Not Yet Mine
"You are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not."-Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
I.
She isn't his to love when he first sees her, and yet he can't help himself. She's beautiful and strong and wounded, this girl with the hole in her heart and sorrow on her shoulders, and he thinks that kissing her would taste of ashes and tears mingled with impossible sweetness.
She's Ben's, of course - and there he corrects himself, because a girl like her can never belong to anyone but herself, but Ben loves her, and Tommy tells himself to step away, because he loves Ben like a brother. But his heart doesn't listen.
II.
Later, Lindy is sitting on the curb, face starkly white in the glare of police lights, hands fainting trembling. He wants to reach for her, to comfort himself as much as her, because Ben is dead dead, dead, and never coming back, and he feels sick to his core, as if by loving the girl his best friend loved he had condemned him from the start, but he doesn't bridge the gap between them, only wraps his arms around himself as if shivering in the cold.
"Ben is dead." She says quietly, and both of them know that, of course; he dragged her away from his body on that rooftop, but he knows she's grounding herself, trying to catch the tatters in her hands and wrap herself in them, shore herself up against whatever life will batter her with next.
Words choke in his throat, strangling him. He lowers himself to the step beside her, and she wraps her arms around herself as if mimicking him. It's a long time before either of them move.
III.
Whatever they become to each other, he doesn't try to define it. Sometimes he thinks they could be friends, and it would be enough for him, that he could live with her simply near and safe, as long as she was happy.
"Take care of that girl." He hears Ben's voice say, somewhere in his mind, and he does, with all he has in him, protects her with everything he has.
He kisses her, only once, and it's half acting, and half hope, and more than he'd expected to have. She tastes of fire and warmth, and he pretends, only for the space between breaths, that she's his, because it can only hurt him when the next breath comes and shatters the spell.
They stop the killer, finally, but she slips away from him - from him, as if he ever had her at all - and he knew, somehow, all along, that trying to hold her was like trying to pin down the wind, even before she's gone.
IV.
She comes back three months after she left, shows up without warning on his doorstep. She doesn't say a word when he opens the door, and if months of running on coffee and little sleep have changed him her eyes don't reflect it. She only drops her suitcases on the floor and wraps her arms around him, trembling warmth and bone-deep weariness, and he half holds her up and sags into her, breathing in the scent of her hair. He's half certain it's a dream, and he keeps his eyes closed, even when Boris whines, pawing at his leg, because if it isn't real he can at least stay in it for a few moments, linger in a world where Lindy came back to him.
"Are you okay?" Her voice is muffled, against his shirt, and he's never heard her sound so uncertain, so frail.
"I am now." He says, and he thinks his voice must sound off, even to her, deceptively strong edges barely supporting a crumbling center. He's fairly certain that if he wakes up now, or even if she lets him go, that he'll crack down the center, shattering on the floor.
She moves back, but her hands stay on his arms, as if balancing herself. He doesn't ask where she's been, or what's happened to her, because she'll tell him in time, if she can, and if not, it doesn't matter. Only one thing does.
"Are you staying?" Tommy asks quietly, voice barely above a whisper, threaded with tentative hope, and her fingers tremble on his arms, even as her head slowly nods.
"Yes."
She isn't his, he thinks, because a girl like her can never belong to anyone but herself, but he loves her, and there's something in her eyes, a difference in her loneliness that gives him hope. She may not love him today, or even tomorrow, but maybe someday.
Maybe. It's enough to live on.