WORTHY

by Lexie Ray

  But it was getting harder and harder. I was tired, he was tired, and tempers were getting short.

  I tiptoed to the couch, where Jonathan was thrashing and moaning in his sleep. The thrashing had to hurt his ribs, but his sleeping self didn’t seem to care. It was his waking self that always paid for these sorts of escapades.

  “Jonathan,” I called. “Jonathan, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”

  When he didn’t respond, I laid my hand lightly on his shoulder and shook him a little bit. He was sweaty, and I was a little nervous about touching him. I gave him a wide berth in the cottage, always turned carefully away so he didn’t have to see my scar, and hadn’t touched him since that first day.

  “Wake up,” I called again. “It’s just a dream, whatever it is.”

  But no. Whatever had its claws in him wasn’t going to let go so easily.

  I knelt in front of him, grabbing him by both of his shoulders and shaking him so fiercely that I felt a little scared about his healing ribs. I was tired, after all, but would they be able to take it?

  “Wake up!” I shouted. “Jonathan!”

  He surfaced, gasping, from wherever he had been, the shock of his sudden waking sending me scrambling backward over the floor like a crab.

  “Fuck,” he swore. “Sorry. I’m sorry, Michelle. Another fucking—ah, freaking nightmare.”

  “You can curse in front of me,” I said in a small voice. “I don’t mind.”

  “You should mind,” he said mildly, ripping off his T-shirt and using it to mop the sweat off his face. Even in the dark, I could see the ripples of muscles on his torso. I was happy that he couldn’t see me blush.

  “Would it make you feel better if I cursed more often?” I asked. “Because I can do that.”

  “Cursed more often?” Jonathan repeated, giving a short laugh. “You never curse. Ever. I’ve never heard you.”

  He let the T-shirt drop into his lap with palpable disgust.

  “Want me to get you another?” I asked. “I’m right here by them.”

  I’d ordered some clothes for Jonathan to make him more comfortable. He couldn’t wear his jeans and shirt that I’d found him in all the time, so I’d taken a look at the sizes and had some things shipped overnight—several pairs of boxers, some packages of T-shirts, a couple of pairs of shorts, and a few other things. I’d dragged a storage box from the barn to the cottage to keep the clothes in.

  “Another shirt I can soak with sweat?” he asked, an edge in his voice. “Perfect.”

  I swallowed. “You don’t have to wear a shirt if you don’t want to,” I said. “I just wanted to make sure that you were comfortable.”

  Jonathan gave a long sigh. “I’m sorry,” he said. “These nightmares are just making it hard for me to sleep, and that’s why I’m snappy. You don’t deserve my irritation. Please, go to bed. I’ll stay awake so I can make sure I don’t wake you up with anything.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I protested. “You need your rest.”

  “And these fucking nightmares won’t let me have it,” he growled, his hands curled uselessly into fists. “Sorry! Michelle, you’re a lady. You deserve to not have to listen to foul language. You deserve to sleep through a night without waking up to my nightmares. You deserve a lot of things.”

  I resisted the urge to snort. I didn’t feel like a lady—nowhere near one, in fact. What was he talking about?

  “Would it help you to talk about your nightmares?” I asked. “Maybe they’re your memories, trying to return to you.”

  Jonathan shuddered. “If they are, then I’m never going back to wherever I came from,” he said.

  That planted a strange thought in my head. I had purchased the clothes—he’d been almost livid when they arrived, saying that I shouldn’t have spent my money on him—but it had somehow given Jonathan an anchor in my cottage, made his being here a little more real. But what if he never left?

  I wasn’t used to the night terrors or the mood swings. Maybe I never would be. But I was gradually getting used to Jonathan being around. The idea that he’d always be around, though, was a little foreign to me. I always sort of thought I’d grow old alone in the cottage. It wasn’t a disturbing thought to me. I loved it out here and didn’t really have a reason to go elsewhere.

  “Maybe you’ll sleep easier if you tell me about your nightmares,” I said, getting up off the floor and plopping down in the armchair. “Go on. I could do with a bedtime story, and you could do with a little dream therapy session.”

  Jonathan shook his head at me, grinning. “It never fails,” he said.

  “What never fails?”

  “You lifting me back into a good mood from wherever I’ve fallen,” he said. “You have a sharp wit, and I like that.”

  “Now you’re just stalling,” I teased.

  Jonathan took a deep breath. “It’s confusing, the nightmare,” he said. “I’ve been having it ever since I got here. I feel like I’m always falling, even when my unconscious mind realizes that there has to be a bottom somewhere. I never hit it. I’m just falling, and there’s this curtain of water in front of me. Something’s on the other side, and I know it’s important. I keep reaching for it, but the water is always just only at my fingertips.”

  “That’s frustrating,” I remarked.

  “Especially when the water eventually parts and there are monsters—or monstrous things waiting for me on the other side,” Jonathan said, a faraway look in his eyes. “Only, this time, they weren’t monsters.”

  I frowned. “What were they?”

  “People,” Jonathan said. “Just a bunch of faces. I didn’t know a single one, but they all knew me.”

  He sounded haunted. “Want me to boil some water for tea?” I offered. “Maybe some chamomile would help you sleep better.”

  He shook his head. “No. Thank you. I have another favor to ask.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Anything.”

  “I don’t understand how you’re so giving to a stranger,” he said wonderingly. “I can’t believe that you took me in like this, that you’re agreeing to do something for me without even knowing what it is.”

  I shrugged. “You need help,” I said. “I can give help. It’s that simple.”

  “You’re too good,” he remarked. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to take me to the place you first found me.”

  “Do you think you can manage?” I asked. “It’s about two miles, remember, from the cottage. Two miles there and two miles back.”

  “The ribs don’t hurt hardly at all when I walk,” he said. “And I haven’t had a dizzy spell in a few days.”

  “That’s good,” I encouraged him. “It’s settled, then. We’ll go to the creek after we both get a little more sleep. Maybe we’ll even take a lunch there.”

  “Like a picnic?” he asked, settling back down on the couch.

  I smiled. “Sure, if you like. A picnic lunch in the woods. Sounds like fun.”

  He sighed. “I don’t know if it’s going to be fun,” he said. “I’m going to be looking for answers. I want to know what happened to me. Maybe there’s some sort of clue there, something that might’ve been left behind.”

  “That’s always possible,” I agreed. “I left in a hurry. We’ll try to follow my path to see if maybe we dropped anything. I feel like you should have a wallet, but you didn’t have one on you. A wallet might give you more answers.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “Thanks for putting up with me, Michelle. You’re a good person.”

  “Try to get some rest,” I said. “We’ll leave when we wake up again. After breakfast, of course.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of leaving until after breakfast,” Jonathan said. I wondered if he was mocking me, but decided to let it go, walking to my room and closing the door.

  As I tried to fall asleep again, my thoughts turned to Jonathan. They were always turning to Jonathan these days. I worried about him a lot—first, of course, when I’d found him. T
hen, I worried about his recovery. I wanted him to get better, wanted him to heal. He’d been walking a little bit around the field, following me around while I did the chores, gradually building his strength. Was he fit enough to get to the creek and back? Maybe not. But it was important to him to go to where I’d found him, to see if it would jar any memories loose.

  Maybe we both needed this.

  It was late morning by the time I woke up. After a quick trip to the bathroom, I got dressed and went out to check on Jonathan. He was sound asleep, for once, not tossing or turning or sweating. Good. I’d leave him to rest just a little bit longer.

  Slipping out the front door, I quickly completed my daily chores, bringing a load of eggs and vegetables back to the cottage. The day was overcast but not too muggy. It would be decent walking weather, and to tell the truth, I was looking forward to it. I hadn’t been into the woods since I’d carried Jonathan out of them, and I was beginning to miss them.

  Jonathan was beginning to stir by the time I was whipping together a couple of the freshest omelets a person could get. Along with a tall pitcher of orange juice, this was going to be an excellent breakfast.

  “Smells good,” he said, startling me. He was at my right elbow, looking down into the frying pan at the omelet I was cooking.

  “How do you keep all the ingredients together like that?” he wondered. “Why doesn’t it just turn into scrambled eggs with a bunch of vegetables in them?”

  “Patience and practice,” I said, trying not to be distracted by his shirtless torso right beside me, the smell of him. He was using the soap and deodorant that I used, but there was something else, some sort of musk that I liked. The realization made me blush, and I carefully focused on the omelets.

  I worked the spatula beneath one of them and flipped it skillfully, making sure it got cooked completely.

  “I’d like to learn how to do that,” Jonathan remarked, peering at our breakfast.

  “Really?”

  Jonathan nodded. “I could start helping you out around here,” he said. “You do everything, and it’s not fair.”

  “I’ve always done everything,” I said. “Comes with living alone for so long. I don’t mind it.”

  “Well, now that you’re not living alone, I’ll pitch in,” he said. “Teach me to cook and we can switch off preparing meals. Show me what to do around here or what needs to be done and I’ll pull my weight. It’s something I want to do, Michelle. I could never pay you back completely for what you’ve been doing for me, but I can try to make your life a little easier.”

  I smiled at him, dumping the omelets onto plates and carrying them to the table.

  “You really don’t owe me anything,” I said. “I’ll have to admit that it’s been strange having someone around, but it’s also sort of pleasant.”

  “So,” Jonathan said, plopping down as he filled our glasses with orange juice. “What’s on the docket for today? How do you start your day?”

  “Well, our docket for today is to walk to the creek,” I said. “I’ve already taken care of the chores. I thought you could use the extra sleep.”

  “You could’ve woken me up to help you,” he protested, cutting into the omelet.

  “I didn’t want to,” I said. “You need it to heal. To rest up for the walk.”

  After breakfast, I packed a couple of lunches in a backpack and filled some empty bottles with water from the tap while Jonathan got ready. In no time, we set out, walking across the field to the tree line.

  “Do you go walking in these woods a lot?” he asked, peering around a little nervously as the trees started to thicken and the air to darken.

  “I try to,” I said. “Sometimes I’m a little busy with things at the cottage. But I don’t know. It’s relaxing for me to walk through here.”

  “It’s kind of creepy,” Jonathan admitted. “Like something’s in here with you.”

  I laughed. “Plenty of things are in here with us,” I said. “Deer, coyotes, raccoons, weasels, snakes, and all of your creepy crawlies. Are you afraid of anything like that?”

  “Not animals,” he said. “I can’t really explain it. There’s a thickness to the air. You never see any people in here?”

  “You’re my first,” I said as cheerfully as I could. “I do always sort of feel like there’s something magical about these woods, as corny as it sounds. Maybe it feels oppressive to you because your brain’s trying to remember what happened—or because your brain knows something traumatic happened to you in here.”

  “Maybe,” he said doubtfully.

  We walked on in silence, following the sound of the creek. I took care to keep our pace at something manageable so as not to tire Jonathan. For someone who’d been mostly bedridden—or couch-ridden, rather—for a while, he seemed to be in pretty good shape. That was one clue to his identity. He took care of his body.

  “So here’s the creek,” I said, holding my hand out as they stepped through some branches. “Obviously.”

  “I still can’t believe you waded it while it was flooding,” Jonathan said disapprovingly.

  “And I still can’t believe you’re upset about it,” I said. “It’s shallow enough here. We can cross.”

  We picked our way atop the stones that were exposed above the surface of the rushing water, helping each other climb the bank on the other side. I looked around for a few moments, trying to get my bearings. Everything had looked different during the storm and the flood. Where had I found Jonathan? It had to have been closer to the river.

  “This way,” I said. “I think.”

  Finally, we reached a place that looked a little familiar to me. The creek had been higher, of course, but this was the place I’d found Jonathan, crumpled on the ground and bleeding. It was hard to believe that he was standing next to me right now.

  “Here we are,” I said, holding my hands out. “It was right here.”

  We started scouring the area, looking for anything. It had rained since, so there weren’t any tracks. I figured that the rising water would’ve also helped to wash any possible evidence away, though it couldn’t hurt to look.

  A wallet wouldn’t have stood a chance against that raging creek, I thought a little glumly. It would be at the bottom of the river by now.

  I turned to see Jonathan on his knees and hurried over to him.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He glanced up at me. “Yeah,” he assured me. “I was just looking at the ground to see if there might be any tracks.”

  I shook my head. “The rain—and the flood—would’ve washed anything away, I’m afraid. Our footprints are long gone.”

  “Not footprints,” he said. “Maybe tires. Like an ATV or a bike or something. What if I was involved in a crash or something? Or maybe someone riding something hit me, though I couldn’t imagine why I’d be walking all the way out here.”

  The mention of a crash made my world shrink to a pinpoint. I was aware that Jonathan continued to talk, but his words blended into sounds of the woods—birdsong, the creaking of the trees. Everything went away as panic climbed my throat, threatening to strangle. I had to get out of here.

  “A crash?” I was incredibly pale, my eyes bugging out of my head. “That—that can’t be. That’s impossible.”

  “You’re probably right,” Jonathan said, sighing and standing up, dusting off the knees of his pants. He noticed the look on my face right away. “What’s wrong?”

  My hand went to my throat as if I could open it up, will the oxygen in to help my lungs get more air. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.

  “Michelle?”

  “Can we walk?” I managed to choke out, each word falling out of my mouth like a prayer. “Walk away from here?”

  “Of course.” Jonathan quickly took me by the elbow—a practiced gesture, I happened to notice, one that spoke of good manners. There was another clue. He took care of his body, and his body knew how to conduct itself appropriately, with good manners, whether he knew it o
r not.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as he helped me across the creek. I was supposed to be the strong one here.

  “Don’t apologize,” he fussed. “You’ve been working really hard while I’ve been lying around on my ass—butt—all day. Of course you’re tired. I’m selfish, Michelle. You need to tell me what your limitations are. I don’t want to exhaust you like this.”

  “I’m not exhausted,” I protested. “It’s just that—that…” God. To even think about thinking about the incident was hard. I certainly couldn’t talk to Jonathan about my fears, could I?

  “You don’t have to think up any excuses,” Jonathan said. “I’m not worth it, Michelle. You’ve done enough. Let’s contact a police station or something to come pick me up at your cottage. I need to become someone else’s problem. You don’t need this problem anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, my eyes tearing up unexpectedly. “I know you’re upset about not finding anything at the place I found you. We can go back. I’m sorry I panicked. Let’s go back and look some more. Come on.”

  Jonathan snagged my arm as I tried to do an about face back toward the creek.

  “No, Michelle,” he said. “There’s nothing there for me.” He peered into my face and I squirmed away. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “Nothing.”

  He cocked his head at me. “You know, I’m pretty tired,” he said, plopping down on a log. “What do you say we take a break here? Not a bad place for a picnic.”

  “If you say so,” I said. “If you’d like to.”

  “I would like to,” Jonathan said. “I’d like you to, also.”

  I plunked down on the log beside him, keeping him on my right side and setting the backpack in between us.

  “Ready for some lunch?” I asked brightly, trying to shake off the last of my panic, the claws of my despair. I couldn’t handle thinking about car crashes. I needed something else to focus on.

  He shook his head as I started to take the lunches out of the backpack. “I’m ready for you to tell me what’s going on with you,” he said.