Down River by John Hart Read Free Book Online Page B

brightest days had run shallow.
    But not here.
    I started the car.
    Everything here was so goddamned real.
    Back at Robin’s, I cut the tape from my ribs and stood under pounding water for as long as I could. I found the Percocet and took two, thought about it, and then swallowed another. Then, with all of the lights off, I climbed into bed.
    When I woke it was dark outside, but a light shone from the hallway. The drugs still had a grip on me, and deep as I’d been, the dream still found me: a dark curve of red spatter, and an old brush too big for small hands.
    Robin stood next to the bed, dark against the light. She was very still. I couldn’t see her face. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she told me.
    “What doesn’t?”
    She unbuttoned her shirt, then slipped it off. She wore nothing else. Light spilled through the gaps between her fingers, the space between her legs. She was a silhouette, a paper doll. I thought of the years we’d shared, of how close we’d come to forever. I wished that I could see her face.
    When I lifted the blanket, she slipped in, on her side, and put a leg over me. “Are you sure?” I asked.
    “Don’t talk.”
    She kissed the side of my neck, rose to kiss my face, and then covered my mouth. She tasted as I remembered, felt the same: hard and hot and eager. She rolled on top of me, and I winced as her weight came onto my ribs. “Sorry,” she whispered, and shifted all of her weight onto my hips. A shudder moved through her. She rose above me and I saw the side of her face in the hall’s light, the dark pit of one eye and the dark hair that gleamed where the light touched it. She took my hands and placed them on her breasts.
    “This doesn’t mean anything,” she repeated; but she was lying, and we both knew it. The communion was immediate and total.
    Like stepping off a cliff.
    Like falling.
     
     
       When next I woke, she was getting dressed.
    “Hey,” I said.
    “Hey yourself.”
    “Want to talk?” I asked.
    She whipped on her shirt, started on the buttons. She could not bring herself to look at me. “Not about this.”
    “Why not?”
    “I needed to figure something out.”
    “Do you mean us?”
    She shook her head. “I can’t talk to you like this.”
    “Like what?”
    “Naked, tangled in my sheets. Put on some pants, come into the living room.”
    I pulled on pants and a T-shirt, found her sitting in a leather club chair with her legs drawn up beneath her. “What time is it?” I asked.
    “Late,” she said.
    A single lamp burned, leaving most of the room in shadow. Her face was pale and uncertain, eyes filled up with hard gray shadow. Her fingers twisted together. I looked around the room as silence stretched between us. “So, how’ve you been?” I finally asked.
    Robin came to her feet. “I can’t do this. I can’t make small talk like we saw each other last week. It’s been five years, Adam. You didn’t call or write. I didn’t know if you were alive, dead, married, still single. Nothing.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “And even with all of that, I still haven’t moved on. Yet here I am sleeping with you, and you want to know why? Because I know that you’re going to leave; and I had to find out if it was still there between us. Because if it was gone, then I’d be okay. Only if it was gone.”
    She stopped talking, turned her face away, and I understood. She’d let her guard down and now she hurt. I stood up. I wanted to stop what was coming, but she spoke over me.
    “Don’t say anything, Adam. And don’t ask me if it’s gone, because I’m about to tell you.” She turned to face me, and lied for the second time. “It’s gone.”
    “Robin…”
    She shoved her feet into untied running shoes, picked up her keys. “I’m going for a walk. Get your stuff together. When I get back we’ll see about finding you a hotel room.”
    She slammed the door behind her, and I sat down, awed again by the force of the passions that had