by Nikky Kaye
“What. Happened?” Gage demanded.
“We were having dinner at home. She didn’t eat very much, said she had a stomachache. All of a sudden, she said she felt sick. So we got up to clear the table, and she b-bent over.” His gaze flickered between us like a firefly—bright and unsteady. “She bent over. She bent over and I saw blood on her jeans. It was on the seat of the chair. And it kept spreading.”
“She was fine when I saw her this afternoon,” I murmured, mostly to myself until Gage whipped his narrowed gaze to me. I would have to explain that to him later.
Aaron threw his hands up, the whites of his eyes bright in his face. “I mean, what the fuck, Gage!” It was a plea, an accusation, and an unanswered question all rolled into one. He looked like he was about to throw up, and I was close to shoving his head between his legs when Gage palmed the back of his friend’s head and beat me to it.
“I didn’t even know she was coming this weekend. Is that why you bailed on the work I asked you to do?”
I put my hand on Gage’s back. “Really not the time.”
He took a deep breath in his through his nose and out through his mouth. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry, you’re right.”
One day I would get a recording of him saying that.
He turned to me with a grim look. “Can you get him some water? I’m going to talk to the nurse and see if I can get back there to find out what the hell is going on!” His voice rose sharply at the end, getting the desk clerk’s attention. I already felt sorry for her.
Aaron’s torso rebounded a little as Gage let go to stalk to the desk. Then he sagged again, his giant hands twisted together like pretzels before him and his elbows braced on his knees. With a jolt, I realized there was dried blood around his fingernails.
“Let’s go wash your hands and get a drink, okay Aaron?”
He glanced up at me, the whites of his eyes pink, but no tears spilling from them yet. I felt awful just looking at him, my stomach twisting. “What? Maddie?” He frowned, as though surprised to see me. I would have been surprised too, sort of.
I touched his shoulder gently. “Let’s go clean up a little.” As I helped him stand, which frankly was like moving a refrigerator, I saw Gage throw me a mysterious hand signal before disappearing behind some double doors that needed a keycard for access.
We shuffled to the nearest restroom, where Aaron disappeared behind the door and I waited close by to make sure I didn’t hear the thump of him fainting or something himself. When he reappeared, his hands were clean and water droplets clung to his hair around his face, as though he’d splashed himself.
“Better?” I asked.
With his legs a little steadier and his nod a little firmer, he croaked, “Water would be good.” But all his energy was focused on the locked doors that Gage had gone through.
Looking around, I saw a water fountain but no paper cups. An alcove by the front door housed a small array of vending machines, though. “Okay, go sit down again. I’ll get you a bottle.”
I didn’t have any cash on me, but Gage’s wallet still burned a hole in my jacket pocket. With a mental note to repay him, I borrowed a few bucks to pay for the resounding clunk of a full water bottle falling down the inside of the machine. After the briefest of inner debates, I decided to splurge for another. He was a billio—millionaire, and he wouldn’t care.
As I passed a bottle to Aaron, the silence between us was broken by an older dark-haired woman calling out his name.
“Where is she?”
“Mother?” I confirmed with Aaron under my breath. He nodded slightly.
“She’s back there.” His hand still shook a little as he pointed to the doors. “Brian’s with her. They wouldn’t let me go because I’m not family.” He sounded like he was ready to cry.
Without another word, the woman flew to the desk. She was barely five feet tall but gave off the impression of a Tasmanian devil. That poor clerk was getting her fill of Gages tonight. And I still didn’t know what was wrong with Bobbie. The way Aaron described it sounded like a girly kind of problem, and possibly one of the worst kind. My insides crumpled in sympathy at the thought.
“Okay, the nurse is going to get a doctor to come out and take us back,” Gage’s mother announced. She raked a hand through her thick dark hair in a gesture eerily similar to her children. “Both of us.”
“Thanks.” Aaron let out a long sigh, like someone had untied a balloon in his chest. He cracked open the water bottle and sipped it, which reminded me that I had one in my other hand.
I offered it to Mrs. Gage. “Um, here.”
She turned to me with a confused look in her bright blue eyes. Clearly, I hadn’t been noticed in the commotion of her dramatic entrance. “Thank you, uh…”
“Maddie. This is Maddie.” As an introduction, Aaron’s left something to be desired. Not that I could blame him; I was lucky he remembered my name in his current state.
“I work with your son,” I said lamely, willing myself not to blush. With, under, over, around.
The lines around her eyes deepened with her puzzled look. “I don’t understand. Why are you here?”
That was a damn good question. I was beginning to wonder that myself. What was I to Gage? What was I to Bobbie? I felt awkward and in the way, and adrift without Gage’s hand to tether me.
“She’s cool, Mrs. G.”
Aaron’s eloquence was just blowing me away.
I shuffled my feet, acutely aware of my bare legs under my skirt—not to mention the still damp panties that I’d dragged back on at Gage’s house. Only then, did I realize that I’d left my laptop bag at his house and did a mental facepalm. At least I had my phone and purse, but I couldn’t go back for my bag without him—and I had no idea when he would be coming out.
Just then, an orderly came out and said he could take Mrs. Gage and Aaron back. With a determined expression, Aaron popped up from the chair so fast that he scared the shit out of the orderly, who was about a foot shorter than him. As they scurried to the big doors, I remembered something.
“Here!” I shoved Gage’s wallet into Aaron’s hand. “Give this back to him.”
He just nodded absently, his mind already twenty feet down the hall ahead of him. It didn’t occur to him to invite me back with them, and I wouldn’t have gone if he’d asked. It wasn’t my place.
I was still wondering where exactly my place was when I got a cab home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MADDIE
I fell asleep in my work clothes, just dragging the covers over me in my old bedroom. I dreamed crazy dreams about Bobbie and Aaron playing in Gage’s game room and Gage building a dollhouse out of hospital supplies. When I woke, it was to find my adoptive mother was sneaking through my dresser at nine on a Saturday morning.
“What are you doing?”
She whirled around, her stick-straight blonde pageboy swinging like a circle skirt. “Nothing! Putting away your laundry?”
Yeah, it was definitely time to do my own laundry again. Ignoring her strange look at my rumpled clothes, I dragged myself out of bed and joined her at my dresser.
“Uh huh.” I looked down into the open, and mostly empty, drawer.
At least she had the decency to blush. I rolled my eyes and fished in a lower drawer for some sweats to change into. Without even the prop of a laundry basket—really, she had to step up her game—she sat on the end of my bed.
“How’s the new job going?”
“Um, okay. I think I’m doing a good job so far.” After I pulled on a soft sweatshirt, I headed for the closet to hang up my wrinkled sweater. In fact, it probably just needed to go to the drycleaner.
“You sound surprised.”
“I guess I am. You know I’m not that great at keeping jobs.”
“You can keep a job, Maddie. You just have a tendency to choose not to.”
It was lecture time, and the theme was familiar. Hiding as much as possible behind the closet door, I shimmied o
ut of my skirt.
“Here we go.” I rolled my eyes. “Maddie, quitters never win and winners never quit!” I parroted back the saying I’d been hearing for a few years now.
I stalked back to the bed to retrieve my leggings. Her silence made me wonder if I’d hurt her feelings. Her expression made me certain of it. Shit.
Sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, I lay my head on her shoulder briefly in apology. I wasn’t a hugger, and she knew that. She froze as my head cradled into her neck, but we breathed quietly in tandem. That was enough.
Only a moment later I straightened and began pulling on the rest of my “not at work” clothes. That was the one thing I hated about being a grown-up—wearing grown-up clothes. I’d never been one of those little girls that dressed up in my mother’s clothes. If I could, I’d live in pajamas, just changing into fresh ones twice a day.
“I’m sorry, Maddie. We just want—“
“What’s best for me, I know.” I sighed. “I appreciate it. You know I do. I just…” I trailed off, not quite knowing how to articulate what I was feeling. “I, um, started looking for her, you know.”
She went rigid and remained silent, probably not sure what to say. The thought of me finding my “real” mother threatened her, if I’d applied my intro psychology course knowledge properly.
I knew I was adopted. It was hard to miss, since it didn’t happen until I was a teenager. But as I’d told Gage, until a year ago I’d thought my biological parents were dead. It turned out I was half-right. The year before, I’d re-opened my adoption paperwork in Dad’s office while filling out my passport application, and discovered that the woman from whom I’d been separated when I was young had been on her way to prison, not the cemetery.
Yeah, that little bombshell sent me into a summer of spiraling regrets. I wasn’t dumb enough to drink too much or act out—after all, I’d spent ten years surviving the system by flying under everyone’s radar. My “parents” stoically put up with my confused, sullen state, constantly reminding me that they loved me and wanted me. But after two months of getting the silent treatment, they were ready to duct tape me to a therapist’s chair.
I got over it. Mostly. And I should be happy and proud that I wasn’t just working retail like some of my friends, despite still living at home. In fact, I counted my lucky stars every day that I had a home to live in. After way too many years in the foster care system, other kids would have been bitter troublemakers. I’d always tried to stay above my emotions, floating above the tension and insecurity, but I was also damn grateful.
The truth was that my hit and miss track record with jobs wasn’t just because of the economy. I used to joke that I had ADHD, but I’d grown up feeling like everything was temporary, and still approached life that way. I’d never kept a hobby, a pet, or a boyfriend. Maybe if I tried to raise pet boyfriends as a hobby…
I’d survived childhood and adolescence, which was saying something in my case. I’d even gone to college, damn it! I had a relatively useless degree, a regretfully popped cherry from an ill-advised party, and a student loan to prove it.
Now that I was—in theory—an adult, I was supposed to have goals, but I was used to flying by the seat of my pants and it was a hard habit to break. Gage was the first person I’d spent time with who made me want to focus a little more.
“Can you see yourself staying in this job?” she asked gently. It wasn’t an unfair question.
I considered it. I liked the work so far. It beat answering phones at a car dealership or transcribing insurance reports from screwy dictations. It was a novelty to be considered almost an expert in something, and I couldn’t deny that it felt pretty great to impress somebody for once. Brian Gage’s icy eyes and sharp jaw flashed before me, his lips curving into the smirk that I was starting to strategize about eliciting from him. I shook the image out of my head, wondering where he was and how he was doing today.
“No?” She sounded disappointed.
“What?” I realized she had misinterpreted my gesture. “No, I like it. I, uh, like the people I work with—mostly.” One of them I liked a hell of a lot, in fact.
I looked around my room, comparing it to Gage’s house and finding it sincerely lacking. My mom followed my gaze, pausing on the blank walls and almost empty dresser top.
“You never did decorate in here,” she chided me.
I shrugged and sat beside her again with a sigh. My dorm room at school had looked eerily similar—just a narrow bed, a dresser and a desk. The only difference was that I had a TV in my room there and here I just watched stuff on my laptop. “I just haven’t gotten around to it. I haven’t been back long enough.”
“Mad, this has been your room for nine years.”
“What can I say? I have no personality,” I joked.
She twirled one of my long auburn curls around her index finger and tugged. “Now that is not true.”
But she didn’t push it, for which I was grateful. I was grateful to her for a lot of things, and the reminder prompted me to put my arm around her waist and squeeze affectionately. It was a rare enough thing for me to do that after a shocked pause, she looped her arm around my shoulder and gave me a hard sideways hug.
“Thanks… Mom. Maybe next week we could…um, shop for some curtains or something together. If I don’t have to work late...” I trailed off, wondering what qualified as “working late” with Brian Gage. Naked time probably didn’t count.
“But you like the job, right?”
My nod reassured her, until I added, “When I stop liking it, I’ll just quit.” I was kidding—almost. It was more like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was the first time that I felt really good at something, so the clock was ticking as to when I would screw it up.
I had a history of getting out before getting kicked out, but it was time to change that pattern.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
GAGE
I hadn’t known that you could sleep standing up until the doctor’s voice woke me and my back was against the wall.
“I’m sorry for the delay, Miss Gage.” He was tall man with an East Indian lilt in his voice. He looked around the room and took us all in at the same time as double-checking Bobbie’s identification on her wristband.
My mother sat on a chair beside Bobbie’s bed, a vague mesh pattern from the blanket tattooed on her forehead from where she’d been resting. The plastic-covered reclining chair in the corner looked like it came from Barbie’s Dream House with Aaron’s giant frame wedged into it. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, willing the burning in them to subside.
“Would you like me to speak with you alone?” the doc asked my sister.
“No, it’s okay.” Her voice was tired and her face wan, but we needed news. “This is my family.” Aaron cleared his throat. “And my boyfriend,” she added, making me wince.
Their relationship was still weird for me. I’d walked in on some sorority type going down on Aaron once in his football days, so there was precedent in my memory for awful, bleach-requiring imaginings involving my little sister. Blech.
“Ah.” The doctor nodded at Aaron. “Okay, then. Well, first off, I think the baby is okay.”
“Baby?” my mother squeaked. If it were possible, Bobbie’s complexion paled from wan to paper white.
“Yes. I want to do an ultrasound shortly to confirm dates, but your HCG levels indicate that you’re pregnant.”
Bobbie and Aaron just stared at each other, neither of them paying attention to the laser beams that were probably shooting out of my eyes at the two of them. How could they be so fucking stupid? I shook my head.
“The bleeding? There was so much blood,” Aaron said.
“Sometimes it happens in the first trimester. It could be from implantation, although I think we’re a little late for that. It could be a progesterone drop, which can result in the uterus sloughing off some lining. Sometimes it’s indicative of a molar or ectopic pregnancy—both of which can be ve
ry dangerous, which is why we have to do an ultrasound to rule them out. I take it this was unplanned?”
I barked out a laugh. “I sure hope so.”
“Brian!” My mother’s reprimand bounced off me. She wasn’t the one who was invariably going to have to pick up all the pieces.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I asked the doctor, “What do we do now?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “An ultrasound, then I will talk to Roberta about what to expect.”
What to expect when you’re expecting. That was just fucking great. I wanted to kick something. I wanted to punch Aaron in the face. Instead, I slammed the door on my way out and headed for the cafeteria. With any luck, it would sell booze.
It didn’t. Two cups of sub-par coffee made me even more edgy by the time I returned to the room half an hour later. I opened the door quietly this time, noticing that the room was dim. Aaron was asleep on the reclining chair by the window, but Mom was gone.
“Where’s Mom?”
“I sent her out to get me some fresh clothes,” Bobbie said quietly, reminding me that hers were headed for the incinerator. “You know how she is with hospitals since Dad died. She was driving me crazy with baby names.”
A snort escaped me. “Yeah, she did a bang up job with ours.” Mom had claimed over the years that Brian and Roberta were family names, but I’d yet to find out what branch of the family tree that fruit had fallen from.
I’m sorry, Brain.”
My eyes burned, making me blink rapidly. When I pulled my phone out of my pocket, I saw it was almost five in the morning and still dark outside.
“Sorry for what, Pinky?” I said, fighting bone deep exhaustion despite the vertical nap earlier.
She glanced over at Aaron, her face crumpling. “For disappointing you.”
I sighed, not sure what to say. I was angry with her for not using protection and getting pregnant, angry with her for getting involved with my friend in the first place, and now all that anger warred with the pity I felt over her situation and guilt over being angry in the first place. I was officially fucked up, emotionally.
