After a year and a half of trying to move on from the what-ifs, the tides have pulled Alexandra Rivera and Zachariah Kim back together again.
*****
In the h...
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By the time we make it through the front door, I'm out of breath. Adrenaline pulses through my veins at hypersonic speed and I'm on a whole different kind of high than anything I've experienced before. It's like every functioning part of my body has been cranked into high-octane overdrive and my brain is trying its best to catch up to the rest.
Zachariah closes the door behind us and listens for an echo. When nothing returns, he deduces my roommate isn't home.
I'm left standing there as he disappears into the bathroom to grab the first aid kit. There's nothing to care for except a small cut below my knuckle, but he moves quickly. I don't remember catching my hand on anything sharp, but it's hard to remember everything that happened earlier. It's all a blur now.
The next thing I know, he's in front of me once again except now I'm sitting at one of the barstools while he stands in front of me; one of my hands drapes over him as he swipes at the cut with a cotton swab.
I hiss at the sharp sting and attempt to pull away but he holds me steady in his grip. All of his concentration is directed at the task at hand, leaving me to wonder how and why he seems to be so calm right now. The only thing I want to do is absolutely everything. Jump off the walls, parachute out of a helicopter; nothing feels off-limits.
"That was a dumb thing I did, wasn't it?"
The strands along his hairline fall over his eyes so I'm unable to see them. But even if he's shielding himself from making eye contact or genuinely just keeping himself busy by tending to my nonexistent wound, his eyes are burned into my memory as clearly as my own.
"A very dumb thing," he agrees.
"That could have ended badly."
He echoes, "Very badly."
His thumb grazes over my hand as he smooths the bandage into place. Even though the minor wound is fully dressed now, he doesn't remove his hand from mine.
"I don't know what I was thinking." Sliding off the stool, I tear myself away from him. The cause of my inability to breathe cannot be determined to be by previous events or his proximity, so I eliminate the chance for the latter to keep affecting me. "God, that was so dumb. That guy was huge. He could've knocked me flat on my ass in a heartbeat."
His watchful eyes follow my every move, but I'm at the point where I can't even be bothered to squirm underneath his gaze. I'm still on cloud one-thousand.
"You held your own pretty well." Zachariah crosses his arms in front of his chest, leaning back against the counter.
"Barely." I point my finger at him. "You know how weak I am. Imagine if that tool didn't have a pea-sized brain, then what?"
"I don't think you would've been put into that situation in the first place if that were the case," he argues.
The pacing continues at an accelerated speed. "Oh no, I'm sure I would have. There are plenty of smart, bigoted people in the world. It still would have been bad, just a slightly less stupid version of bad."
