Accidental Love

by Max Hudson

  “Dessert sounds good,” he said. He couldn’t help but feel relieved when he said that. He hadn’t realized just how much he needed to get away from his apartment. Coming back home hadn’t helped nearly as much as he thought it should have. Beth’s company might be exactly what he needed. It would do him some good to get out of the house, too.

  The doctors had told him that he needed to follow a routine, so that was exactly what he intended to do. Even though the pull of the couch was strong, stronger than he wanted to admit.

  “Just one shake,” he said. “How does that sound?”

  “Just one shake sounds good,” she replied. “And I can pick you up. Half an hour?”

  “Make it forty-five minutes,” he said.

  When there was a silence on the line, Luca clarified. “It takes me longer to get ready now.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Okay. See you in forty-five minutes.”

  ***

  Luca had greatly underestimated just how much effort it would be to go out. Being in the car had hurt him. He wasn’t sure if it was because his meds were wearing off or if it was because Beth direly needed to change her tires, but everything about the ride felt bumpy, and he could feel it in every part of his skin, in every muscle. He almost felt like he could feel it in every bone of his body, but he wasn’t sure if he could and he didn’t want to be dramatic.

  He couldn’t help but wince and groan every time that there was a bump in the road, though. Beth wasn’t the world’s most contentious driver, so every time that she turned, Luca was in pain.

  Luckily, they had soon arrived at Shake Space pretty soon after leaving his apartment. He was glad that he had chosen somewhere close to his apartment. He didn’t want to think about what it would have been like if he had chosen one of the rolled ice cream places, which Beth had texted him about once they had gotten off the phone.

  Luca had been dying to try some of the new ice cream, but for the time being, he just wanted something familiar. There was nothing wrong with familiar. Beth was familiar. She was the definition of familiar.

  Sometimes, she felt more like family than his own family did. Partly it was because he felt like he could always be honest with her, something that he rarely felt was true with his own family. He could be honest with Annie, but with the accident, he wasn’t sure what that meant.

  He didn’t think that he could be as liberal with revealing everything, since she was sure to be worried about him. He knew that Beth was worried too, but it wasn’t the same. She was his friend, so she gave him the space that he needed.

  After they’d found a booth, Beth went up to the counter to place their orders. She ordered them two milkshakes. His was a cookies and cream one; hers was a chocolate one with peanut butter sprinkles. He could hear her order it and just the fact that she was ordering dessert for both of them was enough to make him happy. For a second, he didn’t think about the pain or about the accident. He didn’t think at all about how his life had changed. All he thought about was the fact that he was with his best friend and the two of them were having dessert, like they did once or twice every month, because that was their tradition.

  Even if things were bad. Even when things were bad, even when they were fighting, and they had been fighting several times, dessert night still happened. They sat in front of each other, saying nothing, just drinking their milkshakes. And then they would go home and slowly, very slowly, things would go back to normal.

  Beth normally didn't do dessert—at least not outside of her meetings with Luca. That meant that when she did get to, she went all out. That was one of the things that he appreciated about her, just how willing she was to commit to whatever it was that Luca proposed.

  He wasn’t sure when dessert night had been implemented, but it felt like it had been part of his life forever. She slid into the booth across from him and smiled.

  “Hey,” she said. He hadn’t notice before, partly because they had been in the car and partly because he hadn’t paid attention, but she looked bad. Her eyes were small and bloodshot, there were bags under her eyes, her skin looked oily, and there were zits on her face. Beth looked after herself with a fanaticism that some people had described as religious. She worked out, she ate only green things—except on dessert night—and she was mostly a full-time vegetarian. It wasn’t because she wanted to be; it was partly because of her job.

  They had met when they had both started working at Athlete List, way back in the day. They had both been in college back then and both seemed to realize just how weird the environment was, but they had stuck through it together. Luca had risen up in the ranks, which was what he wanted, and Beth had started to act and model, which was what she wanted.

  Things had been going spectacularly for both of them, until only a little while ago. Now they weren’t going so great, at least for Luca. He was worried that the things that were happening with him were making it harder for Beth to live her life.

  That was the last thing that he wanted. If the accident had affected him then, as far as he was concerned, it shouldn’t be affecting anyone else.

  “Beth?”

  She looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. “What?”

  “Are you okay?”

  She smiled. “Sure,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  He cocked his head, trying to think about the best way to phrase this. The last thing that he wanted to do was insult her. She was sensitive about her looks and for good reason. She might have been gorgeous, but it was still her looks that paid the bills.

  If those weren’t paying the bills anymore, then she was in real trouble. But she still had plenty of time to do that. “You just look,” he said. “I don’t know, a little tired?”

  She laughed. “You can say it, you know,” he said. “I know that I look like shit.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” she said with a smile. “You’re nice. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  “Good,” he said. “So are you?”

  Beth shrugged. “Honestly, I’ve been better,” she said. “But I’m just so relieved that you’re okay.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “People keep saying that I was lucky.”

  She nodded, saying nothing.

  “So I guess that’s that,” he said.

  “That shit was crazy.”

  This time, it was his turn to nod. “It was super crazy. Honestly, part of me doesn't remember the accident. I don't think I want to remember it. At least not completely.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I've gotten along well enough just by hearing other people for collection of the day it happened.”

  She stared at him, her eyes narrow. “That makes sense. Like with Derek.”

  He shuddered the moment that she mentioned his name, but he had known this was coming. “Yeah,” he replied, “like Derek.”

  The moment that he said that, the shakes arrived. He was grateful for that, because it meant that he would have a little bit of time to think about what he was going to say next. If anyone in the world actually knew what had happened with Derek, it would be her.

  “So what happened?”

  “When I woke up, I was convinced that we were still together,” he said quietly. “When my parents told me it wasn’t true, I don’t know. I needed to call him. Make sure that they weren’t lying.”

  “What made you think that they were lying?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Try,” she said. She bit down on her straw before she took a huge sip of her milkshake.

  “Okay, but I'm not sure that it makes any sense,” Luca said. The cookies and cream shake was nice, it was exactly what he needed, sickly sweet in his mouth after a week of what he could only think of as bare minimums.

  “Still,” his best friend said, swirling a little plastic spoon inside of her giant milkshake mug. “Try anyway.”

  He sighed. “It doesn't make sense to me now, and I honestly d
on’t think that it made sense to me then.”

  “You don’t?”

  “On reflection, I don’t,” he said. “But at the time, it completely made sense. Look, I was sure that Derek was my boyfriend when I woke up. I kept justifying the reasons why he wasn’t there, and I kept thinking that he was going to come visit me at any moment.”

  She stared at him. “But he didn't.”

  “He didn't. Exactly,” he said. “He never showed up.”

  “Which must have thrown you off.”

  “I honestly think my brain would have found a way to work around that too,” he said. “If I needed to. And that was what was so weird about it, because even though my family kept saying that we weren't seeing each other, that he wasn't my boyfriend, every part of me was screaming that he was. When I closed my eyes, what I could remember was him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I could remember us being happy,” he said. “I could remember Derek doing all these tiny things that made me happy, like doing the laundry so I didn’t have to or making sure that my feet were covered when I fell asleep watching stuff on the sofa.”

  “So you could only remember the good things?”

  Luca shrugged. “No,” he said. “Not exactly. I could remember the bad things too, but for some reason, those just seemed less… I don’t know, they didn’t seem as important. I just, I wanted us to be together. My brain had convinced me that we were. And the worst part was that my parents kept acting like we weren’t, and I thought that they were just trying to sabotage our relationship.”

  The moment that he said that, he felt a lot better. He had never been reserved, especially not with Beth, but he hadn’t realized just how much he needed to get off his chest before all the word vomit had spewed out of his mouth. He was a little worried about how she would react, but as always, she simply nodded, quite sagely. Her ponytail bobbed in the air along with her and Luca had to hold back a smile. It wouldn’t have felt appropriate to smile there, considering the subject matter, no matter how much affection he felt for Beth.

  “So, of course, you had to call him.”

  He nodded, spooning a little milkshake into his mouth. “Right,” he said. “Of course I had to call him. I mean, wouldn't you have called him?”

  “Oh, yes. I would have called him. Of course I would have called him.”

  Luca stared at her. “What is it?”

  She cocked her head, moved back in the booth, and lifted the shake with her hands so that it was level with her mouth. “On the other hand, you could have called me.”

  Luca sighed. He was wondering how long it was going to take for this point to be made and he wasn’t surprised that she had brought it up now. “I know, Beth,” he said. “I do.”

  “But?”

  “Well, there’s one other thing I know for sure.”

  She raised her eyebrows as she sucked from her straw, looking innocently at him.

  “You would have told me the truth,” he said. “And sure, there was a part of me that wanted to hear the truth. But there was a bigger part of me that just wanted to hear that I was still with Derek.”

  That was the first thing that he had said that seemed to surprise her. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “Because I… I love him?”

  “You love him?”

  “That’s what it feels like,” Luca said. “What it felt like then. I don’t know how to explain it. If it’s nostalgia… or something like that. I want… I want us to be together.”

  She blanched. “You don’t remember what happened in Vegas, do you?”

  Luca shook his head. “No,” he said, “not at all. I was going to ask you about it.”

  “You were?”

  “Yes,” Luca said, nodding. “I mean, part of me doesn’t want to know. But I need to be honest with myself, right?”

  “It’s not nice,” she said, pushing her shake away from her. It wasn’t even close to finished and the fact that she had pushed it away was very concerning to Luca, who had never seen her not finish a dessert. His mouth went dry as his heart started beating fast in his chest. “In fact, it kind of ruined your life.”

  “What do you mean it ruined my life?”

  She leaned in to speak to him. When she did talk, her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. The way that she was looking at him, with her eyes wide with fear, Luca didn’t remember seeing that look on her face ever before.

  Something about it scared him. It didn’t just make him anxious, it terrified him, and he wasn’t sure what it was about it.

  “Beth,” he said, leaning in so that their faces were only inches apart from each other. “I need to know, okay? I need to have all the information that I can about my own life.”

  She closed her eyes. When she spoke, her voice was trembling. “Look, I'm not a doctor,” she said. “I don't want to make a diagnosis, because I wouldn't be able to.”

  “I didn’t say that you were,” he replied, his voice also a whisper. “I just need to know the truth, you know, about what happened. You don’t need to protect me. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” she said. “I’m telling you, I’m not a doctor. However, I think that’s what your brain is doing.”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “You don’t get it?”

  Luca shook his head.

  “Your brain is protecting you. Something happened in Vegas, Luca, something that you don’t want to recall, okay?”

  Luca didn’t say anything. He just looked at her and blinked.

  “What happened in Vegas, you know, changed you.”

  “Changed me,” Luca echoed.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know you might not believe me, but it changed you. It changed your relationship with Derek forever, it changed you as a person, and part of me thinks that you just don't want to know.”

  Luca shook his head. “It’s not your decision.”

  “I know,” she said. “But it was a horrible time for all of us, and I don't want to relive the experience.”

  Luca swallowed. “I need to know. I wouldn't ask if I didn't need to know.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I just need to gather my courage before I can tell you this. Do you remember anything about Las Vegas?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I don’t remember ever thinking or talking about it. I don’t remember it being part of my life at all.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you remember your last anniversary?”

  “Vaguely,” he said.

  “Okay,” she replied. “So for your last anniversary, you guys decided that it was going to be big. I mean, I have a feeling that it was him that decided that he needed to make it big. You were pissed off at him.”

  “I was?”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “You were furious at him, but you wouldn’t tell me why. I think because you didn’t want me to dislike him more than I already did.”

  He cocked his head, sucking his milkshake up with his straw. “You didn’t like Derek?”

  “I mean, I always pretended that I did like him,” she said. “But eventually, it started feeling like too much. He kept making you feel like shit and I couldn’t abide by that. Why would I be okay with someone that wasn’t making you happy?”

  “I don’t know,” Luca said, shrugging. It made sense that she wouldn’t have told him, because she was a good friend and she wouldn’t have wanted him to feel more isolated. “So… Vegas.”

  “Right,” she said. “Vegas. You didn’t really want to go, but eventually you decided to say yes. You wanted to fix your relationship.”

  “That’s how bad it was?”

  “It was bad,” she said. “You don’t remember?”

  “No,” Luca said, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “All I remember is the nice things. I mean, I remember feeling bad about things, about how things were going. But it’s so weird. My brain can’t remember any concrete fights or anything
like that.”

  “That’s… maybe good,” Beth said, furrowing her brow. “Your fights were bad, Luca.”

  “How bad?”

  “Bad,” she replied. She didn’t say anything other than that, because he was sure that he was supposed to be coming to his own conclusions. He was and none of them were very good.

  He didn’t say anything else. He just waited for her to continue filling in the gaps in his memory. He looked down at her, waiting for her to keep talking, when someone came into the restaurant. His gaze was momentarily diverted due to the sound that the doors had made, and his breath caught in his throat when he saw who had just walked in.

  He wasn’t sure if it was Brooklyn at first, but the moment that he turned around and started walking toward the front of the restaurant, where he was supposed to place his order, Luca was able to confirm it was. There was another man trailing behind him. He was just as good-looking as Brooklyn was, but he looked like he didn’t want to be there.

  Luca followed the two of them with his gaze. Brooklyn hadn’t spotted him and he sat in the booth behind them. Luca leaned back, trying to overhear the conversation, completely uninterested in what his friend was going to say now.

  Of course he wanted to hear what had happened in Las Vegas, but there was something about Brooklyn that overwhelmed all his senses. There was part of him that also needed to know if the guy that he was with was his boyfriend.

  Brooklyn hadn’t pinged at all in Luca’s gaydar, but maybe it was because he had been too doped up to really process what was happening. He was too good-looking to be straight, Luca thought absent-mindedly.

  Beth cocked her head. She had finished drinking her milkshake and began, “So when Vegas happened, you…”

  “Stop,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face.

  “You want me to stop?” She said.

  He leaned over. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. He wanted to make sure that the booth behind him didn’t hear him. “That’s Brooklyn. And I think that might be his boyfriend.”

  She blinked at him. “You didn’t say that he was gay.”

  “I didn’t know that he was gay,” he said quietly.

  She moved to the edge of her seat, trying to peer at them. Luca laughed. “Jesus, be discreet,” he said, putting his hand in front of his mouth.