Push

by Claire Wallis

  “Would you die for me, Jenny?” he asks. “Is that the kind of love you feel?”

  “Yes, but that’s metaphorical. People say they would die for someone, David, but they don’t really ever expect it to happen. Just because you wouldn’t jump in front of a bus to save me doesn’t mean you don’t love me.”

  David takes the joint from my hand. He inhales again, and I am pretty sure I see tears in his eyes. What is this? Is he crying? Why? Maybe he isn’t crying. Maybe it’s the wind. Or the smoke.

  “But what if it weren’t? What if it weren’t hypothetical?” he says. “What if, right now, I jumped off this bridge and you could reach out and pull me back up, but it meant that you would fall instead. It meant that you would drown, and I would live. Would you do it?” I don’t know how to answer. I think about it for a long time, motioning for him to pass me the joint again. My inhale is deep and wide. It feels bottomless.

  “It is metaphorical, David. People don’t do that kind of stuff. People don’t throw themselves off a bridge to test someone’s love for them. They don’t ask for the sacrifice. It is made for them voluntarily, Out of love. Not to prove something.”

  David stands up, holding on to the bridge truss. He leans forward and looks over the edge.

  “What are you doing?” I ask him. “David, cut it out. Sit down. Let’s talk about something else. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “But it does,” he says. “It does matter.” Now he is climbing to the truss above us. I stand up, too, trying to figure out what he is doing. Once he is balanced on the upper truss, he bends down and grabs my hand, pulling me up next to him. We are standing here together, and he is holding my hand.

  “Don’t you see, Jenny? It does matter. It matters because I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that you would sacrifice yourself so that I would live. I don’t believe that you love me that much. But I want to find out. I want to know if it is real. I want to know if you really do love me like you say you do.” We are both looking out over the water, and I’m starting to get a little paranoid that David might try to jump or something. That he might actually want me to prove that I will die so that he can live. For a second, I wonder if the weed we’ve been smoking is bad. If it is, three dozen of my buyers are probably out there perched on some other bridge, having the exact same fucked-up conversation. But before I can think too much about it, David extends his leg out in front of him. He balances on his other leg, still holding my hand. His body wavers back and forth, trying to remain steady. It isn’t like him to take that kind of a chance.

  “David. Stop it!” I say. “Stop it right now. This is stupid.” And it is. I don’t know what else to say to make him stop.

  He puts his leg back down and looks at me. His face suddenly seems electrified, power-soaked. He says softly, “I will believe that you love me if you let me do this.”

  “Let you do what?” My head is spinning. I am so confused.

  “If you let me watch you fall. Because if you don’t jump, then I will.”

  What? What the hell does that mean? And then it strikes me. He wants me to choose his life over mine. In his mind, that is how I am going to show him that I love him. That is how I am going to prove that I feel that kind of love. The kind his mother told him about. The kind that you would die for.

  “I don’t know how to say this any more clearly. When someone says they would die for you, it is metaphorical, David. It isn’t real,” I say again. I am beginning to wish there was a shrink up here with us.

  “Jump,” he says, “or I will.” A long moment of silence passes between us, and he flicks the stub of the joint off the bridge.

  “I am not going to jump,” I say quietly. When we are off this bridge, I am going to sucker punch him. “Let’s just go home, okay? Let’s go make love and forget this whole conversation even happened.” I am starting to feel nauseated. I turn away from him and start to climb back up to the bridge deck, but I feel his hand on my arm, pulling me back down. And then he has a hold of both my arms.

  “Jump,” he says, with his hands firmly gripping each of my upper arms. His eyes are loaded, charged with energy. They are telling me he’s enjoying the absolute control he has over this moment. Over whether I live or die. But they are also making me afraid, and I think he likes it.

  “I am not going to jump,” I say again, this time with blatant, yet unwelcome, fear in my voice. I am shaking and staring right at him, hoping he will come to his senses when he sees that he has taken this whole thing too far. I try to pull myself out of his grip, but I am balanced on this metal beam and I don’t want my own struggling to cause me to fall. I tell him to let me go.

  But instead he tips my body to the side. He is going to push me. He is going to send me off this bridge and into the water. But why? Why would he do that? I don’t understand. Then he smiles. A face-cracking smile. A “happy-as-shit” smile. The kind I have never seen before. He pushes hard against my side, and my feet slip off the truss.

  I am flipping off this bridge in a cartwheel. But the trusses are in the way. I feel my hand crack into one, and then my hip. The smack of my head against the steel sounds bright and crisp inside my brain. Then everything is quiet.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Emma—Present Day

  Oh. My. God. What the fuck happened last night? My eyes open, and I can only look up at the ceiling, trying desperately not to move. I am terrified that if I turn my head or move my arm, the retching will start again. That is the thing I remember the most. The endless puking. Countless dry heaves. Being put into the shower. And not by David.

  Memories come flinging back at me, smacking me with their humiliation. I was shit-faced. Completely shit-faced. Of that I am sure. And David, he was mad at me, but not for long. It was a misunderstanding about Matt and the bathroom, and when it was over, we were okay. Fantastic even. I think I may have told him that I’m falling for him. Not with those exact words but in a different way. Jesus. I hope I didn’t fuck this up. I am such an ass.

  I feel fuzzy and heavy at the same time. My head is pounding, and my mouth tastes unbelievably raunchy. My hair is still damp from the shower, and I am wearing someone’s T-shirt and nothing else. I remember laughing in the shower. Laughing about my blue panties with the black lace being all wet. Who put me in there?

  Oh. My. God. It was Matt. Matt put me in David’s shower. Sweet Mother of God! I remember teasing him about his tattoo. About why he keeps it covered up at work. About why a grown man would want a tattoo of a cartoon rocket ship on his forearm. Oh, Christ almighty. I hate myself.

  Work! Today is Wednesday. I am supposed to be at work. What time is it? I slowly turn my head to look at the clock, but I’m not in my own bed. Where is the fucking clock? I can see from the light coming in between David’s blinds that it is easily late morning. That I have missed my first day of work only a few weeks after I started. And it is because I was drunk as shit, taunting one of my coworkers who more than likely saw me in soaking wet underwear. What else did he see? Why was Matt even here? And where was David? Where is David?

  I lift my head and look around the room. There he is. Sitting in his bedroom chair, looking at me. Fuck. I think he’s furious. But when he sees me looking at him, he shakes his head and smiles. Not a big smile, mind you, but it’s definitely a smile. Maybe I didn’t fuck this up. Maybe it isn’t as bad as I think. Maybe David doesn’t hate me.

  “Good morning,” he says. I decide to save myself from the torture and cut to the chase.

  “Just, please, tell me I didn’t fuck things up,” I say.

  “Fuck things up?” he asks. “No. You didn’t fuck things up, Emma. You were fucked up, but things are not.” Thank God. Thank fucking God. “You were, however, one hell of an inebriated specimen last night. How much do you remember?”

  “Not much. Just a lot of puking.” I don’t want to mention the shower. Maybe he doesn’t know about it. Maybe it’s better if he doesn’t know about it.

  “Yes,
there was whole a lot of that, as I understand.” Does that mean he wasn’t here when I was puking? Why wasn’t he here? Where was he?

  “Sorry you had to see that,” I say, offering him a chance to answer my questions without actually having to ask them.

  “I didn’t see any of it.”

  “Oh.” Perhaps feigning innocence will save me. He looks almost disappointed that I don’t remember more.

  “I had a job to finish last night, and I couldn’t walk away. Despite how much I wanted to.” He runs his fingers through his hair and leans forward on the chair. “You were completely fucked up. I should have been watching you more. I should have been paying better attention to how much you were drinking. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I’m a big girl, David. I should have been watching all that for myself. But I was having so much fun. I’m sorry if I embarrassed you or made things awkward between us. Or between you and your friends.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry. Or embarrassed,” he says with a look of confusion on his face. “What do you remember?”

  “I remember Matt.” There. I said it. It feels like a confessional.

  David stands up and walks over to the bed. He sits on the edge and runs his fingers across my forehead and through my hair.

  “Yeah? Well, he’s the one that got to see all your impressive regurgitation. He’s the one that brought you home.”

  “What? Why? I don’t understand.” And I don’t. I am so confused. Last night I learned they know each other, but obviously they are better friends than I thought.

  He must see how utterly perplexed I am. “Matt is a friend, Emma. He has been for a while. I told you that last night, and I told you why I hadn’t mentioned it before. He’s the only one I could trust to get you home when I couldn’t. I called him, he came, and he took care of you. He told me how completely messed up you were.”

  “What else did he tell you?” I can’t look at David’s eyes. It hurts.

  “I’m not sure you want to know.” I’m not sure I want to know either.

  “Please,” I say. “Before I see him at work, I need to know. That is if they don’t fire me for not calling off today.”

  “Matt took care of it, so no worries there.”

  “That’s way too nice of him. I don’t deserve it.” I wait a few seconds for David to tell me more about last night, but when he doesn’t offer it up, I ask again. “So, are you going to tell me or not?” He inhales sharply and looks as if he’s collecting his thoughts, deciding what he should, and shouldn’t, tell me. I still can’t look at him.

  “Short story is you wiped the floor clean with your pretty ass, and I couldn’t get you back up. Carl was breathing down my neck to finish the game, so I called Matt and asked him to come get you. When he got there, we roused you, put you in the car, and Matt took it from there. I wound up with the rest of Carl’s money, finished my job, packed up the place, and came home at four to find Matt crashed on the couch and you in my bed.” He stops for a minute, pausing just long enough to put his hand on my chin and turn my face toward his. When I look at him I am wincing, scrunching up my face in preparation for the horribleness that is sure to come. I am dreading what he might say next, and my face is not squelching my feelings. I know he can read my worry like a book.

  “When I woke Matt up to ask him how you were, he told me about the puking and about how he had to put you in the shower because you were covered in it. He said it was pretty bad.”

  “Ugh,” I say, wondering how angry David really is, knowing that Matt put me in the shower and cleaned me up. He’s hiding it pretty well.

  “I’m not mad at you, Emma, if that’s what you’re worried about. Everyone gets shit-faced sometimes. I’m not mad at Matt either. I trust that he didn’t do any of the creepy shit that my other asshole friends would have done with a drunk-as-fuck woman. When you see him at work tomorrow, you should thank him.” He is saying all this with a guarded face. I get the distinct feeling that I am missing something.

  “There is something you aren’t telling me,” I say. “What is it?”

  David sighs and bends down to plant a soft kiss on my lips. I try not to exhale because I don’t want him to smell my foul breath.

  “I hated last night,” he says with both sadness and downright resentment. Oh, no. I suddenly want to kick myself for making him feel this way. “I hate that I watched you get so drunk. I hate that I couldn’t be the one to take care of you. I hate knowing that Matt probably saw you naked and now you have to work with him every day. I hate that I had to lie to you about knowing him. And I hate that the night after telling me about your warped-as-fuck stepfather, you were puking your guts out with no one but the douche bag to hold your hair.” Wow.

  Where do I go from here?

  “Well, if it makes it any better, I hate myself for making you feel all those things.” And I do.

  “I wouldn’t feel all that, Emma, if I didn’t give a flying fuck about you.” That’s it! I didn’t tell him I’m falling for him. I told him I give a flying fuck about him. But somehow the realization does not make me feel better. “There is something about us together, Emma. Something so...irrational. It’s almost absurd. Last night was completely out of control. I felt so out of control. And that’s what I hated the most.” He looks troubled. Really troubled. I’ve never seen him so unsettled, and it hurts me to know that I am the cause of it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”

  We are both quiet for a long time. He is brushing my hair with his hand, wiping it back off my face and neck. Smoothing it. Smoothing us. He lies down next to me, and we both fall asleep.

  * * *

  I spend Thursday and Friday at the office trying to make amends with Matt. He tells me over and over again not to worry about it. That I didn’t do anything wrong. Getting drunk and puking is not a crime, and he’s glad he could help out a couple of friends. He even apologizes that he couldn’t tell me about knowing David. I joke with him about what a jerk he was to ask me questions about David when he probably knows more about him than I do. I keep waiting for the ball to drop. For him to crack some smart-ass joke about it. For him to say something to the other guys at work. But he doesn’t. He keeps quiet about the whole thing. He doesn’t even comment on the shower situation. Nothing. Until the end of the day on Friday.

  Matt and I are riding down in the elevator together. I know that David is waiting for me at his car because, except for working hours, he hasn’t let me out of his sight since I got the dog tags from Michael. Matt is looking up at the changing digital numbers above the elevator door.

  “Tuesday night was pretty crazy,” he says. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

  “That it was,” I say as calmly as possible.

  “Do you remember everything?”

  “No, but David has filled me in on some of the more embarrassing details.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” he says with a heaping pile of innuendo, “especially since he wasn’t there to see most of them himself.” He turns his head toward me, and my eyes shoot to his. Panic rises in my throat, but I decide to make light of it all. I don’t know if he’s joking or not. Either way, teasing me about it is a complete dick move.

  “Yes, I’m sure you got an eyeful. Are you going to share?” I say.

  “I didn’t tell him everything that happened, Emma. Because if I did, you and I wouldn’t be standing here right now.” I am mortified. “I would be dead in the gutter, and you and David would be screwing on some beach in Cozumel.” What?

  “What the hell are you talking about?” We are nearly to the lobby now, and I do not want to have this conversation with anyone else in earshot. When the elevator gets to the lobby, I press the door close button and hold it down tight.

  Apparently Matt is not joking. I must have put on quite the show. “I’m talking about all the stuff you don’t remember. You were pretty fucking hysterical, Emma. Going on and on about how much David likes the blue panties you we
re wearing. You took all your clothes off so you could show them to me. You danced around in them for me. He would kill me if he knew I didn’t stop you.” He is right.

  “And the whole time you were prancing around, you were talking about David and how bad you have it for him,” he continues.

  Ugh. “Thanks for not telling him all this. It’s a little humiliating.”

  “I’m not trying to humiliate you, Emma. I’m trying to enlighten you. He never would have dreamed of bringing a woman to poker before—and he sure as shit wouldn’t have sat outside her office building waiting to drive her home after work every day.” Matt’s eyebrows go up, and his mouth moves into a soft pucker. It is a look intended to hammer home his point.

  “Oh,” I sigh, unsure of what else I should say.

  “Look, I’m just saying that I think he’s got it bad for you, too. I think you guys fit.” This is not how I expected our conversation to go. I feel relief. But also trepidation. I am reminded of my conversation with Matt about David looking like a man with food poisoning versus a man in love. Did Matt know something even then? What had David already told him? I want to ask him, but there is no way in hell I’m stepping out on that limb.

  I lift my finger from the elevator button, and the door opens. We step out of the building together and into the courtyard. David isn’t waiting by the car. He is sitting on a bench opposite the building’s front door. When he sees us come out, he gets up and walks over. Just before he reaches us, Matt grins at me and tells me to have a nice weekend. I smile back at him and tell him to do the same.

  “Thanks,” I say, “for Tuesday night and today.”

  “No problem, Emma. See you Monday.” Then he turns to David and says, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” David says to Matt in return, with a lift of his chin.

  “She knows, dude. I just told her. You can thank me later.” And with that, Matt turns away from us and runs like hell toward the parking garage.

  Chapter Twenty-Five