Anything Between Us (Starving Artists Book 3)

by Mila Ferrera

  “I’m going to be fine,” I say through gritted teeth. “Go home to Bob. Say hi for me. And thanks for dinner. And today. Your support. You were great.”

  “I’ll call tomorrow,” she says as she grabs her coat from off a chair at the kitchen table.

  I almost tell her not to bother, but then I realize it’ll only upset her more, and that’s a shitty thing to do to someone who’s spent pretty much the entire day trying to help you out. So instead, I walk her to the door and give her a hug. “I really am fine,” I tell her. “I’m just taking some time to process everything.”

  “Of course,” she says hoarsely. “You take all the time you need.”

  It’s a massive relief when she drives away. I return to the kitchen, zap Dad’s dinner for a few more seconds, and bring it to him in the living room, where he’s watching a documentary about Antarctica. I pull up the TV tray and set the plate in front of him. “Sorry you had to wait so long, Dad.”

  He looks down at the casserole. “I bet this needs salt, Cathy. Mom never puts enough salt in the casserole.”

  I retrieve the salt shaker and sit down next to him, watching him eat as the documentary narrator describes the accelerating pace of ice-melt. Dad’s hand shakes as he spoons each bite into his mouth, little bits of pasta and tuna falling back to the plate every time. He squints at the television as he chews, and I wonder if his eyes are getting worse.

  “Dad, are you having trouble seeing the TV? Do you want to wear your glasses?”

  “I don’t need glasses,” he grumbles. “My eyes are fine.” But he’s hunched forward, and his whole face is screwed up with his effort to bring the screen into focus.

  “I can tell that you can’t see.” I walk over to the side table and pick up his glasses from the planter where he left them. “Come on. Put these on. It’ll help.”

  He knocks my outstretched hand away, and the glasses fall to the floor. “Dad, stop it!” My chest tight, I scoop the glasses from the floor and try to put them on his face, but he hits me with his spoon, sending tuna and bits of fried onion all over the area rug. The glasses hit the floor again, too, and one of the lenses cracks.

  Tears starting in my eyes, I clean it all up. Dad looks down at me as I wipe the floor. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, sounding angry. “Sneaking and stealing.” He kicks at me, landing a glancing blow on my hip.

  “Stop it,” I yell, pushing myself up to my feet and dodging another weak kick. But I can tell from Dad’s face that he’s not angry anymore—he’s scared. And it instantly knocks the wind out of me, my breath whooshing from my throat and my body sagging. “Dad. I’m so sorry.”

  He’s blinking fast, breathing hard. He’s dropped his spoon on the couch, and I pick it up and gently set it next to him. After a moment in which the narrator drones, “Our actions have accelerated this change, and our actions might be the only thing that can save this—”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. “Don’t you want to finish your dinner?”

  He pushes his plate away. With a lump in my throat, I take the half-eaten dinner back to the kitchen and set about doing the dishes. Now my hands are shaking. I can’t believe I lost it like that. This is the last thing he needs.

  After I’ve gotten everything tidied, I go back out to the living room. I sit next to Dad and stroke his arm. “I had a rough day,” I say, my voice cracking. “But I shouldn’t have yelled.”

  He stares straight ahead. Like I’m not even here.

  “I got some bad news today.” Now I can’t stop the tears from coming. I’ve always been closer to my dad than my mom. He’s always been the one I went to with my hopes and fears. He was the first person I told when I was having my doubts about Ryan, and even though he was already having memory problems, he could still listen and hug me and tell me to follow my heart.

  But not anymore. Now he’s a shell of what he used to be. The Tom Miller who could have wrapped his arms around his daughter and told her that everything would be okay is gone. The grief pushes its way up, but I stomp it back down—it’s only going to make things worse if I fall apart right in front of him. The stress of my outburst has already done enough damage. It’s driven him deep inside himself, a place I can’t follow.

  It takes a lot of cajoling and physical support, but I get him through the evening routine. Barely. He tries to spit out his pills, but I think we get all of them down his throat. I hope so, at least. He turns his head as I try to brush his teeth. He pushes me away and nearly falls when I try to help him stand at the toilet, and it gets pee everywhere, another mess to clean up.

  Finally, I get him in bed. I kiss his forehead and tell him I love him. He doesn’t say anything back. I’m not even sure if he knows who I am right now.

  After sanitizing the bathroom, I trudge upstairs and sit on my bed. Before I can think too much about it, I pull up my contacts and tap my mom’s name. She answers on the fourth ring, sounding out of breath. “Sweetie! You caught me at the perfect time. I just finished my hot yoga class with Chase.”

  Ah. Chase. Her boyfriend, who’s not even ten years older than I am. “Hi, Mom. How are things?”

  “They’re wonderful. We’re planning to go to California for Thanksgiving.”

  “Sounds nice.”

  She must hear the drag in my voice, because she says, “Oh, honey. I’ll be around for Christmas. We wanted to get away for a few days, just the two of us, and this was the time we could do it. And I figured you’d want to be with your dad like you have the last few years—”

  “It’s fine, Mom,” I say. “I hope you have fun.”

  She pauses for a few seconds. “How’s he doing?”

  “Not that great, to be honest. More paranoid. More unsteady.”

  “Poor Tom,” she says. I imagine she’d use the same tone while talking about a sad news story. “And how are you doing?”

  My mouth opens, ready to unload the enormous, crushing burden I was handed this morning by a sympathetic doctor, while the social worker sat on one side of me and Cathy sat on the other. But Mom sounds so happy now. I hear her say something muffled to Chase, maybe telling him it’s me on the phone, because I hear him say, “Hey, Sasha!”

  “I’m doing well,” I say to my mom. “Cathy’s been helping me out a lot, and business is good.”

  “I’m so glad to hear that!” she says. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re on your own with him. It shouldn’t be your responsibility.”

  Well, then whose else would it be?! I almost shout it aloud. I’m an only child. She left him years ago, right when he needed her most. “He’s my dad,” is all I say.

  “Well, I’m your mom, and I hope you’ll come down to Kalamazoo and visit us! Did I tell you they opened the loveliest arts center near the campus? I think of you every time I pass it! I heard they were looking for instructors, so I stepped in to inquire. Full-time, Sasha. With benefits. I’d so love if you moved here. We could have so much fun, and I think it would be good for you.”

  “I can’t leave,” I remind her.

  “At some point, he’ll need to go into a home,” she says. This is where she always goes when I call—and when I always say goodbye. “I love you,” I tell her. She deserves to hear it, and I’m sure, deep down, I do love her, even though all I feel right now is tired. And angry. And abandoned.

  After I end the call, I look down at my phone. Nate has left a voicemail.

  I delete it without listening. It feels like someone’s reached into my chest and torn out my heart. I don’t want to hear his voice. It makes me want him too much.

  He doesn’t understand that I’m doing him a favor. He’s worked so hard to overcome the trauma that nearly made him take his own life. I’ve seen him struggle to beat it. I’ve felt him tense at night when a nightmare approaches. I’ve heard him breathing, shaky but determined, trying to cope. There’s no way in hell I’m going to hand him something like this, right when he’s got his life back, right when his future is bright and uncomplic
ated.

  Because I know him. Raised right. Does his duty. Disciplined, measured, deliberate. Most of the time, at least. He’s the kind of person who might stick with me because he feels like he should, not because he wants to.

  That’s the last thing I want. Even when the only thing I want right now is him, wrapping his arms around me, keeping me from shattering. He’s always looked at me like I was something precious and special, from the very first night we met. He didn’t look at me like I was just a body to fuck. He looked at me with a kind of awe. He acted like he wanted to know me. To understand me.

  Every moment from that one to this afternoon has been the same. I needed to feel him one more time, even though I knew I was being unforgivably selfish. I hated the way he looked before I turned away for the last time. I hate that tomorrow morning, I need to head to the pharmacy and ask for the morning-after pill. It kills me that this is the end.

  But Nate will be able to move on. He’ll start school next month. He’ll meet some pretty student who thinks he walks on water. She’ll worship him because she sees him for who he is. For all he can offer. He’ll have everything he deserves, and I’m glad. I just needed to get out of the way.

  Maybe that’s what I need to do for Dad, too. I was a monster tonight.

  Like a zombie, I roll off my bed and peer underneath. I reach out and shove a stack of books to the side, then pull the locked case toward me. Sitting back on my knees, I put the case on the bed and tap in the combination. My mom’s birthday.

  Nate’s SIG lies there, waiting for a steady hand. The bullets are in my desk drawer. I crawl over there and pull out the magazine, full but for the one I left in the parking lot. I set it on the bed and sit back, contemplating the weapon in all its cold, lethal glory.

  Stop it, whispers a voice inside me. I might have years before the decline begins. I could live. I could work. I could make sure my dad’s okay.

  I could go through each day knowing what’s coming, and what I’ll never have: Being at peace with my own mind. A great love. Children. A fiftieth anniversary. Memories.

  Even the things I do have, I’m going to lose, long before my body dies. Everything will slip away strand by strand and moment by moment, a little more each day, until I’m the one with shaking hands and failing eyes. Until I’m the one who doesn’t recognize anyone. Until people look at me the way we all look at my dad.

  I pull the case a little closer to the edge of the bed and touch the weapon’s trigger. How hard would it be? A moment, a decision, and then darkness.

  Don’t, whispers that annoying voice.

  But then I hear another. Maybe this would be easier. For everyone.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  Nate

  When I get to Daniel’s door, I hear music inside, and I almost walk away. I force myself to knock, gripping the doorframe to keep myself from pacing.

  “Hang on,” I hear my brother shout from deep inside his apartment. He yanks the door open a few seconds later, still pulling on a shirt. I glance over his shoulder and see Stella walking toward the couch, adjusting her own clothes. “Hey,” Daniel says, just as I backtrack toward the stairs. “Nate! Stop!”

  “I’m sorry for interrupting you guys.”

  He steps into the hallway, swinging the door mostly shut. “What’s going on? You look like someone died.” When I don’t immediately say anything, his eyes go wide, and he speaks in a hushed voice. “Did somebody die?”

  I shake my head. “It’s …” I sigh. “Something’s going on with Sasha, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “You want to come in and talk about it?”

  I chuckle. “Poor Stella.”

  “Stella’s fine,” he says. “She’d feel awful if she thought I was neglecting you to hang out with her.” He leans into his apartment and tells her he’ll be back in a little while, and I hear her telling him to take all the time he needs. “See?” he says as he pulls his keys from a peg and closes the door behind him. “You want to walk?”

  “Yeah.” Because I need to move, and maybe he knows that. I shove my hands in my pockets as we walk down the stairs and out the front. The cold air closes in on us, raising goosebumps. Our breath puffs in front of us.

  “She got some bad news today,” I tell him. “A few hours ago, she came over and broke up with me.”

  “Broke up with you.”

  I roll my eyes. “I guess I don’t have the right to say that since we were never officially in a relationship, right?” Except it felt like one. It felt more real and more serious than anything I’ve had before, and I feel more for her than anyone I’ve ever known.

  “I don’t know what you had,” says Daniel. “But I know you care a lot about her.”

  I let out a shaky breath that hangs in front of me, a white cloud of misery. “It’s so much more than that.”

  “Okay,” he says, his tone cautious. “But I haven’t once heard you say you felt secure about her feelings for you. Is this really a surprise?”

  “You know how she broke up with me?” I blurt out. “She walks in, goes down on me, we fuck right there in my living room. Before I can even zip my pants, she’s out the fucking door, saying she enjoyed our time together but it can’t go any further because she got this news and that’s it, I guess.” I pause, realizing I’ve just said way, way too much, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. “I’ve been turning this over and over in my head since it happened, and I still can’t make sense of it.”

  “Uh,” says Daniel. “That is … wow.”

  “You know the worst thing? I can tell she likes me! I actually don’t think she’s pushing me away because she doesn’t feel anything for me.” I raise my arms, jittery and shaking with all the thoughts clamoring in my brain. “She’s got this idea that she has to deal with everything alone. Or maybe she thinks I’m not the guy for the job. I don’t know.”

  “And you can’t just be there for her?”

  “She won’t fucking answer her phone,” I shout. “She walked out after dropping this news—”

  “You’re not going to tell me what the news is?” he asks. “Maybe I could be more helpful if—”

  “I can’t, Daniel.” I can’t imagine being Sasha, having to walk around and try to act normal when mere acquaintances know this incredibly personal thing about her. “It’s not my story to tell.”

  “Fair. But it’s bad, I take it.”

  “Very bad.” And she’s probably with her dad right now, taking care of him as she thinks about becoming like him someday. “I’m really worried about her.”

  “What did she say when you told her that?”

  “I didn’t get a chance.”

  “And now she’s not answering her phone.”

  “Which is driving me crazy. I’m half of a mind to drive over to her house right the fuck now, to make sure she’s okay.” I scrub my hands over my face. “I don’t want to be a stalker, you know? I just want to know she’s all right.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Women have to deal with a lot of shit from dudes who can’t take a hint. You don’t want to scare her by just showing up at her door.”

  I close my eyes. “I know. I know.” I wish I knew Cathy’s number. I’d call her instead. But I don’t even know her last name. “I should probably let it go, but something doesn’t feel right.” Nothing feels right.

  We’ve walked around the block and we’re approaching our building again. “You want to come inside and have a drink?” Daniel says. “Maybe take some of this edge off?”

  “Nah. Stella’s waiting for you. The last thing I need after today is to feel like a third wheel.”

  “But I’m here, Nate. Okay?”

  We pause at the front steps. This is so strange, talking like this to my brother. But it’s also kinda nice. “Yeah. I know. And I’m glad.”

  “You can come by anytime,” he says. “I don’t mind at all. And I’d feel shitty if I knew you needed me and didn’t reach out.” He leans forward,
making sure he’s got my attention. “I’m serious. I’ll kick your ass. Or, I’ll try. I bet I can get in a few good hits before you take me down.” We both laugh. “Let me know how you’re doing tomorrow. Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”

  I head back to my apartment, still churning as I think about how Sasha looked when she walked away today. Cornered. Shattered. What’s wrong with me, that I let her go? Why didn’t I pull her back in and force her to talk to me?

  For two reasons, I realize. First, because words don’t always come easy, and in that moment she’d turned everything upside-down. I’m might not even have been able to give my name, rank, and serial number after what she did and said. And second, because I’m not the guy who forces a woman to stick around when she doesn’t want to. My dad trained me up on that idea from a young age. Mom, too. Sasha gets to make her own decisions. She gets to kick me to the curb if she wants to. She shouldn’t have to worry about my feelings when she’s overwhelmed by her own. I guess that makes me a feminist? Who the fuck knows, but right now it feels completely wrong.

  I’m not a hundred percent sure what it means, that she has this Alzheimer’s gene, and she knows it, and she’s still in her twenties. Why would doctors tell her something like that—didn’t they know how upsetting it would be? Isn’t “do no harm” their mantra or something? It seems like malpractice, handing someone what seems like a death sentence and then sending them on their merry way. What the fuck?

  I pace my apartment for a while, unable to dispel this incredible uneasiness. I left a voicemail earlier, asking her to let me know she’s all right. I don’t believe she’d want me to think she was suffering if she wasn’t. In fact, the Sasha I know would be more likely to tell me she’s okay even if she isn’t. But she’s gone silent.

  “This is bullshit,” I mutter. She doesn’t get to do this to me. She doesn’t get to walk in here, drop that news like a fucking bomb, tear my heart out and hand it to me, and leave again. She doesn’t get to use me like that and not even let me tell her I’m still here for her. If she doesn’t want me around, that’s fine. But she at least has to let me say that I would be, if she’d let me.