Until We Fall Read online

  I glance away, toward the tiny candle. It’s amazing how the small source of light illuminates so much. “So. What does a five a.m. yoga class involve?”

  “Five thirty. Slow movements, building tapas—energy—for the day. Rituals that facilitate awakening.”

  I mirror her posture, resting my forehead against my palm. “Why so early?”

  “Lots of demand for the specific type of yoga I offer, I guess.”

  “Wait; there are different types of yoga?”

  She stretches one leg out in front of her—away from the flame—and bends forward, until her cheek hovers just above her knee. “Yes. There are lots of different styles. Asana is just one piece. Some are more ancient than others. It’s a philosophy, a way of life.”

  “I’m thoroughly confused,” I confess. “What’s asana?”

  “Sorry. It’s the movement portion of yoga. The poses.”

  Her breathing is deep and rhythmic as she straightens and bends over the other leg.

  “The breathing limb of yoga is pranayama.”

  “And is there something specific that you’re doing now?” I find the sound of her breathing, like the sound of the wind in a conch shell, enthralling.

  Finally, she offers a faint smile. “This particular pose is called ‘attempting not to panic-asana’,” she says with a lightness that does not match her words.

  “Panic seems like a pretty distinct emotion.” I’m afraid to ask more but I’m also curious now. Here’s a woman who is running her own yoga studio, who clearly deployed to the Middle East, slinging around the word “panic” as if she’s talking about something completely different, like…how much she loves a particular kind of chocolate.

  I sit with her in the faint light of the candle, listening to her just breathe. Feeling the stillness.

  Embraced in a cocoon of darkness and light, safe from the storm raging outside.

  * * *

  Nalini

  Just breathe.

  The squat fat candle is bravely pushing back the darkness around us. A single flame, gallantly holding back the wave of crushing fear that lurks at the edge of the shadows.

  Those candles have never sold particularly well. It’s hard to market a candle like this one—ungainly, with one wick—when people seem convinced that only expensive, heavily scented glass candles are the only ones of value.

  At the moment, though, I’m grateful for the whole damn box of them, even if I would never burn them all at once. That’d be far too much fire in one place.

  “Why?”

  I glance over at him and it takes me a moment to realize I’ve spoken out loud about the fire. Shit.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you afraid of the fire?”

  I chew on the inside of my lip, debating how far I should take this conversation. Part of me thinks of him as a single-serving friend from Flight Club—that person you sit with on a plane and share your deepest fears and secrets with, only to never see them again.

  But another part of me, the part of me that’s drawn to the warmth of his skin radiating against mine, the part of me that is seriously grateful for his kindness in getting the candle going without pushing for too many answers to unasked questions…that part of me is more leery.

  For a guy who wandered in off the street looking like a half-drowned stray, my storm buddy is turning into quite an interesting puzzle.

  “Bad memories of my mom’s cooking as a kid.” I make a feeble attempt at a joke. The candle flickers and struggles to stay lit.

  “Oh.” There is so much disappointment in that single syllable, as if I’ve lost an opportunity that I’ll never have again.

  I need to change the subject, away from my paralyzing, irrational panic to something more mundane. Instead, I decide to embrace it, to name the thing that makes me afraid. “I was trapped in a building in Syria. I’ve had some…issues with fire since then. So not being in the dark alone makes this whole thing a lot easier.”

  “Is it the storm or the darkness?” Every time he speaks, his voice vibrates through the connection of our arms. His voice is deep and rough. Like the darkness in his eyes.

  “Both? I think it’s the combination that makes it tougher than normal.”

  Silence hangs between us, heavy, then filled with the sounds of the battle in the sky overhead. It sounds as if the lightning is striking the ground all around the studio, and even through the closed doors and layers of concrete, we can hear the wind howling like a mad thing, clawing at the earth as if it would drag us from safety.

  “I used to sit with my mother and listen to the thunderstorms when I was a kid,” he says after a moment.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. When we lived at Fort Hood. Our house was out on Stillhouse Hollow, overlooking the water. We could watch the storms roll across the hill country through these huge glass windows. Storms always remind me of how she used to smell. Like no matter where I am, I can always smell the lotion she used to wear.” He clears his throat. “Crabtree and Evelyn Rosewater. Even in Iraq, I could still remember the way she smelled.”

  “You’re talking in past tense.” I’m afraid to speak the words. To ask the question his words imply.

  “She died when I was twelve.” I feel him tense, a physical manifestation of the pain of a lost boy in those simple words. “She was killed the first year we were in Iraq. One of the first women to die in our endlessly stupid war.”

  His words slam into me, a solid punch in the chest, crushing my heart into a thousand shining pieces. I reach for him in the dark, finding his hand resting on his thigh. He doesn’t resist as I thread my fingers in his. “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s why I joined the Army.” He lifts his hand, breaking the contact between us, scrubbing it over his face. “Sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well. Didn’t mean to dump that on you.”

  I don’t remove my hand from where it rests on his thigh. “It’s okay.”

  He makes a noise, his hand covering his eyes. “I never really talk about her. I think you’re the first person I’ve told in…forever.”

  “A loss like that would tend to be hard to talk about.” The muscle in his leg is knotted and tense, his words strained. Like the words are dragging the physical pain back out from a place he does not want to go.

  “I got lucky. The first person I told was one of my roommates at school. I never told anyone except him. He never fucked with me about it. Never called me a baby for tearing up.”

  “What kind of a bastard would tease anyone for being sad about their mom dying?”

  “Clearly, you don’t know cadets,” he says dryly.

  I stiffen at his words. The possibility of him being a member of the Long Gray Line like me is…unsettling, at best.

  I’ve tried my hardest to avoid fellow West Pointers as a rule. I do not have good memories of that place. No matter how much it set me up for success, the price I paid…I can’t say it was worth it. “West Point?”

  “Yep. Class of 2012.”

  “Small world. I’m class of 2010.” I angle my shoulders slightly toward him.

  He shifts then, peering over at me. “No shit? Why haven’t you ever been over to The Pint? I thought Eli had rounded up all the local veterans and Old Grads.”

  I want to avoid the subject of the veteran community in Durham. There are good folks here—my issues are mine, not theirs. “I’ve been too busy building my business. Yoga is a highly competitive marketplace and I’m trying to establish a foothold in an already crowded city.”

  “Really? There’s that many people that want to get together with a bunch of people and chant?”

  I’m used to people knowing very little about yoga or the philosophy and beliefs behind it. Misconceptions are not offensive to me unless they’re intentional or exploitative. Don’t get me started on the exploitation. So I don’t correct him, not right then. As much as yoga is fundamental to who I am, I’m not offended by his lack of knowledge or the flippant way he talks about it. />
  He doesn’t know any different and for some reason, I have an extraordinary amount of patience for my storm buddy. That doesn’t make his comments any less problematic. It just means I’m less likely to argue about it today.

  “You should drop by The Pint sometime. Eli…well, never mind. I’m kind of on a self-imposed ban at the moment.”

  I’m uncomfortably aware of my hand on his thigh, the solid strength beneath my touch. He lowers his then, and sets it on mine.

  It’s an easy thing to flip mine beneath his so we’re palm to palm. An intimately human connection between two strangers.

  Funny how that works. Stripped away of everything, all pretense, all the noise of modern life, we can sit here and be fully human, fully aware of everything we are to each other. Absorbing each other’s energy.

  “Why are you self-imposing a ban?”

  His fingers flex beneath mine. “I’m coming off a ten-year run of being a complete fucking asshole.”

  3

  Caleb

  She says nothing for a long time. The storm thrashes above us, its violence reminding me far too closely of the sounds of mortar and rocket attacks on our tiny base in northern Iraq. It’s showing no sign of letting up, even after almost an hour. I’m not used to storms hanging around like this. The storms in the hill country usually rolled through pretty quickly.

  I don’t hate storms. I wasn’t lying when I told her they made me think of my mother. They do. But those memories are twisted up now, and tied into the explosions and bullshit from Iraq.

  So it’s complicated. Just like everything in my life.

  One thing that hasn’t gotten too terribly complicated at this moment is being with the woman next to me, even though I’m still curious about why she’s afraid of the dark. I know there’s more there.

  Sitting there, listening to the crashing storm, it’s far too easy to confess the harsh reality of my own life that I haven’t really unpacked for anyone.

  Ever.

  Eli knows part of it. Hell, he knows most of it. That’s a big part of the reason he put up with me for so damn long.

  Deacon got sick of pretending to care.

  Noah and Josh walked away a long time ago.

  I’m sorry. I’ve managed to run off everyone who was ever decent to me. I’ll run you off, too, I think. But I say none of those things.

  “I thought you were friends with Eli.”

  “I was. I am.” I love the feeling of her palm pressed to mine. The simple connection of skin to skin. “He’s…a good friend. The roommate I told about my mom? That was Eli. He was such a Boy Scout, even then.” I don’t mean that disparagingly. Eli is one of the best men I know.

  It’s then that I notice the copper design tracing down the back of her index finger. “What’s this?”

  She slips her hand from mine and holds both of hers out in front of her. “Henna. I came home from one of my cousins’ weddings in Mumbai last week.”

  I reach for her before I realize it might be rude. She smiles and there’s a light in her eyes that wasn’t there a moment ago. “It’s okay. It’s part of the mehndi ceremony. The bride’s arms, hands, and legs are decorated with powerful protective symbols using henna. Tradition says that the darker her henna is and the longer it lasts predicts how much her husband will love her.”

  “That’s so neat.” I trace my finger over the looping flowers and swirls, then turn her hand over, noticing the designs that are more faded on her palms. “Does it hurt?”

  I glance up and see her noticing the scrapes on my fingers, the black tattoos peeking out from the edges of my sleeves. She meets my gaze but doesn’t ask the question I see in her eyes.

  “No,” she tells me. “It’s applied as a paste. It dries and flakes off and continues to darken for the next day or so. It actually cools as it dries.”

  “It’s beautiful.” The silence draws out between us again. “So before Syria, did you always hate storms?” I ask, needing to fill the space with something other than the noise of the destruction above us.

  “They’re calling this a hundred years’ storm,” she says. “At this point, I’m hoping the building doesn’t get destroyed so I don’t have to cancel classes.”

  “That’s not answering the question.” I slide my thumb over the designs on her skin. The touch is gentle. I’m seeking rather than taking. Unsure of how long she will allow this contact to remain. I’ll enjoy the connection for however long it lasts. Because pure human contact has been in short supply in my life for so goddamned long.

  And it will end. Of that, I’m certain. It always does.

  “No, I didn’t always hate storms,” she says after a moment. “West Point started me on the path of astraphobia and getting blown up in Syria sealed the deal.”

  “You know it’s treatable, right?”

  “So is smoking, drinking, and sex addiction. Doesn’t mean I’m going to let someone pick through my head when it’s perfectly reasonable to be afraid of something that can kill you.” She removes her hand from mine, dragging her fingers through her hair. Her breathing is coming faster, harder.

  As if she catches my thoughts, she slows it down. Deeply inhaling, then controlling the exhale. It’s impressive watching her reclaim control.

  “We can talk about something else,” I say. “Childhood pets. Pet peeves. Favorite stupid new cadet story.”

  She closes her eyes, resting her head against the concrete wall behind us. “On my summer detail as a yearling, one of my new cadets swallowed a live grasshopper during Beast because one of the cadre NCOs dared her to.”

  God, but it feels so weird to talk about yearlings and plebes and cows and not have to explain that Beast is essentially basic training. Plebes are freshmen and basically pond scum. We’d talk about them like they were houseplants or pets. They didn’t even have names until they made it through freshman year. Yearlings or yuks are sophomores, cows are juniors and firsties—first class cadets are seniors. It’s so damn strange to fall right back into the language of West Point, even though it’s been years since I graduated.

  It’s really hard to laugh when you’re both amused yet horrified, and I somehow manage to be both at the same time. “What the hell? Why would anyone do that?”

  “Which part? The swallowing of the live bug or the daring someone to swallow said live bug?”

  “Both? Either. Hell, I thought I’d seen everything.” I shudder at the idea of a living thing’s feet prickling down my throat on its way to an acid bath. Ugh.

  “Clearly you’ve never wanted to belong so badly to something that you’d do anything for acceptance.”

  Her words strike a nerve. One she doesn’t realize is exposed. I rest my elbow on one knee, pushing my hair back. It’s too long now. Kind of like the scruff on my face that’s rapidly passed the stage of five o’clock shadow and is moving into full beard mode. I need to shave before I start blending in with all the hippies around here. “You have no idea.”

  She presses her lips into a flat line. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “It seems like I keep circling back and saying things that aren’t really…they’re pretty insensitive.”

  “I’ve had a long time to get over losing my mom.” The words are forced bravado, pushing back against the knot that rises up against my throat. A lie, convenient and dark, blending into the shadows.

  “No one gets over that. No matter how old they are.” She shifts, moving her body into contact with mine once more. A living, breathing being pressed against another living being, unsure of how to offer comfort except through contact.

  “How do you know to do that?” I ask suddenly.

  “Do what?”

  “You just…you keep pressing against me.”

  She moves away. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to…”

  I slip my hand around her knee, holding her fast. “I didn’t mean it like it sounded.” I release her quickly. “It’s just…not something people do all the time. I noticed, that
’s all.”

  The candlelight flickers over her, casting her honey gold skin in even deeper copper hues. Her full lips are parted, dark and dusky and fucking erotic as hell. If I close my eyes, my brain will definitely go someplace not appropriate for polite company.

  “Our bodies and minds are connected. Seventy percent of human communication is nonverbal.” Her voice is quiet beneath the storm. “Sometimes, it’s easier to express something without saying a word.”

  “That’s…fascinating.” I’m practicing not being an asshole. Or rather, practicing directness without being an asshole. Once upon a time, I would have called what she’s said hippy New Age bullshit.

  Amazing how sobriety can change your point of view on oh…everything.

  “I’m glad.” Her words are a comfort. A balm I hadn’t realized I needed.

  “I’m glad I’m not alone right now.”

  * * *

  Nalini

  My breath catches in my throat. His words are a caress. A teasing promise of something deeper than a brush of skin against skin in the dark.

  But also a connection, something deeply human that binds us together. It’s not just our shared fear of the dark. It’s something…different. Deeper.

  More human.

  “The universe has a strange way of making things happen that need to happen,” I say after a drawn-out silence.

  His arm flexes as he drags his hand through his hair once more. “I’m not sure I believe that.”

  Too late, I realize my words have sliced at him without meaning to. I reach for him then because I can do nothing else but apply pressure to the wound I’ve opened, no matter how unintentionally. I didn’t mean to, but I guess knowing about his mother’s death has turned into something I can’t avoid, even if I’m trying to. “I’m sorry. I know how callous it must sound for someone to say everything happens for a reason.”