by Leddy Harper
His body stiffened beneath me, and I worried he’d clam up again. But I needed him to talk. I had to get him to lower his walls enough to let me in. I figured having him relaxed and settled would be the perfect time to pry.
“A lot of pain.”
I rolled back so my neck rested on his arm, allowing me to tilt my head enough to see his face. It was dark in the room, but my eyes had adjusted to the glowing moonlight filtering in through the window. It was just enough to make out his expression and watch it change.
Not making me press for more, he continued. “As soon as I got back stateside, my dad had me in with all these different specialists. I was fortunate for that, because so many men come back and have to wait for either financial aid to get treatment, or suffer the process of going through the VA.”
“What was it like? What did you have to do?”
“I had to learn how to walk again. Which isn’t easy. It’s more difficult than most people think. My body had been used to moving one way, and it suddenly couldn’t anymore. You don’t think about walking; you just do it. But I couldn’t.”
“How long did you have to wait before you did that? What is the healing process like?”
He let out a humorless chuckle. “There was no healing time. The doctors my father had hired were specialists in amputations. They’d spent years and years studying it, analyzing everything about the procedures and how it affects the body. And they believed rehab had to start taking place as I healed, not after.”
“But I don’t understand. How could you do that?”
A deep huff blew past his lips as he blinked up toward the ceiling. After a moment, he took my hand from his chest and moved it beneath the blanket until my arm was stretched across his body and my fingers touched his thigh. He grew so stiff beneath me, and I knew this couldn’t have been easy for him.
Pride filled me and swirled around in my chest.
“These muscles”—he used my hand to press into the top of his strained thigh—“used to be attached to the bone right above my knee. But they had to cut above that, so in order to reattach the muscle, they had to more or less sew it to the bottom of the bone.”
I shivered as he explained the process. His words alone were enough to cause me sympathy pains. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for him to actually live through it.
“As you can probably imagine, putting weight on it was impossible. So it was something I had to work up to.”
“How did you do that?”
“I used an artificial leg I had to strap around my hips. It was so fucking painful and uncomfortable, but it was the only way. It took a while to finally be able to use a regular prosthetic.”
I moved my hand to his shoulder and kissed his chest, curling into him more. Hearing him explain it all to me didn’t help me understand him more, but I didn’t care. The reason for my contentment was from the fact he had explained it. Progress.
“It’s ugly,” he mumbled as I relaxed against him once more. “It’s freakish and ugly, and I wish you hadn’t seen it.”
His body had been tense during his account of the amputation. His voice sounded steady as he spoke, like he was giving a speech about the topic. But as he admitted the last part, the rigidness of his muscles deflated. He sank more into the bed as he turned into dead weight, and his tone deepened, heavy with torment and sorrow. It took me by surprise and left my heart bleeding for him.
Keeping my face pressed against his chest, I asked, “Do you love me?”
“More than anything else in this world.” His arm curled around my back and pulled me closer to him, holding me against his side.
“Would you still love me if I gained two hundred pounds?”
“Yes, of course.” His tone held an air of question to it.
“What about if I got chicken pox and it left me with pockmarks all over my body? Or I fell into a pile of poison ivy and every inch of my skin was covered in a rash. Or what if—”
“Novah…” He squeezed his arm around me, interrupting my point. “It doesn’t matter if you turned blue and lost all your hair, or developed some sort of perspiration issue and smelled like sweaty socks. I’d still love you.”
“Then what is it you love about me?”
He slowly released a sigh that ruffled the hair at the top of my head. “I love everything about you. Your passion, your heart, the way you think. It’s not about appearance to me—never has been.”
I tilted my head to see his face. “Then why is the idea of me feeling the same way so hard for you to accept? Why do you put so much emphasis on the outside when it comes to you but not me?”
His eyes closed and his head sank farther into his pillow. “It has nothing to do with your love or why you love me. My grotesque imperfections are just that—gross. And I don’t understand your need to see them.”
I didn’t say anything else. He’d just revealed another layer to me, one I had to dissect to understand. And I took advantage of the silence, using it to analyze his words, their meaning, and how to handle it all.
Nolan’s self-hatred wasn’t new to me. I understood that about him very early on, and it’d taught me a lot about how his mind worked and how he viewed himself. This new development went hand in hand with that, yet it explained so much more.
He not only hated himself, but his own reflection had blurred to the point of distortion. When he looked at his body, his injuries, he saw something hideous, and in turn, it muddled his entire image. Everything about him had become ugly and tainted in his eyes, inside and out.
The new insight into just how deep his self-loathing actually cut gave me a better idea of how to handle him from here on out.
Nineteen
The sun shining through the window woke me the following morning. It took me a moment to realize where I was, and then a grin instantly tugged at the corners of my lips. I’d slept in Nolan’s bed all night, and that thought alone filled me with more hope and happiness than anything else.
When I rolled over, I noticed the other side of the bed empty, and my smile faded from my lips. I wished he’d stayed long enough for me to see his face first thing in the morning, but I couldn’t let it bother me. I couldn’t let it take away the high I got from sleeping next to Nolan all night.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” Nolan asked as soon as I made it to the kitchen, where I found him making coffee and buttering a few pieces of toast.
I stood against the counter and watched him, unable to speak. The sight of him stole the words from my tongue. He’d put his leg back on and wore a pair of sweatpants, hung low on his hips. The way his muscles moved made it seem as though he were exercising instead of spreading butter, and it nearly hypnotized me.
My silence must’ve piqued his curiosity, because he glanced over his shoulder, and then he completely stopped everything.
“How do you do it? How do you look even more beautiful than you did yesterday, or the day before?”
I waved my hand at him in dismissal. “I just woke up, Nolan. No one looks good first thing in the morning.”
He shook his head and turned his body to face me. Leaning against the counter behind him, he said, “I happen to think you look your best first thing in the morning.”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. Nolan had always said he preferred me without makeup, but I thought he’d said it to flatter me. However, the way he regarded me, the way his gaze softened and filled with something I’d never seen in another pair of eyes before—especially a pair staring back at me—I couldn’t help but believe him.
My hair was thrown up in some kind of messy knot since I didn’t have a brush to get the tangles out. I had not one ounce of concealer on my face to hide the few blemishes on my cheek, which never seemed to go away, and my lips felt dry and cracked. In no way would anyone look at me and call me beautiful—no one except Nolan.
“How did you sleep?” I asked, changing the subject with the hope it would alleviate the burning in my cheeks.
I glanced away, unable to hide the expression that had instantly taken over my face. I had no idea what to say to him. How do you respond to someone who admitted sleeping next to you had kept them up all night? So instead of asking why or probing for more information, I stared at the floor and counted each step he took in my direction.
One…two…three…and then his arms were around me.
“I couldn’t stop watching you,” he whispered into my ear. The warmth of his breath heated my skin, but it was his words that ignited a fire inside. “I couldn’t believe I finally had you next to me, and not once did I experience the need to push you away. I wanted to hold you closer, feel your body against mine.”
My arms instinctually wrapped around his waist, and I buried my face into his bare chest. “You’ve come so far, Nolan. I’m so proud of you.”
“Listen.” He pulled back, but he never broke our embrace, only loosened it. “I can’t promise I won’t have moments of hesitation, or I won’t fight against things. But I learned something yesterday, and again last night with you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I couldn’t fight the muscles in my face from pulling my lips into a giddy smirk. “What did you learn?”
“You give one hell of a blowjob.”
I belted out a laugh that came from deep within. It felt so good, this moment with Nolan. But then his mood turned somber as he continued his explanation.
“When I developed your roll of film and realized when the pictures had been taken, it made me relive that day all over again—just that day…not the ones after. But for the first time, I got to see it through your eyes. It was like you were showing me your memories of it instead of me seeing my own.”
“Why are your memories of it so bad?”
“My dad took it all away. I have nothing to look back on to remember any of it except what’s in here.” He tapped his finger against his temple, not once taking his eyes off mine. “It’s like watching a movie you’ve already seen. You can’t enjoy a really good scene because you know what happens next. It becomes tainted in a way. For years, I haven’t been able to think of that day without the pain of what followed.”
“And seeing my pictures changed that?”
“You told me how your life changed after that, but I never witnessed it. So, I guess it was like watching a different movie.” He huffed, and I could see his frustration in the way he closed his eyes and shook his head. “This isn’t making any sense.”
“Yes it is. Go on.”
“I was just a kid. I may have been eighteen, but everyone knows an eighteen-year-old boy is far from being an adult.”
I held his face and gently ran my thumbs beneath his eyes. “Do you still think I blame you for everything? Nolan…”
“No.” The trembles in his voice had vanished, and his hands gripped my hips so hard his fingers pinched my skin against the bones. “I know you don’t. We’ve moved past that. However, I realized yesterday I still condemned myself. And I think that’s worse than you blaming me.”
“Why?” Confusion turned my question into an airy breath, one without the sound of my voice to back it up.
“All these years, I kept telling myself I should’ve known better. I should have been better. I wanted you so much, and when I finally had time with you outside the walls of school, away from my friends and the immaturity of the kids around us, I stopped thinking straight. I disrespected you by what I did. I should’ve asked for your number, taken you out on a date, let you know how I really felt about you. But instead, I allowed my hormones to lead the way.”
“You can’t take all the blame, Nolan. I allowed you to do what you did. I could’ve stopped you. It’s not fair for you to take all the responsibility.”
He shook his head, dismissing my claim. “I still should’ve known better. You were naïve, and I took advantage without even knowing it. And this whole time, ever since then, I’ve blamed myself. But seeing your pictures changed something in me.
“When you think back to your younger self, the image is distorted. You see you…but through your own eyes, through your own memories and experiences. It’s hard to gain perspective that way. But your pictures allowed me to see myself through your lens, and it gave me the chance to see something I’d never been able to on my own. I was just a kid.”
“You never realized that before?”
“No. Everyone at that age thinks they’re wise and mature enough to be an adult. They think they know everything…and I was no different. So in my head, I was a young adult, but an adult nonetheless. I’ve never been able to give myself slack for being age appropriate.”
“But now you do?”
He nodded, and it seemed as though some of his tension had vanished from his shoulders. “I’m not saying I shouldn’t have known better, or that what I did was right, because it wasn’t. In hindsight, I never should’ve touched you or let it go as far as it did. But I am finally able to look back on that version of myself and, without condemning him, acknowledge how he made a mistake.”
“So this whole time you’ve hated yourself because of what you did fifteen years ago? Nolan, we all make mistakes and do things we wish we could take back. But we can’t let those regrets hold us captive. All we can do is take it at face value, learn from it, and move on—hopefully as better people.”
“I know that now. Your pictures gave that to me. Like I said, my memories were a movie I’ve already seen; I already knew the outcome. In my screenplay, the main character became ostracized for his actions, and his penance was losing his leg, losing years of his life…losing himself. Whereas your movie had a different main character, a different feel. It was about this amazing girl who had caught the eye of a hopeless boy. She saw something in him he couldn’t even see in himself. But what I really got out of it was he was a boy. And for one brief moment, he made her happy. It didn’t show the destruction his actions had caused or the lives his choices had altered. It was nothing but a story of two teenagers spending an amazing afternoon together.”
“That’s what you saw in my pictures?” I was baffled, completely in awe over his depiction of my lost photos.
He nodded and the slightest grin revealed itself on his lips. “And it offered me a peace I’ve never experienced before. You’ve saved me more times than I can count.”
“No, Nolan. You’ve saved yourself. I know you think just because I’ve popped up in your thoughts or inadvertently gave you something strong enough to pull yourself through, it somehow means I saved you. But you couldn’t be further from the truth. If you truly wanted to self-destruct, you would have by now. It wasn’t me saving you in those moments…it was all you. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
“I get my strength from you.”
I linked my fingers behind his neck and pulled his lips to mine. I told him everything I couldn’t put into words in that kiss.
You’re worth it.
You are strong all on your own.
I wouldn’t be who I am without you.
I needed him to know that, to believe it, to trust in it. Because I had a feeling the toughest moments were yet to come. We were at the cusp of his journey, the crucial point where he’d stand on his own or fall. And if he couldn’t recognize his own strength, he wouldn’t have the confidence to hold himself up.
My phone sounded, notifying me of an incoming text. Nolan ended the kiss and backed away, going back to the toast he’d left behind on the counter. I glanced around the kitchen and found my cell on the bar top area. It suddenly hit me how I hadn’t brought it to the kitchen with me after getting out of bed.
“How did my phone get out here?”
“It wouldn’t stop going off this morning and I didn’t want it to wake you.” He turned his head to look at me. “I didn’t go through it, I swear. I only brought it out here and set it down.”
Ignoring his paranoid admission—I honestly didn’t care if he’d gone through it—I picked it up and noticed th
e numerous messages from Shari.
“She wants to know if we’re free tonight for dinner,” I said, reading through her texts. The longer I’d gone without replying to her, the more impatient they became. “What should I tell her?”
It had taken days to convince him to go to dinner in the first place, and when he canceled our date last night, I’d assumed it was because he didn’t feel comfortable going. So when he said, “Sounds good to me,” it took me by surprise. I was sure I would have to spend more time talking him into it.
I didn’t question him, I only responded to Shari and told her we would meet her at six. The last thing I wanted to do was give Nolan an opportunity to back out of it.
I’d gone home after talking to Shari to grab some clothes, and then I headed back to Nolan’s. We ended up spending the day together, relaxing and taking it easy. We even got ready for dinner together, sharing the bathroom as we got dressed. It seemed so normal, as though it was our regular routine we did on a daily basis.
Not once throughout the day did he appear to be hesitant or uneasy regarding spending the evening with Shari. He actually seemed a little excited about it, and I had a hard time containing my own enthusiasm. It was almost as if he’d become a different person overnight. He truly did seem to have a different outlook on things, and I only hoped it would continue.
He held my hand the entire drive to the restaurant. And as we made our way to the table to wait for Shari and Mike to arrive, Nolan’s posture was relaxed. He genuinely appeared to be content.
But when Shari walked in with Mike, Nolan’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. I couldn’t quite pinpoint where his surprise seemed to have come from other than from seeing Mike.
“What are you doing here?” Nolan asked as he stood to shake hands and greet them. “I didn’t realize you knew Shari.”
Mike’s grin lit up his face. His happiness shone brighter than the lights above us. He truly was good for my best friend, and it seemed as though she was just as good for him.
