Love Lessons by Heidi Cullinan

Author:Heidi Cullinan [Cullinan, Heidi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2013-09-30T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Walter lay awake a long time, watching Kelly sleep.

It was ridiculous, he knew, but he was afraid to close his eyes for fear he’d wake up and this would be a dream. That he’d wake in his room, without Kelly, with his mom banging around in the kitchen, either putting on a fragile smile when he came down or ripping the veil away entirely and weeping because he was leaving, going to school and leaving her alone. That he’d find out he hadn’t picked up Kelly from the airport, kissed him in Roscoe’s and made out with him with a Disney movie as background noise.

It was ridiculous. He knew this. Even so, he fought sleep like it was a devil, letting it claim him only for long, heavy blinks before he woke himself with a sharp bite against the inside of his cheek. He traced the soft contours of Kelly’s face as he lay still and serene in his slumber beside Walter, ran his fingertip down the line of his neck, across his clavicle and around the collar of his T-shirt.

He’d done it. He’d told Kelly how he felt. Some of it. They’d kissed, made out.

Now what? Walter still didn’t know. Part of him was convinced, utterly, that this had been the biggest mistake of his life, bigger than staying home with his mom those two years.

Part of him ached so badly for this he wanted to cry.

He didn’t, but his throat was thick and his gut queasy as he kept tracing Kelly’s skin, as things he’d promised himself he wouldn’t think about stirred like dead leaves inside him. That was the funny thing about feelings. He’d learned this years ago, even before college—he could lock things away, but it was a hard turn, that valve. He had to shut whole parts of himself off when he closed it. This had been discussed, at length, in the therapy he’d allowed himself when things with his mother had gone particularly sour. You can’t shut your heart off forever, the counselor had warned him.

Turned out she was right.

Walter skimmed his hand over Kelly’s chest, lightly so as not to wake him, but enough to let himself feel, to learn those planes he’d been longing for. It was important not to wake him, because Walter was feeling like a real idiot right now, wanting to blurt out everything, all his secrets that weren’t anything at all, stupid old wounds that upset him. Things he could look back on now and see were problems, scars he carried that got in his way even now, events that if he hadn’t been so young and clueless would have told him a lot, could have kept him from feeling so lousy. Sad truths about how sick his mother was—oh, not sick enough to be a real danger, no, but sick enough to make life lonely and confusing. Ugly truths about his dad and how fucking inattentive and selfish he was, how his dad’s worthlessness mixed with his mother’s Russian roulette was a nightmare roofie cocktail.

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