by Jay McLean
“You can take whatever you want,” he says, moving around me. He reaches over me to get a box from high in his closet and drops it on his bed. A few of my dresses are in there, along with tops, bras and panties. My cheeks flame while I silently question why he kept it all. I look over at him, but his eyes are fixed on the box, his cheeks as red as mine if not redder. “You can stay here,” he says out of nowhere. “I mean, if you don’t want to be alone tonight. But you’re probably used to being alone, right? Because your dad and his job and all that… unless you’re not alone…” He exhales loudly.
“I’m alone,” Cordy says for me. Stupid Traitor Cordy.
His eyes lock on mine, then slowly drift down my body. “You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch. Or not. Whatever you want.” He sits on the edge of the bed and looks up at me. Only now do I see the bags under his eyes, the struggle to keep them open, and I remember that he hasn’t slept at all in two days. “The doctor’s coming in at nine. Kim will be here at eight to take Tommy for the day. I want to be there before he sees her, make sure she’s up for it. Yeah… she’ll probably hate that I’m there but… she’s going to be okay, right?” His voice breaks. “She has to be okay.”
I reach for him, but he stands quickly, avoiding my touch. “I’m going to shower.” He opens a drawer in his dresser to grab a pair of boxer shorts, and without looking at me, he says, “I’ll be back.”
I sit on the edge of the bed, my mind racing with so many thoughts I can’t focus on one. At some point, I hear the shower run, and I rummage through the box of my clothes for something to wear. There’s nothing I can sleep in, so I grab a random shirt from one of his boxes and slip it over me, then I sit back down, and I wait. I don’t know exactly what I’m waiting for. I recall him asking if I wanted to stay here but I haven’t decided, so I spend the next few minutes trying to make up my mind. Before I know it, he’s walking back into the room in nothing but his underwear, a towel in his hand, roughly drying his hair. He freezes when he sees me, and panic sets in. Is he so out of it that he doesn’t remember asking me to stay? I start to get up at the same time he says, “I’ll just grab a pillow.” But the only part of him that moves are his eyes—eyes trailing from my bare legs, pausing at my waist, and then at my breasts before settling on my face. His eyes are no longer sad, no longer tired, and I struggle to breathe through the tension filling the air.
I reach for my phone on his nightstand and type: I should go. But without bothering to read what I’ve said, he takes the phone from me and throws it on the bed. Now he’s close. Too close. His hand cups my jaw and tilts my head up, shifting my gaze from his abs to his eyes. “Please stay,” he whispers. “I can’t be alone.”
15
—Becca—
I wake up, my body covered in sweat and an unfamiliar weight on my chest. Next to me, Josh is lying on his stomach, snoring lightly with his arm over me. He asked me to stay last night, for him, and I couldn’t say no. So we lay in bed facing each other, the inches of space between may as well have been an entire country.
Within minutes he was asleep, and this time, I stayed up and watched him. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the tremble of his lips matching his steady breaths. Unruly strays of hair had fallen over his brow—strays I wanted to touch, wanted to slip between my fingers. His chest was toned, his shoulders wide. I ended up shoving my hands under the pillow so I could fight the ache, the urge, to feel him.
As slowly as possible, I reach for my phone on the nightstand and check the time. It’s 5:30 and still pitch black outside. With gentle hands, I remove his arm from my chest and free myself from beneath him. I get up, use the bathroom, then brush my teeth with my finger. When I return, Josh is sitting up, blankets bunched around him. He smiles sleepily. “What time is it?”
I get back into bed and show him my phone.
After a moan, he rubs his face and says, “Tommy will be up in an hour.” Then he gets up and repeats my process: bathroom, brushes teeth, crawls back in bed.
I type on my phone and show it to him. Did you sleep okay?
With a nod, he takes the phone from me and places it under his pillow. Then he lies on his side, one hand under his head, the other resting on my stomach, releasing an entire kaleidoscope of butterflies. “Does it hurt?” he asks, his voice low. “When you whisper?”
I nod and look away from him, focusing instead on the ceiling—pretending to be fascinated by cracked white paint, and not the forbidden memories and reminders of moments spent lying on my back, my vision blurred from the pleasure he provided. We whispered endless promises in this room, revelations of love and admissions of pain. “Like a boo-boo?” he asks, running a single finger over my throat. “You know what fixes boo-boos?” From the corner of my eye, I see him lean up on his elbow, his eyes charged with adoration. I try to hide my smile, honestly I do, but it’s impossible not to react to the way he’s looking at me, the way he’s making me feel. I freeze when he dips his head, his movements slow, giving me time to push him away. But I don’t. I can’t. My heart races while his hand moves back to my waist, his fingertips searing my skin. His lips—soft and sweet—make contact with my neck and he smiles against my throat. “Kisses make all boo-boos better.”
Oh jeez. Josh Warden, world—the boy I fell insanely in love with.
Loud banging on his door forces us apart and as far away from each other as possible, as if we’d been busted doing something we shouldn’t be doing. Maybe we were.
The banging sounds again, and Tommy cries from his bedroom. “Daddy!”
“Who the hell…?” Josh murmurs, standing at the side of his bed pulling on a pair of sweats.
“Daddy!”
“I’m coming, bud.” He leaves the room and goes into Tommy’s, his words soft and comforting. “It’s okay. Someone’s just at the door.”
I meet Josh in the hallway, carrying a petrified Tommy. The banging is louder now, the entire house shaking with the force of it. Josh hands me Tommy, who cries harder. Then he marches to the door, protectively moving us behind him before opening it. I run my hand through Tommy’s hair, kissing his tears, doing everything I can to calm him down. Then a familiar voice speaks, his tone turning my insides to stone. “Is my daughter here?”
I reveal myself from behind Josh, my gaze lowered as I place Tommy on the floor.
“I thought you weren’t getting in until tomorrow,” Josh says.
Dad doesn’t reply. He simply steps to the side waiting for me to join him. We make it to the second to last step before Tommy yells, “You a butt sniffer, mister!”
—Joshua—
The call connects on the third ring. “Shitstain,” Chloe says in greeting. In the background, Hunter shouts, “Why the fire truck are you always calling my wife?”
“Because you always give horrible relationship advice,” Chloe tells him.
“Have you boned her yet?” Hunter yells.
In my mind, Chloe’s eyes roll so high she sees stars. “You’re a Neanderthal,” she says to him. To me, she says, “How’s it going?”
“I’m failing.”
“I told you not to kiss her!”
I laugh under my breath and set Tommy up with his breakfast. “I didn’t kiss her.”
“Okay? So…”
“But I told her I wanted to.”
Silence passes a beat. “That’s… kind of hot, to be honest.”
“Yeah?”
“What else did you say?”
“I told her I spent the entire night watching her sleep, getting lost in the memories of her.”
“Swoon. And then what?”
“Then I got scared and pretended like I hadn’t said a thing.”
Chloe laughs. “And how did she react?”
“I don’t know. She sort of looked scared.”
“Well…” She huffs out a breath. “Sometimes, it’s good to be scared, you know? It means she’s feeling something. And if you didn’t make her cry, that something is probabl
y a good thing.”
“Maybe. At least now I’ve kicked, and it’s her turn to push.”
She laughs knowingly. “I hate to break it to you, Warden, but you’re not the one who kicked. She did when she sent you that letter. Right now, you’re doing the pushing. Just do me a favor, okay?”
“Anything.”
“Don’t push too hard.”
Chloe hangs up before I get a chance to respond, so I dump my phone on the counter and look over at Tommy. “You didn’t hear a word I just said. Got it?”
His eyes narrow in confusion. “But my ears are working.”
“I know they are. But I meant, like, don’t tell anyone what I said.”
He tilts his head, looking even more confused. “But that’s not what you said. You told me I didn’t hear a word you said, but I did hear them. All of them. You said you told Becca you wanted to kiss her.”
“I know that’s what I said, but that’s not what I meant.”
“Is this another one of those finger of peaches?”
With a smile, I say, “Exactly.”
Nodding slowly, Tommy’s eyes shift around the room. Then he shrugs and bites down on a spoonful of cereal. “Who was that angry man?” he asks, milk trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“That was Becca’s dad.”
“Why was he banging on the door like that?”
I take a sip of my coffee and shrug. “I have no idea, buddy. He probably couldn’t find Becca and got scared.”
“Like you, when you couldn’t find Ma’am last time?” Last time are his new favorite words—the ones he overuses to the point of wanting to scrub my ears clean with steel wool. They change every couple of months, thank God. Last month it was in your butt.
I lean my forearms on the counter. “Yeah. Like that.”
“When can I see Ma’am?”
“Soon.”
“Is she going to be deaded, like Pa?”
“No, bud.” I say quickly, shaking my head. I look him in the eyes—eyes refusing to meet mine. “What’s going on? What are you thinking?”
“Everyone who goes in that hospital leaves. Pa deaded, Becca left, and now Ma’am will, too.”
I try to come up with something to say to take away his fears, but nothing forms because I don’t want to lie just to give him false hope. I’d done enough online research in the past forty-eight hours to know that if it is what the doctors suspect, Ma’am will be leaving. Maybe not physically, but her mind won’t be the same, and Tommy loves her, understands her, at least well enough to recognize that she may not be the same woman we’ve always known and loved. “I go to the hospital all the time and nothing ever happens to me,” I tell him, half joking, half hoping it’ll erase his fears.
Tommy rolls his eyes, a goofy smile spreading across his lips. “That’s because you’re invisible, Daddy.”
“You mean invincible.”
“No. Invisible.”
“If I’m invisible, then how can you see me?”
His eyes narrow, his mind deep in thought. “Silly Daddy. That’s what I said. Invincible. Like Superman. You Superman, Daddy!”
“Helloooo,” Aunt Kim calls, poking her head through the front door.
“Hey, did you know that I was Superman?” I ask her.
She rolls her eyes just like Tommy did. “Well, duh,” she coos, making her way toward Tommy and ruffling his hair. “No broken bones can keep your daddy down.”
Tommy smiles up at her. “There was a big scary man at the door last time.”
“A big scary man?” Kim repeats, her eyes on mine.
“Later,” I mouth, then focus on Tommy. “That reminds me… we need to talk about something, bud,” I say, my voice stern.
“Uh oh.”
“Yeah, uh oh.”
Tommy leans back in his chair and looks around the room. “I didn’t dinosaur stomp on my iPad. I promise.” He takes a mouthful of cereal, guilt written all over his face. He totally dinosaur stomped on his iPad.
I shake my head, trying not to laugh. “You can’t call people butt sniffers, bud. It’s not nice.”
He spits out his cereal with his laugh. “But he is a butt sniffer!”
I wipe the milk off the counter with a cloth. “It’s not funny.”
“Butt sniffer. Butt sniffer. Butt sniffer.”
“I have to get going. Be good to your aunt, okay?”
“Okay, butt sniffer in your butt last time!”
* * *
Becca answers the door to Chazarae’s house, a shy smile on her beautiful face. “You left your phone in my bed,” I tell her, holding it behind my back.
She throws her hand out between us, palm up.
I rock on my heels. “Yeah. No. I think I’m going to keep it.”
Becca bites down on her lip, her emerald eyes penetrating mine. She steps forward, closing the door with one hand, the other flattening on my stomach. “Please?” she mouths.
I shake my head and lean forward, my mouth to her ear. “You’re going to have to work for it.” I’m trying to flirt, though I’m almost positive I’m failing because both her hands are on my chest now, and all of a sudden I can’t think. I can’t see. I can’t even breathe. I try to swallow but my throat’s too dry, even though I’m pretty sure there’s puke in there, and now my eyes are starting to water and there’s some fucked-up acid shit in my nose and the air is thick and my vision blurs and dammit, she pouts.
“Don’t pout,” I breathe out.
She does it again. This time, batting her eyelids. Becca rises to her toes and presses her lips to mine. Just once. But enough for air to fill my lungs and for my vision to return to normal. I cave and hand her the phone just as her door opens and her dad appears. She steps back, her arms falling to her side. “You ready, Becca?” her dad asks.
“Good morning, sir.” I offer him my hand for a shake. “I need to apologize for my son this morning. He got a little rattled when he heard the banging on the door.”
He looks down at my hand, ignores it, and then motions toward Chaz’s car. “Let’s go.”
* * *
I get in my car, my thoughts running in circles as I drive the familiar streets to the hospital. I try to think back to all the encounters I’ve had with Becca’s dad, every word I’ve spoken, and I try to justify why he’s acting the way he is toward me. I understand, to a degree, but he wasn’t this bad when he was here for Chaz’s birthday and I’ve had zero contact with him since. I push aside the concern—for now, but not forever—and instead, I focus on Chaz.
Chaz is awake when I enter the room, her nose scrunched in disgust as she prods her breakfast with her fork. She forces a smile when she looks at me, “Oh, Joshua, thank the Lord you’re here. Go get me a chocolate bar, will you?”
With a sigh, I take the seat next to her bed. “Chocolate for breakfast, Ma’am? Who are you? Tommy?”
She laughs quietly—the exact reaction I was hoping for.
“How are you feeling?”
After pushing away the tray, she says, “I’m good. I just want to get out of here.”
“I know. But a specialist is coming in soon, so hopefully we can find out more and get you back home as soon as possible.”
Her smile reaches her eyes—eyes dark and aged and wrinkled, just like the rest of her. Her skin’s dry, cracked from the hours upon hours she spends out in her garden doing the work I used to do before my skating took priority. Heaviness builds in my chest and I look down at my lap.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
She shifts in her spot, moving the pillows to get more comfortable. “You know better than to lie to me, Joshua.”
“I just wish I’d spent more time with you. That’s all.”
“Oh, hush!” She crosses her arms over her chest, her eyes narrowed at me. “I’m not dead. Not even dying. Now stop talking as if I am. It may be unfortunate for you, but I have plenty of years left. Now, let’s talk about that girlfriend of yo
urs. Where is she?”
I rub the three days of growth on my jaw with my knuckles and choose my words carefully, knowing it’s important not to push her. “You know you’ve met Becca before…”
“I have?”
“Yeah. Your last birthday. She was there.”
Chaz sighs, her shoulders dropping. “The nurse said I might have problems remembering things…”
“It’s okay,” I soothe. “It’s not important.”
Becca enters the room, her father following behind her. I turn to them, the same time Chaz gasps. “Dan, what are you doing here?”
* * *
I find out from Becca that Dan is her birth grandfather—information provided by her dad who’s made an effort to openly ignore my presence. I sit with Chaz, he stands on the other side of the room, and Becca seems lost—floating between us.
We sit in silence, and we wait.
Dr. Richards arrives, introducing himself first to Chaz and then to the rest of us. She gets taken to a different room—a room only family members can access. And considering Chaz doesn’t realize she actually has family here, she goes it alone, something I try to fight. But she calms me quickly, tells me to stop acting like she’s on her deathbed. And so I sit in the room, the silence deafening, the walls closing in on me and I wait some more. Seconds. Minutes. Hours tick by.
Martin gets a phone call.
I get eight.
