Fair of Face

by Sienna Waters

  “Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think,” she repeated to herself.

  Not that it helped. Her palms were sweaty on the steering wheel as she finally turned into the hospital parking lot and got a ticket.

  “Whatever happens will happen.”

  Even spoken aloud the words couldn’t soothe her. What it came down to, she thought as she got out of the car, was that she had to try. She had to show up. She had to see Nat’s face. Even just a glimpse of her would be better than nothing. Just knowing that she was alive and somewhat okay. If that was all she got, then that would be just fine. Painful, but fine. Because this world needed Nat Lee in it.

  She hurried into the hospital, dodging a security guard and running up to the desk.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I’m here for Natalie Bingham.” Checked in under her real name. Smart.

  “One moment please.”

  The place was swanky, private, cold and white and sterile. But that seemed comforting in a way. The hospital gave off an aura of confidence, it screamed ‘people here know what they’re doing.’ Kate’s mouth was dry and every part of her seemed to tremble. But she had to know. Had to know that Nat was okay.

  “You’ll need to go up to the third floor, take a right out of the elevator and check in with the nurse’s station there,” the smiling blonde receptionist said finally.

  And Kate took off as fast as her feet could carry her, sneakers squeaking on the clean white floor.

  When the elevator doors slid open she didn’t want to step out. After wanting to see Nat for so long, suddenly she was afraid. She forced herself to get out just as the doors were sliding shut. She turned right and came face to face with an empty nurse’s station. Not a soul in sight. Swallowing, she looked around, and then made a decision, turning down a long corridor.

  She heard before she saw.

  There was the sound of voices, of laughter, and she knew without needing to see that at least a couple of the people in the room were drunk or high. She closed her eyes for a second, tried to gather herself, and then walked a few steps to peek into a window. She knew damn well what she’d see.

  Nat’s bed was surrounded by people. The same people she’d seen in the bar, Nat’s so-called friends, her hangers-on. Nat herself was in the bed, a drip coming out of one hand. She was pale, naked of makeup, but she had half a smile and her eyes were open. Kate’s hands relaxed a little. She was alive, she was herself. That was as much as she’d asked for. As much as she could ask for.

  Now what? She stood undecided in the middle of the corridor. She could come back later. She could walk away. She’d got what she demanded, a Nat that was living and fine. But now she wanted more, now that the universe had fulfilled its part of the deal, she wanted even more. Still she hesitated, stomach spinning, mind whirling, mouth dry and hands sweating. She couldn’t just walk in there. She couldn’t do this.

  A man sat by Nat’s side. He was tall and thin, his hair shaved close to the scalp, his nose bony. Nat said something, and the man reached into his pocket. Kate saw the spark of light shining on cellophane plastic as he palmed something and passed it over to Nat who held it carefully in her hand.

  And something in Kate broke. No. Not like this. Not Nat. No.

  She pushed into the room, screaming as she went.

  “Out! Out! Out! All of you! Out!”

  There was motion, heads turning, mouths opening, but Kate ignored it all.

  “Get the hell out of here. Are you fucking deaf? Get out.”

  People started to stand. Whether because she sounded crazy or authoritative, Kate didn’t know and didn’t care.

  “Get out! Leave the hospital!”

  And there were questions and comments and angry looks and she didn’t know what to do but knew these people had to go. She said the only thing she could think of.

  “The police are coming, get out.”

  With a rapid flurry of movement, jackets were picked up, feet hit the linoleum, the door swung open, and people were leaving without bidding goodbye. Until Kate was standing in a near empty room, the door still shaking with movement, the quiet enveloping her.

  “You came.”

  Kate was shaking so hard she could barely see. She turned around.

  “What’s in your hand?”

  Nat frowned but opened her closed hand. A small package of tissues sat in her palm. Kate’s legs gave way and she stumbled to a seat.

  “I thought...” she began then took a breath. “I thought he passed you something else.”

  “Drugs.”

  Kate nodded. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have trusted you. I shouldn’t have thrown everyone out. I... I shouldn’t have come.”

  Even the words sounded shaky.

  A hand reached out, pale and tremoring, reaching for her until Kate could finally move and grip its coolness.

  “You came.”

  It wasn’t an accusation, it wasn’t angry, it wasn’t anything other than relief. Pure and simple relief.

  “I came.”

  There was a sound that Kate didn’t recognize. And when she looked she saw tears on Nat’s face, marring the perfect beauty of her, tracing down her cheeks. She didn’t know what to do. She wanted to take her in her arms, wanted to hold her close, but didn’t know how, couldn’t make herself move.

  “Kate, I’m scared.”

  She gripped the cold hand tightly. “You don’t have to be afraid. You’re in the right place. You’re getting help.”

  “I’m afraid. This was all so easy. It happened so fast. I almost died, Kate. And you were right. That was the only thing I could think. You were right. Jed didn’t pass me drugs, but he could have. He had pills in his top right hand pocket, I could see the bag. All I had to do was ask and he’d have passed them over.”

  Kate looked into the pain of her eyes.

  “Kate, I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough for this. Please. You have to help me. I know you don’t want to be here, I know you don’t want to play any part in this. And I have no right to ask for your help. But I don’t know how else to do this, I don’t know who else can help me.”

  It wasn’t the begging. Kate knew full well she’d have helped Nat anyway. It was the relief in Nat’s voice when she said ‘you came.’ It was the sound of a hope, a dream, a fantasy, being fulfilled. And Kate knew then that they’d both been going through the same thing, that they needed each other and no one else. She held tight onto Nat’s fragile hand.

  “Ma’am, what are you doing in here?”

  She tore her eyes away from Nat for long enough to see a uniformed nurse standing in the doorway. Then she grinned.

  “I’m checking Ms. Lee out,” she said, turning back to look at Nat.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible, Ms. Lee is about to be transferred to our rehab program. Mr. Lyon was quite determined about that.”

  “Brooks Lyon doesn’t make the decisions around here,” Kate said, eyes still fixed on Nat. “Ms. Lee does. And I’m under instruction to take Ms. Lee to a different rehab program.”

  “A different program? That’s not in the records, I’m afraid...”

  “It’s a little place up in the mountains,” Kate whispered and Nat’s eyes lit up. “A place where you can relax, sort things out.”

  Nat grinned right back at her, knowing exactly what Kate was proposing. Then she turned to the nurse.

  “I’m not a child. Mr. Lyon does not hold any authority to make decisions on my behalf,” she snapped. “Bring me my clothes. I’m checking out.”

  And the nurse scurried away.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The cabin was always best at this time of year. When the leaves started to change color, when the light softened and muted, it always looked like a fairytale come to life. A woodsman’s cottage perhaps, at least in Kate’s childhood imagination. And with a low fire burning in the fireplace against the slight chill and damp in the air it was cozy inside, warm and safe
.

  The drive had tired Nat. They hadn’t spoken. Nat had been quiet, and Kate had left her to her thoughts and shown her to the bedroom to nap as soon as they arrived. Kate herself was unsure of what was happening here. She’d planned on helping Nat, sure, but not taking care of her in such a literal way. Yet it had seemed the best thing to do, bringing her up here.

  She was bound, she knew that. Bound in some inextricable way to Nat and to how all this was going to work out. She couldn’t explain it in the same way that she couldn’t explain why she’d fallen in love with Nat. It was just a fact. Something that was. Their lives were intertwined and forcing a separation had done no good for either of them.

  “Smells good.”

  Nat looked thin as she stood in the bedroom doorway. Kate smiled at her and stirred the pot on the stove.

  “Just soup,” she said. “Nothing fancy.”

  “Still smells good.”

  “Sit down and I’ll bring you a bowl.”

  She served out two bowls, carrying them carefully to the rickety wooden table. Nat’s arms looked so fragile, the bruises visible on her skin, injection sites, blood draws. She pulled out a chair and sat opposite Nat.

  “Why did you come?”

  It was an obvious question, but one that didn’t have an obvious answer. Not really. Kate shrugged.

  “Because I had to.”

  “I didn’t call. I didn’t ask for your help.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Kate picked up her spoon. “I didn’t have to come for you. I had to come for me, I think. Or maybe for us.”

  “There’s an us?”

  Nat’s eyes were watchful and she wasn’t eating. Kate put her spoon down again. Enough was enough. Enough dancing, enough playing, enough avoiding the important conversations. She’d got the healthy Nat that she’d wished for. In return, she needed to lay her cards on the table.

  “My life’s falling apart,” she said.

  Nat laughed, a cracking, bitter sound. “Tell me about it,” she said.

  “Without you, I’m failing,” said Kate honestly. “I’m about to be fired from my new job. All I do is work and sleep. I can’t even think straight. It took me a while to realize it, but I’m failing because you’re not there. You calm me, make me better at what I do. When you’re not there I fall back into the same controlling patterns, so no one wants to work with me.”

  “You need me?”

  Nat seemed to be shaking a little, her eyes were brimming with tears and her voice was so small, so disbelieving that Kate wanted to wrap her up in her arms and never let go. Instead, she nodded.

  “I need you.”

  Nat picked up her spoon now, blew on the soup, ate a little. She was quiet and Kate didn’t push things. Let what will happen happen in its own time, she thought. They were both here, both at the table. There was all the time in the world.

  “Jake came out,” Nat said finally. “I guess you know that already. Everyone else in the world does. He never told me. I don’t think he told anyone. He just did it.”

  “I’m proud of him.”

  “So was I,” Nat said. “Honestly, I was. I was jealous, but proud too. He deserves to live his own life, Van deserves to have someone who loves him in public and in private. I was happy for them.”

  “Then what happened?”

  There was another long silence as Nat ate more.

  “I was living a lie. You told me that, you told me it would break me. And it did.”

  “How?”

  Nat sighed. “I was pathetic. I mean, that’s how people saw me. They felt sorry for me, they wanted to know if I’d known. Everyone treated me as though Jake was about to be my husband and had suddenly dropped this bombshell. Which, of course, is the way everyone thought it was. And I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t tell them the truth, I couldn’t say that I knew, that I wasn’t hurting in the way they thought I was. I just had to keep agreeing, keep looking sad, keep accepting their pity.” She hesitated. “It was so hard, Kate. So hard to walk into every room and feel it weighed down with pity for me.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “I didn’t mean to do it. I wasn’t... I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, Kate. I need you to believe that. But with you gone it felt like the world was unstable under my feet, like there was nothing centering me. I was empty and lost and sad. Then Jake happened. And then, just one night, just one time, I told myself that it didn’t matter. Someone offered me something, I took it wanting to... deaden the pain perhaps, feel something else, I don’t know. It was a moment of bad judgment, just one. I drank, I took something else, I don’t know, it all spiraled from there. Then I woke up in the hospital.”

  She looked up, her eyes haunted and dark, her hair framing her face so that she looked like a child.

  “Kate, it was so easy. So terrifyingly easy. I could be dead. I feel like I’m a ghost now.”

  “You got a second chance.”

  “They don’t come often.”

  “No,” Kate said. “They don’t.” She smiled a little. “But sometimes they do. Sometimes you get to try again, you get to fix your mistakes, learn from them.”

  “And this, right now, right here, you, is this a second chance?”

  “Maybe,” Kate said, her heart skipping. “If we want it to be.”

  Nat smiled a little. “I’ve lost my job, my career, my reputation, such as it was. I’ve lost you. I’ve lost my fake boyfriend and fake wedding. The only constant in the last few weeks, the only unchanging thing, has been my feelings for you. That’s the only part of me that feels the same as before you left.”

  And strangely at that moment Kate remembered what Jeannie Tulane had told her. It came to her in a flash and she blurted it out unthinking.

  “You got me the job,” she said. “The magazine job. You called and told them to hire me. I had no idea. I just found out yesterday.”

  “You deserved it,” Nat said. “And you wanted it. Of course I helped. I always help when I can. But...” She bit her lip for a second. “I thought you knew. I mean, I didn’t realize that they hadn’t told you.”

  “If I’d have known, I’d have thanked you.”

  “Most everyone I know wouldn’t have bothered,” Nat said, tucking her hair behind her ear. “This is LA. You could have just taken it as your due, gotten what you wanted out of me, no need to say thanks.”

  Kate bristled a little at this. “That’s not me, I’m not like that and you know it.”

  “I know,” Nat said simply. “I know you, Kate. I can’t help it. I don’t know why but I just know you. I know when you’re lying, I know when you’re telling the truth.”

  Kate smiled but said nothing. Since the beginning she’d been able to sense when Nat was lying.

  “I know that you’re controlling and obsessive sometimes,” Nat continued. “But I also know that you’re lonely even though you won’t admit it. That you need love. That you need truth and openness. That you’re generous and loyal and beautiful.”

  Nat’s hands went back to her hair, pushing it back, feeling it. She shook her head.

  “I must look awful,” she said. “I don’t remember the last time I washed my hair.”

  “You could shave your head and you’d still look beautiful to me,” said Kate. “And I prefer you with no makeup if I’m being completely honest. You look younger, more innocent, more like you.”

  Nat laughed a little, a real laugh this time, and rolled her eyes. “Right.”

  And that somehow touched Kate more than anything else. That deprecation, the lack of belief in herself. She leaned forward, her hands coming up and without hesitation cupping Nat’s fragile face.

  “You’re beautiful,” she said, looking straight into those dark eyes and feeling herself sinking into them. “You’re beautiful with no makeup, you’d be beautiful with no hair, you’ll be beautiful when you’re seventy. You are the most beautiful person that I know, Nat. And it has nothing to do with your makeup or your bone structure or anything
else. You’re just beautiful.”

  Looking into Nat’s eyes, feeling her heart rate speed up, feeling her stomach start to pulse with need, Kate was finally absolutely certain about one thing. She should never have left. Because she loved Nat Lee. With all her heart. There was nothing left to do but speak the words, and they came so easily, so naturally that it surprised her that she’d never said them before.

  “I love you.”

  And the tears that had been lingering in Nat’s eyes finally started to drop, to flow warm down her face, to trickle onto Kate’s hands.

  “Even like this?” Nat whispered. “Even with nothing?”

  “Especially like this,” Kate whispered back. “And there’s something else. I’m not going back to New York. I’m staying here. With you, if you’ll have me.”

  Nat took her hands, held them in her own across the table. “But what about the lifestyle? My job? My world?”

  “I told you that I thought you weren’t strong enough to survive here,” Kate said, feeling shame inside. “But together we could be strong enough. Together we could figure all this out.”

  Nat shook her head. “No,” she said. “No.”

  And Kate pulled her hands back. She was shaking, her mouth was getting dry again. She’d laid her heart on the table and Nat wasn’t going to take it. She felt the emptiness creeping back into her, the darkness, the loss.

  “It won’t work, Kate,” Nat was saying. “It can’t work. You were right.”

  “We can try?” It shouldn’t have been a question, but it sounded like one, wavering and brittle in the air.

  “No, we can’t try.”

  Kate pushed her chair back a little as if trying to make room for all the pain inside her, as if physically distancing herself from Nat would make it hurt less. And Nat caught the movement, frowned, then looked into her eyes, direct and calm.

  “I don’t think you should stay here,” she said.

  Kate thought she might throw up. Her throat tightened.