While We Waited

by Tammy Falkner

  I glower at him and he shrinks back a little. “Why?”

  “She’s not here right now,” Lark calls from behind me.

  “Can I leave the flowers?” the man asks.

  “Sure,” Lark replies. She comes and takes them from him. Then she slams the door in his face.

  “That wasn’t very nice.”

  Fin opens her bedroom door and pops her head out. “Is he gone?”

  “Yep. You can come out.”

  “We seriously need to talk to the doorman. They let just about anyone in the building.” She glares at me.

  They didn’t actually let me in that first night. I snuck past them.

  She comes back into the kitchen and pours herself another cup of coffee. Then she plucks the card from the clip on the flowers, reads it, rolls her eyes, and tosses it into the trash. “I’ll drop them off at the assisted living center. They’ll like them.” She shrugs and goes to her room. She closes the door.

  “She gets lots of flowers,” Wren explains. “That particular guy has been bringing flowers every two weeks for the past four months. She takes them to the assisted living center and gives them to the residents who don’t have visitors.”

  So she didn’t sleep with this guy recently? The clutch that’s squeezing my heart eases a little.

  “That’s nice, that she takes flowers to the assisted living facility.”

  Wren snorts. “No one makes the mistake of calling Finny nice to her face.”

  Lark makes an exaggerated gang sign and says, “She’s got a rep to protect.”

  I laugh. Fin’s tiny. Like a little Latina fireball. But I don’t see her as particularly fearsome.

  “You laugh, but she’s tough.”

  The doorbell rings again and I look around. “Should I get it?”

  They all roll their eyes but I go to the door anyway. I open it to find a flower deliveryman standing there with a huge vase of roses. There are at least three dozen. How many men did she bring home with her in the past two months?

  I take the flowers and put them beside the others.

  Fin comes out of her room. She’s wearing jeans and a hoodie, and she has her hair pulled back into a haphazard bun.

  “Well, shit,” she says when she sees the second vase of flowers. “I can’t carry that many flowers by myself.”

  Wren stands up. “Tag can go with you to help.” She looks down at my son. “He’s asleep.”

  “Never mind,” Fin says. “I’ll just make two trips.”

  “I don’t mind,” I say quickly.

  She looks up at me, her brow quirked. “You sure?”

  I want to talk to her anyway. “Yes, I’m sure. Let me get my shoes.” I go to my room and slide my feet into my sneakers. Then I dash into the bathroom to brush my teeth. “Are you sure you don’t mind watching him?” I ask Wren as I come back out. She barely knows me, after all.

  She grins. “As long as you come back,” she says.

  “I promise to come back.” I pick up the largest vase of flowers, after I put on my coat. “Ready?” I ask Fin.

  “A better question is whether or not you’re ready,” Lark murmurs. “She’s only had two cups of coffee.”

  I guess I’ll take my chances.

  Finch

  My knees tremble as I walk into the place where my mom lives. Part of the reason is because Tag keeps trying to talk to me. “I didn’t have any expectations,” I say on a sigh.

  “I know, but…” His voice trails off.

  “Dude, it’s all right. I fucked you. I didn’t expect you to marry me.”

  He heaves out a heavy breath and squeezes the bridge of his nose.

  I absolutely hate coming to visit my mom, because I never know what I’ll find when I’m here. But at the same time I love coming here, because there is a part of me that wishes for more. I want a family. I want to have someone to call mine. But it will probably never be here. Not for any length of time, anyway.

  I walk up to the information desk and the receptionist greets me by name. “Finch!” she cries. “So glad to see you!”

  “How is she today?” I ask quietly. Tag is standing silently beside me, taking it all in.

  “She’s not having a great day,” the receptionist admits. She winces. “I’m sorry.”

  I always hope she’ll be having a good day. But she rarely does.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I’ll just pop in for a minute.” I point to the flowers. “Can you be sure some of the residents who never get flowers get these?”

  She smiles. “Of course. I know just who to give them to.”

  Tag sets his flowers on the counter, too.

  “You can go on back home. Thanks for the help,” I tell him.

  “I’ll come with you,” he says.

  “I don’t need a chaperone.”

  He looks down at me. “I don’t want to be your chaperone. But you might need a friend.” He falls into step beside me.

  “I don’t need anything,” I mumble.

  “Okay,” he says. “Then I need it.” He glares at me.

  “You’re just a regular goody two shoes, aren’t you? Are you going to pray over me next?”

  His eyes narrow. “Do you need for me to pray over you?”

  “Not on your life,” I snap.

  He nods. We go through the assisted living facility to the section where mental health patients are housed. The doors are locked and we have to have special escorts to get to this part of the building. If my mother wasn’t quite so homicidal, this might not even be necessary.

  I stop at her door and look through the tiny window. She’s sitting in a chair reading a book. She looks so normal. But she’s not. She never has been and she never will be, no matter how much I wish for her to be.

  I knock and wait for her to call for me to enter. I have been hit in the head with books, pens, and other miscellaneous stuff since I was a little girl, simply for barging into her room. I’ve become a little wary.

  She calls for me to enter, and I look up at Tag. He stands stoically by the door, but he doesn’t try to join me.

  “Hi, Mom,” I say as I walk into the room. The door snicks closed behind me. Sometimes Mom knows who I am. Sometimes she doesn’t. I never know until I get here.

  “Hi,” she says. Her eyes narrow at me. “What are you doing here?”

  I sit down on the edge of her bed. “Just wanted to come by and say hi. To see if you need anything.”

  “I need some magazines. And some chocolate. And I need for that nurse to stop stealing my toilet paper.”

  “I’ll be sure and get you some chocolate.”

  “Or did you steal my toilet paper?” Her face transforms into a snarl. Suddenly she jumps from the chair and flies at me, her tiny fists flailing.

  I grab for her wrists. I have been restraining my mother ever since I can remember. Self-preservation at its finest. She struggles, and she manages to clip me on the mouth. I jerk my head back, but I can already taste the coppery flavor of blood as it floods my tongue.

  She turns, picks up a pen from a nearby desk, and comes at me, wielding it like a knife. I freeze. My mother has tried to kill me more times than I can count. This time is no different. I weave to the left and she jabs the pen tip into the soft, meaty part of my upper arm. I wince and try to get my arms around her.

  Suddenly, a voice rings out. “Stop!” Tag cries. He crosses the room, his strides quick and even. He wraps his arms around my mother, pinning her hands down. The pen clatters to the floor. She struggles. She cries out. She flails. Her face contorts into a rage-filled, fury-stricken visage of the woman she was a moment ago. “Out!” he shouts at me.

  “Don’t hurt her,” I warn, and I go to get a nurse.

  The nurse grabs a vial of medicine from a locked cabinet and runs into the room. She sticks a syringe into my mother’s shoulder, and Mom goes limp in Tag’s arms. He picks her up and carries her to her bed.

  “It might be best if you didn’t come by for a few days,
Finch,” the nurse says. “She’s been a little off this week.”

  “Okay.” I try to close the door to the room inside my heart where hope dwells. Hope that she will someday be able to love me.

  Mom mutters to herself as she fights sleep.

  “Did something happen to set her off?” I ask. Last week, she thought her neighbor stole her purse and she was frantic for days.

  “Nothing has to happen, Finch. You know that. And you know it’s not your fault. And that it’s not you she’s attacking, specifically.”

  I nod. I do know. But it doesn’t make it any better.

  “We should go,” Tag says gently.

  I stare down at my mother. She looks old and frail. And soft. And kind. She looks like my mother. Not like some crazed mental patient.

  Tag takes my hand in his and gives it a squeeze. I jerk my eyes up to his, and his green eyes meet mine. He appraises me closely. So closely that my skin gets too tight and I try to tug my hand out of his. But he holds me tightly and pulls me toward the door. When it closes behind us, I stop to look through the tiny window and I watch as the nurse bustles around, cleaning and straightening up the mess my mom just made.

  I’m still breathing hard. I shouldn’t be. I take in a deep breath and blow it out through my lips. I’m ready to leave. So ready. I should have listened when they said she was having a rough day. I shouldn’t have tried to visit. It’s my own fault she just tried to stab me.

  Tag pauses in the hallway and pulls me to a stop beside him. He leans back against the wall, his knees bent so he can look into my eyes a little more deeply. He’s much taller than I am. Much, much taller.

  He lifts our bound hands in between us and straightens out his fingers. My palm rests along his, and his fingers tangle up with mine. He just holds me like that. I try to pull back, but he doesn’t say anything and he doesn’t let go.

  “Seriously?”

  “Shh,” he says. “Be quiet for a second. I want to try something.”

  “You’re not going to pray over me, are you?”

  “Not right this second. Unless you want me to. And if you do, I will. But no.” He breathes in and out slowly, and I realize he’s matched his breaths to mine. He looks into my eyes. My breath stops, but he keeps breathing in and out slowly, and I match his pace. “Someone taught me this when I was younger. When my uncle would beat the ever-living crap out of me and I’d get so upset I hyperventilated every time he came into a room.”

  “I’m not hyperventilating.”

  “I think I might be, though.” He chuckles.

  He breathes in and out, staring into my eyes, and I feel myself relaxing. But then he jerks my arm and I fall against him, bracing my hands on his chest to catch myself. “What the fuck was that?” I ask as I push back.

  He doesn’t let me go, though. He pulls me against him and wraps his arms around me, holding me close. I am stiff as a board, but he’s soft and warm and he feels so strong. “Just for a minute,” he whispers. “Sixty seconds.” He starts to count softly. “One. Two. Three…”

  His words are almost as warm as his body. He’s holding me tightly, and I let myself melt into him, just for a second. I lay the side of my face over his heart and listen to the steady thump of it, relaxing into him. When he realizes he doesn’t have to hold me so tightly, he lifts a hand and drags it up and down my back in soft, gentle sweeps. I burrow in closer to him.

  “Thirty. Thirty-one. Thirty-two…”

  When he gets to sixty, I’m nearly boneless and I wobble on my unsteady legs like a newborn colt when he sets me back from him. He grabs my elbows and looks down at me. “Okay?”

  Well, I was until he held me. Now I just feel…strange. I feel like someone has taken my insides and put them right below the surface of my skin.

  “Your mom is mentally ill?” he asks.

  I nod.

  “Has she always been violent?”

  I don’t want to answer, but my mouth has decided it has a mind of its own. The traitor. “Yes.” Now that it’s out there, I rush to explain. “She wasn’t always like this. Sometimes she was awesome. She cooked, and played with me, and we went on adventures.” I don’t know why I feel like he should know all this. Or why I want to tell him. “But then her up days became so much less frequent than her down days.” And her lows were really low. “Now she’s here, where they can control her meds.” And keep her from trying to kill people. Like me.

  He starts to walk me down the hallway, but stops in front of a bathroom door. It’s the kind with only one room, and he goes inside. He motions for me to follow him.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Can I check your shoulder?”

  “Why?” I look down at my arm. I’m not bleeding.

  “Your mother just stabbed you with a pen.”

  “Oh.” I forgot about that in the melee. And the subsequent calm after the storm. I unzip my hoodie and pull the shoulder back.

  “She got you pretty good,” he says. His fingertips tickle a slow path over my shoulder and I shiver.

  “I’ve had worse.”

  “I’m sure you have.”

  I look up at him. He wets a paper towel and wipes away the sticky ooze that has seeped from the small wound.

  “It didn’t go very deep,” he says.

  I snort. “That’s what she said.”

  His cheeks redden, but a smile tugs at the corners of his lips. “Why do you do that?” he asks, shaking his head.

  “Do what?”

  “Deflect with humor when someone tries to care for you.”

  “Dude, you’ve known me for half a second,” I remind him, my ire rising.

  “Tell it to someone who has never been inside you,” he says slowly, looking into my eyes.

  My heart lurches. “I’m ready to go home.”

  He reaches past me to throw the damp paper towel away. His arm grazes my boob and he freezes. “Sorry,” he says, blushing.

  “You totally just did the boob graze. That’s, like, the oldest trick in the book.”

  He laughs. “Yet I’ve never done it before.”

  “Liar.”

  He arches his brow and looks down at me. “I have never grazed a boob that no one asked me to graze.”

  “So I get to be your first.”

  Heat creeps up his cheeks again. He’s not a virgin. He has a kid, for Christ’s sake. Not to mention that he fucked the shit out of me that night.

  We walk quietly toward the exit, and a few of the residents call out thanks for the flowers. I wave at them and keep walking.

  When we get out on the street, I wince and ask him, “You won’t tell my sisters about what happened today, will you?”

  He looks confused. “Why don’t you want them to know?”

  I shrug. “They worry.”

  “They should. She could have hurt you, really hurt you.”

  I nod. It’s not anything I’m not used to.

  “Let’s make a deal, okay?” He looks at me, his gaze hopeful. “If you’ll bring me with you when you come visit, I won’t tell anyone.”

  I roll my eyes. “I told you I don’t need a chaperone.”

  “I don’t have to hang out with you,” he counters. “I can go visit the other residents. I like talking to people.” He shrugs.

  “That’s all it is? You’re not trying to be a macho save-the-damsel bullshit-slinger?”

  He puffs out his chest. “Macho, yes. Crap-slinger? Not right this second.” He nudges my shoulder with his. “Bring me with you. Please.” He puts his hands together like he’s praying.

  “Fine.” But a grin tips the corners of my mouth. “Does this mean we have a date?” I nudge his shoulder this time.

  “Do you want it to be a date?”

  Do I? Two hours ago, I would have said fuck no. But today…after what he did for me with my mom? And after?

  “Maybe,” I say quietly.

  “Then it’s a date.”

  My skin feels too tight and my heart trips a beat. “
I’ll think about it,” I whisper.

  Tag

  Fin and I get back to the apartment and I find Benji asleep in his portable crib. Wren borrowed it from Peck, who also has a new baby. I didn’t have more than a pack of diapers, some formula, and a few pieces of clothing that the nurse passed over in one of those giveaway diaper bags.

  And no money to buy anything. I am going to have to find a job. Quickly. But in order to find a job, I’ll also have to find someone to care for Benji.

  I have to make a lot of plans and figure out what I’m going to do going forward.

  I go into the bathroom, turn on the shower, and think.

  Benji.

  Job.

  Money.

  Babysitter.

  …Finch.

  I stop, brace my hands on the counter, and stare at my reflection.

  Finch is a problem I didn’t anticipate.

  Before Finny, I’d only slept with one woman my whole life. There had never been another for me, so it surprised the heck out of me when just looking at Finch took my breath. I can still feel her wrapped around me. Then when I held her at the assisted living facility… The sixty seconds I held her in my arms lasted for the duration of an eye-blink, it seemed.

  An eye-blink that rocked my world.

  I knew there was something powerful between us. I just didn’t realize how powerful. I pulled her against me, hoping just to help her calm down, to center herself. But it was me that went sideways when I held her in my arms.

  And now I’m naked in the bathroom getting hard again at the thought of holding her in my arms. We were in a public hallway. She’d just been stabbed by her mother. And I was hard as steel then, and hard as steel now.

  Finch is a tiny little thing. Her long dark hair was piled on top of her head in that awkward bun, and I know it hangs down over her shoulders when she sets it free. In my mind, I can still see it spread out over her pillow. I love dragging my fingers through her hair. But since it was pulled up in a bun when I held her, I let myself drag my fingertips up and down the ridges of her spine instead.

  I’d halfway expected her to slap me, but I’m not even sure she noticed how she affected me. I’m sure I was just something to do. An easy fuck. Right. I hope she didn’t notice the way she affected me. She’ll think I have bad intentions, and I don’t. I don’t have any intentions at all.