Before I Fall

“—use them, that would be gross. We actually have a housekeeper who comes twice a week and—”

“Kent? I said okay. I mean, I’d like to stay. If you don’t mind.”

He stands there for a second with his mouth hanging open as though he’s sure he’s misheard me. Then he takes his hands out of his pockets, curls them and uncurls them, lifts them and drops them against his thighs. “Sure, yeah, no, that’s fine.”

But for another minute he doesn’t move. He just stares at me. The hotness returns, only this time it’s moving into my head, making everything seem cloudy and remote. My eyes are suddenly heavy.

“You’re tired,” he says, and his voice is soft again.

“It’s been a long day,” I say.

“Come on.” He reaches out his hand and without thinking I take it. It’s warm and dry, and as he leads me deeper into the house, away from the music, into the shadows, I close my eyes and remember how he used to slip his hand in mine and whisper, Don’t listen to them. Just keep walking. Keep your head up. It almost feels like no time has passed. It doesn’t feel crazy that I’m holding hands with Kent McFuller and I’m letting him lead me somewhere—it feels normal.

The music fades away altogether. Everything is so quiet. Our feet barely make a sound on the carpets, and each room is a web of shadow and moonlight. The house smells like polished wood and rain and just a little bit like chimney smoke, like someone’s recently had a fire. I think, This would be a perfect house to get snowed into.

“This way,” Kent says. He pushes open a door—it creaks on its hinges—and I hear him fumbling for a light switch on the wall.

“No,” I say.

He hesitates. “No light?”

“No light.”

Very slowly he guides me inside the room. Here it’s almost completely dark. I can barely make out the outline of his shoulders.

“The bed’s over here.”

I let him pull me over to him. We’re only inches away, and it’s like I can feel his impression in the darkness, like it’s taking on a form around him. We’re still holding hands, but now we’re face-to-face. I never realized how tall he was: at least four inches taller than I am. There’s the strangest amount of warmth coming off him. It’s everywhere, radiating outward, making my fingers tingle.

“Your skin,” I say, barely a whisper. “It’s hot.”

“It’s always this way,” he says. Something rustles in the dark and I know he has moved his arm. His fingers hover half an inch from my face, and it’s like I can see them, burning hot and white. He drops his arm, taking the warmth with him.

And it’s the weirdest thing, but standing there with Kent McFuller in a room so pitch-black it could be buried somewhere, I feel the tiniest of tiny things spark inside me, a little flame at the very bottom of my stomach that makes me unafraid.

“There are extra blankets in the closet,” he says. His lips are right by my cheek.

“Thank you,” I whisper back.

He stays until I’ve gotten into bed, and then he draws up the blankets around my shoulders like it’s normal, like he’s been putting me to bed every night of my whole life. Typical Kent McFuller.

FIVE

You see, I was still looking for answers then. I still wanted to know why. As though somebody was going to answer that for me, as though any answer would be satisfying.

Not then, but afterward, I started to think about time, and how it keeps moving and draining and flowing forever forward, seconds into minutes into days into years, all of it leading to the same place, a current running forever in one direction. And we’re all going and swimming as fast as we can, helping it along.

My point is: maybe you can afford to wait. Maybe for you there’s a tomorrow. Maybe for you there’s one thousand tomorrows, or three thousand, or ten, so much time you can bathe in it, roll around in it, let it slide like coins through your fingers. So much time you can waste it.

But for some of us there’s only today. And the truth is, you never really know.