Falling Away

by Jasinda Wilder

  "Hey there," she says. "I'm Cheyenne Leveaux. How can I help you?"

  My gaze wants to roam down, take in her body, but I keep my eyes on hers. "Hi. I'm Ben Dorsey. I had a knee injury recently, and the hospital referred you as a physical therapist."

  Cheyenne nods. "Sure. Why don't you come on back to the office and we'll set things up." She nods at a door in the back. We pass by the guy with the prosthetic. "That's great, Nick. I saw that set. I think that's good for today. See you Wednesday, right?"

  "See you Wednesday, Cheyenne." Nick waves.

  Her office is clearly a converted storage closet, containing no more than a tiny desk with an ancient laptop, a filing cabinet, and a medicine ball rather than a desk chair. There's a folding chair leaning against one wall. Cheyenne unfolds it and waits while I lower myself carefully onto the chair.

  It's interesting: she watches me like a hawk as I sit, watching the way I do it, but she makes no move to help me. When I'm arranged with my crutches between my legs, she takes a seat on the medicine ball, bouncing gently.

  "So, Ben. Tell me what happened."

  I shrug. "Football. Took a hit to the knee, needed surgery...now no more football."

  "Doesn't seem fair, does it?" She leans with her back to the wall, crosses her ankles and props them on her desk.

  Now that I have a moment to examine her in the context of conversation, I realize she's older than my initial estimation. Originally, I'd pegged her to be a handful of years older than me, but now I'm realizing it's more than that. She's insanely fit, dressed in skin-tight yoga pants and sports bra, showing off ab definition I know a lot of guys would be jealous of, toned arms, powerful legs. But there are wrinkles around the corners of her eyes, a hardness in her gaze, a world-weary wisdom that only comes with age.

  "What doesn't seem fair?" I ask.

  "How quickly a dream can be snatched."

  I shake my head. "It doesn't seem real, yet. I keep thinking I should be able to work it out and go back to playing next season."

  "The doctor was firm on the prognosis, huh?"

  I nod. "Yeah, Dr. Lane was pretty clear. He said it'd take months to even be able to walk without a cane, and even longer before I'll be able to jog short distances. Competitive ball will never happen again for me, he was very clear on that."

  She blows out a breath of commiseration. "I know Dr. Lane very well. He's a great doctor. But I'm sure we'll have you mobile quicker than expected, especially if you're determined. I can't promise miracles, meaning your career playing football is over for sure, but I can get you walking in no time." Her gaze pins me. "As long as you're dedicated, and determined. Your success depends on you."

  "Sounds like you know what you're talking about."

  Cheyenne shrugs. "I've been a physical therapist for eight years, and I was an ER nurse for ten years before that. And, yeah, I also know from experience."

  "What experience, if you don't mind me asking?"

  She smiles, and god, that smile of hers is an expression of pure warmth. "Well, I was a dancer. Ballet and contemporary. My mom started me in ballet when I was four, and I was competing with a troupe by the time I was seven. I got into Juilliard. I spent two amazing, glorious years there. Then...god, it was so stupid. I was ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center with my boyfriend, I slipped, and fell. Snapped my ankle. I tripped, and when I hit the ice, my boyfriend's skate sliced across my Achilles tendon as he tried to get out of the way, so he didn't land on me.

  "I healed fine, and I can run and walk and I'm totally normal, but competitive, professional dance was out. My ankle and the tendon just couldn't take the strain. I tried. I toughed it out a whole 'nother year, but my advisor eventually was just like, Cheyenne, I think you need to face facts." She shrugs, but I can tell it's still hard for her. "I probably could have kept dancing, could have gone easy on myself, taken some time off and rested it longer, maybe joined a troupe and taken it slow. But I was competitive, you know? I had to be the best, and if I couldn't...well, why bother? So I quit, left New York...eventually had my daughter and studied to be a nurse."

  "You've got a daughter, huh?" This is an oddly personal conversation to have with a potential therapist. I'm not at all sure this is how things usually go.

  Cheyenne smiles. "Yeah. About your age, off at college."

  I'm not sure where to go with that, so I let a silence hang briefly and then change the subject. "So. Where do we start?"

  She takes her feet off the desk, opens a drawer of the filing cabinet, and withdraws a folder, handing me a stack of papers. "Well, with paperwork of course. Fill these out, and I'll be right back. I need to check on my clients."

  She disappears out the door, and I can't help appreciating how well she fills out her yoga pants. But then I feel oddly guilty about that thought, considering she mentioned having a daughter my age. But jeez, however old she is, she's beautiful, and I can't help noticing it.

  I turn my focus to the paperwork. At least physical therapy will be something to look forward to, what with having such a lovely piece of eye candy as my therapist.

  *

  We agree to start with three appointments a week, evenings, seven o'clock. It seems late to me, but Cheyenne claims she works weird hours, especially since a lot of her clients are fitting in their therapy appointments around their own work schedules.

  I end up quitting the bar, since there's no way I can manage a full shift on my feet any time soon, and they can't exactly hold a position open for me indefinitely. I've got enough money put aside that I can afford to take some time off. The biggest enemy at this point, for me, is boredom.

  I discover the bus stops not far from my apartment, and it stops near both the library and the gym, so I spend a lot of time at the library, reading. I can settle in a corner with a book and stay there as long as I want, which ends up being from open to close a lot of days. Once it was clear football was over for me, I distanced myself from my former teammates, which wasn't that hard, honestly. We were football buddies, workout buddies, drinking buddies. None of them knew where I came from, or why I'm in San Antonio alone, so it's easy to withdraw and retreat back into myself.

  Therapy is fucking hard.

  For a sweet, warm woman, Cheyenne is a fierce motivator, unrelenting in her determination to push me to my limits, while still managing to be encouraging and unfailingly kind.

  But Cheyenne, even though she doesn't ask me very many personal questions, has a way of drawing things out of me while she works on me. I tell her about growing up as the son of a famous football star, about Mom and her work with people with speech impediments. I even manage to casually mention my best friend Kylie without totally losing it, although the way Cheyenne quickly pushed our conversation past that topic tells me I might have sounded a little too casual.

  Slowly, quietly, Cheyenne becomes my only friend. I find myself looking forward to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. We end up sitting on the weight machines after my session, the door to the gym locked, and we talk. She tells me about dancing in New York, how she and her friends would go to Central Park or Bryant Park and dance together, just for the fun of it, and how they'd draw crowds even when they were just goofing around. She tells me about how angry she was when she was faced with the decision to quit dance, how she was so angry for so long, angry at life for taking her dream away.

  I understand that, perfectly well. I'm pissed off. I want to hate the motherfucker who drilled my knee. I want to hate life. I want to wallow in self-pity. What the fuck am I going to do? Another season or two in San Antonio and I could've gone to the draft, gone pro. My coach told me as much, and I had a few talks with scouts about it. They told me to spend another season or two here, hone my skills, put up more stats, and I'd be in good position.

  So now I've got useless football stats, a fucked knee, a fucked career. I've got three years toward a political science degree, and now I'm wondering what the fuck I thought I was going to ever do with that degree. I didn't th
ink, that's the point. It was always football. Just get a degree, Dad insisted. You can still play ball, you can still pursue the pros, he said, but get a degree. You won't regret it.

  Now? Fuck political science. I'm not a goddamn politician. I'm a shitty liar, and I have no patience for self-serving assholes. So, clearly, D.C. or a state capital are out for me.

  So now what?

  I have no clue.

  But Cheyenne encourages me to put all my anger and frustration into therapy, use my anger and my confusion and my doubt and channel it into getting my mobility back. Get walking with crutches again, and then figure out the next step.

  In the meantime, I keep the conversations with my parents short and I avoid sharing any details. Dad asks about the season, and I always act like I've got to go, trying to avoid his questions as best I can. I can't lie to him, but I can't tell him the truth either.

  I need to do this on my own.

  Why?

  Maybe because I'm a stubborn son of a bitch.

  THREE: 2:36 AM

  I push the weight up with my legs, straining, aching, and fighting the agony in my right knee. I manage to straighten my legs, and I desperately want to lower them and release the strain. I start to do just that...

  "Hold it there for me, Ben," Cheyenne says. "For ten seconds. That's all. Ten seconds. You can do it, I know you can."

  But I can't. I'm a fucking pussy, and it hurts. I try, though. I shake all over, sweat sluicing down my face. I strain, and a growl escapes me as I fight the urge to let the weight go.

  "...nine...eight...seven...six! Keep it up, Ben! Five more seconds, come on!" She's kneeling beside me, her voice patient and encouraging as always.

  My leg trembles, and the pain in my ruined knee is so bad I could almost cry. "I can't--fuck, I can't. I gotta let it go."

  I start to lower the leg press, but my knee gives out. And Cheyenne is there, catching the weight and lowering it. I slide to a sitting position, grab my right leg near the knee and lift it over the bench, and then collapse forward, elbows on my thighs, gasping.

  The most pathetic thing about this? The press only has a hundred pounds on it. And I only managed two sets of ten. I used to be able to press over twice my body weight, six or eight reps of twenty each. Now, a hundred measly fucking pounds pushed twenty times and I'm out of breath, sweating, and my knee hurts so bad I don't dare speak in case the tremor in my voice shows.

  I feel her hand on my shoulder, and a white towel appears in front of my face. I take the towel and wipe my face, neck, and chest, and then accept the bottle of water she hands to me.

  "That was great, Ben. You're making excellent progress." She sips from her own bottle of water, another towel slung over her slim shoulder. She toys with her hair, a sleek blond braid hanging down her back. "Next time we'll try for three sets, huh?"

  "I barely managed two today, Cheyenne. Gonna take awhile to get to three." I hate how defeated I sound.

  She crouches in front of me, and my eyes go involuntarily to her gray-and-pink sports bra, visible beneath the white tank top, and then to her muscular thighs, encased in black knee-length stretch pants. I force my eyes back to her hazel-green gaze. If she noticed me checking her out, she doesn't give anything away.

  "Ben, you're too hard on yourself. It's only been a month. It's going to take some time, okay? You have to be patient with yourself."

  "I know," I sigh, and roll my head around my shoulders to loosen the tension. "It's just frustrating to be so limited."

  She smiles, warm and understanding. Only the slight wrinkles in the corners of her eyes give away the fact that she's older than me by quite a bit. I don't know how much, but enough. She has a daughter in college, so she's got to be at least forty. But, Jesus, what a gorgeous forty.

  "I get it, Ben. I do." She pats my knee, the good one. Is it me, or do her fingers linger a few seconds too long? "I went through it too, remember? I know what you're going through, how hard it is. You can do this. You just have to be patient and stay the course." She stands up, turns away and grabs two ten-pound hand weights from a rack.

  She's facing away, so I let myself eye her ass. Taut, all toned muscle.

  Fuck, what's wrong with me? She's got a daughter in college, for fuck's sake. She's my physical therapist. I should not be checking her out. But yet, every time I've been here since being injured in the game that ended my chances at a football career, I check her out. I struggle to keep my eyes off her, especially when she's looking my way.

  Like she is now. Shit. She totally caught me staring. But she doesn't turn cold, doesn't scold me, or glare at me. She just offers me the same kind, warm, patient smile she always has for me.

  "Come on. Time to walk that knee out, mister. Come on. Up, up, up." She grabs me by the hand and pulls me up to my feet.

  Her hands linger in mine, just for a moment, but it's enough to make me wonder. And then she hands me the weights and gestures to the track that leads around the perimeter of the gym. She walks beside me, twenty-pound weights in her hands, and sets the pace. She ignores the fact that I'm fighting to keep up, that I'm hobbling so bad it can barely be called walking.

  And then a ripple in the carpet catches the toe of my cross trainer, and I trip. I lurch forward, hobble, and my bad knee twists and goes out from under me. I fall, the weights dropping from my hands. My knee crashes into the floor, and pure agony lances through my leg, shooting from toe to hip, throbbing so hard my gut tightens. I roll off my knee, clutching it, gasping, fighting the urge to curse a blue streak.

  "Ben! Shit! Are you okay?" She's kneeling beside me, helping me sit up.

  Her hand goes to my knee, and she rips open the snaps of my track pants up past my knee, baring my hairy thigh. Her hands are warm and strong, flexing my knee, straightening my leg until I yelp.

  "Fuck!" I pull free of her hold on my leg and lie back. "Fuck, that hurt."

  "I think we'd better call it a day," Cheyenne says, a concerned expression on her face. "I'm worried that's going to swell."

  "Yeah, no shit." My voice is hoarse with the effort needed to breathe through the pain.

  "Can you stand up?" She's taking my hand, pulling.

  "Yeah, I can fucking stand, okay?" I snap, jerking my hand away.

  "Fine then, stand up." She backs away, not quite hiding the hurt before I see it.

  I scrub my hand through my hair. "God, Cheyenne, I'm sorry. I'm being an asshole and you don't deserve it."

  And just like that, the smile is back. She holds her hand out to me, and this time I take it and let her help me to my feet.

  "Okay, see if you can put any weight on it," she tells me, not letting go of me.

  I hobble, get my balance, and gingerly put weight on my knee. "Nope, nope, nope. Not happening," I grunt, hopping as my knee gives, wincing.

  "Okay. Lean on me." She slides her slim shoulder under my arm and supports me.

  She's a lithe little thing, barely five-five to my six-two, and I outweigh her by at least seventy pounds, but she still manages to support my weight and help me limp out of the gym and into the locker room. I lower myself to the bench and straighten my leg, closing my eyes as the motion sends pain shooting through me.

  "That set us back, didn't it?" Cheyenne asks.

  I nod. "Yeah, I think it did."

  She sits down next to me and buttons the snaps of my pants leg. When she's done, she's sitting just a little too close to me. "You need ice on that."

  "Yeah, I'll ice it when I get home."

  "You have a ride?"

  I shrug. "No, I'll just take the bus, then walk, same as always."

  She frowns. "Ben, you can't. You'll hurt yourself worse."

  "Well, I can't drive with my knee fucked up, and I'm still working on teleportation."

  She snorts and smacks my shoulder. "Smart ass."

  "Better than being a dumbass," I retort.

  "Well, you'd be a dumbass not to just ask me if I can drive you home, then, wouldn't you?"

/>   I swallow my pride. "Cheyenne, would you mind driving me home?"

  She smiles brightly. "Why sure, Ben, I'd be happy to."

  So I wait, leaning against the frame of the door as she wipes down the machines, shuts off the lights, and then locks the door behind us. She hikes her gym bag higher on her shoulder, and I, out of the instinct drilled into me by my mom and dad, take it from her.

  "Ben, I can--" she starts to protest.

  "And so can I. I have a shit knee, but I'm not useless." I hang the bag from my right shoulder and lean on the cane.

  She lets me carry her bag, shooting me a smile that's somehow different from the ones she usually gives me. This one is...more personal, somehow. Less politely professional, containing a note of...I don't know what. I can't read Cheyenne, most of the time.

  She opens the back door of her F-150, takes the bag from me, and tosses it onto the backbench, then climbs up into the driver's seat. It's not a big truck, not jacked up as high as my Silverado, but the step up and in is still going to be hellishly difficult. I set my cane--my stupid fucking cane--inside, grab the handle and the seat and lift myself into the seat using only my upper body.

  "Clearly nothing wrong with your core muscles," Cheyenne says, a strange note in her voice.

  I glance at her, surprised by the comment, but she focuses on putting the truck in gear and backing out. I have to be crazy, because it almost looked like she was blushing there for a moment. But that's stupid. There's no way a forty-year-old fox of a woman with a grown daughter would be blushing over a twenty-two-year-old kid.

  I give her directions to my apartment, and the ride is surprisingly comfortable, no awkwardness. She tunes the radio to The Highway, an XM country music station, and "Cowboy Side of You" by Clare Dunn comes on. I surprise myself by knowing the lyrics. But then, you don't grow up in Nashville, and then live in Texas, without hearing some country music, even if it's not really your thing.

  We pull up to my apartment, and she hops out, circles around and hovers near me as I slide out. God, I hate being a damned invalid, having her hover over me in case I fall. But a part of me, way deep down, kind of likes having her close, having her hover. Because it means she cares.