“What…was…that…all…about?” he gets out between shallow breaths.
I shake my head playfully. “I felt like running from you,” I say in one quick breath, and then try to get back on track filling and emptying my lungs in a reasonably slower manner.
“And you haven’t been doing that this whole time?” Now that we’re steadied, there’s really no reason Ran still needs to hold on to me, but he’s not letting go. He’s holding me tighter. “Haven’t you always been trying to get away?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “But I’ve finally decided to let you catch up with me.”
Ran’s eyebrows draw down faintly. “How’s your leg?”
“It’s fine,” I lie, as I feel all the heat in my body centered around that six-inch strip of skin.
“You sure?” Ran tucks his head down to pull my eyes up to him. “You okay to keep walking? Or am I going to have to carry you?”
“You don’t need to carry me,” I say, biting on my lips. They’re even more chapped than before, the sting of the wind still tearing at them.
“Here.” Ran dips his hand into his jacket pocket and pulls out a tube of chapstick.
I take it from him and pop the cap off. When I run it over my lips, I can’t help but notice the slight tightening in his brow as he watches me coat my mouth. “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” he says, still not blinking. He traces the chapstick over his own lips and I’ve never felt jealous of an inanimate object in my life up to this point, but the envy I have over that stupid chapstick is unreal. I don’t think he does it on purpose, but when he slides his full lips over one another slowly to spread the chapstick evenly on their surface, I just about lose it. My head spins and my mouth tingles and I have to pin back the sigh that wants to slip out from me.
“Okay,” I stammer nervously, trying to regain my self-control. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.” Ran grips onto my hand again. “Just one more block. I have someone I want you to meet.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I’m glad you’re back,” he says, shifting his weight in his wheelchair. His frame is so slight, his wrinkled skin hung so loosely over his bones, that he looks like he hasn’t eaten in months. But judging from the smell and consistency of the puréed contents on the plate resting on a table next to him, I can easily see how that might be the case. “I hope they’re not paying you much, because you aren’t doing a very good job, boy.”
Ran laughs and leans forward, his elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped in front of him. I share the same small sofa but I’m leaning further back into it than he is, trying to take it all in.
“Dorothy’s set keeps blinking out on her, too.” The elderly man points a craggily finger toward the hall. “I told her you’d be by to look at it, but not to hold her breath because you don’t do very good work.”
“I’ll be sure to stop in and check it out for Miss Dorothy. How have they been treating you here, Tom? How are the ladies?”
“Cranky as hell,” Tom says. Not the answer I was expecting to hear from an 85-year-old man, and I try to stifle a laugh. Ran angles his head back toward me and smiles widely. “They’re old, senile, and none of them have their original teeth.”
“Well then, it sounds like it should be a match made in heaven.” Ran reaches out and gently thumps Tom on the knee. “You’re not looking so great yourself, old man.”
“Caroline would give you a different opinion,” Tom defends, lifting a shaky spoon to his thin lips. He slurps his lunch—if you can call it that—into his mouth and the repulsive sound of it makes my stomach roll. “My sweetie loves this old bag of bones.” The green mush that doesn’t make it in trickles down Tom’s chin and Ran leans over to sweep it away with the cloth on Tom’s lap.
“Well, tell her to get in here and take better care of you. I’ve seen babies make less mess during mealtime,” Ran teases.
Tom lifts his head my direction. “Is this your sweetie, Patrick?”
Ran swivels toward me, his chin tucked over his shoulder. “Tom, this is Maggie.”
Tom shifts his weight again, and I can’t help but hold in a tense breath, expecting to hear the crack and pop of his bones crumbling apart. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me at all. It’s hard to believe a body can age so much and still function, still hold itself together.
“What’s a pretty girl like you doing with this underachiever?” Tom delivers me an endearing smile and a coy eyebrow lift. “You can do better than this cable guy.”
“I kinda like him,” I smile, and when Ran’s eyes flash my direction, I deepen the grin.
Tom shrugs. “Well, maybe you can teach him a thing or two about getting his work done, lazy boy. No one knows the meaning of work these days.”
Ran’s still looking at me, like my last statement requires several moments for him to process.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Tom gives me an approving nod. “Alright you two. You gotta get on outta here. Caroline is coming soon and I can’t have too many visitors before they start limiting it.”
“You’re just too popular, Tom,” Ran says, pushing off the sofa. He reaches a hand back to pull me up as well. “I’ll see you next week.”
I stand to my feet and take hold of Tom’s extended hand, shaking it so carefully, feeling as though it might break between my fingers, when I notice Ran walking over to a low table at the base of the window. He picks something up and shakes it three times and it sounds like a saltshaker. “You need to make sure you feed them every day, Tom.” When he steps back, I see a clear bowl with two golden fish swimming around in it. “I haven’t had to replace any yet, so keep up the good work.”
Tom rolls his eyes and looks at me, his cold, scaly grip still on my hand. “Strangest cable man around giving all the people here gold fish. I say he should focus on doing his job and less on fish, if you ask me.” Tom winks and his eye is entirely swallowed up in the creases and folds of his worn face.
I smile, pull my hand from his, and join Ran in the doorway.
“It was nice meeting you, Tom.” I wave.
“Nice to meet you, Maggie,” Tom says, then throws a cutting glare toward Ran. “Patrick, don’t go messing this one up.”
Ran looks at Tom, then down at me, and when he answers, he keeps his eyes held with mine. “Don’t worry, Tom. I don’t plan to.”
“One last stop before we can head back.” Ran pulls me through a hall that smells like a mixture of urine and ammonia, which makes my eyes burn and my throat feel raw. There are two wheelchairs parked at the far end of the hallway, angled outward toward the window, and the patients inhabiting them can barely be seen over the backs of their chairs, they’re slumped so low. I follow the direction of their gaze, and it’s just an empty parking lot with one, lone, beat up truck filling a single space on the other side of the glass. You’d think someone could place them near a window that at least had a tree or a bird outside of it. Some sign of life.
Ran pops his head into a room just to the left of us. “Miss Dorothy?” he asks, edging slightly into it. “It’s Patrick. Tom told me your cable was giving you some problems?”
A woman tucked tightly into her covers lifts her head up at the sound of Ran’s voice. “Oh,” her speech is just as shaky as Tom’s, but there’s a sweet quality to it. “Hello Patrick.” She glances back and forth between us and gives me an endearing smile. “Yes, channel three isn’t working and I like to watch my stories in the afternoon.”
Ran runs his hand over his chin and crinkles his forehead as if he’s contemplating what she’s saying. “Okay. Let me see what I can do about that.” He walks over to a TV that’s mounted in the right corner of the small room, hanging just under the ceiling. He pushes a few buttons, taps on the screen a couple of times, and then walks back over to reclaim my hand. “Should be all set for you, Dorothy.”
She offers another smile that stretches all the way across her face, crinkling her eye
s. “Thank you, dear.” After looking at Ran, she looks at me with the same charming gaze. “I’ll see you next week.”
“See you next week, Miss Dorothy,” Ran confirms, slipping back out into the hall. I steal a look over my shoulder as we exit, and see Dorothy’s eyes focused on something on her nightstand, that same appreciative grin held on her face. From the corner of my eye, I glimpse the flicker of orange fins flitting around in a circular motion.
***
The walk back to my house is quiet, slower than earlier. We spend the first block in comfortable silence, our hands still entwined, and when I open my mouth to speak, my voice cracks. “Patrick isn’t your real name, is it?” I ask as our feet scrape along the sidewalk.
“No,” Ran laughs. “My name has always been Ransom.” We both stop at the curb and wait for an old VW bus to chug past before we step out to cross the street. “And I’ve never been a cable guy, either.”
“Then why do you let him think you are?” I hop back up on the curb on the opposite side and Ran and I continue our leisurely saunter down the block. The temperature has dropped by several more degrees, yet the energized heat from walking next to one another warms me more than I would expect.
“What harm does it do? He doesn’t remember me,” Ran answers matter-of-factly. “What good would it do to try to make him relearn who I am every time I come by?”
“Does he always think you’re a cable guy?”
Ran shakes his head. “No. More often than not he doesn’t even acknowledge me.” He pulls my hand closer toward him and my body follows, our shoulders sandwiched together as we walk. “Today was a good day, Maggie.”
“I don’t understand why you don’t try to remind him who you are.”
Ran sighs, and it’s not an annoyed sound, but more of a fatigued one. “I don’t think it’s fair to challenge someone to do something when they don’t have the capacity to actually do it.”
“Well, I kind of feel like that’s what you’re doing with me, Ran,” I admit. I grip on tighter to his hand, hoping his gut reaction isn’t to cast aside my attempt at vulnerability.
“That’s completely different.” To my relief, Ran’s pressure on my hand doesn’t change. “Forgiveness is a choice. Everyone has the capacity to forgive.”
I don’t press him on it because I know that he’s probably right, and it’s not even fair to compare the two scenarios. “Caroline. Was that your mom?”
“Ha!” Ran whole body lifts with laughter. “No. Caroline was our housekeeper growing up.”
“Oh that’s scandalous!” I chuckle. “So she and your dad are seeing each other now?”
“No, Maggie. Caroline moved out of state ten years ago after her husband died. She and my dad were never together.”
“Oh.” I feel awful for Tom and my heart aches in my chest for Ran. For them both and the realities they are forced to face. “That has got to be terrible to live the way he does. It probably doesn’t even feel like living. Probably more like existing.”
We round the corner and my house creeps into view.
“You want to know what I think, Maggie?” Ran swivels on his heels so we’re face to face. Instead of dropping my hand, his fingers slip down my side to draw the other one up and take it into his possession.
“Do I get a choice?” I mock, curling my mouth into what I hope appears as an attempt at flirting.
Ran ignores it and continues, and I honestly feel a little dejected. “I think Tom lives life more fully than a lot of people who have all their faculties about them, yet just seem to exist rather than truly live.” His penetrating blue eyes bore into me and it’s like he’s speaking through them more than through his mouth with actual words right now. I pray that my own eyes aren’t as telling, and I hope the mist forming over them isn’t perceptible, because I hate how he always does this to me. Challenges me and pushes me and makes me seem like I’m a hopeless cause.
I don’t give him the satisfaction of discovering it on his own. “I think we can add psychoanalyst to your growing list, Ran.” I yank my hands from his and shove them into my pockets, and all the warmth they’d contained slips so quickly from them that they instantly feel brittle and fragile. And they should, because that’s exactly what I am.
“I think that’s the most insulting of the bunch. Worse than kidnapper and hostage holder.” He tugs at my elbow, trying to free my hands from their stowed away position. “I don’t think you get me, Maggie.”
“No, but you seem to have me all figured out, don’t you?”
I push past him with my shoulder to continue down the street. My house gets larger and larger with each step and Ran’s outline slips further and further away with every exasperated movement forward. And it’s an unnerving feeling when the realization dawns that though I should be more at ease the closer I get toward home, the opposite occurs because my house is filled with memories of abandonment, diagnoses of illness, and fears for the future. I’m not living in that house. I’m existing.
As the distance between me and my physical home shortens, the ache for Ran becomes so much stronger, so much more immediate, like he’s somehow become home for me instead. But he hasn’t. Home is supposed to be safe, and nothing about Ran is safe. Though I suppose nothing about the home that stands in front of me is, either.
Frustrated from the irrational pull toward Ran and the absurd repelling sensation from this structure ahead of me, I lock my legs in place, not knowing where to go, where to turn, or what to do. I stand there, unmoving, the wind biting at my cheeks, freezing the tears that spill down them like icicles on my skin.
“Damn it, Maggie.” Ran jogs up to me and seizes me roughly from behind. I want to throw him off—to shove him away—but I cave and press into his chest, my shoulder blades pinned against him, my head hung low, the sobs lifting it up and down as my shoulders tremble with that same helpless reaction. “Damn it,” he whispers against my cheek. “I hate what I’m doing to you.”
I swallow all of my emotion in one bitter gulp. “I hate it, too.”
I feel each rush of air hot on my skin, the variation in temperature so evident from standing out here in the winter cold. Ran’s chest rises and falls rapidly against my back. He slouches over me and presses his mouth just along my jaw, skating and brushing his lips hesitantly over my skin, his breath shaky and unsteady as it slips in and out of him.
It’s as though a swarm of butterflies releases in my gut and they flutter and crash against my ribcage when his mouth lingers there, just under my earlobe, making his fast breathing more audible. With slow, deliberate movement he brings his fingers up to my scarf to peel it down to allow more room for his mouth along the slope of my neck. My heart flickers in my chest as his hand stays there, in the crook of space between the base of my jaw and my ear, and he rubs his fingers over my skin. A soft noise escapes from low in his throat.
“Maggie,” he breathes against me. “I’m not trying to hurt you.” He presses his lips under my ear again and my insides flinch with an unfamiliar desire I’ve never experienced with anyone else before. “I promised I’d help you heal.” His mouth creeps closer. “I’m trying to help you heal.”
My eyes close unwillingly, pushing out another tear that slides down my cheek. I whisper, “I know.”
Ran’s mouth meets my skin and his lips trace lightly all the way onto my neck, trailing up and down the curve of it, kissing away the stream of emotion that trickled there moments earlier. I feel each distinct point of contact that his open mouth makes not just on my skin, but in the pit of my stomach. “Ran,” I murmur, pressing my neck toward him, sighing.
“I’m sorry,” he mutters, the heat from his lips warming my skin. “I’m sorry for everything you’ve been through, for all of the hurt that you have.” My chest feels tight under his other arm that’s bound across it. “I’m sorry that I’m dragging you back through it all over again. I’m sorry it has to happen like this.” He presses light pecks up and down my neck. “I’m sorry, Maggie. I�
�m. So. Sorry.”
“I’m not.” A jolt of electricity blazes through me and I flip around in his arms and push into him. “I’m not sorry, Ran.” I coil my fingers around his neck, interlocking each one, and lure his face toward mine. His tortured eyes examine me—scan every inch of my face—looking for clarification. “I’m not sorry. For any of it.”
Bringing my face toward his, I stroke his cheek with my fingers and then drag my nail across his bottom lip, feeling it pull against the pad of my finger, something I’ve wanted to do since the first time I saw him in the back of the ambulance. “I’m ready for you to patch me up.” Hesitantly, on unsure footing, I lift up toward him and press a kiss onto his cheek, feeling the curve of his curled upper lip just at the edge of mine, just like last night. His breath rushes out and I breathe it in. “I’m ready to heal.” My lips pull back and I lift my eyes to his. “I want you to help me.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Cora: HOLY CRAP, MAGGIE! I think I have thesis numbers 3, 4, and 5 with that!
Me: It IS a lot to take in.
Cora: Ummm…you think? Or I could just sum it up in one paper about how the freakin’ Carson family can’t catch a break.
Me: Seriously.
Cora: So…do you think she’s really pregnant?
Me: I don’t know…I hope not. That’s more than Mikey can handle right now.
Cora: And you wonder why I never let it get past second. I can’t imagine getting pregnant, and then worrying that the father of the baby might DIE!
Me: That’s completely insensitive, Cora.
Cora: You know what I mean.
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