things happened in their lives, it was my fault.
It was the little things that were the hardest, watching this now. They way Justin's eyes were rimmed with red, even though he'd managed not to cry through the whole thing. He was a professional after all, but it had clearly been a struggle. JC looked as guilty as I felt now, and I wondered what sorts of horrible things I'd said to him the day before, when he'd been forcing me into rehab. I wish I remembered them all, so I could apologize for each and every comment.
Then there was Chris. Chris who looked positively ... lost. Like he could feel the absence of something that was necessary for him to function properly. He remained silent through most of it, speaking up only when directly addressed with a question. And even then his answers were curt, which was nothing like him at all.
None of them were themselves, not even close. Which was to be expected, but was absolutely devastating to have to watch. And I did have to watch it, it was something I'd been needing to do for a long time. Needing to know, to be able to be able to bridge the gap between then and now.
Little things. It was more than just the way the guys looked, it was the way that the room was filled to capacity, standing room only, in a way that even we didn't see much. It was the way that the questions felt harsher than normal, when you would hope that the reporters would be more compassionate, with the guys looking so obviously torn up. It was the way there was no fifth chair, for the first time that I could remember.
I sat in stunned silence until it was over, then stared at the gray lines that filled my screen for a few minutes after that. In truth, it wasn't worse than I'd been imagining, but I don't think it could have been. And I don't know how they could bear to remain the whole time, under that barrage of questions that seemed to never end.
And it was my fault.
It was another couple minutes before I could even get up to change the tape, taking another one out of the clearly labeled box that had been sitting in the back of my closet, ever since I'd gotten Chris to request it from the PR archives. I picked it at random this time, hardly knowing where to start now that the first one -- the one I'd needed to see most -- was out of the way. A lot of these I didn't even remember.
It turned out to be Rosie O'Donnell, from about six months ago, and I was bombed. I remembered this interview; I'd thought I was being witty and charming and wondered why everyone was being pissy with me afterward. Now I knew. It wasn't just that I had been acting like a lecherous moron, but I looked bad, too. My skin and eyes looked wrong, almost dead, and that was even after makeup had done their magic on me.
Justin interrupted almost everything I said and for once he was very, very right to. I had to admire their professionalism again; not one of them looked like he wished I wasn't there, even though there was no way they weren't thinking it. They stuck by me, the stuck by us, as a unit.
After Rosie mercifully ended I stared at the blank screen for a long while again and wondered how much worse it had gotten. Then I popped in a TRL appearance from about a month later. I hadn't shown up for that one at all. And the worst part was, they looked more at ease without me there. I must not have been missing that time. Maybe I'd called them from where I was. Or maybe I was merely passed out backstage. Or maybe they'd deliberately left me behind.
I didn't really want to think about that last possibility. The official explanation was that I was still feeling ill. Still feeling ill. I wondered how many other appearances I'd missed before this one.
I had to force myself to go on that time, to put another one of the tapes in and see how else I'd shamed us. I'd had the idea in the back of my mind that it would get easier as I went along, that the hardest part of all would be starting and once I got used to seeing myself like that it would be smooth sailing. I was dead wrong. The weight of each appearance built up upon the last, until it was hard to move. Hard to breathe.
I had to stop, but I couldn't, not now. If I stopped now, I might never be able to get myself to start again and it felt important that I see this stuff. Important that I know what had gone on, what I'd missed, what I could never be again. You had to remember the past before you could ever hope not to relive it.
The Entertainment Tonight footage -- both raw and edited -- showed one of our afterparties. And me and Daisy were there together. The edited footage showed us laughing and holding hands and looking quite couply, and even though we certainly weren't as photogenic at that point as Chris and Dani who were in the same shot, it was head and shoulders above how we'd looked in the raw footage it had been taken from.
I couldn't seem to stay out of anyone's face, and never seemed to recognize when someone just didn't want me around right then. I laughed wrong and I smiled wrong and for a while it was almost like looking at someone who wasn't me, only it was. Only every time I felt distanced from the person I'd been, something would happen to snap me back.
It was strange to see myself drinking. Strange and all-too-familiar. A wave of sense memory washed over me and suddenly I could taste that drink, feel the lightheadedness of being slightly-past-buzzed, feel the cool condensation on the glass in my head. And I wanted it. Wanted it so fucking bad.
I squeezed my eyes shut and willed that craving to pass. Reminded myself that there was no alcohol around anymore anyway, so getting up and walking into the kitchen -- or the bathroom, or the dining room, or a spare bedroom -- wouldn't do me any good. And that thought was just about the only thing that kept me from doing it, too, so I was grateful as I'd never been before that we'd sanitized the house.
And once again, all those thoughts and feelings and cravings were tied up with Daisy. Until I confronted her with all those pent-up things inside me, and finally broke ties with her, I was worried that seeing anything like what I was seeing right now -- with her and me and liquor and whatever else -- would send me reeling. Make me feel like I was out of control again, with no way out.
I suddenly really wished Chris was home, to make it better.
It was a couple hours and maybe a half-dozen tapes and a pint of ice cream later when a noise at the door startled me out of my daze. Clicking the mute button on the remote in my lap, I turned my head to see Chris coming in.
"Hey," I said and he looked up, startled.
"I told you you didn't have to wait up," he said as he shut the door behind him, but he looked happy to see me there. The somewhat neutral expression he'd been wearing when he came in -- there'd even been a bit of a weary frown, I thought -- had melted away into a smile. Even his eyes looked a bit brighter, a bit more alert.
Even so, though, we were both probably not looking our best. He must have been jet-lagged to beat all, at best, and I was still more or less an emotional wreck from watching the tapes. They hadn't really gotten any better, but I seemed to get numb to them after a while. I didn't want to get numb to them, though, didn't want them to lose their sharpness, their bite. Didn't want to forget anymore what I'd been.
"I couldn't sleep," I said softly and his eyes crinkled at that, smiling at me again gratefully. He dumped his things by the door, not that he'd had much with him to begin with, and walked over into the living room. He was practically dragging himself, but seemed to be building up more energy as he approached rather than losing it
"Neither could I," he admitted with a faint shrug. "Nothing like being awake for an entire late-night flight across the country."
"So what happened?" I asked, tucking my feet up under my butt to give Chris room on the couch with me. Even though I knew a big chunk of his weariness was jet lag, there was still something else. And I was ready to bet just about my whole fortune that it had everything to do with Dani.
"I don't even know where to start," said Chris; the look on his face, though, said he did, but wasn't ready to. I watched his eyes flicker to the television, then his whole head turn sharply toward it. The volume had been muted, but I realized with a start that I'd left the video running. There I was, in all my strung-out glory, and Chris's eyes were wide.
"I was just ... " I began, then realized I didn't have to make excuses for what I was doing. They had to all have realized that I was going to need to go looking, sooner or later, though they'd probably all been figuring on later.
"We could have done this together," murmured Chris after a moment of awkward silence. "You and me ... or all of us."
I shook my head automatically, knowing that wouldn't have been the right way to handle this. "No, I had to ... I couldn't have done it for the first time with someone else here. It would have made me hold back my reactions. And Karen said it would be okay ... to react."
"It is," said Chris. "I promise you it is." He glanced at the television again, then looked at me awkwardly. "Do you need me to go, for tonight? I can hide out in my room, get a couple hours' sleep ... "
I couldn't say yes to that, even though Chris could clearly use the sleep. I'd been waiting too long for him to get home. I may have lost track of time, left the video running a little too long, but I still wanted him here. "No," I said haltingly, my own eyes drawn back to the screen in almost morbid fascination.
"Okay," he said, still awkward, clearly unsure or quite how to handle this. "You okay, man?"
I nodded at him, or rather I nodded at the television in acknowledgment of his question. "Was ... " I began, my voice still maddeningly halting. "Is that really me, Chris?" I saw him flinch.
"Yeah," he whispered, reaching out for me hesitantly -- more hesitantly than normal --- as though unsure if I would welcome it. If I needed it. I did. "It was you, Joey. It isn't you now."
"It is, though," I argued, making meaningless gestures with my hands. "That's me. I'm him. I know I've changed, Chris, but I'm still that guy. I have to live with that."
"Yeah, you do," he said, and I was grateful for his honesty. Grateful that he was Chris and he wouldn't hurt me, but he wouldn't lie to me, either. "And you are," he added. "You have been. Joey ... why did you want to watch this tonight?"
I took his hand and squeezed it. "I started out watching the press conference. The one you guys did ... while I was in detox. I had to see it, Chris. I needed to know. What it had been like, for you guys, I mean. The things ... "
" ... we wouldn't say," finished Chris, and I could tell just form his voice that he understood. That he wouldn't have to ask why anymore. "Did it help?" he asked after another awkward moment had passed.
"Help me understand?" I clarified. "Yeah, it did. It explained a lot. Help me feel better? No, not really. I can't believe ... I put you guys through that. That I let things get that bad. That -- a lot of things. I can't believe you forgave me."
"You're our Joey," he said, but I heard 'you're my Joey', and I was pretty sure it wasn't just wishful thinking. He sat back into the couch like he was settling in for a while. "We were all pretty shaken up at that press conference," he told me. "None of us had even had a chance to deal with it yet, we hadn't even really talked to each other, let alone anyone else. We only knew the basics of how the tour was going to be postponed but not cancelled. We were just ... not ready for what they threw at us."
"I'm sorry," I said again, even though the words felt entirely inadequate for how I was feeling, not to mention for how they'd felt at the time. "It was pretty harsh. It would have been bad even if you had been ready for it."
"Yeah," he agreed quite honestly. "Even if we'd had answers for their questions, it would have been hard to deal with them. None of us talk about it much, Joey. I think we're all just glad it's over with."
"So how do I stop feeling so awful that I put you through that?" I asked softly, not expecting him to be able to answer. Not expecting anyone to be able to answer that one. Not expecting there to be an answer at all.
"I don't know," he said anyway. "I just know ... as hard as that was and as glad as we are that it's behind us, we're ten times happier that this is all over for you now. That you're feeling better, and are ... you again, more or less."
"Thanks," I said, reaching for his leg and squeezing it. That reminded me I had every reason to be confident in my relationship with the guys, but didn't do much for my guilt. "And thank you for doing it. No one said anything awful about me at all. And I wouldn't have blamed you if you had."
"We're a group," said Chris firmly, and from his tone of voice there was no doubt in his mind about that at all. "Not just in name, Joey. We're a group and we've been through some pretty rough times together and you guys are the best friends I'll ever have. This is one of those rough times, right now, but it's not the only one. Not by far. And we're in the home stretch now."
"It's going to be a long time before I feel completely right again," I said, worried that he was thinking the home stretch meant that I would be back to 'normal' again, even though I knew better. This was Chris, and he knew better.
"Yeah, but you're on your way." I know he meant it to assure me that I wasn't as bad off as I thought I was, but it did more to convince me that Chris understood that this wasn't a process that was going to end some time in the near future. "What else did you watch, Joey? I don't even know what was in there." He gestured vaguely at the box, but he was still looking at me.
"A lot," I said, my voice more fervent than I'd meant it to be. "A lot of stuff from before and a couple from after. There's an album in there, too. Of clippings and pictures and whatever. But I didn't even open that."
"Well, maybe *that's* something that we'll do together, then," said Chris, utterly non-judgmental about that. "So maybe I can tell you the stuff that happened that they didn't print." Of which there was sure to be a lot. A lot.
"Thanks," I said. "That would be ... helpful." I'd almost said good before realizing that 'good' was just a handy word to use, and in this case it definitely wasn't accurate. Looking through that album wasn't going to be good at all. "But not tonight."
"No, not tonight," he agreed. "I think we've both already been through enough tonight without throwing that into the mix."
I wondered if that was an opening to ask him how things had gone, but his face was turned away, toward the box, and I couldn't read his expression. I reached out for his shoulder, too slowly, and he turned around to face me again before I reached it.
"Man, I need to tell you about this guy behind me on the plane on the way out there," he said, his voicing gaining animation with each word. I smiled at him and privately acknowledged that no, now apparently wasn't the time. "I swear, he was the most obnoxious person I ever met, and I have met a lot of obnoxious people ... "
When Chris finally lapsed into silence, exhausting his supply of new anecdotes, I got up to eject the tape, sliding it carefully into its slot in the box. There were still many left I hadn't watched and I would, one of these days, but for right now Chris was right -- I'd seen as many of them as I needed to. Or could.
"You want to tell me about your visit with Dani?" I suggested as I sat back down, finding the remote buried between the cushions already and turning the TV off with an audible snap.
"There's not much to tell," said Chris, slumping down even further and looking profoundly unhappy that the conversation had taken a sudden turn towards that. "We broke up."
"Yeah, I figured," I said awkwardly. "I kinda figured before you went out there. Did you kinda figure too?" He just nodded, almost too briefly to catch, and crossed his arms over his chest. For a few moments he just closed into himself, and I let him, then he let go and stretched his arms out.
"I didn't want it to be that," he said finally, "but it was actually good that it was. And I think you know what I mean by that."
"I do," I said, after pausing for a moment, thinking this looked to be one of those times when pushing would do me no good, and Chris was going to say what he wanted to, when he wanted to.
"How are you doing?" he asked me after a couple more moments had passed. "Still shook up?"
"Yeah," I had to admit. "I saw ... a lot of stuff I didn't remember. Didn't really want to, I guess. It's been rough for a long time, hasn't it?" Chris sensed the question was rhetorical, and didn't answer me. "I probably should have quit a couple tapes back. It's like watching a train wreck."
"You're not a train wreck," he said softly, staring at me but almost looking like he was staring through me, his mind somewhere else.
"I think you know what I mean," I said, the weight of it starting to get to me again. The sheer immensity of what I'd been, and where I still was.
"Stay right where you are," said Chris, waggling a finger at me and getting up abruptly enough to tilt me backwards into the arm of the couch. "I know you have this somewhere. You have everything somewhere."
"You know I have what somewhere?" I said, struggling to sit up as he flung the doors to my tape cabinet open and started searching. "The tapes are in the box on the floor, Chris. I haven't moved them."
"No, no, not those," he said impatiently, digging around. "You've seen quite enough of those for one day, Joe. I'm looking for something else." He was on his knees now, rooting around at the back of a shelf, so the only thing I could see clearly was his ass sticking out at me. I resisted the urge to do something vulgar -- and only because I wasn't sure what kind of mood he was in yet -- and waited for him to come back out.
"Got it!" he said, backing out on his knees with a videotape clenched in his fist. "I knew you'd have it."
"Have what?" I repeated, trying to catch a glimpse of what he was holding.
"Backstage footage from that video shoot," said Chris vaguely as he popped the tape into the VCR. "You're your brother's biggest fan, Joey. I think you have a copy of everything he's ever taped of us. I was sure we'd watched this together ages ago, that's how I knew it'd be around."
"What would be around?" I asked, finally getting exasperated with him and trying to snag the back of his shirt with my hand so I could pull him onto to couch with me. "I don't think it's too difficult a question for you, Chris."
"This," he said, hitting play before finally sitting back down, right on top of my feet of course. I yanked them out and set them on his lap. "I just figured you needed to watch some happier times. It wasn't always like that other stuff, Joey. Things were really good for us for a long time, and I don't want you to forget that."
"Oh," I said softly as the screen came to life and I followed Steve's somewhat jittery camera movements as he made his way onto the set. No professional equipment for him back then, just a camcorder and a whole lotta admiration for what we were doing.
It only took me about five minutes to figure out why Chris had picked this one. Me and Justin had spent almost the entire time goofing off together, spraying each other with water bottles and trying to make the other laugh at the worst possible moments. Like when the camera was rolling. Man, did we ever get hell for that one, but it was worth it.
"I had fun that day," I said aloud, shifting onto my side with my feet still resting in Chris lap. He grabbed one of them between his hands and started rubbing it gently, coaxing a moan out of me within about five seconds. "Damn," I murmured, still watching the TV and knowing that Chris probably was, too. "I spend my whole adult life with you and I'm just now finding out how good you are at that?"
" I have many hidden talents," said Chris, trying to sound mysterious but failing when he started to laugh. "Maybe if you'd stuck your feet in my lap sooner you would have found out."
"Last time I stuck my feet in your lap you bit them," I pointed out, hoping I wasn't giving him any ideas.
He started pulling my foot up toward his mouth, then just grinned at me and started rubbing it again. "You looked like you could use a little soothing," he said, a little more seriously now. Then he yelped and pointed at the screen happily. "Look, look, you remember that dog that was hanging around the whole time?"
"Yeah, sure," I said dryly, glancing where he was pointing. "I remember how you fed it scraps of your lunch and after that nothing we did could get him to go away. He almost ended up in the video."
"We should have let him," argued Chris. "He was cute. That little puppy could have been a star. A star, I tell you. And he gave good nuzzle, too."
"He was hardly a puppy," I laughed as the rather large dog came into view again, prancing across the set like he owned it.
"All dogs are puppies if you treat 'em right," said Chris, sounding wistful. "You and me need to get a dog?"
"A dog?" I repeated incredulously, even though the idea made me smile. "We can't even find someone to water the plants while we're gone, Chris, how are we gonna take care of a dog?"
"We could take him with us on tour," he insisted. "And that way when one of us needed company and the other wasn't around we could curl up with our puppy and feel loved."
I think that was when it really struck me that we were talking about this as "our" place. Our yard. Our puppy. Without a Dani to go back to, Chris didn't really have anywhere else to go. And it didn't seem like he was in a hurry to find one anymore.
"A dog on the bus, Chris?" I said, trying not to burst his bubble. "With us? That's just a disaster waiting to happen." I couldn't tell if his crushed look was real or put on so I added, "Maybe after."
"You'll see the light," he assured me, looking back at the screen. "Hey, look at that, that was right before we had that awful time in wardrobe, you remember?" he asked me, squeezing my ankle. "When the air conditioning broke?"
"I looked good, huh," I said, my eyes fixed on the screen. It was almost as hard to watch this as it was to watch the other tapes, just for different reasons.
"Yeah," agreed Chris fervently. "You looked great. This was before ... stuff started."
"I meant compared to now," I murmured, suddenly not wanting to get into it but it was too late once the words were out. It wasn't the kind of thing Chris would let go.
Sure enough, he turned his head to look at me, squeezing my ankle again. "You're kidding, right?" he asked, knowing full well I wasn't. "Joe, you're such a goof." Before I knew it, he was lifting my shirt and blowing a raspberry on my stomach. "You look fabulous."
It's impossible not to laugh when someone is doing that to you, so I did. "Do not."
"Do too," he said, giving me a quick peck on the lips before sitting back again. "And I should know. Now shush and watch."
I shushed and watched, just in time to see Chris step into the shot, with Dani at his side, holding his hand and whispering something in his ear. They were both smiling so wide, and when he looked at her he looked so lovestruck I almost laughed. Until I remembered. Chris's hands had stilled on my feet and he was staring at the screen like nothing else existed.
But only for a moment, then he started up again, smiling faintly and glancing toward me. "This really was a long time ago, wasn't it? I never dreamed back than that things were gonna end the way they did."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be," he said, shaking his head. "You don't have to be sorry for everything." But he was setting my feet aside and getting up off the couch. "I'll be right back. I need a drink."
I let them sink back into the couch cushion as I watched him disappear into the kitchen, more or less ignoring the tape now though I heard bits and pieces of a conversation about tweezing someone's eyebrows in the background. I assumed we were talking about Lance. When Chris hadn't come back a few minutes later I got up myself and found him sitting on the kitchen counter, reading the directions on the back of a package of Kool-Aid.
"This doesn't look so hard," he said after I'd been standing there silently for a moment.
I took the package out of his hand and set it on the counter next to him. "You gonna be okay?" I asked.
"With the Kool-Aid? Sure. How badly can I mess that up?"
"With breaking up with Dani," I clarified, saying it flat out. "You knew what I meant."
"Yeah, yeah," he said, dismissing the question though not my concern. "It was hard to actually do it ... but it was really something that had already happened to us, a while ago. We just had to finally face that and move on."
"You glad you went out there?"
"Yeah," he admitted. "I mean, it was a crazy long trip, just for that, but it was good to be with her. To see her. You just can't do something like that over the phone." He looked down and began swinging his legs, his heels hitting the lower cupboard with faint, dull thuds. "I'm kinda glad it's done," he said. "Waiting longer would have just ... dragged things on. Kept us both from doing some things that we wanted to."
"Did she have someone else, Chris?" I asked softly. Gently, I hoped, because no matter who you were asking, that was a touchy subject.
"No," he said, shaking his head and thankfully not looking like he took offence. "That's not quite what I meant." Though he sounded unsure of that, and I really felt for him if he had his suspicions but wasn't ready to talk about it. "She just spent a lot of time waiting for me. And that's not fair to either of us, but especially not to her."
"I ... don't know what to say," I admitted then, still not sure of how Chris really felt about this. I thought I'd been learning to read him as well as he'd been learning to read me, but at the moment he was completely blank to me.
"You don't have to say anything," he assured me, a soft smile crossing his face. "Seriously. It's been a tough night ... but I'm exactly where I want to be right now." Which could have meant a lot of things, but from the way his eyes caught mine I guessed that he meant he'd chosen to be here with me.
"I don't want to be the reason the two of you broke up," I told him hesitantly, resting my hand on his upper arm to hold his attention.
'You're not," he said quickly, as though he'd been expecting that from me. "We broke up because of me, okay? And because me and her weren't working anymore. Because we were starting to want different things. You're blaming yourself for enough, Joey, don't you dare take this on, too." Then he leaned forward and kissed me, locking his arms around my neck.
"Okay, I won't," I promised him softly. "As long as you're sure."
"I'm sure," he said, giving me an earnest smile that I couldn't help but trust. "Thanks, Joey. For ... I don't know. Being you." Then he leaned in and kissed me again and my eyes closed as our lips parted.
My palms drifted down Chris's back as we kissed, almost cupping his butt in my hands. "Is this crossing the line?" I asked, somewhat nervously, as we parted for a moment.
There was a long pause where we both didn't move, kept touching each other and staring at each other and wondering what the other was going to say.
"I ... I don't think there's a line anymore," he confessed finally.
Then we were holding each other in ways we never had before as we continued to kiss. I lost track of who was supposed to be comforting who, and whether or not this was even in the realm of comforting anymore.
I pulled away; I had to know. "What does this mean?" I asked, gripping his shoulder and staring into his eyes, the barely-contained emotion in my own surely obvious.
"It means," said Chris, grasping for words, "that ... you and me ... we're something more than we thought."
"And what did we think we were?" I needed to hear this from Chris, needed to know it wasn't just me projecting what I wanted on him.
"Just friends," he whispered.
"So that means," I said slowly, planting a kiss on his nose that was half-teasing and half-tender, "that we're more than just friends?"
"I think it's what we both want, now," he said, tentatively, still staring into my eyes, searching me like I was searching him.
"I know it's what I want," I told him finally.
He smiled, both shyly and eagerly. "I know now it's what I want, too."
"I think it's what we've been, without realizing," I added, touching his face with curious fingers, tracing his jaw, his throat. "Without this."
"We should talk about this," said Chris. His lips were red and wet and there were few things I wanted more than to kiss him again.
"I think we've moved past talking about it," I said after a long moment of staring at them. "Right now we need to do this."
"Not here," said Chris, sliding off the counter and into my arms. "Not in the kitchen."
I agreed with him that the kitchen was hardly the place to do this, hardly a place we could be comfortable and tender and physically intimate for just about the first time, but I didn't really want to go anywhere either, and had no idea where we'd go if I did.
"Living room?" I suggested as my hand moved restlessly over the small of his back.
He shook his head with a slight smile. "More and more lately," he said, so close to me I could feel his breath on my neck, "I've been feeling like there's a time and a place for everything. The time is when the people involved are ready for it. The place ... is somewhere special to them." I still didn't know what he was driving at until he nudged me with his torso towards the sliding doors. "Let's go out back."
Which yes, was perfect. There was no place I could think of that was more 'ours' than my back yard.
"Hang on," I said, dashing into the living room before he could stop me and grabbing the blanket off the back of the couch. "Now I'm ready," I finished as I returned to his side, wrapping an arm so very comfortably around his waist and leaning in for another soft, wet kiss.
I'd never seen Chris look at me quite like this. Actually, I wasn't sure I'd seen Chris so visibly aroused at all -- even though he'd always had affection to spare for us, his relationships had been private things. He kept the gaze up for a long moment, studying my face then catching my eyes and holding them. I didn't even think of turning away.
Blindly he reached behind him to open the sliding door, fumbling to unlatch it and finally jerking it open, taking a step backwards and pulling me along with him. He didn't have to say anything to encourage me to follow, just had to keep looking at me like that, like I was the only person who existed.
He led me outside, leaving the door open behind us, going past the deck chairs and past the pool and onto a soft, flat patch of grass where he took the blanket and carefully spread it out for us. That was the only moment he let go of my eyes, catching them again as he sat down and reached up for my hand so I would join him.
"Warm night," I said softly to break the thick silence. I worried when he didn't reply, but then he grinned at me and it was so familiar that I had to grin back. I was still grinning when he leaned in to kiss me, long and slow and deep again. His hand circled my back and tugged at my shirt until I relented and broke the kiss to let him slip it off over my head.
I expect his lips to return, but he paused with the shirt in his hands and looked down, away from my face. I knew he was going to do it only the moment before he did, finally setting my shirt carefully aside and gently taking both my hands, turning my wrists up to expose the scars that criss-crossed my arms.
"Do they still hurt?" he asked as his thumbs gently caressed my palms.
"Only when I look at them," I murmured, leaving the rest of that thought, that memory, unsaid. I closed my eyes against it, but Chris's hands reminded me what was there, and I could feel his gaze, even if I couldn't see it.
And so I felt the whisper of his breath on my wrists as he leaned down to kiss them, his lips soft and wet on that sensitive skin.
"I know you'll never forget," he said, "but you don't have to let it hurt you anymore. You've paid the price for all your mistakes. More than."
But it wasn't about that, not exactly, and I didn't know how to explain that to him. "I'm not ready for it to not hurt," I said finally when the right words didn't just come, opening my eyes to look at him.
He nodded rather than try to convince me otherwise. "But you will be one day," he said, "and I hope it's soon. Because I don't think you deserve to feel this." But he didn't know, probably couldn't fathom the guilt inside me for so many of the things I'd done. Chris's forgiveness meant so very much to me, but it didn't fix everything.
He brought my wrists up to his lips to kiss them this time, embracing the scars rather than denying them like I knew almost everyone else would. It was touching, if awkward. Here I was seeing Chris take a step I wasn't sure I was ready to yet.
Then he let go with one of his hands and cupped my chin. "This has been a long time coming, hasn't it?" he said, and suddenly there was that crooked grin, that glint of humor to offset the concern in his eyes. "We've both been a little blind, I think."
"I knew," I murmured quietly as I studied those eyes, forgetting that maybe he needed to see a smile on my face, too. "I knew how I felt, but you were taken ... "
"Not so taken as we thought," he replied. I would have worried that I'd reminded him again of Dani, and of the so-recent break-up, but his smile never left his face. "Dani and I are still exactly what we have been for a long time now. Friends. And maybe that's part of the reason I apparently felt free to fall for you."
"The guys are gonna shit," I said, the first thing that came into my head. Even though I knew there was at least one who wouldn't be surprised at all.
"I don't care about them right now," said Chris dismissively, his eyes still locked with mine and looking very big and brown and full of affection. "We spend enough time worrying about other people and what they'll think or say. This is about us, tonight."
And neither one of us had to clarify what "us" was anymore; even if we hadn't talked about it, the feelings were pretty clear in both of us now that we weren't trying to ignore them or conceal them.
He didn't let me reply, leaning in for a kiss that left me hotter than any of our others. "Fuck, I love you," I blurted out when he sat back.
"Yeah, I think we both already knew that part," he said with a wry grin, his one hand -- probably unconsciously -- still stroking my scars. "Now we can just express it in a few new ways."
"Just a few?" I challenged, finally smiling back. It was astonishing to see the glow come to his face when I did.
"Maybe more than a few," he admitted, positively cheerful now and leaning over me, practically forcing me down onto the blanket. "Did I ever tell you what I once did with a pair of panty hose and a couple of those clippy things that you use to hold down tablecloths?"
I laughed as I slid down onto my back, looking up at him. "I've been wondering what sex with you would be like," I confessed, "but I think I always knew it would be anything but dull."
I ran my hand slowly down Chris's side as he sprawled drowsily across the blanket next to me, his skin still feeling slightly sweat-damp but cooling quickly in the early morning air. His eyes drifted shut as I watched but he squirmed slightly, the blanket bunched and folded beneath us now.
I caressed him for a few more moments, running my hand from his hip to halfway down his thigh and back again, then sat up and tried in vain to straighten things. "Come here," I said finally, tugging on Chris's arm. He rolled onto his side, still mostly on the blanket, and looked at me like I should be doing nothing but getting right back on there with him. "No, really," I insisted, though the distraction of his naked body was tempting. "Come with me."
He groaned a little as he got to his feet and offered me a hand up. "This had better be good," he murmured, pressing his face to my neck and slinging an arm around me, low on my hips.
"You would doubt me, right now?" I challenged him.
"You made us get up," he said, squeezing me. "I'm already doubting your sanity. Not to mention my abilities."
"Well, you have nothing to worry about there," I assured him, trying not to sound too crude about it. It wouldn't even have mattered, though, if he hadn't been. What was going on between us definitely wasn't all about the physical. "I'm just taking you someplace more comfortable."
He looked at me like that was about the lamest thing he'd ever heard. "I was comfortable," he said. "Especially when you were still there with me."
I tugged on him again, leading him to the deck, and after a moment of resistance he followed along like a puppy, willing to go wherever I led. The dark sky was just beginning to show a hint of dusty pink as I stretched out on one of the deck chairs. The leather felt different against my bare skin, but comfortable all the same. Rather than take the other, Chris stretched out half on top and half beside me, and it was like we'd been like this forever.
"I guess Gary will be picking you up this morning," he murmured as he pressed his cheek against my shoulder and neck, curling drowsily against me. A comment like that could have ruined the mood, but it didn't. It felt natural. It was natural, the kind of conversation we would have had any day of the week.
"No," I said, kissing his soft hair. "I have an appointment with Karen this morning. I'm ... definitely going to have a lot to talk to her about. Will you take me?"
"Do you even have to ask?" he countered, closing his eyes but smiling as he did.
"Thanks," I whispered. He probably didn't know how much it meant to me that he would do that for me, especially when I hadn't even be able to talk to him about it for so long. The things I'd been through seemed to give Chris the patience of a saint, and I could probably never let him know how much that had helped me these past couple of weeks.
As Chris dozed in my arms, his weight comfortable against me and not nearly as restless in his sleep as I'd always known him to be, I sat back in the chair and watched the sun rise and though about what the next day, week, year, lifetime would hold.