Just Remember to Breathe (Thompson Sisters)

shoulder. It was a possessive slap, and I was pretty sure she was giving in.
    “Yeah,” I said, my voice cracking a little. “Misunderstanding, okay?”
    “Yeah, we kinda heard the whole thing,” he said. “Don’t stress it.”
    At the desk in the emergency room, we did paperwork. And I bled a little on the desk, then apologized. A few minutes later a physician’s assistant came over and did triage, decided that as bad as it looked, my hand wasn’t life threatening, then said someone would be with us eventually.
    “This might take a while,” I said.
    “We’ve got all the time in the world,” Alex murmured. She still hadn’t let go of me.
    So we waited. After a little while, Joel and Kelly stopped bickering, and started making out. They were getting a lot of interested looks from the other people in the waiting room, until finally an elderly lady sitting two seats down from them tapped Joel on the shoulder with her cane.
    “You two are indecent,” she said. “Why don’t you take it somewhere else.”
    “Oh God,” Kelly said. “I’m so sorry.”
    “Yeah, sorry,” Joel mumbled.
    “Maybe you two should get going,” Alex said. “We’ll be fine here.”
    “You’re sure?” Kelly asked.
    By this time, Joel was standing, tugging on her hand.
    “Yes,” Alex said, nodding. “Go!”
    Kelly leaned in close to Alex and whispered, “I probably won’t be home tonight.”
    Alex grinned. “See you tomorrow, then.”
    Joel looked over at me, said, “Later, Dylan. Nice to meet you.” He stuck his hand out to shake, and I automatically did the same, then gasped in pain. We did not shake hands.
    I nodded to him. The two of them hurried out of the emergency room, hand in hand.
    “They’re funny,” I said.
    She grinned. “Yeah. But they love each other.”
    She leaned in a little closer to me as she said it.
    I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the pain in my hand, and said, “What about us? What are we exactly, now?”
    She looked at me, her eyes stealing away my breath, and said, “Do we have to figure that out right now?”
    I said, “Not right this second. But soon. Before… before we get our hearts broken all over again.”
    She winced. “Good point, I guess.” She looked away, and I could see her lower lip quivering.
    “Alex,” I said. “Listen to me.”
    She turned back toward me.
    “I want to talk about what happened. Between us.”
    She nodded, then said, “Why?”
    “I think we need to clear the air. Alex… we’ve been dancing around this for weeks. Sometimes flirting, sometimes not. Remembering, but not. Playing by rules that seemed to make sense, but maybe they don’t really. I think it’s time to be honest about what’s going on with us.”
    She blinked, and took a deep breath. Her expression radiated anxiety.
    “Talk to me, Alex. Why are you afraid of this?”
    Her mouth twitched at the edges into a smile. She whispered, “Because I’m happier right now than I’ve been in a long time. I don’t want to screw it up.”
    I took a deep, shuddering breath. It was clear she really meant it. She was happier right now than she’d been in a long time, because she was with me.
    All the more reason to be honest, about everything.
    “Neither do I,” I said. “And I’m afraid if we don’t talk, I’ll have assumptions, or you’ll have assumptions, that the other doesn’t share. And we’ll screw up again. And that… I don’t think I could take it.”
    “Just answer me one thing,” she said.
    I nodded.
    “Do you love me? Really? Still?”
    I pulled her closer, and said, quietly, “More than life itself.”
    She wrapped her arms around me and leaned against my chest. “Okay. Then I’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about.”

    So, now that you’ve mentioned the pill (Alex)

    “Okay,” I said. “Then I’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about.”
    I couldn’t seem to stop holding Dylan. My hands were wrapped around his waist, and I could feel the hard muscle of his abdominal muscles under them.
    There was no question Dylan was not the same boy I’d fallen in love with. He’d grown, matured in ways I couldn’t have foreseen four years ago. Sometimes I could look at him and see the hardened soldier he’d had to become: occasionally grim faced, chest and arms built like a boxer, short cropped hair, and especially his eyes; eyes that sometimes stared off into the distance as if he were a million light years away. That was the Dylan it was