14. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

M r. Graham's home had two bathrooms: a full bathroom upstairs for the three bedrooms to share, and a small bathroom downstairs with a walk-in shower that looked as spacious as dorm room accommodations. Forrest had insisted Lucy take the nicer bathroom. After the conversation about her mother, Lucy felt too drained to mount a polite argument.

Lucy undressed, draping Edith's green shirt over a towel rack. She ran her hand over the satiny fabric, marveling at how different she'd felt throughout the day simply because of a green shirt. Every time she had passed a window in the hospital, she'd glanced at her reflection, secretly relishing the image. Lucy had never considered herself vain. In fact, she'd spent much of her life resisting vanity. Lucy had hated feeling like her mother's doll to be dressed up.

But this afternoon in the office, it had been fun being dressed up by a giddy Edith. There was something so counterintuitive about a fierce feminist jumping up and down clapping at the sight of Lucy walking out in a green blouse. It didn't feel like Lucy was being forced into some image she would never fit. Instead, it felt like a dear friend was revealing something Lucy had yet to ever recognize in herself.

Lucy wondered what it would mean to stop listening to her mother's voice, still so strong inside of her. Would it simply make dressing in the morning more entertaining, or would it mean more? And what did it say that someone who'd been dead so many years was still dictating her life? Impressive, Mom .

For the first time in her long acquaintance with Forrest, Lucy wondered if he heard a similar voice in his head. He’d said that his mother’s absence had told him lies. Did he have to exert as much effort to quiet those lies as Lucy did? A part of Lucy regretted that it had taken them so many years to realize they shared a similar wound. What support had she missed giving or receiving?

Lucy stepped into the opening of the shower curtain that wrapped around a claw-foot bathtub into warm water. She wouldn't wash her hair tonight, but she needed to wash off the hospital air. It clung to her, drawing her back to memories on which she would rather not dwell. The generic bar soap was not like the scented, liquid soaps she usually indulged in, but that didn't dampen the cathartic effect.

Once she finished standing beneath the shower head for a few extra minutes, Lucy dried off and removed the scrunchie that had been holding her hair in place. She took the brush she always kept in her purse and ran it over her hair, but it did little to smooth her hair. The bun had misshaped it, creating large, unruly waves that cascaded down her back.

There was no choice but to put the same pants on from the day. Lucy pulled on the camisole she'd worn beneath her sweater that morning and that she had kept on all day under the green shirt. It was thin black fabric that clung tightly to her, never meant to be shown fully. She knew she should put her bra on underneath it, but it would be a hassle to take it off again when she got to her room. The odds of her running into Forrest on the short walk to Gracie's old room were fairly low.

Finally, it was time to walk to her room where she planned to collapse into bed and hope that her fatigue was sufficient to keep thoughts of Forrest being only one door down from intruding into her dreams. She wouldn't think about what degree of undress he might be sleeping in since they had left Paducah without packing pajamas. She would not. She really wouldn't. Soon, Lucy had an internal chant worthy of the little engine that could.

Forrest had called her perfect tonight. Not her editing abilities or her secretarial efficiencies. No, just Lucy herself. Lucy would try to not think about this, as well.

Lucy left the bathroom, the old brass door hinges creaking loudly. She headed towards Gracie's room, but her steps paused when she noticed the door cracked open on Forrest's room.

He had said it was perfectly preserved from his youth. What had sixteen-year-old Forrest been like? Lucy calculated the time-line. He would've been a teen in the 90s. Would there be a poster of Cindy Crawford pouting in a bikini? Or would Nirvana's naked baby be swimming across a wall? Lucy squeezed into the opening, not wanting this door's squeaky hinge to broadcast where she was going.

Lucy immediately noticed that the room didn't smell like Forrest. It didn't smell bad, just abandoned. The leather and pine scent that defined Forrest's office and, well, Forrest was absent. Lucy had always wondered if the leathery scent came from his book bindings or his briefcase or his elbow patches, or if it was simply him. If she were nuzzled into the space right below his ear, and if she were to inhale deeply, would she smell warm soft leather there?

Moonlight beams streaked across the room through a dormer window, providing enough light for Lucy to notice a lamp on a dresser. She walked over and turned it on, flinching at the sound of the switch, and wondering how many great American novels had been read deep into the night by its light. Sure enough, it illuminated a worn paperback of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . "There's a shocker, Forrest," she whispered.

Lucy's eyes scanned the room. The walls were a dark navy blue. There were no little league trophies or a basketball hoop hanging over a laundry basket. Nor was Cindy Crawford or rock band posters hanging on the wall. There were, though, bookshelves on every wall, far too many for the average teenage boy. The shelves were over-stuffed, books laying horizontal on top of the rows of vertical books.

On one shelf, a frame was lying face-down. Lucy picked it up and removed a layer of dust with her hand. The logo for a Kentucky water park was printed on the bottom. It must have been one of those souvenir photos for which families paid exorbitant prices to prove they had been on a proper family vacation. A family of four looked out at her, the children very young. Lucy saw hints of Gracie and Forrest in the children. The boy, barely beyond walking, had the same dimples she'd seen beneath Forrest's beard for a decade. Mr. Graham was holding him and looking healthy and vibrant. Gracie was held by a woman who was tall and lean in the same fashion as Forrest. Her hair was a perfect match for his own light brown.

Lucy laid the photo face-down again. Other frames were standing up; pictures of him and Gracie, and several with people she didn't recognize, all young and beautiful and dressed in the denim jackets and plaid flannel clothes of 90s youth. Forrest always had an arm draped around someone and a smile. He'd been a bean-pole in high school, which wasn't shocking in the least.

On the walls, there was a collection of medals pinned with thumb tacks. Lucy read the medals, each for various debate and academic competitions. He had been consistent throughout his life, hadn't he? The only poster, shockingly, was a large illustrated poster of Gandalf from Lord of the Rings . A small huff of laughter escaped Lucy. She had never known him to read fantasy novels, but she was happy teenage Forrest had. He would have needed the escape, the good versus evil battles where the light always triumphed in the end.

In the corner to the side of the dormer window, there was a small desk buried under stacks of paper. Lucy walked around the foot of the bed to the desk, and shuffled through the corner of one stack. It was page after page of double-spaced typing in Times New Roman, 12-point font, likely essays he had saved. Would the study on the Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn be there? Most boys hoarded baseball cards or comic books.

Lucy picked up the first essay on the stack and scanned the first paragraph. Immediately, she was lost to the familiar voice - less mature, but essentially the same - that occupied so much of her time.

***

Forrest was bent over, furiously drying his hair within his towel. Once again, Forrest had found himself turning down the temperature on his shower, trying to chill thoughts of Lucy. Lucy's hair. Lucy glowing in an emerald green shirt. Lucy laughing at a joke he said. Lucy looking sad at old memories he wished he could somehow edit and improve.

His father was lying in a hospital in critical condition, and all Forrest could think about was that he and Lucy were under the same roof. And this time, it wasn't Hart Building. Forrest thought about the last time he had been in this house. Knowing his father, he'd be thrilled Forrest was thinking about Lucy instead of him.

The small closet-like shower had been inadequate for the mood Forrest was in. He had knocked elbows against the edge as he slammed down shampoo and splashed the cool water repeatedly over his head with cupped hands. He was at least a foot too tall for the shower head.

After he was dry enough, Forrest yanked on his khakis, not bothering with the belt. The buckle on it clanged as he left the room, bouncing with each step. Forrest headed to the stairs. He would go up the stairs and walk directly to his room while looking downward. Better to avoid even a passing glance at the shut door to Gracie's room. He would then collapse into the lumpy twin bed where he had once fantasized about Gwyneth Paltrow from Shakespeare in Love and a whole slew of other 90s beauties, all of whom seemed to pale in comparison to Lucy. And he would refuse, absolutely refuse, to let his mind wonder in the way it had at sixteen. He wasn't a horny teenager, after all. He was a man well in control of his baser impulses.

He walked up the stairs, straightening a few crooked picture frames along the way. Each school year, Gracie had framed Forrest's and her official school pictures, because having various stages of acne documented in yearbooks had not been enough. His dad, in a rare show of normalcy, had hung them along the stairway. The cute Forrest at the base of the stairs aged into his awkward junior-high years halfway up, only to end with a cap-and-gown photo at the top, his valedictory medal hung around his neck. With a flicker of pride, Forrest admitted to himself that he did like that picture, at least.

Sure enough, the door to Gracie's room was shut when Forrest walked past it to his own door. He turned into his room, and immediately froze in place. Lucy stood at his desk, reading one of the many essays he had saved from his high school years. Her hair, usually up in a bun or clipped in some kind of twist, hung loose. Had he ever seen her hair down? He couldn't remember, and surely if he had, he'd remember. Broad, thick waves imprinted from her bun went all the way to the middle of her back. The light from his reading lamp shone on it, bringing out all of the streaks of red that were, perhaps more than any other part of Lucy, so very recognizable as being her.

It also occurred to Forrest that Lucy was no longer wearing Edith's green shirt. Instead, there was just a thin, spaghetti-strapped shirt revealing shoulders he was absolutely certain he had never seen. Forrest realized that he had not taken a breath since walking into the room, and he forced himself to inhale.

At the sound, Lucy turned around and jumped. She clutched the green shirt to her chest, which had the uncomfortable effect of making Forrest acutely aware that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, nor was he holding anything to cover any of the bare skin on display.

Lucy stepped back into his desk, catching herself on the edge. Clearly fumbling for words while her eyes seemed glued to his torso, Lucy finally managed to make eye contact while issuing an apology: "I'm so sorry, Forrest."

She looked nothing short of mortified. Unsure how to respond and supremely uncomfortable in his own skin, Forrest settled on imitation. “No, I’m sorry.”

Lucy’s fist clutched the green fabric harder, her knuckles whitening. “For what? Stepping into your own room in your own house?”

“No, just…” Forrest could hardly say he was sorry for not being more dressed. “I’m sorry I startled you.”

“That’s my fault, not yours. I’m the one being unforgivably nosy.”

“I don’t mind. Really.” Forrest took a step further into the room. “Are you itching for a red pen reading that paper?”

Lucy returned the essay to the pile, a soft smile easing her stricken, embarrassed expression. She said, “No red pen. Although, it’s incredible how an author’s voice works. It’s clearly your writing. I could’ve identified it in a line-up.”

Forrest matched her expression with his own modest grin. “Besides looking for the early works of Forrest Graham, were you wanting to see anything else. Shall I give you the tour?”

Lucy waved off his suggestion, her eyes still diverting from his own with obvious embarrassment. “Nah, I was just curious. Curious what 17-year-old Forrest had been like."

"Yeah. And what did you find? That I was a giant nerd."

"Pretty much, yes."

He laughed softly.

Lucy said, "Who are all of these people in the pictures? Any girlfriends?"

"A few. Nothing serious. Unsurprisingly." Lucy knew his dating record. His habit of going from girlfriend to girlfriend before anything significant occurred started mid-high school.

"So...Gandalf?"

Forrest ran a hand through his hair grimacing. "Yes. I might have gone through a fantasy stage in high school."

"But no longer? Dr. Graham doesn't secretly read about orcs and fairies in between classes?"

"Is everything that is said in this room strictly confidential?"

An electric shock went through the air at the question. Forrest had not meant the question in that way. Or at least, he hadn't consciously meant it so.

Lucy licked her lips, their natural color glowing in the dim light. "Completely confidential."

"I re-read the Lord of the Rings series at least once every five years."

"I've never gotten around to reading them."

"You should. They're wonderful."

"Are there any dukes? Especially of the rakish variety."

"I'm afraid not," he said with a chuckle. "But there is love in it."

Forrest looked around the room, at the crowded bookshelves and medals and pictures, trying to imagine what it looked like through Lucy's eyes. But then his mind zeroed in on the astonishing presence of Lucy within the dark blue walls, and he wondered what his 17-year-old self would think if he saw the room right now. All the same surroundings, but with a tall, striking, perfectly-nerdy woman standing next to the bed. He'd never thought of it before, but she was basically his high-school-self's dream-girl.

He had been quiet too long. Lucy said, "What are you thinking?"

"I was thinking about time-travel."

She quirked her head in question.

"I was thinking how completely thrilled teenage Forrest would be to know a beautiful girl is standing in his room right now."

"Perfect earlier tonight? Now beautiful? Forrest, you have to stop saying words like that to me." She spoke softly, but there was pleading in her words.

"Why?"

"You know why." It was a whisper. He knew why.

Forrest walked around the end of the bed to her, never breaking eye contact. He had no plans for when he reached her, but the pull to go was overpowering. When he did stand in front of her, he stopped about a foot away and did something he had wanted to do for longer than he could remember: he brushed the hair framing her face away, running his hand down the length of that hair. It was as soft as he had always suspected it would be. Then, still moving methodically, he removed her glasses, folding them in, reaching around her, and laying them on the stack of papers she had been examining. Looking into her eyes, eyes glazed over in the haze that had settled over the room, Forrest wrapped a hand around the back of her neck. He'd spent years wondering how the curls at the base of her neck would feel to the touch. They tickled.

The other hand remained at his side. Perhaps, if he left it there, he wouldn't go too far. He wouldn't scare her away or cross that next line. Forrest knew he was approaching one line, a line he had firmly drawn and obeyed for a very long time. But he would try to not push it further. He just needed to know what it would be like to kiss Lucy O'Shields.

Slowly, giving her time to pull away or indicate in some way, any way, that she did not want this, Forrest leaned towards her. She angled her head, parting her lips slightly. Forrest inhaled. It was an invitation.

Finally, their lips met, at first as tentative as middle schoolers on their first kiss. It was so foreign, so other-worldly, to be standing so close to, to be breathing the same air as Lucy.

But then, Lucy dropped the green shirt she had been hugging between them. It landed on their bare feet. She placed her hands firmly on his bare abdomen, and then, in a movement more brazen and daring than he had ever dreamed, she ran her hands all the way up his bare chest, wrapping her arms around his neck, sending shivers down Forrest. Her breast, covered only with the thin jersey fabric of her camisole, pressed against his chest.

Forrest groaned, wrapping his other hand around her waist, pulling her into him. She would feel how much he wanted her. He could no longer hide the storm of desire that had been brewing in him for the past month and possibly even longer. He couldn't hide it from himself or from Lucy.

As the kiss deepened, there were no hospitals or painful pasts or invalidating mothers or English departments or risks. There was just Forrest wrapped around Lucy, finally living the fantasies he had only ever allowed to exist in the most secret corners of his mind.

Forrest finally broke the kiss only to begin a stream of kisses down her neck, to her collar bone and her shoulders. He noticed that on each shoulder, there was a dusting of freckles identical to the ones across her nose. In wonder, he said, "You have freckles here, too." He kissed them.

Turning her in his arms, Forrest guided her down onto the plaid comforter of his bed. She awed him by sitting down, guiding him in return with a hand behind his neck, bringing his lips back to her own. Forrest fell on top of her.

The bed was only a twin, but they didn't need more space than it provided. Their bodies were completely entwined from their lips to their centers to their feet. Forrest began exploring again with his lips. His hand pulled down a strap at her shoulder. It was so easy, offering no resistance. There was no bra to unclip or push away. Lucy's breast was immediately exposed to him.

Forrest took it into his mouth, and Lucy inhaled with shock and moaned, pressing against his erection with her pelvis. Forrest felt undone, knowing all of the lines had been lost. How could he cross a line when he no longer remembered lines existed? Tonight, he would explore all the parts of Lucy he had wondered about for so long.

Forrest wanted to see her, all of her. He pulled her shirt up, and she raised her arms in complete acquiescence. As soon as the shirt was off, she pulled Forrest back to her, kissing him with a passion he had never experienced from another woman.

Forrest reached for the clasp of her pants. "Lucy, can I..."

She unhooked a clasp or undid a button or unzipped a zipper. Forrest wasn't sure what contraption had been undone, but suddenly, he was pulling her pants down the length of her long legs, running his hands over the smooth, porcelain skin.

Finally, she was in front of him, completely bare, breathing deeply as if they had just run a marathon.

"Oh, Lucy. You're so...beautiful isn't enough. You are more than I ever imagined."

She propped herself on an elbow, and reached to the waistband of his pants. "Please."

"I need a condom."

"I'm on the pill. Please."

Forrest had never had sex without a condom, but he had never had sex with Lucy. He had never slept with anyone with whom he had told stories about his father on late nights after school. He had never had sex with someone who knew his father, who talked to him and checked up on him. He had never had conversations with a girlfriend about her own struggles with family.

There were a thousand layers he kept between himself and his past partners that did not exist between him and Lucy. And so, after he removed his pants, Forrest laid on top of Lucy, aligned himself with her, and entered with nothing between them. It was just him and Lucy being together in body, reflecting all that they already were to each other.

In perfect unison to a rhythm they both recognized in the other, Forrest and Lucy moved together until he felt her gasp and dig her fingertips into his back, pulsing around him.

Forrest jerked with each pulse, and then he shivered and released all of the built-up desire and need and love into Lucy, his Lucy. She held him gently, brushing her lips lightly across his ear and cheek and neck as he tried to recover.

Forrest could swear there was a lump building in his throat, a sensation completely foreign to him. Forrest was not a person who cried. He had not cried since childhood.

Gently, Forrest pulled out of Lucy, and positioned himself to her side. She turned, allowing him to pull her back against his chest. His arms wrapped firmly around her and his face buried in her vanilla-scented hair, Forrest waited for sleep to come and silence the swell of emotion he felt completely unable to address.

***

Lucy woke, wrapped in the warmth of Forrest's arms around her, his body pressed all the way down her back and legs. Immediately, the image of Forrest standing in the doorway of his room returned to Lucy. She had been completely trapped by the sight of his shirtless chest. The lamp light had sparkled on his shoulders - whether it was from water droplets left from his shower or whatever spell had come over them that night, she did not know. His stomach was completely flat. Of course it was, Lucy thought, almost irritated at him for having the audacity to be so perfect. He wasn't overly muscled. That wouldn't fit Forrest. But Lucy could see subtle lines and grooves down his abdomen. She had been right when she had seen the inch of skin in her apartment last week. Forrest was beautiful.

Her neck and breast were pleasantly achy from the friction of Forrest's beard, and she still felt the warm glow of satisfaction thrumming at her core. The radio clock on top of the nearest bookshelf said three o'clock, and the darkness outside confirmed the hour.

Lucy was shocked she'd fallen asleep. Although, that was perhaps the least shocking thing that had occurred that evening.

As she recapped the evening, groggily processing all that had happened, Lucy blushed at her own brazenness. She had more than just gone with the flow. There had been multiple moments when she had led, initiated, pushed it further.

But how could she possibly have not done so? Of all the men in her life, no one had ever been to her what Forrest was. The (very few) ex-boyfriends had always paled in comparison to Forrest, each less tall, less intelligent, less funny, none quite so authentic and warm. In the dark of Forrest's adolescent bedroom, Lucy realized she had compared every potential match to Forrest. Yes, she had compared and found lacking every single one.

And it wasn't even just men with romantic potential. No man in her life had ever been as natural to talk with and easy to be around. Maybe, Lucy thought, that explained why it was with Forrest that she had run her hands along his body and pulled herself to him. She revealed more to him when talking than with anyone else. Of course, she would be more impulsive, more honest when she was with him physically.

Forrest nuzzled the back of her neck, his beard tickling. She didn't know if that meant he was waking up, as well, or if he moved like this in his sleep. She knew so much about Forrest, but she did not know this. She did not know how he slept or cuddled or held a woman. She was learning all in real time.

A dark foreboding threatened at the edge of Lucy's wonderment and contentment. Yes, she and Forrest had, much to her dismay, had sex. For goodness's sake, they were spooning. His pelvis was tucked firmly against her ass, and she could feel a hardening as Forrest once again stirred behind her.

But for all of this connection, Lucy knew that the talking had stopped the moment he'd walked around that bed to her. There had been so much conversation and sharing up to that moment, and then it had just been doing and being, silence except for pants and moans and whispered names. At some point, she and Forrest would have to talk about what had transpired, and Lucy feared how it might torpedo her entire existence.

But as Forrest's hand moved up her abdomen, cupping her breast and gently squeezing, Lucy knew that for now, she did not want to think about the future. They had already done the unthinkable. Would it really hurt to do it again? To do it again in the dark of this single night before harsh daylight shone in and illuminated whatever consequences might be awaiting them.

Lucy, the highly proficient secretary of the PSU English Department, turned over in Forrest’s arms, pushed him onto his back, and rolled on top of him.