A Single Brush of Skin

A/N: Hello, friends. I hope you've been well. Here's a small bit of grief and angst for the lot of you. Don't worry, there's a hopeful and lovely ending (especially for any The Notebook fans out there). I just had some... feels to work out over the weekend, and this was the result. Haha.

Also, you have no idea how much I'd appreciate some feedback. Small comments, constructive criticism, anything you have to offer is much appreciated. Thank you!

xo gummies.

And now:

—

        He heard the words before really seeing her face. It took a moment for all of it to register, her raven black hair up in a messy bun, the quality of her voice stifled and grainier somehow. The combined sight and sound of her broke his heart.

        He’d opened the door to find her standing in his doorway with red-rimmed eyes and such sorrow on her face. She was wearing an old, baggy sweatshirt he remembered she’d only pull out when she felt like the world was caving in on her.

        “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

        He wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He personally wasn’t even sure of how he felt about their situation. There was such uncertainty within him that he inadvertently allowed several minutes of silence to pass. His hand was wrapped heavily around the doorknob, and his ex-fiancée stood too still across the threshold from him.

        “That’s all I wanted to say,” she muttered.

        Her sudden, abrupt movement back toward the elevator had him jolting into motion. Alex reached across the threshold, his hand wrapping around hers awkwardly and too tightly.

        “Corinne,” he said. Her name fell out of his mouth in a soft, breathy, strained whisper. He glanced down to their hands just at the same time that she did. His fingers glided roughly, as if ineptly, over hers until they intertwined together at a weird angle.
It was shocking as well as disheartening for him to find that touching her at all was something of a new feeling. He missed the way their hands used to love one another even when he and Corinne weren’t necessarily conscious of it themselves.

        Alex lifted his gaze to meet with hers.

        “I…” His mind suddenly went blank as tears pricked at the corners of his light brown eyes. He missed her. It’d been so long since… “God, Corinne.”

        Her body canted slightly towards his, and Alex tugged her unhesitatingly into him. She buried her face in his chest as her arms found purchase around his back, and his clutched her at the shoulders. Closing his eyes, he pressed his face into the side of her head as she rested at his chest, just above his heart. Maybe she was listening to the beat of it, remembering when both of their hearts were once in sync with each other. Alex took a breath and smelled her sweet scent overlaid with a hint of sweat and her usual musk that was altogether her scent—so familiar to him, and yet so sadly foreign.

        “I’ve missed you,” he muttered, eyes still closed.

        Corinne only breathed against him. Her exhales washed over his bare shoulder a few times before he realized he was standing out in the middle of the hallway in nothing but a wife-beater and boxers.

        He pulled away, albeit reluctantly, and cupped the sides of her face with his hands, meeting her eye-to-eye. Beneath the layers and layers of grief, a severely subdued smile rose to life in his eyes and in his heart. It was small, but that tiny morsel of happiness was indeed there.

        She’d come back to him. There had to be hope.

        “Come inside?” he asked, because despite any level of hope, he wasn’t exactly sure why she’d come to him.

        Corinne smiled behind timid eyes, but interlocked her fingers with his—no less rough or clumsy than Alex had been earlier, but much more certain. And she walked him back into his apartment, shutting the door quietly behind them.

---

        From across the kitchen island that separated the two of them, Alex sat on a barstool and waited on Corinne, watching as she nibbled away at her cuticles, visibly nervous. Despite the heavy subject matter, he couldn’t help but smile in the silence. Her brows furrowed in response.

        “What?” she asked softly, still too shy and tentative.

        “You’re nervous.” His smile didn’t waver, and she tore her hand away from her face. Fight sparked to life in her eyes and mingled with mild irritation, but all of it left her with a sigh.

        “Yeah, I…”

        As if in defeat, Corinne leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest. With that single motion she’d perceptibly become smaller, unsure of herself, and heartbreakingly anxious. In spite of everything they’d been through within the past year, Alex loved her irrevocably—enough to want to wipe away all of that evident heartache. But even then, there was still too much in question between them.

        He still wasn’t sure what she wanted out of this—them. He was barely even certain of what he wanted at all.

        With a sigh, Alex leaned forward onto the kitchen island, his body inexplicably canting towards her despite the granite obstacle. His head bowed over.

        “I don’t know what you want me to say here, Corinne.”

        “I don’t need you to say anything. I just want you to listen.” He heard her snuffle, and he raised his head to find her brown eyes glassy with tears. “Could you handle that?”

        Alex swallowed and nodded his head; he couldn’t be asked to do much else. His palms were sweating and his throat was drying up with anticipation. All he knew for sure was that he missed her too much. Even now, he missed her, and she was standing less than ten feet away from him.

        “You… were right,” she began. His eyebrows shot up immediately, his mouth opening for a quip, but she silenced him with a startlingly icy look. “You were right, okay? I do have a trust problem. I do have an anxiety/panic attack… thing that is a problem—I sometimes have nightmares still. And as far as you and I go… I do hold back so much even after six years.”

        Corinne paused and took a breath. Her eyes weren’t so glossy anymore, but if the way her fingers fidgeted was any indication, she was nonetheless nervous. She wouldn’t meet his eyes, either.

        “But I don’t want to be any of those things. Especially if it means I can’t… have you, if it means that you’re treated unfairly if I have you. Because… jeez, Alex, I do. I still want you. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. I want to share my life with you—all of it. Every little, big thing. Everything from the day-to-day stuff to the life-changing events. I want to be able to… give. To you.”

        She sucked in a breath, turning her gaze to the floor as she tried to surreptitiously wipe her cheek dry. It was a good thing she wasn’t wearing mascara today.

        “I want to treat you better. I want to love you and have the right, feel like I have the right to love you. You’ve always said that I was enough no matter what, but we both know that I—”

        “—Corinne.”

        They looked at one another pointedly, neither backing down for several moments. This was an ongoing battle between them. Corinne never quite felt adequate, always thinking that he treated her too well and that in comparison she was severely lacking no matter how hard she tried. Alex could never quite get her to let go of that line of thought. For some reason, she never believed she was enough for him, and that both pained and frustrated him. She was horribly self-deprecating.

        Why couldn’t she see that he just loved her—flaws and all?

        Corinne was the one to glance away first and speak, her softened voice a startling contrast to the echoes of those past heated battles they were both surely replaying in their heads.

        “Please, Alex. Just let me finish.”

        He nodded almost imperceptibly and kept quiet for a long moment as he began to mull his own words over in his mind. He’d discovered his resolve, and now he had to find an opportunity to apply it well and correctly.

        Corinne closed her eyes briefly before beginning again.

        “Alex, I just wanted you to know that I truly did—do love you. I’m just never very good at showing that I do. It’s always been a fault. And I’m sorry. I just can’t get it right.”

        She suddenly fell silent, and he took his chance. Slowly, Alex left the barstool and drifted towards her cautiously, as though she were an easily frightened bird that might fly away—which in the current circumstance was a rather accurate analogy. He stood in front of Corinne for a long moment before tentatively deciding to reach out and lay a light hand on her hip, hoping she would come of her own accord.

        And with eyes fluttering closed, she did. Her hands came up to rest nowhere else but at his hips, and his on hers. They weren’t exactly hugging, but they weren’t holding each other at a distance, either. They could, however, feel the heat of one another on their skin, and for Alex, that was enough.

        “Corinne,” he said, leaning over until his forehead kissed hers. He breathed her name like a prayer as his body almost completely listed into hers. But he refrained for the sole purpose of giving her space that he knew she needed. She still seemed too fragile and unlike herself—in a way she seemed jittery.

        Only then did Alex realize that Corinne really wasn’t all that put-together right now. She was noticeably wavering on that precarious ledge of sanity, and below her was a twisted pit of nerves and panic; he’d seen it before. A few times, he’d seen her fall over and plunge into a panic attack; some of those panic pits were deeper than others. How was he going to back her away from the ledge this time? He’d rarely been successful at doing so before.

        Alex was about to say something when Corinne beat him to it. Her eyes were still closed as her lips made room for sound.

        “I left because I wanted to find a way to be better for you,” she murmured. “Alex, I’m just sorry.” Corinne ducked her head toward his chest before completely falling into his embrace.

        And it was then that he finally found the words. He moved until his lips were able to rest feather-light at the crown of her head.

        “You were born to be real, love, not perfect.”

        Corinne stiffened in his arms, and he pulled back enough to look at her face.

        “I hope you weren’t wondering if I still loved you. I’d said it five years ago; I’ll say it again. I just want to be with you through it all, Corinne. I don’t need to help you if you don’t want me to, but I want to always be there for you. With you. In your life, and you in mine.”

        She released a shuddering breath, but Alex continued.

        “Just let me love you.”

        A ghost of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth, but the sadness in her eyes was just the same as when she’d appeared on his doorstep.

        “Alex, I don’t know how. When I said you were right earlier, I meant it. I’m damaged goods, Alex, and I’m trying to get passed that. Which is what brought me back here. Aside from saying that I’m sorry, I needed to tell you that I’m ‘putting in the work’. I don’t really know where that’ll leave me or us in the future, but I thought you deserved to know.”

Of course, he understood what “putting in the work” meant. She was finally getting the help she needed.
        The both of them sighed simultaneously, and Alex couldn’t help but find some amusement in that. Even in just the most insignificant of ways, he liked to believe they were already getting back in sync.

        His thoughts wandered from there, but Corinne didn’t. She hadn’t moved out of his arms, but her eyes were set on his chin. He lifted a hand to her face and ran a thumb over her eyebrow, framing her face with his palm. She was seemingly determined not to meet his eyes, though.

        “I don’t know how to keep you,” Corinne said with a strained voice. “And I don’t know how to love very well, but I want to keep you anyway. Oh, jeez. I was so selfish coming here tonight. I just… I’m trying to heal now, Alex. I don’t know. I’m all over the place, but that’s kind of the gist of everything, I guess.”

        Alex took a long breath to gather his thoughts. Watching her quietly and reverently, he responded.

        “I don’t care how broken you think you are, or how unfair you think you’re being. Maybe you’re being selfish, but I’m no one to judge. God knows I’d been selfish with you in the past, and to a worse fault. But if you’ll have me, I’d like to stand with you.” Alex watched as the sadness in her eyes slowly began to shatter like glass. “We don’t need to go back to any engagement; we don’t even need to be… together. Just let me stand with you, be your stronghold for shelter or your seat for rest, or… whatever you need Corinne. I’ll be whatever you need.”

        A genuine smile stretched across her face, and for the first time in too long, Alex saw the Corinne he knew break through the shutters. Even in sadness, he’d never seen her so grim as she’d been tonight, and this ephemeral moment only had him grinning like a fool.

---

        Corinne allowed her hands to roam, sliding them up from his hips and over his strong chest to entangle at the nape of his neck. She’d forgotten how in love she was with him, and that thought had her rolling her eyes at herself. Of all the things to forget—really Corinne?

        “You’ll be anything for me?”

        If Alex’s nervous head nod was anything to go by, she knew the look in her eyes had to be pretty predatory, or at least suspiciously teasing or smug.

        “Then say you’re a bird.”

        Alex barked out a laugh, such beautiful mirth glowing in his eyes.

        “We’re having a serious conversation, and you throw The Notebook at me?”

        “You’re so metro for even catching the reference. You know that, right?”

“Hey, I’m only aware of it because you’d always take the remote from me whenever The Notebook was playing on TV!”

“Mhmm, sure.”

        He shook his head at her as she giggled, but when they caught each other’s gazes again, all joking matter was suddenly cast aside.

        Her eyes were muted, but earnest as a smile played at her lips.

        “Say you’re a bird, Alex,” Corrine said softly, hesitantly, twirling her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. His grip at her hips tightened significantly.

        “Say it; say you’re a bird.”

        With a ghost of a smile on his lips and a quiet strength and resolve in his voice, Alex answered, “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.”

Fin.