by Jamie Howard
“Okay.” It seemed my very large vocabulary had dwindled down to this one inconsequential word.
“What is this?” He gestured between us. “I don’t know what you’re looking for from me, or what you want.” He rubbed his other hand over his face. “I feel like such a chick, trying to define what’s going on between us, but I don’t want you to get hurt. I’ve already told you—”
“That you don’t date. I know,” I interrupted him. “Ian, I like you.” He visibly flinched at my words, so this time it was me giving his hand a squeeze. “But, I’m leaving in December. Long-term, things could never work between us. You don’t date, I don’t have the time for it either.”
“So this is just a casual thing between us?”
“Exactly. Although . . .”
“Although?”
I twisted my lips to the side. “Maybe we could keep this between us?”
“I’m not really sure who you think I’d be telling.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Sorry, I meant . . . if we’re going to do this, I don’t think we should see other people.” My heart gave a little hiccup in my chest. “I don’t want to get caught up in any drama.”
“So, an exclusive, casual non-relationship?”
“Yeah. It kinda sounds ridiculous. Is it ridiculous?”
He lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “It isn’t ridiculous if it works for us.”
I ran a hand over my hair and gave it some thought. It was all that I could offer him, and really, it was the only thing he wanted from me anyway. Some part of me knew this whole thing was a terrible idea. Whatever it was that was building between Ian and me wasn’t even close to casual. But I rationalized, convinced myself that three months with Ian was better than none. There wasn’t a future, but there was a present, and I planned on enjoying every second of it. It was a new feeling for me, this living in the moment. It scared me in the same way that staying in New York scared me, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, it was just terrifying.
“I guess we have a deal then.” I grinned at him and stuck out my hand. “Should we shake on it?”
He grinned right back at me. “I’d rather kiss you again instead.”
So he did. And he didn’t stop until my lips were practically numb and our Chinese food had gone stone cold.
When I left his apartment that night, I knew two things for sure—one: that the deal I’d made with Ian was one of the best ideas I’d ever had, and two: the deal I’d made with Ian was one of the worst ideas I’d ever had.
Chapter 20: Ian
7 Years Earlier
“Best prom night ever,” Maggie said, rolling off me and hugging the thin blanket to her chest. “And so cliché, it was perfect.”
“Having sex in a rickety old barn is cliché?”
“Having sex on prom night is cliché.”
“I think losing your virginity on prom night is cliché, not having sex in general.”
“You say tomato, I say to-mah-to.”
I stretched my arms up and rested my hands underneath my head. The barn had become another one of our spots, a place we could sneak away to together when we wanted to be alone. Rundown and abandoned on the edge of our property, no one would ever think to look for us here. Tonight, I’d had the brilliant idea to pre-stock the area with a few candles. Not too many though, didn’t want to burn the damn place down. Who said romance was dead?
My phone buzzed against the wooden floorboards, lighting up the space around us in a faint blue glow. I ignored it, rolling over onto my side and running my fingers through Maggie’s mass of curls.
“Aren’t you going to get that?”
I shook my head, my nose brushing against hers. “I’ve ignored it the last hundred times. Whoever it is, they can wait another minute.” I kissed her again, taking the time to let my lips play over hers.
The buzzing started again.
“For Christ’s sake.” I flopped back over and grabbed for it, frowning when I saw just how many texts and calls I’d missed.
The blanket dropped down into my lap as I sat up.
Ben: Where are you? Why aren’t you answering your phone?
Mom: Ian, it’s Mom. Please call me back.
Ben: Call me back, NOW!
Rachel: Where are you?
Ben: Answer the phone!
Ben: Don’t bother with your messages. Get to St. Vincent’s asap.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Maggie dropped her chin on my shoulder.
The phone crashed to the floor as I burst to my feet and raced to get dressed. “I don’t know. All Ben said is that I need to get to the hospital.” Grabbing her dress, I tossed it toward her. “Hurry.”
We ran across the lawn with my shirt still unbuttoned and her shoes dangling from her hand. The possibilities flashed through my mind, each one worse than the one before. I squeezed my eyes shut as I turned the key in the ignition, the car grumbling to life beneath me. I don’t remember the drive to the hospital; one minute I was in my driveway and the next I was throwing it into park outside the emergency room. An ambulance sped by, lighting up the inside of the car with strobing reds and blues, the siren wailing.
The automatic doors whooshed open and I skidded to a halt, my eyes roaming over the waiting room, looking for a familiar face. When one failed to materialize, I hurried forward to the front desk.
“How can I help you, sir?” A woman in blue scrubs glanced away from the computer screen and looked up to me, pausing to stare at my unbuttoned shirt.
I didn’t care.
“I . . . I don’t know. My brother told me I needed to get here.”
“Who are you here to see?”
“I don’t know!”
Maggie tugged at my arm, trying to get me to calm down.
“Ian!” A voice shouted from off to my right, and I turned to see Rachel running toward me. Her neatly styled hair hung in a mess around her shoulders, and her black mascara had left visible tracks down her cheeks. Stains circled the bottom edge of her red dress, and a thick black line of what looked like grease slashed on a diagonal up the fabric. She threw her arms around me, nearly knocking me off balance.
“What’s going on, Rach? What happened?” I pushed her back from me and let my gaze roam over her. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“What? You haven’t listened to any of your messages?” Her eyes narrowed as she actually stopped to look at Maggie and me, narrowing even further when she got a good look. “We’ve been calling you for an hour.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I was . . . busy.”
She pinched her lips together in a tight line. “It doesn’t matter. You need to come upstairs, right now.”
With her dress fisted in one hand, she led the way, shaking her head when I asked her what was going on. Every step I took was harder than the last, like my shoes were filling with lead the closer I got to wherever we were going. I knew that whatever I was walking toward was bad, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to see it.
My fingers fumbled over my shirt buttons, desperately trying to put them together with the appropriate holes so that I looked somewhat presentable. Rachel pushed through a glass door to a smaller waiting room where Mom sat with her head in her hands and Ben paced the room in long strides.
Ben saw us first. “Where the fuck have you been? Do you know how many times I tried to call you?”
“Alaric, language,” Mom responded automatically, not even looking up.
“I’m sorry—”
“It was my fault,” Maggie interrupted. “Ian gave me his phone to hold in my purse, and I put my purse down and didn’t even think about it.”
Ben’s eyes traveled down me, then came back up to meet my eyes. His nostrils flared as he gave me a disapproving look. He wasn’t buying it, but who the hell was he to judge? I could smell the tequila and weed on him from here.
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” I shouted.
Mom finally lifted her head up, and her eyes were fi
lled with devastation. Raw and pink around the edges, bloodshot throughout. She opened her mouth to answer me, but all that came out were sobs, heart-wrenching, soul-crushing sobs.
Rachel was by her side in a flash, curling into the chair at her side and wrapping her arms around Mom’s hunched shoulders. Maggie took the chair on her opposite side, copying Rachel’s gesture. Three heads bent together, hiding their faces, the different shades of their brown hair blending together.
Ben strode over to me, and I half thought he was going to punch me, right there in the waiting room of the hospital. Were it not for the odd circumstances, I’d be looking to punch him myself. It might have taken a backseat, but I still hadn’t forgotten about his douchebag move tonight standing Rachel up.
He stopped a foot in front of me and scrubbed a hand over his face. His hair, almost identical to mine in color, was long enough that he could pull it back in a short ponytail, but at the moment, it hung in wavy strands around his face. “We think Dad had a heart attack,” he said, his voice low but steady.
It took me a moment to process his words. I heard them, but they just didn’t make any sense. Dad, the man who preferred salad to steak, the guy who shopped at the organic grocery store and who hadn’t touched a French fry in all the years that I’d been alive. I ran my tongue over my dry lips and swallowed. “What do you mean, you think?”
A muscle leapt in Ben’s cheek as he clenched his jaw. “What I mean, dumbass, is that we don’t know. I was on my way down here when Mom called, hysterical. One second he was brushing his teeth, getting ready for the bed, and next thing she knew, he made a grab for his chest and collapsed. He passed out, stopped breathing. The ambulance rushed him here. They’ve been working on him ever since.”
“No one’s come out to update you?”
He shook his head.
“How long have they been with him?”
“Almost an hour.”
I dropped down into a squat, fisting my hands in my hair. Why the fuck didn’t I answer my phone? How did I not hear an ambulance that was at my house when I was only a little more than a football field away? Could I have done anything? Could I have gotten him in my car and raced him to the hospital faster than the ambulance that got to our house and took him?
I stood back up, but left my stomach on the floor. I traded a look with Ben but wasn’t quite sure if I imagined the blame that shot through his gaze. His eyes softened, and he did something completely uncharacteristic: he hugged me. Squeezing me so tight that my ribs protested and I had a hard time drawing in a breath. It felt like I swallowed a rock, and it’d gotten lodged right at the base of my throat.
Ben resumed his pacing, and I sat. My legs bounced up and down because I couldn’t keep still. I leaned back, sat forward, got up, sat back down, switched chairs, crossed my legs, and finally got back up again. Ben laid tracks down between one row of chairs, and I took the other. Rachel, Mom, and Maggie stayed in exactly the same spot, not moving.
The glass door squealed as it opened, and a man with small, round glasses and a white coat walked through. “Mrs. Mathis?”
The dynamics in the room switched. The women scrambled toward the doctor, but I couldn’t even take a step. My feet cemented themselves to the ground the moment he walked through the door. He hadn’t said a word, but I knew. I knew.
“Mrs. Mathis, when your husband was brought into the emergency room, he had lost consciousness and we were unable to find a pulse. We did everything we could, but despite our best efforts, we were unable to revive him. I’m very sorry, ma’am.”
The room swam in front of me and a ringing pierced through my ears, so loud and insistent that it drowned out nearly everything else in the room. Ben stood less than three feet away, his grief-stricken expression carved in stone. His steps were faltering, stumbling, like it was the very first time he was trying to walk. Reaching an arm around Mom’s shoulders, his face blanked of expression as he questioned the doctor. The only words I caught were “sudden cardiac death,” before the ringing roared back to life with such a vengeance I thought my ears would start bleeding.
I crumpled to the ground when my legs wouldn’t hold me up any longer. The linoleum was cold underneath my hands, and the smell of lemon air freshener was suddenly overpowering. I couldn’t tell how long I sat there, caved in on myself on the dirty floor of the hospital waiting room. My head throbbed and my stomach heaved, and finally, finally, the ringing stopped.
Someone was sobbing. Sobbing so hard that their breaths sounded painful, and any words they were trying to utter were only a horrific, pathetic moaning. My eyes searched through the blurred scenery in front of me trying to find Mom, so sure that it was her who was coming apart at the seams. But it wasn’t her.
It was me.
Chapter 21: Bianca
I slapped a wet rag on the scarred surface of the table, scrubbing until the dried-on patch of ketchup flaked off. There was something wonderful about the things here at Blackrose, all of them had dents and dings that spoke of being well-used and well-loved.
“You ready to head out?” Harper called from the other side of the restaurant, stuffing her tips in her wallet. The next shift had wandered in fifteen or so minutes ago and was already setting about taking orders.
I nodded and tossed the washcloth behind the bar, stooping to grab my purse. I double-checked the time to make sure I was still on schedule. So far, so good. There wasn’t any way I was going to be late for tonight’s Yankees game after how much money I spent on these tickets.
The autumn breeze whispered over my face, tickling the damp strands of hair at the base of my neck as I pushed open the front door. There’s nothing quite like fall in the Northeast. The trees burned with leaves of red and gold, littering the sidewalk with such vibrant colors it was like walking through fire. Shorts and flip-flops had been traded for scarves and boots as summer wardrobes were packed away. Barring everyone’s obsession with pumpkin-flavored everything, fall was by far my favorite season.
When I turned left and still heard Harper’s footsteps beside me, I frowned in her direction. “Where are you going?”
She shrugged, batting down her scarf as it flew up on a gust of wind into her face. “Your place?”
“Don’t you have a date tonight with tattoo guy?”
“His name is Brand, geez.” She gave me an exaggerated eye roll.
“You see the irony in the fact that his name is Brand and he’s a tattoo artist, right?” I lifted an eyebrow at her. “So, what happened? You cancel?”
“Not cancelled, just rescheduled.” We hurried across the street while the light was red, picking up our conversation when we reached the safety of the sidewalk. “He forgot he had his niece’s dance recital tonight.”
I laughed at the thought of big, burly Brand, covered in ink, surrounded by tutus and glitter. I’d been to more than my fair share of dance recitals, experiencing firsthand their craziness. It spoke volumes about his character that he was not only willing to go to the recital but that he took a rain check on Harper to do so.
Unlocking my front door, I flicked my gaze to the clock on the microwave. The game started at seven-fifteen, and Ian insisted that we had to be there an hour ahead of time for batting practice. Calculating in travel time and possible subway delays, that left me with exactly fifty-seven minutes to get ready.
Harper’s voice drifted in as I rifled through my dresser drawers. “Are these the tickets?”
Tucking the pile of clothes under my arm, I strode out of my bedroom and toward the bathroom. I caught her holding my phone, a guilty smile sitting on her face.
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing. I may have just sent Ian a quick text showing him how freaking fantastic these tickets are.”
At a price that more than covered a month’s worth of rent, the things needed to be plated in gold. I leveled a finger in her direction. “No more texts.”
“Yes, Mom.”
I kicked the bathroom door shut behind me,
and it rebounded off the broken latch and hovered open a few inches. Shedding my clothes, I hopped in the shower and pulled the curtain closed with a metallic screech.
“So, am I ever gonna get to meet Ian?” Harper’s voice echoed around the bathroom.
Whipping the shower curtain, I squinted through shampoo suds.
“Relax,” she said with a laugh. “I’m on the other side of the door.”
I craned my neck a little more and just managed to make out her fingers as she wiggled them at me through the crack in the door.
“Seriously though, are you hiding him from me?”
“Yup. I’m seriously convinced he’s going to fall head over heels in love with you the minute he sees you, so I’m making sure the two of you never cross paths.”
“That’s harsh, B, keeping me from my soul mate like that.”
The great thing about Harper was that she always made me laugh. She chased away all the insecurities and depressing memories that twisted around me like cobwebs. Even something as little as calling me B, rather than Bianca, was huge. Never, ever, ever were nicknames permitted. My name was Bianca, no abbreviations, no alternate pronunciations, nothing.
I dipped my head under the water to rinse, letting the water run into my ears and drown out the sounds around me. As I reached for the loofah, Harper snapped her fingers.
“I’ve got it. He’s ugly. Or old. He’s old and ugly. He’s a seventy-three-year-old with a mullet and dentures. I’m right, right?”
“You got me.”
“Wait, I know!” Harper’s feet slapped against the floor, fading out and then racing back toward me. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before—Facebook. What’s his last name again? I can just look him up and . . . oh damn.”
Shutting off the water, I wrung out my hair and wrapped myself in a scratchy, green towel. “Harper?”
“Do you have clothes on in there?”
“Umm . . . no?”
The door swung open, and I clutched the towel tighter underneath my armpits. Harper walked cautiously forward, one hand clamped tightly over her eyes, the other holding out my phone in front of her. I took it from her and glanced down.
