by Julie Kriss
So—after a long, sweaty night in which I tried vainly to sleep in my grandmother’s bedroom, next to a fan—I got up my courage and decided to try and fix it. The phone wasn’t going to cut it, either. I needed to go over there.
I put on my Get the fuck out of my business shirt, because that shirt always gave me courage. I put on jeans and flip-flops. And I walked over to Andrew’s house.
I did not expect to see the woman in the front window.
Too late, I realized there was a car in Andrew’s driveway. He had a guest, and she was watching me with a surprised look on her face. She said something, probably to Andrew, and then she vanished from the window. The front door opened as I stepped up onto the porch, my steps reluctant now.
The woman who stood in the doorway was in her mid-fifties, strikingly beautiful, and obviously Andrew’s mother. The resemblance couldn’t have been more clear. She smiled at me politely, and I knew how Andrew had been so blessed in the genetics department.
“Hi there,” she said. “You must be Andrew’s neighbor.”
“I’m Tessa,” I said, shaking her hand. I was sweating hard under my T-shirt, both from the heat and from nerves. “I live across the street.”
“I’m Rita, Andrew’s mother.” The woman’s gaze dropped briefly to my chest, then back up again. “How nice of you to visit. Come in.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit. I’d just met Andrew’s mother while wearing a T-shirt that said Get the fuck out of my business on it. Way to go, Tessa. I followed her into the living room, where Andrew was sitting in his wheelchair. He was wearing nylon workout pants and a gray T-shirt that fitted his torso and showed off his chest and his tightly muscled arms. His dark hair was a bit mussed and he had that trim dark beard on his jaw, as if he hadn’t shaved in a few days. His eyes when he looked at me were dark and tired and filled with some kind of pain I couldn’t quite read. I felt my heart squeeze hard in my chest.
“Hey,” I said.
He was fighting it. Whatever it was, the mood that was dragging him down, he was fighting it. I watched his face go hard and his gaze go intentionally cold, the walls going up. “You met my mother, I see,” he said.
There was none of his usual humor, the back-and-forth, the teasing. Had I done this to him? Or had she?
“Would you like something to drink?” Rita asked. “There’s juice in the fridge. And ginger ale, though I didn’t think Andrew liked ginger ale.”
I looked at him. He didn’t like ginger ale. I did. “I’m fine, thanks,” I said.
“Have a seat,” Rita said.
I dropped onto the sofa. I probably shouldn’t ignore Rita—she seemed like a perfectly nice woman—but I couldn’t help it. The only person I wanted to look at was Andrew. “Can we talk?” I asked him.
“Not really,” he said.
“I got a call this morning,” I said. “From the casting agency. They say I got the job.”
His expression got even harder, if that was possible, his jaw twitching. “That’s great.”
It was. It was great. I was going to model bras for a catalog and make a few thousand dollars just to stand there with my breasts barely covered. It was the thing I did, the thing I was good at. It was easy, much-needed money. “They want me to start tomorrow.”
His voice was flat. “That’s great, Tessa. Is that it?”
“Should I leave?” Rita asked.
“I have to be on set for nine o’clock tomorrow,” I said to Andrew. “It’s my day off from the bar, so that works out. The problem is that the air conditioner repairman comes tomorrow, and when I booked the appointment, I thought I would be home.”
His face held no flicker of expression. “So you need someone to take care of it while you’re out? That’s fine. Tell them to come here when they arrive. I’ll handle it.”
I searched his face, trying to read what he was thinking. “That’s really nice of you.”
He shrugged.
The air was thick as molasses, and after a moment of silence Rita said, “You know, I don’t really follow what’s going on.”
Andrew’s gaze flicked past me to his mother. “It’s okay, Mom. Tessa and I are friends.”
That word, friends. The flat way he said it. The look in his eyes.
No. Fuck no. Fuck, fuck, fuck no.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat and turned toward Rita, addressing her myself. “The fact is, I was a complete asshole to Andrew yesterday, and I came over here to apologize.”
Rita’s lovely face went a little bit hard, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Something flickered behind her eyes that was deep and complicated, love and fear at once, and I wondered what she was thinking about. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a voice that could probably terrify an army of wait staff. “Andrew doesn’t need to be mistreated by anyone. Perhaps you should leave.”
“Jesus, Mom.” Andrew closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips tiredly to his forehead. “I’m not a toddler.”
“Andrew, you know you—”
“Stop.” He said it so sharply, with so much command, that I wondered what she’d been about to say. There was something beneath the words that I didn’t understand. He opened his eyes and looked at Rita. “Mom, you can go now. I can talk to Tessa alone.”
Behind my shoulder, I felt her hesitate. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like that this strange woman admits that she’s…that she’s…”
“An asshole,” I finished for her. “I think the T-shirt gives it away.”
“Can’t you go be an asshole to somebody else?” Rita said, obviously forcing the curse word out.
“Mom,” Andrew said. “I can handle it. You can go.”
She paused again, looking at him. Then she turned and left.
I didn’t blame her for her attitude. I liked her for it, actually. At least someone, somewhere, was looking out for Andrew. Trying to protect him from people like me.
When the door closed behind her, I turned back to him. “We need to talk,” I said.
“I’m not doing this.”
I blinked at him. “What?”
“This.” His eyes blazed now, and he motioned to the air between him and me. “Whatever this is. This thing. It’s why I don’t let anyone into my house, Tessa. Because I don’t do this.”
“Do what?” I shot back. “Emotions? Friendship? Giving a shit about someone?”
“All of it.”
“Well, it’s too late. You’re already doing it. I’m already here. And I was a jerk last night, and I’m fucking sorry.”
“For what?” He was getting angry now, letting it show now that Rita was gone. “For getting asked out? For going on a date? For being a normal person who would like to meet someone and get laid? You’re single, Tessa, and you’re a fucking hot bra model. Go do what you need to do. It’s none of my business.”
“That isn’t what I’m apologizing for,” I said. “I’m apologizing for texting you about it like you’re in the friend zone, when you’re not.”
That stopped him for a second, and then he was angry again. “Tessa, get real. I’m in the permanent friend zone. We both know it.”
“Why?” I said. I pointed to his chair. “Because of that?”
“Not because of the fucking chair,” Andrew said. “Because of the man who’s in it.”
Our gazes met for a long, silent second. Both of us were blazing hot, and my throat was still choked up. I stood up and walked toward him.
“Tessa,” he said, his voice a low warning.
I ignored it. I stood in front of him and put my hands on the back of his chair, leaning over him. All the way down. Sure, I was wearing the obscene T-shirt, but underneath it I had nice tits and I wasn’t afraid to use them. I never had been.
I bent lower, lower. Brushed my cheek against the stubble of his beard and felt it against my skin. I loved the feel of a man’s beard, to be honest. Somehow harsh and soft at the same time.
He smelled good. I knew he would, be
cause I’d smelled his scent in the bed I’d slept in. Clean, soapy, a little bit sweaty because he’d probably been working out. I nuzzled him lightly, feeling the heat of his skin, the pulse in his neck, and I tilted my mouth toward his ear.
“I said no to the date,” I told him.
I heard him take a breath. He put his hand on the back of my neck, under my hair. Then he stroked slowly up the side of my neck, his skin gentle on mine, moving up beneath my ear until his palm cupped my jaw.
Against his neck, I closed my eyes. Andrew had never touched me before. It felt so good I wanted to cry. I never wanted it to stop.
He kept his hand there, and we stayed that way for a long moment. It was an embrace, almost. Or as close as either of us was willing to get.
Then Andrew turned his head so his lips were against my ear, his breath against my neck.
“Tessa,” he said. “Go home.”
Seventeen
Andrew
* * *
Thursday. The routine of my fucking life. Get up, work out, shower. Dress. Today the housekeepers came, and when they were finished I ran two loads of laundry and answered the door to Tessa’s air conditioner repair crew, who got her key from me and started work at her house. I turned on my across-the-street feed and kept an eye on it.
Today was doctor visit day, and Dr. Arnaud showed up just after one. He was a black man in his mid-fifties with close-cropped hair, wearing a comfortable short-sleeved button-down shirt and khakis. It was a casual outfit, but he still managed to look like a man who was not only working, but smarter than anyone else in the room.
He took my blood pressure, checked my heart and lungs, and asked me questions. Except for the legs, I was probably Dr. Arnaud’s healthiest patient; I didn’t have anything else physically wrong with me. His semi-regular visits were primarily about the meds I was on.
The suicide attempts meant I was depressed, of course. There was anxiety in the mix, as well as PTSD from the accident. They tried different drugs that were meant to help regenerate my nerves, though none of them had worked so far and I was off them at the moment. Medicinal weed jacked up my anxiety and insomnia, so that was a no go. There were drugs for pain and for sleeping that I said no to. Still, my blood usually contained a mix of some kind of cocktail.
Like I’d told Tessa, it wasn’t the chair. It was the man that was in it.
“Things are looking good,” Dr. Arnaud said when we were finished. He was sitting on my sofa, writing out notes and a couple of prescription renewals. “You’re in prime shape, Andrew, so much so that I’m not sure why I need to keep coming here. You could come to the office sometime.”
“And leave this paradise?” I asked, gesturing around me.
“Ah, the sarcasm. Still in full effect, I see.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Is that so?” He paused his scribbling to point his pen at my monitor feed. “You keep looking at that shot of the house across the street.”
“My neighbor is getting her air conditioning fixed while she’s out, and I promised her I’d keep an eye on it.”
“Isn’t your neighbor an elderly lady?”
I hate talking to people, but when you see the same people enough times, a few things inevitably slip out. “The elderly lady died and her granddaughter moved in.”
Dr. Arnaud blinked his dark brown eyes twice at me, and basically saw everything inside me like an X-ray. “The granddaughter is pretty,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
I scratched my beard. I was going to trim it as soon as he left. “No comment.”
“So she is, then. What does she do for a living?”
“At the moment, she’s at a photo shoot, modeling bras.”
“Good lord, son.” Dr. Arnaud rifled through his classy leather messenger bag. “Hold on a minute.” He found a stack of brochures and picked out four of them. “Take these.”
“What?” I took them and looked at them. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Spinal Cord Injury, Sex, and You.
Yes, You Can Still Have Satisfying Sex!
Couples Intimacy After SCI
26 Positions To Try
“Give them a read,” Dr. Arnaud said. “You might find them interesting.”
“Why is everyone so interested in my sex life? And do you just carry these around with you?” I flipped to the last one. “Twenty-six positions?”
“I’m a doctor, so I carry a lot of things with me. And yes, twenty-six positions. You can try some with your bra model.”
“For fuck’s sake. She isn’t my bra model. And I’m probably the most sexually frustrated patient you’ve ever had, but this is still a bit much.”
“Sexual frustration isn’t healthy,” Dr. Arnaud said without batting an eye. “As your doctor, I don’t recommend it. Actually, if you could alleviate it, you might be able to get off some of these meds.”
I glared at him. But I didn’t give back the brochures.
“Okay, that was a joke,” Dr. Arnaud said, though he’d shown no sign of laughing. “Sexual activity does not actually alleviate depression, anxiety, or PTSD. However, healthy sexual habits release endorphins and raise dopamine levels in the brain. It’s good for you. There’s no reason you can’t have a healthy sex life, Andrew. I’ll leave you some condoms.”
“I don’t need condoms.”
He gave me a stern look. “Believe me, you do. As your doctor, I won’t hear otherwise.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you meant, and I’m not buying that either. Look, I treat a lot of patients with SCI. It’s my specialty. The healthiest ones find a way to have regular sex, and some of them are married. With kids, even.” He took some packets out of his magical bag. “Though it’s a bit early for kids if you’ve just met this bra model, so as I say, here are some condoms.”
There was movement on my security feed, and I saw a car pulling into my driveway. A familiar car. Nick had texted me earlier, saying they had landed safely and were home.
“Shit, my brother is here,” I said. “You have to leave.” I looked at the brochures in my hand, the condoms on the table. “Oh, Jesus.”
Dr. Arnaud was pulling a small bottle from his messenger bag. “I have some lubricant, too. It’s probably going to be helpful.”
“What? Give me that.” I gathered up the brochures, the condoms, the bottle. “You carry lube around, too? What the hell, doc? You’re worse than Donna the wellness therapist. You sure you don’t want to put some crystals around my house?”
“Crystals are not scientifically proven,” Dr. Arnaud said, finally closing his goddamned bag and standing up. “Lubricant, however, is.”
“For Christ’s sake, get out of here already.”
He left while I wheeled quickly to my bedroom and dumped the loot into the drawer of my bedside table. He must have let Nick in my door while he was exiting, because next I heard a familiar growly voice: “Hey fuckface, we’re back. Where are you?”
I slammed the door and wheeled back out to the living room. Nick was standing there in his usual worn jeans and tee. He had Evie with him, her red hair tied up in a messy ponytail, a smile on her face at the sight of me. They both looked tan, happy, relaxed, and, yes, completely sexually satisfied after two weeks of nonstop, uninterrupted banging.
Jesus. Seven years of perfectly content celibacy, and all I could think about anymore was sex.
“Andrew!” Evie said, coming forward. She was wearing a pretty sundress. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. She smelled like suntan lotion and happiness.
Fuck, it was hard to be in a bad mood when Evie was around. “I see you’re still married to my brother,” I said to her. “If you’re in distress, blink twice.”
“Ha ha,” she said wryly. “Here, I brought you a present.”
She dropped a gift bag in my lap, and I opened it. Inside was a statuette of a Hawaiian girl in a grass skirt and coconut bra—classic kitsch. I pressed the button on the bas
e and she started to gyrate, her hips circling mechanically as a few notes of tinny music played. “Welcome to Hawaii!” came a high-pitched recorded voice as the girl danced. “Welcome to Hawaii!”
I sighed and turned it off. It really was hard to be in a bad mood when Evie was around.
“What did Dr. Arnaud say?” Nick asked, dropping onto the sofa.
“He said that after two weeks without you here, I’m healthier than ever,” I replied. “I should probably move to Montana.”
“Did you work on Lightning Man?”
“A little bit.”
Nick’s eyebrows went up. I usually worked on Lightning Man for hours a day, escaping into the comic-book world I loved so much. I’d still done a good amount of work in two weeks, but I’d been distracted by Tessa.
“So that’s it?” Nick said. “You just hung out here and worked?”
“What?” I was distracted again. The air conditioning guys were finished across the street. I watched the feed as they locked Tessa’s door and put her key in her mailbox, like I’d told them to. I noted the time. I’d offered to send Tessa updates, but she told me that models whose phones are constantly pinging on set look unprofessional. Instead she’d call me when she had a break.
Nick repeated himself. “I said, nothing happened while we were gone? Nothing at all?”
I pulled my gaze from the security feed and looked at him. Even though he was sort of scowling at me, he looked happy and relaxed.
It was good to see my brother. He was bossy and rude and he gave a shit about me, even when I was being a dick. The push and pull of his presence had been an essential part of my life. But he was married now, and I remembered the panic I’d felt the day he left, the fear that I had no idea how I would get through two weeks without him. And yet it was two weeks later, Nick was back, and here I was, just fine.
Was that a good thing or a bad thing? I had no fucking idea. Who was I if I didn’t depend on Nick as my lifeline?
“No, nothing happened,” I told him. “I don’t have a very eventful life.”
Nick glanced at Evie, and a knowing look went between them. The kind of married-people look I’d have to get used to for the rest of my life.
