by Nicky James
Catching the arm of the settee to prevent toppling over, I scanned the room, horrified at the whizzing lack of control.
Fuck! This hadn’t happened for weeks.
It was going too fast. Time was slipping through my fingers in a flash, and I couldn’t keep up. I was leaving more and more in the past. Time was running out. When it was gone, it was gone for good.
And what did I have to show for it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I’d been lying on the couch in a panic for nearly an hour.
A whole fucking hour! A month!
I’d been cramped in Beck’s apartment for a month.
My skin blistered with heat and sweat dripped down my temple and the middle of my back. I needed to move. Get away. But the nauseating rush of movement prevented my escape. It wouldn’t slow down. When I cried out, my lips moved too fast, and the words floating in the air had the same quality as those records turned to top speed. Higher pitched. Squealing. Too fast.
Closing my eyes brought more panic. The darkness encased me like a tomb. Squeezed me from all sides. Buried me alive. Taunted. Took away more precious time before I could grasp it and savor it.
Tick, tick, tick…
I gritted my teeth and stumbled awkwardly toward the goddamn clock. It ripped my thoughts to shreds with each consecutive assault. Stole my sanity. Over and over. Ticking. Hitting me where it hurt most. It needed to stop.
Right. Fucking. Now.
Tiny erratic bursts of speed made moving difficult, but I fought it, convinced I’d land on my ass. Aiming for the clock, I growled my frustrations into the room. My vision grayed out around me until my target was the only thing highlighted with any color.
Knowing it was about to face eradication, it screamed with the only voice it had, ticking thunderously loud until I couldn’t think. Like it knew its death was inevitable. Its cries filled my ears, flooded my veins, and consumed my thoughts.
Unconcerned with my balance, I wrenched the thing off the wall, ready to smash it into the ground when a sharp voice pierced the darkness, tearing me from the chaos.
“Grayson! What the fuck! Stop now!”
Hands raised with the enemy in my grasp, seconds from slaughter, I froze.
Beck was beside me before the fog inside my mind fully lifted. He wrenched the clock from my hands and laid it on the couch out of reach. The action threw me off balance, and I pivoted, listed sideways, and caught myself on the wall before I crashed.
Scanning the room, I noted the whirlwind had slowed again to a normal pace. Nothing raced, and the deafening roar in my ears had gone silent. I blinked. Blinked again. Residual adrenaline still overflowed my system, and I couldn’t steady my breathing or the incessant shakes chattering through my body. My hands were clammy. The hair at my temples was damp.
“Gray? Grayson?”
I found Beck’s face and wondered how long he’d been standing there. Still caught halfway between the chaos and the present, little ticks of uncertainty and panic kept zapping me. Hit by a sudden flurry of action, I grasped Beck’s shirtfront.
“Do you have a calendar I can use? I need a calendar.”
I moved to go around him, but he stopped me with a firm hold on my shoulders. His frown was so deep, his brows met in the middle, dipping below the bridge of his glasses.
“Were you about to smash my two-thousand-dollar antique clock?”
“The fucking thing won’t shut up.”
I paused, assessing the room and tuned my hearing into all the sounds around me. There was no ticking. It was gone. A mixture of satisfaction and pride bloomed in my chest but was quickly followed by a sick sense of dread. How would I know what time it was now?
“My phone! Where is my phone?” I asked, peering around Beck to the coffee table.
He shook me. Hard. Snapping my focus back on his face. “What the fuck is going on with you?”
“What time is it?”
“Gray?” He snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I smacked them away.
“Don’t! I have to go.”
I pushed him aside and headed to the bedroom. Time was slipping away. I needed a calendar and a plan before I wasted another minute in this claustrophobic hell of an apartment. I’d use my allotted time wearing my prosthesis to go shopping. I’d take a cab to the mall. Breathe fresh air. Get away.
Buy a calendar.
* * *
By mid-afternoon, the consuming panic that had taken control of my mind and body faded. Standing in the middle of the mall with a newly purchased calendar, a wristwatch, and a digital clock for Beck’s bedroom, I felt like an idiot.
People bustled around, oblivious to the madman standing among them. The one who’d nearly destroyed his best friend’s antique clock because it had loomed larger than life in his mind, hissing threatening vengeance only he could hear. Vengeance for something I no longer knew or understood.
When the last of my anxiety dripped away, I was left feeling ashamed and alone. Rattled from the experience but empty in my core as though I was missing something vital. Only then was I able to look logically at myself and know without a shadow of a doubt that I was not okay. Something was really, really wrong with me.
I’d worn my prosthesis far longer than I was supposed to, and my body ached with the strain. In the food court, I found a vacant table and pulled out my phone, doing my damnedest not to look at the time as I drew up my contact list.
Knowing I would have some explaining to do, but not knowing how to articulate the problem, I called Beck, hoping he would be understanding.
“I’m mad at you,” he snapped the moment he came on the line.
“I know.”
“But…” He sighed. “You are also really freaking me out. Where are you?”
“At the mall. Can you come pick me up? I’ve kinda over-done myself.”
I could envisage him rubbing his eyes beneath his glasses. “Yeah. Let me lock up the shop, and I’ll be there in ten minutes. Meet me out front.”
“Thanks.”
Ten minutes later, Beck pulled up at the curb, and I stood from the bench where I’d sat my sorry ass and got in his car.
Our drive back home was silent. Beck stewed. His anger wafted off him in waves. The steel grip he maintained on the steering wheel was telling. The plastic bag with my purchases crinkled in my damp palm as I clung to it with a mixture of guilt and reassurance.
He parked around back and killed the engine but didn’t make a move to exit the car. Staring straight ahead, his hands twitched on the wheel. I knew I needed to say something.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
“You were going to smash my clock!” he spat.
Of all the people in Beck’s life, I knew how much of a slight that was. He was fiercely protective of his possessions.
Before I could respond, he spun and pinned me with his fiery gaze. “What is going on with you? And I’m not talking about the bullshit little bump we’re having in our friendship right now. I’m talking about everything else.”
How did I describe something I didn’t understand? Every time my mouth formed words, nothing came out. Had I imagined it? The world racing out of control didn’t make sense. It wasn’t logically something that could happen. Yet it had felt so real.
Maybe the sinking fear when I considered the passing time was simply the result of being so housebound. My routine was out of whack. Could the answer be that simple?
“I don’t know. I think I’m just feeling a little stir crazy. I’m not used to sitting around so much. The clock…” I sighed. “I don’t know what to say. It… it gives me a headache. The ticking. It’s loud.”
It was one lie after another lately. I didn’t know who I was anymore.
“What ticking?”
“The ticking, you know? Every fucking second. It just eats at my brain until my head pounds. Then the chimes on the hour. Fuck, I just—”
“So the answer is to smash it to smithereens? My clock. Not yours. Mine!”
�
��No.”
“If it bothers you, then speak the fuck up! Don’t destroy my things.” The hurt behind his words was thick. It was a hurt born in childhood.
“Can we take it down? Stop the pendulum or something so it doesn’t scream at me all day?”
“It is down. You took it down, and you must have knocked something loose in the process because it’s not working now. It’s almost two hundred years old, you know? It’s fragile. And fucking rare!”
“Shit.” I wiped a sweaty palm down my face. “I’m so sorry. I’ll pay to have it repaired.”
“Never mind. I can fix it. I have a knack for these things. I’ll bring it down to the shop and hang it in the gift room.”
I didn’t object. The clock needed to go away, although I knew, deep inside, it wouldn’t eliminate the problem. The problem was inside me, burrowed deep in a dark cave.
“Come on. Let’s go upstairs.”
Beck exited the vehicle, and I climbed out the other side, the strain on my residual limb burned and throbbed, making me favor my other leg. Aurora warned me against limping, explained about proper weight distribution, but I’d disobeyed her instructions and caused myself pain. It wasn’t from a poorly fitting prosthesis either, it was overuse. It’d been hours since I’d put it on. My new, daily time allotment had expired ages ago.
Making the slow climb to the second floor, clinging to the banisters on both sides of the stairwell, the dark haze descended. Returning to the apartment and the monotonous routine of doing nothing made me antsy. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I could hear the taunting tick of the clock, even when I knew it wasn’t possible.
“Can we hit the gym tonight?” I asked halfway up.
Beck groaned as he fit his key in the door. “I’m beginning to think you truly hate me.”
“Is that a no? I’ll go on my own. It’s fine.”
“Yeah, we can go. If it helps you, then I will suffer the torture.”
“Come on, you love the burn. Admit it.”
Beck chuckled and held the door so I could enter the apartment. “I don’t, but I hate seeing you like this more. Give me ten minutes. I have to run to the shop and take care of a few things I left hanging when you called.”
Before the accident, I was a regular face at Fit in the Point, Dewhurst’s biggest gym. Lifting weights and keeping my cardio peaked out benefitted my job and made me feel good about myself. It had been second nature to grab my gym bag after work and spend a few hours in the zone, sweating off the day’s stress.
Lately, it took a lot of personal pep-talking to get me out the door. I wanted to go. I craved the normality of the task. It was a dip into what had made my life comfortable at one time. But it took energy and for me to swallow my pride whenever we walked into the building.
People knew me there. They stared. They whispered. Some pointed when they thought I wasn’t looking. I’d become a spectacle. For the first time ever, I was self-conscious about how I looked and what people saw.
I had a newfound respect for people who treated me like the person I used to be and not like the cripple with half a leg missing. Apart from the fitness instructors and a small handful of regulars who saw past my injury, no one talked to me anymore.
I didn’t need or want their sympathies. I had enough self-loathing and pity for everyone. At first, it was embarrassing. Their avoidance fed my depression and made me wonder why I bothered getting out of bed at all. Shame made it hard to focus on my exercises, and Beck had repeatedly told me I was miserable and to snap out of it.
But now, a few weeks in, all I felt was a festering irritation at those people who I’d once called friends who couldn’t even look me in the eye. Where I’d initially chosen to wear joggers so I could hide my injury, lately I wore shorts and a cover made of fancy fabric over my shrinker sock. Aurora had given it to me as a gift. It was black with skulls and pirates on it that apparently glowed in the dark. A friend of hers made them.
All it had taken was for me to joke one day about starting a new career as a pirate, getting a peg leg, an eye patch, and a boat, for her and I to become friends.
I flashed my membership card at the front desk, and Beck paid for his session with cash—since he stubbornly refused to commit to more than one day at a time.
“Hey, Grayson,” a short, dark-hair girl called from a small office space behind the counter. She poked her head out and smiled, her unique silver eyes catching the light and glimmering.
“Bea. How ya doing?”
Bea was a personal trainer. Even at five-feet nothing, she was not a woman I would fuck with. Her solid body was barely covered with a tight black tank top the same color as her hair and spandex biker shorts that only just cupped her round ass.
“Getting by. When am I gonna see you in spin class?”
I laughed and shook my head. “Not sure that’s in the cards anymore.”
“Don’t give me your bullshit, Gray. I’ve had plenty of amputees in my class over the years. I smell excuses.”
Leave it to Bea to put me in my place.
Beck snorted and clapped my shoulder. “Aww, does Bea make you cry into your pillow at night?”
I elbowed Beck and leaned against the counter so I could make a swing at him with my crutch. “You’re one to talk. Take that woman’s class, and I swear you’ll be crawling out of here begging for your mama to save you.”
Beck laughed and glanced at Bea, sizing her up in a way I’d seen him do with plenty of women. His smile was the one he reserved for when he flirted. “She don’t look so scary. I could take her.”
“You think I’m a drill sergeant with you. I dare ya.” I waved a hand at Bea, encouraging Beck to take the plunge.
Bea grinned, clearly enjoying the banter. “I don’t know, newbie,” she said to Beck. “Come back and talk to me after you’ve survived Tony’s beginner class. I teach advanced spin, I don’t want to break you.” Then she winked.
Beck sneered good-naturedly between us before hiking up his gym bag, setting it more squarely on his shoulder. “Fuck ya both. Let’s go get this shit over with. One person torturing me is enough.”
I waved at Bea and followed Beck into the weight room, chuckling the entire way.
“She’s got a boyfriend, you know.”
Beck didn’t look up as he loaded the correct weight onto the free weight bench press we liked to use. “The cute ones always do. Story of my life.”
“You wouldn’t want her anyway. She has an OCD streak to her. She’d never understand your chaotic living arrangements like I do.”
Instant tension found us, and I bit my tongue, realizing that what I said could be taken to mean something else. Beck had once freely talked about the women he was interested in. I’d heard all about his dates—even when I preferred not to. The slightest step in that direction now had him clamming up and me getting defensive. It wasn’t good.
“You go first,” he informed me, taking his place at the head of the bench to spot me.
I sat before lying my body down and peered up into Beck’s hazel eyes, wondering if we’d ever get back to normal. He wore shorts today, like me, and it was hard not to sneak a glance up them from my angle. His thighs weren’t as firm as my own. The hair on them was lighter. But I’d spent many years loving them, sneaking glances at all of him when I could.
“Ready,” I asked.
He nodded, so I started my first set while Beck counted out loud.
The strain of lifting weights was a good distraction, and over the following hour, I lost myself in the familiar rhythm as we took turns on the machines. I worked my arms and chest and my left leg—to a point. My blood flowed, and my mind cleared.
Mostly.
A sweaty Beck was hard to ignore.
Beck copied all my activities but at a lesser intensity. When we’d finished with the weights, I yanked my T-shirt over my head and mopped my face before nodding at the treadmill. “Hop on.”
It wasn’t an activity I could do yet, but Aurora ass
ured me, in time, I would be right back at it. Normally, Beck and I gave up after weight lifting, but today I pushed him to do more because I wasn’t ready to head back to his apartment just yet and having him close felt good for my head—even if it was hell on my heart.
“Are you kidding me? Fuck that shit. I don’t run.”
“A light jog. Ten minutes. Come on. Don’t wimp out on me.”
“Ah, no thanks.”
“Ah, yes thanks. I’ll talk you through it.”
“Talk me through what? My last breath? Are you trying to kill me?”
“I’m trying to make you healthy.”
“I hate you. I don’t want to be healthy.”
Despite his arguments, he begrudgingly climbed on, and I set the intensity low enough he wouldn’t collapse. With a grin like the Cheshire cat, I asked, “Ready?”
“You’re enjoying my pain too much.”
“Maybe I just like watching you sweat.”
It was too much honesty, and Beck cut his eyes to the control panel. “Just start it.”
I hit the button and stood at the end of the machine, facing him so I could cheer him on. For the first two minutes, he sneered, panted, and bitched about his lungs burning. After that, he didn’t have the energy to find words, so he stared right into my eyes while he chugged along, searing his hatred into me with his laser gaze.
I’d know him long enough, I knew all the faces of Beck. As he pushed himself beyond his limits, sweating and gasping air, he lost the ability to hold up walls. His anger was replaced by a series of other things, and I read every wordless emotion that crossed his face.
Concern for my wellbeing.
Questions for the things I wasn’t sharing.
Embarrassment from the incident a few weeks ago—which made him look away a few times, unable to hold my gaze.
Then, something else.
Something I’d never seen before and didn’t recognize.
The last two minutes of his run, our eyes locked. Mindlessly, I fed him encouragement. When I licked my lips, his gaze slipped, and he followed the action before scanning my bare chest, his pupils dilating. When he caught himself, he darted his gaze away and stumbled in his run. Catching himself on the bars, he growled in frustration.
