"Click," she whispered, her hand in the shape of a pistol.
The elevator doors slid shut as our eyes duelled: each daring the other to flinch, each challenging the other to back down, each knowing there was no way in hell that was going to happen.
I grabbed the back of Abbi's neck and pulled her toward me, crashing my lips into hers. Her fingers gripped the sleeves of my suit jacket and I followed the delicious curve of her figure-hugging pencil skirt. The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Abbi instinctively stepped back away from me as a group of three crowded in.
She wiped the back of her hand over her lips and eyed me as she straightened her blouse.
"Guess we lost," she whispered with a small smile.
I turned to face the door like everyone else in the now silent elevator as we descended toward the lobby. But that wasn't right, I thought as I stared at my indistinct refection in the polished silver. When you lose Russian roulette, you don’t go on living. When you lose Russian roulette, you lose your life. The bullet doesn't disappear, it doesn't fall with a slight clatter at your feet. It destroys everything.
I started this game with Abbi. I decided to play. And I was willing to blow up everything. For her.
Without warning, I turned to Abbi, catching her surprised gasp between my lips as I backed her against the wall. I kissed her, because I'd lost.
And I wanted to lose every day of my life with her.
Michael
If someone showed me a picture of the three of us the way were on the couch late that evening a month ago, I wouldn't have believed that it was me. I'd swear it was altered or photoshopped or doctored in some way. I'd insist that the man with the contented, simple smile with his cheek resting on the golden hair of the woman next to him as he looked down at the sleeping child in her lap was someone else, admittedly someone who looked a lot like me. But it couldn't have been me. A faded old couch, a greasy pizza box on a second-hand coffee table, a night in watching a silly old movie with the windows open and the moths gathering round the porch light—none of that was a part of the life I knew. It would have been as foreign to me as a Coors Light.
And yet as Abbi and I sat in silence together, doing absolutely nothing but watching the steady rise and fall of Zara's shoulders as she slept and the flutter of her long blonde eyelashes that danced in her dreams like stalks of wheat, I felt completely in place. My arm seemed designed to fit perfectly around Abbi's narrow shoulders. My fingers seemed to be just the right size to wrap around her arm. The side of my body was like a puzzle piece and Abbi's hip and waist were the only match. I breathed when she breathed and there was no need to do anything else at all.
The television across from us in the living room had been frozen at the end of the credits for over twenty minutes, but neither Abbi nor I moved to switch it off or carry Zara to bed.
"Michael?"
Abbi's soft voice stirred me. I lifted my cheek from the top of her head to blink almost sleepily at her. "Hmm?"
Abbi's face was angelic in the warm light of the lamps, her cheeks pink from the warmth, her hair ruffled from the back of the couch.
"I was wondering something," she said.
"What's that?"
Abbi looked away from me to brush a strand of hair from Zara's face. She laid the back of her hand tenderly on her cheek and then glanced up at me through those long eyelashes.
"Why did you stay?"
I resisted the urge to fidget uncomfortably. I'd been gliding across the surface of the clear, cool pool as if on the wings of a dragonfly. But Abbi was calling me deeper. If we were to be anything, I knew I'd have to answer her. I'd have to dive in. I'd have to hold my breath and trust she was waiting for me at the bottom with life-giving air.
Ignoring the jolting of my heart, I told her in a quiet voice, partly to not wake Zara and partly because I didn't trust the strength of my voice to speak any louder, "I remembered my father leaving."
Abbi's face betrayed surprise, but she didn't ask me for more. She was waiting. Waiting in the depths. It was up to me whether to swim, to kick, to fight my way to her.
"He left when I was young," I said next.
Abbi's hazel eyes watched me with a gentle patience. I wondered if she could see how difficult it was for me to speak. I wondered if she could see that it felt like I was relearning how to move my lips, how to form words, how to make sound. I wondered if she could see that this was unnatural for me, uncomfortable, strange, difficult.
I thought maybe she could, because she silently slipped her fingers between mine and traced slow circles with her thumb along the side of my hand.
I sucked in a shuddering breath and dived deeper.
"I didn't want Zara to be left with that memory," I continued, glancing down at my daughter who was still sleeping soundly. "With that hole, with those questions."
When I looked back at Abbi's eyes, she searched mine for meaning. I stared down at her fingers intertwined with mine, intertwined like the handfasting ribbons around our wrists
