I smarted a bit at that comment. I felt a tad bit ashamed. I locked the gate behind us and laid the pizza at the edge of the tub, conscious that he was watching me.
“You’re not a pig, Dex,” I reassured him. “You’re just…”
“Me?”
“You’re definitely you.” And you can be wonderful.
We stood a few feet apart, both of our robes still on, waiting for the other one to undress first. So silly when you thought about it.
So I disrobed first. And Dex gasped at the sight of me. Not in lust, but in balls to the wall concern.
“Jesus, Perry. You’re hurt.” He sounded hurt as he said it.
I looked down. In the pool’s wavering glow I could see a multitude of bruises and scratches covering my legs and arms.
“I’m not hurt,” I told him quickly. “I’m cold.”
I reached for the metal railing and eased myself into the hot pool, the scalding water burning my skin wonderfully, stinging at any wounds I had until the pain was gone. A trail of shivers and sparking nerves followed in its wake, rushing up as the water rose around me.
I looked up. He was still staring down at me, like he was caught in something I couldn’t see.
“Get your ass in this hot tub right now,” I told him. “I’m fine and getting better with every second.”
It was true. Now that I was leaning back in the water up to my neck, I was overcome by extreme pleasure and a rare feeling of relaxation.
Dex continued to hesitate, then he finally dropped the robe. I swear, he had to make everything so dramatic, including getting into a hot tub. Not that I blamed him with that body. I tried not to stare at him in his grey boxer briefs. It was hard not to. It was damn hard.
He came in the water beside me, gasping at the heat as he went. Eventually he settled on the other side of the tub and leaned his head back against the edge. “Oh my God, please just leave me here.”
“That can be arranged. You’ll be really pruney though.”
He straightened up and lowered his gaze at me. “Will you go to the hospital tomorrow?”
“I told you I’m fine.”
“Will you?”
“We’ll be busy tomorrow if we have to help them with the investigation.”
“Will you?”
“Argh fine. Now give me pizza.” I knew I had no choice to comply because Dex usually asked as a formality. If he really wanted me to do something, he’d find a way to make me.
“Done,” he said and opened the box for me. I picked out a couple of slices and shoved them in my mouth, completely ravenous. I washed it down with the cold Coke that was the sweetest, most precious drink I had ever tasted.
We ate in silence for a bit. There was no talking, not with our appetites, and it wasn’t long before we both polished off the whole box. In hindsight we should have ordered two pizzas but Dex warned me that it would have been too much of a shock to our system. He was right, as usual.
With the food out of the way and there nothing else to do but talk or stare at each other, our conversation turned to more serious topics. We talked about Christina. We talked about Rigby. We talked about Mitch. And we talked about the beast.
It felt good to just lay it all out there with him, all the things I’d kept to myself about the whole ordeal. He could only hear my thoughts sometimes and it felt good to have a direct interaction with him. To know he was listening. We were in this together as we always had been and he was always going to be that person who understood. No matter what happened in the future, he had to stay a part of my life. If not for just being that one person in the world who understood what I had to go through, the things I saw, the way I felt when I was faced with something impossible. He went through all of it too. We really were cut from the same cloth.
We were both starting to get quite wrinkly from the water when I brought up the dilemma with the episode.
“Do you think Jimmy will be mad if we don’t air it?” I wondered.
“We’re not airing it, kiddo. You know that. It wouldn’t be right.”
I nodded, feeling a weird mix of disappointment and relief. “And he’ll understand?”
“Definitely,” he answered. When he saw the puzzlement on my brow, he went on, softly, “Your priorities change when you almost lose the person you need. Jimmy will be glad that we’re alive and have both our arms.”
I looked down at the frothy water. “So much for my first gig as a cameraperson.”
“You did great. You’re welcome to the job if you want it.”
I offered him a half-smile. “Don’t tell me you want to take over my position now.”
“Oh it’s your position again is it?” he finished off the rest of the Coke and wiped his mouth. “Well baby, I don’t blame you. You’re much prettier than I am.”
“It’s the boobs,” I said modestly.
His eyes crinkled softly at the corners and I gave him credit for holding my gaze and not glancing downward. A beat passed, then he looked at the gate. “Well, I think I’m going to head back. I’ll fall asleep in here if I stay any longer.”
“OK,” I said. My chest pinched. I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him to stay in the tub with me. I wanted to keep talking to him. I wanted to keep looking at him.
Plus, he had just called me baby again. I needed to hear more of that.
He got up slowly but once out of the tub, he scrambled to wrap himself in the robe and picked up mine, holding it out for me.
It was hard leaving that heat but I got out as quickly as I could. He wrapped the robe around me, picked up the garbage and the glasses and we did a quick jog through the parking lot toward our rooms, steam rising off of our bodies, dissipating in the starry sky.
We burst through his door and I walked toward the adjoining one to my room. Every step I took felt long, felt heavy. I ran a million reasons through my head of why I should stay. I thought of a million things I could say, including “I was wrong.”
But I couldn’t say any of them.
I just didn’t have the words.
I reached for the door knob in slow motion and he called after me.
“Perry?”
I paused. A hope ran through me. I turned to look at him.
I’d never seen him look so…lost.
“Sleep well,” he said in a strained voice. “If you need me, you know where I am.”
The room next door.
I swallowed hard and gave him a grateful nod. Then disappeared into my room, the door slowly closing on his solemn eyes.
~~~
I did not sleep well. I did not sleep at all. It was 2am and I was still tossing and turning on the bed. My mind was racing and it wouldn’t stop. But it wasn’t about the beast. It wasn’t about Mitch or Christina or any of the shit that tried to kill me in the last 24 hours. As fantastical as all of that was, it no longer mattered. It had happened and we made it out alive. It was done.
And so were Dex and I. After everything I had said to him the other day, there was no way we couldn’t be done. The man opened himself up to me for the first time and I was so pig-headed, so stubborn, that I threw it away. He practically gave me his heart and I turned my back on it.
I was hurt. I was so hurt by what he did to me. But now I was just hurting myself. I was starting to wonder if this was even about Dex after all. Was it he that I couldn’t forgive? Or was it myself? For the things I had done to him?
He was right. He had been wrong to hurt me, to treat me the way he did. But he wasn’t alone. I lied to him. Right to his face. Because I was too scared to admit to him that I had been in love with him. I had lied to him, I had messed with his medication and I was acting like I could do no wrong. We were both at fault and I was starting to see the light that I apparently was.
I gripped the corner of my pillow and swallowed back tears of frustration. I had lied because I was scared. I had thrown love away because I was scared. All because I was scared. And I was still scared, no matter how deep I fell into my self-loathing, I knew there was a new chord of terror waiting to emerge. It was the fear of losing myself all over again, of letting go and never getting my soul back. It was the fear of learning to love again and having my heart broken. It was the fear of being a fool.
And it was the same fear that millions of people faced every single day. The fear of loving someone. The fear of being loved. Yet people did it anyway.
So why couldn’t I?
I rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. A pale light from the motel’s awning filtered in through the window. I was alone, lying in bed, feeling like my heart was breaking into a million pieces again, and there was no one to blame but myself. The agony slowly spread from my center out into my bones. It ached. I ached.
But it wasn’t over. It wouldn’t be over until I tried to make it right.
I had a feeling it wasn’t where I lay.
It was in the room next door.
I pulled back my covers and padded my way through the dark over to our adjoining door. My hand hovered above the knob as last minute thoughts of pride ran through my head. I decided to risk being a fool.
I opened the door, then opened the other door.
The bathroom light in Dex’s room was on, bathing it in a slant of low light. I saw his silhouette on the bed turn over and he slowly sat up.
“Perry?” he asked, the sleep clogging up his throat. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said softly. “Maybe everything.”
He sat up a bit more and reached over for the bedside lamp but I cried out, “No. Please. Leave the light off.”
He paused then took his arm back. I could feel the bewilderment coming from him, it made the silence heavier as he thought of what to say.
“I just want you to stay there, please,” I told him.
He swallowed hard. “OK.”
I walked over so I was at the foot of his bed. I could see half his body lit in the grainy light. I knew I looked the same. Half of me in light, half of me in dark.
I stood there, staring at him, and slowly gripped the bottom of my t-shirt. I raised my arms above my head and pulled the shirt right off, dropping it to the ground beside me. I was completely topless and though I couldn’t read his face properly I could hear him take in a sharp breath of air.
I tugged at the edge of my underwear and deliberately slipped them off. Once they were at my feet I stepped out of them and crawled onto the bed.
“Oh my God,” Dex whispered as I came closer.
I didn’t let myself feel modest. I just went with it. I wanted to give it all to him.
I crawled very, very slowly, like a big cat, giving Dex time to slide forward under the sheets and lie back.