Brice snorts at this. “So you did sleep with him. Was it for business or pleasure? Maybe both?”
If this were a movie, I would slap him right now. Instead I shake my head in complete disbelief. “Hypocrite much? How do you think I ended up in this situation? I was planning to surprise you the other night after our long fight, but when I stopped by your hospital room, what did I find but this pretty, young thing bouncing about in your room?”
The nurse standing behind him goes to open her mouth, but Brice beats her to it before she can part her pretty lips. “Are you talking about Tuesday?”
“Tuesday? Is that a name?” Jack asks looking over the nurse.
She sighs and prepares a line I bet she’s repeated a thousand times in her life. “My parents were hippies. I’m just glad I wasn’t born one day earlier. No one likes Mondays.”
I’m not sure what to do with this information, so after digesting the fact that this nurse’s name is Tuesday, I turn back to Brice. “You slept with a girl named Tuesday?”
“Tuesday is my cousin,” Brice says.
“You slept with your cousin?” Jack asks.
“No!” Brice and Tuesday reply in unison.
Then Brice sighs and explains, “I haven’t seen Tuesday since we were kids. That’s why you’ve never met her. Her mom and my mom are sisters, but they had a spat and her family moved to the coast. She’s completing her nursing training at my hospital. We just happened to run into each other.”
This makes perfect sense, except one little thing. “I saw her leaning over your bed. Kissing you.”
Brice and Tuesday first look at each other, faces sharing the same confusion. Then Brice laughs. “Not kissing. It’s an old game we used to play. I guess it’s weird now that we’re grown up, but we used to have staring contests with our faces really close. That’s probably what you saw. Tuesday was trying to cheer me up because I was sure I was losing you.”
Definitely weird, but that’s not what I’m focusing on now. “You thought you were losing me? I thought I was losing you.”
“You’re crazy,” Brice says. He motions with his hands down at his body. “Look at me. I’m not exactly the manly stud I once was.” Despite how serious he is as he says this, he can’t help the half grin that lifts at the corner of his mouth when he talks about himself being a stud. “I was sure I was going to lose you. Maybe not right away, but eventually. Then I found out you were still filming and it became a certainty in my mind.”
He grimaces as he says this last part. Then he looks over at Jack.
“They were all solo scenes,” I blurt out. Tuesday blushes so that her whole body takes on a pinkish hue. “Nobody else. I told you that.”
Jack lets his head fall back on his neck, looking at the ceiling for just a second. Then he’s back, pointing at the door and saying, “That’s more than enough drama for one day. Now get out. All of you. I doubt you’re planning to stay, are you Tess?”
I’m certainly not.
While Tuesday takes hold of Brice’s wheelchair, Jack grabs my wrist and places his other hand low on my waist. “Just know that my offer still stands.”
Thankfully Brice doesn’t see this or he would go ballistic.
With a forceful pull back, I break out of Jack’s grip. No longer am I seeing the events of the past twelve hours in the same light. It’s like I’ve just broken free from an eel that had wrapped itself around me. And now that I’m not entranced by his charm, I can see how artificial and sad Jack’s life is. He’s surrounded himself with anything he could want except the one thing he truly seems to desire: companionship. I wonder, briefly, if he has even a single friend that actually cares about him, but then I turn back to where Brice and his cousin are waiting for me. I don’t know if Jack has a friend, but he hasn’t won any points with me.
So I turn my back on him and a partnership that would no doubt make my life easier. But I also know for sure that it isn’t what I need. Because I’m pretty sure I’ve already got that base covered.
Part V
The Curtains Open
Chapter 17
I’m not ready to make up with Brice just yet. It doesn’t matter that Tuesday actually has pictures of them from when they were toddlers taking a bath together to prove that they are very much relatives. It doesn’t matter that I have no rational reason to still be upset with him.
I can’t shake how it felt when I was sure he had betrayed me.
After leaving Jack’s penthouse, we start out on the long walk back to the hospital. According to Tuesday, Brice made her push him the eleven blocks to Jack’s place after his phone call with Greg. When Tuesday talks, she still doesn’t look me in the eyes. I wonder what she must think of me now that she knows my profession.
“Thanks for bringing him all the way out here,” I say. I sidle up beside her and place my hands just above hers on the wheelchair handles. “I’ll take over from here.”
Tuesday acquiesces, pulling away to walk beside us. She has her hands in her pockets, but her back remains straight. The way she holds herself makes me think of movie characters who go to beauty classes to learn how to act like a lady. A half grin pulls at the corner of my lips when I wonder how many of those classes it would take to tame me. Hundreds, probably. Maybe thousands.
I feel someone watching me, and when I look down, Brice has his head tilted back, eyes peering up at me.
“What?”
“You weren’t around for the good news.”
“What good news?”
“The doctors are optimistic that I’ll make a full recovery. Walking, running. All that jazz. As long as I stick to my physical therapy, I’ll be good to go in a couple of months.”
A sigh I didn’t know I’ve been holding in since the crash seeps out. A fresh lightness lifts my feet with each step. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that everything is perfect again, but it’s at least moving in that direction.
“If we hurry back,” Tuesday says, “You can still make the breakfast cart.”
Brice sticks his tongue out in obvious disgust. “No more bland oatmeal and mealy apple slices for me. Let’s eat,” he says, drawing out the last syllable while he scans the street left and right, “there!”
“The Waffle Palace? God,” I say as we approach the entrance. “I didn’t know this place was still around. How long has it been since we were here last?”
“A couple of years, at least.” Brice turns to Tuesday. “They have the best French toast. Plus unlimited refills on coffee.”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” she says. “My next shift starts in three hours and thanks to you, I haven’t had a wink of sleep.”
This accusation sounds weirdly sexual, and it sends my mind back down those dark paths that had me running from Brice and into Jack’s arms. But she’s his cousin. They were up all night looking for me, not playing games under the sheets. Still, I can’t help but ask.
“You two are first cousins?”
“Yep,” Brice says. “Like I said, our mothers are sisters.”
We sit at a booth with cracked leather seats and order an absolute feast from the greasy menu. While we wait for our food to come out, we sip on burnt coffee in silence. While I’m sure that Brice has heard the fate of the studio, I need to let someone in on my dirty fear that it was every bit my fault. But I can’t talk about these things in front of Tuesday, so I grasp my mug in two hands, relishing in the warmth.
Brice, unable to take the silence any longer, blurts out, “So Tuesday here used to be a cammer just like you.”
Tuesday slaps his arm and looks around to count how many other people just heard her darkest secret. “The whole world doesn’t need to hear.” Then, conspiratorially, she leans forward and says in a voice barely above a whisper, “It was just something I did back in university to supplement my bills. I didn’t last long. After only three months, I started getting these pictures of myself from some creepy middle-aged guy. They were just of me at the store or outside the Pilates st
udio. I made a police report, but nothing ever happened. Anyway, after that I was through. The money was great, but I couldn’t handle the stress.
“I get it,” I say, hesitantly. This is not a topic I ever talked about to anyone. Not even Brice. “I’ve had my share of stalkers.”
“But you kept going?”
“What!” Brice shouts, cutting across Tuesday’s question.
I shrug. “I never told you because I didn’t want you to worry. Plus, if I told you that I had stalkers, I would have to explain why, and this was back before you knew about the camming. Besides, I always carry pepper spray on me. And I remind myself 99.9% of them are never going to leave their parents’ basement for long enough to actually track me down and do anything.”
A sudden hurried thought crosses my mind. I look between Brice and Tuesdsay. “How did you know that she was a cammer? You didn’t see any of her videos, did—”
Before I can even get the foul-tasting question off my tongue, Brice and Tuesday are cringing and shaking their heads while saying, “No, no. Never.”
Then Tuesday’s eyebrows crinkle together and she looks over at Brice. “Did you ever—”
“No!” he shouts loud enough that every head in the restaurant turns our way for a brief moment. Like the birds in a forest startled silent, the cloud soon lifts and the gray static of chatter and life return to our surroundings. None of us knows where to pick up the conversation, so it’s a miracle when the waitress arrives balancing a smorgasbord of French toast, waffles, biscuits, eggs, bacon, sausages, and enough jellies and butter and syrups that we won’t be calling her back any time soon.
We collectively dive into the carbs and grease in front of us, only coming up for air to say things like, ‘God, this is amazing’ or ‘Did you try the blueberry syrup?’ through half-full mouths. After fifteen minutes, only scraps remain in front of us. We’re no longer leaning forward but backward now, basking in the fullness of our bellies.
Before anyone can say how good that was for the thousandth time, I look Brice in the eyes and ask him the question that’s been bothering me since I thought his cousin was some random nurse out to steal my guy. Maybe I was worried about it even before then.
“Are we going to be okay?”
He spears the last bit of sausage that I’ve been eyeing. But instead of bringing it to his own mouth, he holds it out for me. “No,” he says. “We’re going to be great.”
Tuesday pipes up at this, saying, “You two might be all hunky-dory now, but the moment I step back in that hospital, Nurse Ross is going to have the chopping block all ready for my head.”
That’s how selfish I’ve been lately. I didn’t even consider Tuesday’s position for even a millisecond. She was risking her job when she helped wheel him out and into the night like she did.
“I really owe you,” Brice says to his cousin.
She punches him in the shoulder. A little too hard in my opinion, given that he’s a patient and all. “Yes you do. I bet they’ve already reviewed the security tapes and figured out it’s me who took off with you. I’ve probably got a thousand messages, but my phone died last night. God, I need a smoke.”
She pulls out a pack of cigarettes and looks towards the door. Brice shakes his head, rolling his eyes at the same time. “I’ll never understand how the people who keep us healthy can get addicted to those things.”
“Now is not the time to be talking about making yourself unhealthy. You’ve probably set yourself back a week staying up all night like you did. You’re supposed to be resting.”
Now that I’m looking back and forth between them as they carry on like this, I can definitely see the family resemblance. Their noses are the same. Like one was copy and pasted over to the next. Then there’s the smile. It’s just a bit lopsided for both of them, the left corner of their lips pulling up half an inch higher than the other side.
It’s also at this time that I notice how Tuesday and I are similar. We’re about the same build: thin and just a tad shorter than we would both probably like. Her chest is at least a cup size bigger than mine, but I’d be willing to bet that we’d have no problem sharing wardrobes.
This is when my idea strikes.
“Tuesday, can you come to the bathroom with me?”
Her eyes glance back to her cigarettes sitting on the table, but she slides them back in her purse for the time being. She stands up, walking three steps behind me. We leave Brice at the table, confused.
The moment we’re inside the bathroom, I say, “Switch clothes with me.”
Tuesday doesn’t object, but she doesn’t start stripping either. After the initial shock at this odd request, she asks a dumb-sounding, “What?”
“You said that they probably have video of you taking Brice out of the hospital last night. I can tell you’re stressed about what’s going to happen when you get back there.”
She bites her lips and nods. I know that I hated this girl at first sight, but that’s only because I thought she was stealing Brice away from me. I might have only spent the past two hours with her, but it’s easy to see that under normal circumstances, she’s probably the kind of person who can make friends with everyone. I briefly wonder if this character trait is one reason she ended up getting into nursing.
“We’ve been gone for almost five hours. They might not have noticed until this morning, but there’s no way they won’t have figured it out by now. I could get fired. Maybe even arrested.” Her voice is small, and she won’t stop looking at the bathroom tiles stained with ground-in dirt.
“Which is exactly why we need to change clothes.” She’s still not getting it, so I direct her into one of the empty stalls while I take the other one beside it. While I pull my shirt over my head, I explain. “I’ll take him back to the hospital. When they catch me, I’ll admit that I stole your uniform in order to sneak him out. Unless their CCTV cameras are super high definition, I bet they won’t be able to tell the difference between you and me.”
I dangle my shirt over the wall that separates us. “You go home and wait for your next shift. If they ask why you never answered your phone, say that you lost it on the bus or something.”
There’s a pause before Tuesday says in a more upbeat, but still soft, voice, “I can get what Brice sees in your now.” She then hangs her shirt over the wall. We switch and begin dressing in each other’s clothes. “I didn’t get what was so special about you when he insisted on sneaking out of the hospital. I mean, you haven’t even come to visit him for weeks. Then you ended up being in another guy’s apartment, and I really wasn’t impressed.”
“Not a great first impression,” I say and hang my jeans over the wall.
“But Brice kept insisting that I would like you. That I had to, because you’re his best friend,” she says and passes me her pants. “We might have grown apart over the years, but I can see what he means.”
She exits the stall first, and I’m seconds behind.
I never had any worries that her clothes would fit me. They’re scrubs, which means loose fitting. But I wasn’t expecting my clothes to look better on her. My jeans hug her ass better than they ever accentuated my curves. And now that Tuesday is in a normal shirt, she looks even cuter. Especially when she tilts her head at me and asks, “Do you mind?” She then comes up behind me and takes my hair in her hands. “I always have my hair up at the hospital.”
When she finishes fixing up my hair, we both look each other over in the mirror. “My jeans look better on you,” I say, admiring how normal Tuesday looks now that she’s not dressed in her nurse outfit.
“And you look as straight-laced as they come.” The moment the words are out of her mouth, she looks down. Then her eyes come back to mine in the reflection. “I didn’t mean that you’re not straight-laced now. I was just trying to say—”
Shaking my head, I say, “It’s alright. I get it. It’s not every day you meet someone who makes adult films for a living. I mean, you only dabbled in it. I jumped in head first
.”
Tuesday nods at this, not trusting herself to reply for a few seconds. Then she finally says, “You and Brice seem good together. And if you’re going to keep seeing Brice, that means I’ll be seeing a lot of you too. So I hope we can be friends.”
Now it’s my turn to pause and consider what to say to this. It’s not hard to count the number of people who have wanted to be friends with me. If we exclude my fans online who are only interested in my body, that leaves just one: Brice. I’ve gotten used to being a lone wolf, but the idea of a friend like Tuesday doesn’t seem as burdensome as it might have felt a month ago.
Chapter 18
Tuesday catches a taxi from the restaurant, hugging both of us before promising that she’ll return my clothes later.
“Don’t,” I say. “They look cuter on you anyway.”
She shifts her weight to one hip, looking down at herself. “Good luck guys. Let’s hope I still have a job by the end of the day.”
As the sun blazes over the horizon and life stirs in the city, traffic picking up and birds filling the gaps between honking horns and revving engines, I push the wheelchair-bound Brice towards the hospital. The rhythmic thump-thump of his wheels going over the sections of sidewalk are like the beginning of a song that never quite starts.
Brice is quiet, but I don’t know why. Has the business of the night just taken it out of him? I bend down to get a look at the corner of his face, expecting to find that he’s slumped over, asleep, but his eyes are open and staring straight ahead. That means he’s choosing to remain silent. Perhaps because he doesn’t know what to say. Or maybe he’s just basking in the early morning solitude.
This silence hangs over us until we enter the double doors into the hospital lobby. No one at the front desk gives us a second or even a first glance, so I can at least hope that there hasn’t been a hospital-wide alert put out looking for the escapee Brice. After a short elevator ride with a child much too young to be bald and connected to multiple IVs, we’re on Brice’s floor and only fifteen seconds from the safety of his room. But whereas we managed to go unnoticed in the main hospital lobby, that luck doesn’t hold out here.
Cammers With Benefits (FWB Series Book 1) Page 13
