Fear of Falling

the tongue ring?”
    “What?”
    “Do you like it?” I rasped, dropping my voice an octave. “Does it feel good to you?”
    “Um, uh,” Kami sputtered before swallowing. Without bothering to ask, she grabbed my wine glass and downed its contents.
    “I’ll take that as a yes,” I laughed. She tried to feign offense before succumbing to her own amusement.
    “Hey, where’s this one from?” she asked, once we had both calmed down and diverted our attention back to the shot glasses.
    I took the blank, nondescript glass from her hand and turned it over in my fingers. “Dive.”
    “Dive? Why would you take one from the bar you work at?” Picking up another unmarked glass, she frowned with confusion. “This one from Dive too?”
    “Yep.”
    “O-kay. Seems kinda silly to put these up with all the other ones that are obviously significant to you.”
    I smiled, stepping in closer to her. Close enough to smell the vanilla and orchid scents of her shampoo. “These are significant to me too. The most significant. This is the shot glass your lips touched the first night I met you. This is the one you used when we shared a Screaming Orgasm.”
    She stared at me in stunned silence for a beat before clearing her throat. “So… you just go around collecting every glass I drink from?”
    “Yep.” I took a step forward, causing our fronts to touch. I could feel her heart beat faster with the move. “Every. Single. One.”
    She drew in a mortified breath, her eyes growing unbelievably large before I broke into a peel of uncontrollable laughter.
    “Oh my God! You should see your face,” I howled at her confused expression. “Relax, Kami. I swear I don’t creep around in the shadows, stealing your drinking glasses!”
    She shook her head in disbelief. “You are such a creepy asshole, Blaine Jacobs!”
    “Awww, come on now.” I set the glasses back in their designated spots before wrapping my arms around her narrow waist. “Seriously, I’m not a creeper. But I did save those two. Maybe I was having a semi-creeper moment but, hey, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after you ran outta the bar that night. And when you popped back up, I knew it was fate. I wanted to commemorate that. I believe in celebrating the things that are meaningful to you, no matter how petty they may seem. If they made you feel something at one time, if their memory incites some type of emotion, then they deserve to be acknowledged.”
    “Wow,” she whispered, her eyes low and sultry. “I must be tipsy, because that was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.”
    I chuckled before placing a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Come on, let’s get you off your feet.”
    I led her to my living room sofa, killing the music and clicking on the TV instead. “I’ve got the movie channels; anything in particular you wanna watch?” I asked, scrolling through the menu.
    “I don’t know. Any horror flicks on?”
    I cocked a brow. “Horror? Seriously?”
    “Yeah, why not?”
    “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I just pegged you for a chick flick lover. You know, guy meets girl, they fall in love, and skip into the sunset or some equally sappy shit like that.”
    “Blech,” she replied with a mock shudder. “That’s way scarier than any horror movie. Besides, the real monsters aren’t stalking in the shadows with masks and butcher knives. They don’t have fangs or claws. They’re all around us, hiding in plain sight. That’s what’s scary.”
    Her solemn words hit me like a ton of bricks, reminding me of why we were really here. I cut off my flat screen and turned towards her. It was time to say “Fuck it” and put all the cards on the table.
    “The real reason I brought you here is because there are things I need you to know about me. Things that may help you understand why I say some of the shit that I do.”
    She nodded. “Ok. I think there’s some stuff I need to tell you too,” she replied with an edge of uncertainty. She chewed her bottom lip and cast her eyes down to her hands knotted in her lap.
    I took a deep breath, preparing to dive in headfirst. “Ok. I had sort of a rough patch after my mom died. I was the typical out-of-control teen, not giving a fuck about grades or my future. I skipped more than I attended. And I had a temper. Shit, honestly, I still do.
    “There was this girl named Amanda. Cheerleader, blonde, perky…and I was wild, rugged and had already collected quite a few tattoos and even