Within/Without

chapter thirty-eight.

Val

After everything, I'm not sure the word peace has only one definition. Sometimes it is a cup of steaming coffee on a rainy night. Sometimes it is the breath of quiet after lightning strikes. Sometimes it is the sound of your name from the mouth of someone you love. Sometimes, it is sunlight, sliding like an angel's gaze through a dusty window.

And now? Now, it is this: Simon's arms around me, snaking underneath my side and over my shoulder. Simon's breath against my neck. Simon's body heat pressing into my bare back. Simon, Simon, Simon. I wake up with the sensation of having left my body for the night, escaping instead to a warm, golden place, and returning, reluctantly, like a tired wanderer, to my own skin.

I get the feeling I've waited my whole life for this.

I roll over, facing Simon, who—despite the encroaching afternoon—still seems to be fast asleep. Here, I recognize yet another meaning for the word peace. It's the look on Simon's face, the calm lift to his brow, the slightly-open mouth. When he's awake, something about him always seems tense, like he's a drawn weapon, seconds from being fired. Wherever he is here, now, though, he can breathe. He can live.

I want that for him. I want it so badly, I'd do anything.

Simon's eyes flutter open then, startling seemingly both of us. When he sees me, he laughs under his breath, his voice still low and husky with sleep. "Hey, gorgeous," he says, and exhales, pressing a kiss so light to my forehead that I very well could have imagined it. "It's a good thing. I was beginning to think last night was a dream."

"Understandable," I say, resting in the crook of his shoulder, freckled, too, as his face. I discovered last night that Simon has freckles all over his body. Sprinkled across his chest and dotted along his ribs, splattered across the backs of his legs and his ankles and his feet. He's art, after all, with God's pencil marks left all over him. "Some things seem too good to be true."

Simon grins. "Was it?"

"Hm?"

"Good? Was it good?"

I grin back at him. "Better than that," I answer. "The best."

He kisses my forehead again. Then the side of my nose, my cheek, my jaw. When his lips have traced their way to my collarbones, he sits up, the sheets rustling around him. "I'll go get dressed."

"Oh?" I say, sitting up as he staggers from the bed, stepping back into the slacks he was supposed to wear the night before.

"I could kill for some pancakes right now." He pauses. "Or waffles, maybe. I dunno. Probably pancakes. I'll be right back!"

He pecks me on the mouth once more before disappearing around the corner, and a moment later I hear the door shut and the faucet turn on.

I stay in the bed after he's gone, both because I'm too lazy to move and because the scent of him in the sheets isn't something I can bear parting with. I roll over onto my back, feeling the pillows sink underneath my weight, watching the popcorn ceiling and replaying the night's events over and over again.

I probably would have stayed there, even, perhaps long enough to melt into the bed and never be seen again, if the sound of a phone's ringtone didn't startle me from my reverie.

Recognizing the tone as Simon's and not my own, I let it ring. I even let it ring a second time. On the third call is when I struggle from my bed, throwing a bathrobe over my shoulders and squinting at the screen. Noah, it said. Simon's brother. What if it was something important?

Hoping Simon wouldn't mind, I pick up.

Before I can even utter a hello, Noah's already talking. "Ginger Snap, hey, good news, buddy. Larry's got these guys taken care of. You and Val are all clear to head back now! Better news, no one important is dead. Unless you count the guys who jumped us, in which case, two important people are dead."

Something within me goes cold.

Of course this trip had come as a surprise, but he couldn't have—could he?

I'm so in my own head, my hands beginning to tremble, that I forget the call's still connected. "Ginger Snap? Hey. You okay?"

I swallow. "What do you mean we're all clear?"

There's a moment of silence before I hear Noah take in a long, exhaustive breath. "Oh. Val. Shit. Fuck. Shit. Val, I—"

"Save it," I snap, ending the phone call and slamming the phone down on the desk.

"Val?"

I turn. Simon's at the front of the room, standing beside the TV. His hair's wet, a deeper, more brownish red, his chest bare, hands in the pockets of his pajama bottoms. "Everything okay?" He asks, though his eyes tell me he knows that nothing, in fact, is okay.

My heart is heavy with a toss-up of emotions; I'm not sure whether I'm going to pass out or throw up. There's panic, hurt, a lingering taste of love and pleasure. In my head, however, is one song and one song only: betrayal.

In spite of all this, I manage to say: "I'm going home."

Simon's expression lapses into sudden disbelief. "Val, I—"

"No, Simon. You know what? Just no. I don't want to hear your explanation," I say, shoving him aside on my way to the dresser. I pull my suitcase from under the desk, throwing it open and beginning to shove my clothes back into it. My anger, my frustration, keeps me from paying attention to any rational order. "You had me here thinking it was a nice, romantic surprise. A random getaway where we could spend time with each other. But no, it's—you tear me away from my family, my sister, my niece, so your cousin can murder some guys?"

"Val," Simon sputters, his face still brimming with cold, cold shock. "I'm not going to say I didn't lie to you, because I did, and I'm sorry. But I was just trying to keep you safe—"

I slam the suitcase shut, looking up at him in disbelief. "Were you?" I say. "Or were you trying to protect yourself, in case the cops caught on to whatever the hell Larry was up to?"

"Val, I'd never. Everything I do is about you. Is for you."

I scoff bitterly, swiping tears from my face. I hate that I'm crying. I hate that I'm yelling. I hate every second of this, because I know it's not just about this. It's about everything. My whole life, I've never let myself be angry. I can't. I can't risk that. Don't let them see that part of you. Don't let them label you as their angry black girl. So I play the part, usually. I am docile and submissive and everything they expect me not to be. Even when I was allowed to be angry, I was not.

Until now.

Now, the reservoirs have broken, and so have I.

My voice lowers to a cool, hissing whisper. "This isn't for me," I tell him. "If it was for me, if you really wanted to keep me safe, you wouldn't have abandoned the people I love when you knew it wasn't safe for them. You wouldn't have lied to me. God, I should've known. I should've known, shouldn't I?"

Simon steps forward, gripping my wrist with both of his hands, his eyes pleading and his heart pounding and his voice so, so quiet. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought I was doing the right thing."

"You don't know what the right thing is," I say. "You're a liar. A cheat. It's in your blood, isn't it? You just can't help it."

Simon drops my arm, like something within him has snapped in half.

I grab my jacket from the chair by the balcony, taking my hotel key. "Goodbye, Simon."

And as I cross the room and open the door and step out into the hall, he doesn't move a single muscle.

Not even the slightest twitch.