Chapter 2: A Civilian Liaison
When my vision returns, it's fuzzy. I see pale light from far away, and I start to hear my own ragged breathing. Voices come into focus but they sound cold and strained. I wonder if I'm wearing earplugs and try to lift my hands to my head to check, but someone holds my wrists down.
Then I feel the pounding in my head.
I think I moan, even though I don't mean to, and someone says, "She's coming around."
I see a face in front of me start to become clear, a smile. "Coming where?" I whisper.
The face in front of me smiles wider, it think it glows, and perfect lips part in a light laugh. I want to ask if she's an angel, but when she looks down at the rest of my body, I recognize her fluttering lashes. I try to form her name on my tongue, but instead she says, "Right here."
She shifts her body slightly and looks down at something in her hands. I think she asks me about today, and then about the President, but I can't stop reveling in the way her lips move, how she's the only thing I can see that's not fuzzy. I struggle to swallow and when she looks for my answer, all I can think to say is, "Christ, you're hot."
Her cheeks color, and a smile plays across her lips before she glances up at someone behind me. "That's the adrenaline talking. She'll be fine." And then she's gone, and I feel the pounding in my head even stronger than before. It beats in my ears with my pulse, and I think it's going to make my head burst. I try to hold my head together with my hands, but then I slip into nothingness again.
-x-
I wake up when strong arms are lifting me into one of the reclined passenger seats. I wonder fleetingly if they would mind carrying me to one of the seats in first-class, but it would be rude to ask. Soon I don't have to think about that anymore because the throbbing comes back and all I can do is focus on the rough ridges of the line where plastic meets metal on my armrest.
I think someone climbs over me into the aisle and I'm vaguely aware that moving bodies brush past me as they exit the plane. I feel a squeeze on my arm and hot breath in my ear as "You did good, kid" is whispered into my ear. And then I sit in silence, alone and counting the pulse in my ears because I need time to pass a little faster.
One, two, three, I open my eyes when I feel someone's finger along my cheek. Quinn pulls her hand away and I see blood just before she buries the finger in her other palm and smiles at me sweetly.
When I count to twenty-four, Quinn gets up to speak with someone a few rows ahead of us. I stop counting to hear what they say, but Quinn's voice is so low that it's gravely, and I can only make out a few of her words. I start to count again when she returns to my side. Six, seven, eight, and suddenly the plane is full again, people are storming towards me and I see a light flashed in my eyes.
I blink to clear my vision, and see a man in an Airport Security jacket with thin eyebrows. He smiles at me and says, "Do you know what day it is?"
I blink hard. "Tuesday," I mumble, "Uh, it's September. Twenty-third or fourth, I don't know." The man has a chipped tooth in the front, and he nods and puts his fingers to my neck.
He checks his watch as he counts the beats of my pulse like I did. "Did you black out when you hit your head?" he asks, and I can't help but wonder how he can do that—count and talk at the same time.
"Yeah, and again after that," I reply. He asks about nausea too, and tells me to move my fingers and toes. I don't know why, but the longer he talks, the lighter the pounding and the more I feel a sting on my cheek. I reach up to touch it, but the security guy grabs my wrist to stop me, like I'm a danger to myself.
When he stands up, he mumbles something to Quinn and pats my shoulder. And then he's gone. Quinn helps me out of the aisle seat and I try to tell her that I'm fine, I can walk, but then the ground moves from under me and I cling to the first headrest I can find. When I regain my footing, Quinn gently replaces the headrest with her shoulder and pulls me forward.
Then I see him—the slumped figure of a man with olive skin. He's been pushed up against the window, and I see a patch of blood on the hard plastic window frame, just above his head. Shouldn't someone be taking his pulse? Asking him what day it is? But before I can say something, Quinn is pulling at my waist, leading me forward.
She takes me all the way down the aisle and out into the terminal. I stop to rest in one of those leather-backed chairs but Quinn nervously checks her phone and squats in front of me.
"B," she says, and carefully rests her hands on my thighs. "Are you going to be alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, totally," I spit out, but I have to stop nodding because it makes the pounding worse.
"I have to go, I can't get my next flight covered. Is that okay?" She pushes the hair out of my eyes.
I try to smile and I pat her hands to shake off her concern. "Of course, go!"
"Okay, your bag is right here, maybe just rest a bit before you get up yeah?" I glance at the shoulder bag and suitcase on the floor next to me and nod, and then she's gone. I try to look for her, thank her, but scanning the terminal starts to hurt, so I close my eyes and just count for a while.
One, two, three. Someone sneezes nearby.
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. I remember the stinging on my cheek and reach up to feel the raised edge of a cut, already forming into a thin scab.
Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one. I hear an announcement on the intercom, but forget to pay attention.
At sixty-four I realize that the throbbing is going down, and at ninety-two I open my eyes again. Edges are clearer now than they were before, and at one hundred, I risk leaning forward and rising slowly to my feet. I sway at first, but quickly steady myself. I try to take a step forward, but my foot crashes against one of my bags and I lurch forward. "Dammit," I breathe, and gently reach to fumble with handles of my luggage. Maybe the extra weight in each hand will help me steady my strides.
I take a few teetering steps forward before one of my bags bounces off my thigh and twists behind me uncomfortably. I curse again and try to power through it, but stop short. Because I hear that voice.
"Hey there." She's leaning up against one of the reception stations, arms folded across her chest, aviators propped up on her head.
Suddenly the suitcases don't matter and it's not just my body that's off balance. I say, "hi," because I can't think of anything else to say. But she just stands there, waiting for me to do something else, say something else. So I say the only thing that makes any sense to me. "I'd ask if you wanted to head back to my place. But it's in New York. And we're not. And..." and so many things I can't explain them all. "And I probably have a concussion or something."
"You know where you are?"
I look around me a moment, but that doesn't help, so I squeeze my eyes shut and try to remember. "St. Paul," I say, even though it's more of a guess than anything else.
"You know St. Paul?" I must have guessed right, because there's no hint of mirth in her voice. Instead, her eyebrows are knitted together in naked concern. She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and lets her question—a dozen questions all phrased into one—hang in the air.
I let my eyes linger on that lip a little too long before I finally reply to all of them. "No, not really."
She smiles again and unfolds her arms. I try to study the way her hips sway when she walks, but she's soon at my side, pulling the luggage from my grasp and calling over her shoulder, "Come on, I'll help you," and so easily the issue is settled.
She walks steadily in front of me, occasionally checking behind her to make sure I'm still following. I quickly realize that I can't look up at the signs because the great LEDs hanging from the ceiling burn at my corneas and pinch behind my eyes. Instead, I just follow her, too lost to do anything but trust her to lead me out of the airport.
I walk closely behind, watching the way the back pockets of her jeans rise and fall with each stride. When we finally make it out into a blast of night air and she sets my bags on the curb, I find myself struggling to tell her something. It's not till her hand is in the air, hailing an approaching taxi that I figure out what it is.
"Thank you."
She turns toward me, hand still hanging above her head and smirks, "No problem. You just looked kind of confused."
The airport taxi rolls to a stop, and she's opening the car door for me when I correct her, "No, I mean, before that." I climb into the back seat, swinging my legs in after me. "Thank you for saving my life. Everyone's life probably."
She studies me from under furrowed eyebrows, weighing my words. She opens her mouth once, twice, before she responds resolutely, "You're welcome." Then she swings the door closed behind me, like it'll close my mouth too.
I don't look up when she climbs in the other side and mumbles something to the cab driver. He grunts at her and I wait for her to settle back into her seat, one leg crossed over the other, elbow propped up against the car door. The taxi pulls us into traffic. "You don't get thanked very often," I guess.
"No." She smiles, "I guess I don't stick around long enough afterward."
"You're sticking around this time."
Her eyes twinkle, "that's because you don't know St. Paul," and then she looks back out the window, her view illuminated by occasional streetlights and far-off flashes of the city.
-x-
Over the comforting hum of the engine I lull in and out of awareness, slipping between memory, unanswered questions, and the muted curve of her jaw. I still don't know her name, but I stay silent, content to watch as the fabric of her shirt pulls open slightly with the rise and fall of her chest.
Perhaps I'm so deep in my own hazy confusion that I can't even articulate the questions that might help me understand.
Perhaps I've been seduced by the mystery.
Suddenly I realize that she is looking back at me, watching as passing streetlights gleam yellow through the taxi window and run over my bangs. She runs her tongue over her bottom lip and combs delicate fingers through her hair before letting the hand fall back on the seat between us.
Her caramel hands are marred by the red cracks along her knuckles, the casualties of struggle. I unwillingly recall the rumpled jacket, the way arms were forced into odd angles, the red stain on white plastic, five o'clock shadow just barely visible behind slumped shoulders.
Our silence is interrupted by my curiosity. "That guy, on the plane," my voice cracks, but I go on, "He was dead, wasn't he?"
She responds with something like pity written across her face. "Yes."
I swallow before daring to press further, "Did you kill him?"
Her face hardens, like clay left out in the sun for too long. But she doesn't hesitate.
"Yes."
-x-
When the room only has one king bed, I should be surprised, but I'm not. I'm glad, actually. I feel like the game is over, even though I don't remember it starting. The inevitability is thrilling, it shoots through me, twists and flutters through my stomach.
I let my fingers explore the quilting of our duvet, I take in that so familiar smell of hotel sheets and the red glow of the alarm clock that reads 11:46pm. I switch on the bedside lamp so that she won't have to turn on the main lights.
I hear my luggage thump to the ground where they'll soon be forgotten, and listen to her footsteps as they come closer and stop just behind me. "Is this okay?" Her voice is deep and warm and so close to my ear that I can feel it like humming in my chest. It makes my heart beat faster and I just nod.
"How's your head feeling?"
I let my eyes close as I listen for the pounding in my ears. "Good, fine," I mumble, and I have to stop talking because her fingers start to draw circles into my shoulder and my back. I think I lean into it as I finish my thought, "the throbbing stopped."
She steps behind me and brings her other hand to my shoulder, now rubbing firmer circles with her thumbs. "Mhmm," she hums into my ear, and her thumbs drop lower on my back. She starts to push harder and move deeper so that I can feel my whole body swaying at her touch.
I wonder if I'm still dizzy.
"Do you want to use the bathroom first?" she whispers. I don't know if she means before she uses it or before anything else happens, but either way, I shake my head.
Her fingers graze my neck at the edge of my collar as she pulls the blue blazer off my shoulders, down my arms. I see it fall haphazardly across the foot of the bed in front of me before her fingers are drawing circles in my back again.
I feel them drop lower before they still at my sides, leaving cold paths across my skin where I'm so quickly missing her fingers. Then she pauses for an age. When she speaks, her voice just barely shakes. "Are you afraid of me?"
It catches me off guard, and I scrunch my nose in confusion. "Why? Are you going to hurt me or something?"
A soft laugh escapes her lips before she replies. "No, of course not." She starts to massage the base of my spine, but I feel a twinge when she pushes too hard, so I turn around to face her.
She looks up at me with dark eyes, and flips a lock of hair from her face. I can't help but smile when I realize she smells like honey and warm leather. The low angle of the light and the darkness of the room play against the curves of her cheek, the slope of her nose. Shadows make her lashes look even longer than they did before. She wets her bottom lip with her tongue and I see the way her jaw is clenched, her eyebrows furrowed in deep uncertainty.
Her eyes, timid for the first time since I've met her, stay locked onto mine, a thousand things flashing across her face until I still them all and murmur those few words she's begging to hear, dark and hushed.
"I'm not afraid of you."
And then, like I've pulled out the stop in a dam, freed a wild animal, she grasps my chin and pulls me in.
When my lips meet hers, everything stops. The throbbing disappears in an instant, the pain, even the cloud of my own confusion vanishes with her closeness—the heat of her mouth, the brush of her nose against my cheek. Like someone's trapped us in a bubble beneath the waves, locked us in a sound-proof room because all I can hear is the pounding in my ears and the tiny breath she takes through her nose.
(I think I could have been trapped between moments, and had she not let her hands drop to my waist, I'd have stayed there.)
But she does move her hands, and then her lips move under mine, and when we finally break apart I realize how long I've been holding my breath. It comes out in a kind of gasp as she starts to trail soft kisses down my neck, more heat rising in my face. Without hesitation, she grips the fabric at the bottom of my shirt and firmly pulls it out from where it's tucked under my deep blue skirt.
I wrap my fingers around the back of her neck, feeling baby hairs and hot skin as I guide her back up. Our mouths fuse together again and she grasps at the buttons of my shirt.
I sigh into the kiss when I feel the tip of her tongue across my bottom lip, tasting me. And then, before I can suck her tongue into my mouth, she pulls away like she's just remembered something important, breathing just a little more heavily than she was before. She doesn't look up, just pulls back slightly to stare at my lips and whisper "Just tell me if you want me to stop, okay?"
I don't even have to process that, just shake my head with quiet conviction. "Don't." For an instant our eyes meet before I step back into her, my body flush with hers. Our mouths immediately open to each other, hot breath and hotter tongues.
Soon I realize that my shirt is open, that her hands are reaching around the waistband of my skirt, searching for the zipper. She finds it an tugs, letting the dark material shift and slide off my hips on its own. When I feel the loss of fabric and the chill of nakedness, I let my hands surge into her hair, pulling her close enough that I can wrap the length of my leg around hers and cling to her body like a vine.
She fumbles with the buttons of her shirt and throws it off the moment she can, twisting to free her wrists from the fabric. And then I look down at her chest, rising and falling with rasping breaths. I swear the soft swells of golden skin could be glowing in the low light, set off by the contrast of brilliant white lace.
She must look down too, because she reaches out to slide her soft palm down the plain of my stomach, and the feeling is so new, so startlingly raw that I gasp.
"Fuck, Brittany," she whispers.
She kisses me again, I watch as she brings her hands to fiddle with the clasp at the front of her bra.
Those hands—still cracked and sore—look so delicate now, struggling with a simple hook. I can't imagine them doing what I've seen them do, what I know they've done. They must have carried out their tasks with such unwavering conviction that it seems strange now that they struggle so frantic and needy. But then the lace is falling away and she must be able to hear me swallow at the overwhelming sight of full breasts, bare and waiting.
When she chuckles, her voice is deep and breathy, and I'm struck with the realization that I've been standing just a beat too long, gently swaying back and forth. She impatiently takes my hands in hers, guides them to her chest until my palms feel their weight and the pads of my fingers can touch their softness.
She sighs, and I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks from embarrassment and then it's falling lower and twisting itself around until it's joining the throbbing between my legs.
My hands drop to the button of her jeans and I pull until her mouth is on mine again, and her hands replace mine, tugging at her zipper and stepping out of denim legs. Then her hands return to my body, trailing down my sides and dipping below my underwear, around my ass, to pull me towards her. Pressed against the naked length of her body, the ridge of the hip I can feel how wet I am.
I notice her touch, the way she smells, the way she moves, pushes me easily to the bed, carefully guiding the back of my neck to the mattress. Something seems so inexplicably new, so unlike any time I've ever done this. Maybe that should make sense. She's not anything like anyone I've ever been with before, yet somehow this is familiar, like she couldn't possibly be anyone other than who she is.
But that thought hardly makes sense to me, and then she slides the underwear down my legs, her eyes follow them, her fingers trail down the length of my thighs, my calves, and move back up again.
And I can't ignore it now, the need for friction, that desperate aching beat that means I've long since abandoned clear thinking. She must sense it too, because she doesn't waste a single moment.
"Fuck."
I moan when she presses her thigh into my center, parting my folds with the smooth expanse of her skin. I push back into her, sliding, coating her thigh with wet heat. Her lips fall onto mine, sucking at my bottom lip, pulling it with her teeth. I let my hands wander the lines and valleys of her stomach. How did I not notice these abs before now?
She shifts slightly to bring her hand to the ridge of my hip, the crease of my thigh. Her mouth drops to my jaw, sucking at the skin there and up beneath my ear, her hot honey breath and the tips of her hair tickling at my neck. She finds my pulse the same time that deft fingers slide through wet folds, and I can't hold back the throaty moan that erupts from somewhere deep inside. My vision clouds, and I white-knuckle the cotton sheets beside my head.
When I pant for more—more pressure, more friction, more heat, fuck—she braces her hand against her knee and pushes up into me. She hovers there, above me, her head falling to make wet paths across my chest and throat, her breasts tickling at my stomach, her fingers moving slowly in and out—gathering me up and pulling me toward her.
Somewhere in the distant haze of my subconscious, her words come back to me. That's just the adrenaline talking and she's coming back to my lips, her taut stomach brushing against mine.
Is that what this is? This thing that feels like a beat inside of me, like my pulse... It's not frantic, not hurried, just deliberate—steady, like waves, but unstoppable, like the thunder of a freight train.
I can't name it, and in a flash I'm forgetting to, because she moves from above me, licking a slow trail from my belly button to the crease of my thigh, her weight shifted back into a kneel before she throws her legs behind her and guides my ankles to the blades of her back.
I feel it like an earthquake: "Ugh, God," she runs the flat of her tongue once across my center and then she pushes deeper and back up again, her tongue coming to a point as it reaches my clit, and I swear to God the whole bed moves. I can't stop the way my back arches and then my hips lift of the bed, desperate to feel more of her on me.
"Fuck, San–" I gasp, cutting myself off when a single instant of clarity reminds me that I don't know her name yet, not for real.
I bite at the back of my hand as her mouth wraps around me and sucks, before she pushes her tongue back down again, down and then inside of me. My whole body quivers, threatening to collapse in on itself.
I feel her fingernails clinging to the flesh of my thighs, and her dark, wild hair tangled around my fingers. I feel the sheet underneath me cling to my back, now wet with a thin sheen of sweat. I feel her hot tongue coaxing it out of me, deep and slow, until all too soon everything beneath me comes unhinged and I fall between the gap—that rolling void where I feel like time and space have torn apart.
-x-
When I can breathe again—short, erratic gasps—I feel her crawling back up my body. She lifts a damp strand of hair from my face and smirks. Her eyes have grown warmer, like milky chocolate and she plants a kiss on my forehead before falling over to the space beside me.
It's only then, in the chill of her absence, that I realize we've somehow pulled back the covers of the bed. My stewardess jacket is crumpled on the floor underneath the weight of the discarded duvet, but I can't be bothered to care when her voice still makes the back of my neck tingle. "How do you feel?" she says.
"Good."
That word can't even begin to compare to how I feel, but I hope the dopey smile I can't seem to hide tells her as much. She sighs contentedly as she stares up at the ceiling.
Muscle of her carmel shoulder is toned and tenses slightly when I lean over to kiss it carefully. My fingers have found her knee under the sheet and started gliding up her thigh when she interrupts me. "Brittany..."
"Mhmm?" I kiss the tiny mole where her bicep rolls into her shoulder and push my curious fingers further across soft skin.
"Brittany, wait, it's okay." Her hand finds mine and stops it with a firm grip. "You don't have to." I don't understand, but when she finds my eyes there's something both sad and reassuring in them. "You should probably get some sleep."
The moment she says 'sleep,' I remember how tired I am, how heavy I feel just lying there, but I can't brush off confusion that's starting to feel a tiny bit like rejection.
"Later," she promises, and kisses my forehead again.
"Later," I repeat, and roll back over, sinking into my pillow. Later, I promise myself, just as the edges of my vision fade into darkness and I finally close my heavy eyes, resigned to fall away into dreams.
-x-
I wake up twice during the night. The first time, I find my face pushed awkwardly into the pillow, my breath refracted back at me by the rise of cotton over my nose. I push away in discomfort only to notice the blue light of a cell phone illuminating a face I know, but not well enough (never well enough). She glances at me in the darkness and whispers, "Go back to sleep."
And then, "you're safe, I promise."
-x-
The second time I blink my eyes open it's because the angle of my arm under the weight of my body has rendered it completely useless and somewhat tingly. Perhaps it's a silly thought, but I slam my eyes closed again, praying to fall back into sleep before the full force of my carelessness can make my chest burn and my fingertips feel like pin cushions.
It doesn't take long for me to realize that it won't work, and instead I roll over onto my back and press angry fingers into the flesh of my sleeping arm, massaging it back to life. The sleeping body beside me shouldn't be surprising but it is, if only for an instant, and memories of the day come flooding back like the feeling in my lifeless limb.
It comes back slowly, like a tide, imperceptible at first but faster at the end until all becomes a mad rush get out of the way. But I can't get out of the way. My arm still stings and burns and my brain still struggles to piece any little thing together that I can.
But it doesn't work.
In a few minutes my arm feels normal again and I'm left with the same barrage of questions and uncertainties. They weigh heavily on my eyelids and I whisper into the dark, eyes tracing the bare curves of the body beside me.
Who are you?
No answer comes, just a contented sigh and a faint rustle of the sheets. When I finally fall asleep again it's because I've pushed a quilt over top of all the questions and let myself lay to rest like every piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit together. There, in the dark, under a conceding flutter of eyelashes and slowing of breath, I let myself fall into a kind of contented bewilderment, interrupted only by the sinking certainty that when I wake up again, she'll be gone.