Just You

by Jane Lark

  My heart was thumping to the same rhythm as the bass beat now pounding out of the earphones dangling ‘round my neck

  I couldn’t leave her out here…

  “Have you really got nowhere to go?”

  She shook her head, making her blonde ponytail sweep over her back.

  Shit. What option did I have? What option did she have?

  “Have you got any money?”

  Her head shook again. But her stillness, apart from her shaking head, made me feel like she didn’t even care. I felt stupid then, of course she didn’t care. She’d just tried to end her life by throwing herself off a bridge. She obviously didn’t care about anything right now.

  What to do with her? I could give her money… But I’d have to go back to my apartment to get my card and take her to a cash dispenser. And what would she do with it? Maybe she’d already taken something. Drugs or drink. Maybe that was why she was so dead looking. I’d be stupid to give her money.

  I sighed again. I could call the cops and take her to a station. But what would they care? I found this girl and she’s got nowhere to stay. They’d say, yeah, right, join the line of a couple of hundred other homeless people in New York.

  There wasn’t any choice. “I could take you home with me, if you’ve got nowhere to go. Just for tonight. It would give you chance to get your head straight, and get warm. If you want?”

  “I … ” She looked at me again then, her eyes losing their depth once more and setting up shutters, locking me out.

  “What do you think?” I got another shrug, but her eyes suddenly filled with depth, letting me see into the thoughts behind her gaze. They were asking me questions.

  “What are you going to do if you don’t come back with me?” Another shrug. “Have you got any other options?” She shook her head, her ponytail swaying, but her gaze was clinging to mine now, like was she was considering me. Maybe she was trying to judge if she’d be safe.

  This was surreal, like I’d been lifted out of real life, and placed in the middle of a fucking film. Question was; how was it going to play out? Taking her home was a risk, but sometimes risks had to be taken. Like coming to New York.

  I sighed again. Sometimes taking risks didn’t pay off. But I still hoped they would.

  She shivered and her hands gripped her arms harder.

  I lifted my hands palm outward. “I swear. I’m the nice guy. And if you’ve got nowhere else to go…” Lindy would go mad, but this was devil or deep-blue-sea territory. How could I leave this woman here? She’d nowhere to sleep and it was twenty-one degrees Fahrenheit.

  Her shoulders shook as she shivered again.

  “It’s not far. I live in DUMBO.”

  “Down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass…” she whispered. “It’s such a cool name for a neighborhood.”

  I laughed. She didn’t.

  “Have you got any other choice?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then on my life, if you come, I’ll not hurt you.”

  She said nothing just looked at me.

  “My apartment’s warm. You can’t stay out here…” Shit, I was probably just as crazy as her, offering to take a stranger back with me.

  “I…”

  “I swear, you’re safe with me.”

  She looked back at the wire, then down at the water.

  “You don’t want to do that. Just give it a night, you’ll feel different in the morning.”

  She shook her head, still looking at the water.

  If zombies were real, they’d look like her. My sweatshirt swamping her, she stood like a sorrowful statue, her complexion as pale as marble.

  I couldn’t just leave her. I rubbed her arms, gently, answering an instinct to put my arm around her, but I denied that. I didn’t even know her name.

  “Look, you can trust me. Honest. When we get back to my apartment you can call my Mom, or my friends, and they’ll all tell you I’m the nice guy. Seriously, if you need references…” I smiled as she looked back at me, trying to convince her. “What do you say? Are you a gambler? Are you going to try trusting me?” Silence and stillness. This girl was messed up. But then I’d known that from the moment I’d seen her. She’d been standing in the freezing cold, in a tee, trying to jump off a bridge.

  I held her gaze, trying to look inside her, as she looked back, trying to see inside me.

  Once more there was a sudden pool of desolation and a glitter in her eyes, and she simply nodded, making the choice to put herself into the hands of a stranger–my hands.

  Shit. I was taking her home. She could be a drug addict. I’d been so busy trying to persuade her, I’d forgotten about my own concerns. But I couldn’t leave her here alone; fragility and loneliness rang from her, like she was crying out for help. And the damned Good Samaritan story I’d been brought up on wouldn’t let me leave her in the street.

  But what the hell was I getting myself into?

  “This way.” My fingers carefully closed about her upper arm, and I guided her to turn and start walking off the bridge with me, like this was a normal thing to do–like every night of the week, I took a stranger home. My guts churned. This was crazy. But my fingers wrapped right about her skinny arm, and my instincts yelled at me that she needed protecting, and she needed safety. I could let her have a haven for a few days.

  She was probably a size zero, she was so skinny.

  Lindy would kill to be size zero. She would hate me taking this woman home. She wasn’t flooded with human kindness. She wouldn’t have felt any instinct to help this woman.

  “You haven’t told me your name yet?” I prodded as we descended the steps onto the street.

  She was moving robotically. I was a stranger to her, too, and she hadn’t questioned me verbally at all. She was going home with a guy she didn’t know.

  Maybe she did this all the time.

  Maybe her lack of concern should warn me off.

  As if sensing my thoughts, she stopped and looked at me, hard, really looking into me, like she’d done on the bridge just now, maybe at last deciding she ought to check me out a little more. “It’s Rachel.”

  “Rachel–pleased to meet you. My apartment’s in a block near here, it’s not far. You’re sure about this, yeah? I could still take you somewhere else, if you like?”

  “I’ve got nowhere else to go. So I haven’t got any choice. You don’t mind?”

  I do, really, but I’m not mean enough to dump you here. “No, I don’t mind.”

  I pressed my code in when we reached the building, feeling guilty for covering it up, showing I didn’t trust her, but I didn’t know her.

  “My furniture’s a bit sparse at the moment. I only just moved in a couple of months back. Don’t expect anything fancy…” We entered the elevator and I pressed the button. “I’m on the fifth floor.” That was obvious, the red light behind button five glowed, announcing it.

  I turned and looked at her. What I’d thought was dirt on her face and in her hair, was dried blood. “Did you hit your head?”

  Her gaze struck mine, questioning and cold, and in the white light of the elevator, I faced green eyes. They were a misty green, an unusual sort of green. I’d never seen that eye color before. She didn’t answer me though. She hadn’t spoken since she’d given me her name, and her fingers were curled up, hidden in the sleeves of my sweatshirt, as her arms gripped across her chest.

  She looked down at my Adam’s apple.

  “You don’t have to be worried.”

  Those green eyes looked up again. “I’m not scared of you. You gave me your hoodie. People who are generally mean, don’t give you stuff they need themselves.”

  It was an odd, but reasonable, logic. “Yeah, well….” I didn’t know what to say, yet all my friends in Oregon would say I was never lost for words. “Okay.”

  The elevator bell rang, announcing that we’d reached the fifth floor, and then the doors opened.

  I looked away from her. She was a little too be
autiful for comfort. She had untouchable celeb-magazine beauty, the sort you knew you’d never have, so you never wanted. Lindy was pretty, but there was a quality of perfection in this Rachel. Yet she wasn’t perfect was she, or her life wasn’t, she’d been trying to jump off Manhattan Bridge.

  I wanted to know what led her there, but I wasn’t going to make her feel like I was prying, I didn’t ask.

  I pulled the key from the pocket of my joggers, unlocked the door and stepped back to let her go first, flicking the lights on.

  “Chivalrous to a fault…” she whispered. “Do you stand up for pregnant and elderly women on subway trains?”

  Actually I did. Lindy always said I was a dying breed. Mom always took credit. “And sometimes I even carry their shopping back.”

  She looked at me again. “You don’t come from New York do you? Are you some hillbilly?”

  “I’m from Oregon, from a small town there.”

  “Out of college and flying the nest…”

  She sounded like she was laughing at me, but there was no humor in her face or her eyes. What I saw was grief.

  “Do you want some coffee, I can make a pot? It’ll warm you up.” I took her fingers. I could feel how cold they were even through my gloves. They were like blocks of ice. I rubbed them for a moment.

  Her hands fell when I let them go.

  I felt awkward, but the only thing to do now I’d brought her back here, was to act like I was completely comfortable with it.

  I took off my gloves. They were damp. How’d they get damp?

  There was no life in her eyes, once more, when her gaze met mine.

  She turned and looked about the room. It was empty bar my TV, my Xbox and a beanbag.

  I left her and went to make coffee. The kitchen was to one side of the living space.

  “The bathroom’s through there, if you need it?” I pointed to the door leading into my bedroom. “There’s only one bed, or rather one mattress, I don’t own a bed. But you can have it tonight. I’ll manage on the floor in here.”

  Those pale green eyes turned to me again. “You’re too nice, Jason…?” Her pitch asked for my surname.

  “Macinlay.”

  “You’ve Irish blood?”

  “Two generations ago. Dad’s been back there once, kissed the Blarney Stone, driven the Ring of Kerry and stepped on the Giant’s Causeway.”

  She smiled, but it was shallow. Yet I guessed she was doing her best to push aside the awkwardness of this too. “I have no reason to trust you, Jason Macinlay,” she breathed, “but I do.”

  Again, I didn’t know what to say. I just shrugged.

  I’d left the bedroom door ajar; she pushed it wider and went through, her hand slipping off it, leaving a blood mark.

  Fuck. “What did you do to your hand?” I was moving before I knew and she stopped and turned, but took a step away from me into the bedroom when I neared. “Don’t tell me you had a go at your wrists, too…” I gripped her forearm.

  She had nowhere to run to in my bedroom. You could barely swing a cat in it. There was about a foot of space all around the double mattress which lay on the floor.

  I pulled up the sleeve of the sweatshirt I’d given her.

  Her wrists were narrow. They looked so fucking breakable. But they weren’t slashed. The blood had come from a jagged cut across her palm. It didn’t look like it had been done by a knife, and the blood had begun congealing.

  I glanced at her fingers. I’d heard people injected heroin beneath their fingernails to hide the marks. There were no marks on her arms, and there seemed to be none under her nails. It was probably safe to guess her problem wasn’t heroin .

  “How did you do it?” I’d been avoiding questions, I figured she wouldn’t speak, but I couldn’t help myself now. “What happened?”

  She shrugged, letting my question slide away, as she’d been doing on the bridge. Her gaze, which had been looking at her hand too, lifted to me, but she said nothing.

  I let her hand go. “Why don’t you run a bath? You can talk when you want.”

  The cold had probably stopped her losing too much blood. “Don’t get your hand in the water, though.”

  “What are you, a nurse?” There was that mocking pitch in her voice again.

  “No, I work for a magazine.”

  “And from your voice, you don’t like it?”

  “Not at the moment, and I don’t like the city either. I’m new to it.”

  “Well, I’m not. Maybe I can help you in return, then, seeing as you’re helping me.”

  I didn’t want to give her any expectations, we weren’t friends. “You need to just get warm first.”

  She turned away.

  Jason Macinlay wasn’t like any man I’d known. He was considerate. I didn’t know what to make of him. I’d met guys on the street before, but when they’d taken me back to their place, it hadn’t been to get me out of the cold.

  His place was minimalistic and his bedcovers were crumpled and thrown back. Yet he wasn’t untidy. It just suggested he took life as he found it. Like he didn’t need order.

  I looked at the doors.

  The first one I opened was a closet. It contained rough heaps of his clothing. The second was the bathroom.

  I turned the water on and touched it with my bloody hand. A stinging pain burned in my palm. I must have left blood on the doors. I looked at the gash as blood dripped into the water. The warmth had made it bleed again. I saw the scarlet ribbons of blood spinning in the white porcelain sink back at Declan’s.

  I didn’t want to think about how I’d cut it. I shut that out. I’d ended it. I was starting over. I had to find a job, find a life–somewhere to live.

  I used the toilet as the water ran, and held the neck of Jason Macinlay’s sweaty top up to my nose. The fresh male musky scent was ridiculously comforting. I breathed it in. There was something about him that made me feel safer than I’d felt in an entire year, or maybe longer. Nothing in his eyes had said he’d brought me back here because he wanted sex. He’d said he was a nice guy. Those words were still swimming around in my muddled head.

  Was I going mad again? Had I really injured Declan? My eyes shut for a moment as images whisked through my brain and swept away. I couldn’t grasp hold of them. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to get away.

  But I had got away. I’d gotten here. I had nowhere else to go.

  I was suddenly very aware of the pace of my breathing. It felt too fast. I remembered seeing people breathing into paper bags when they hyperventilated and focused on breathing in the same way, trying to slow it down. I stripped off Jason Macinlay’s top, then my t-shirt. Then I took off my sneakers and jeans.

  I hadn’t put on any underwear in my haste to get out.

  I got into the water. It was really warm and the heat absorbed all my pain, physical and mental.

  Pictures of the black water I’d seen beneath the bridge, swelling and rocking, played through my mind. I imagined it absorbing me, a great dark, thick, fluid weight.

  It would be so much easier to slip beneath the water. I didn’t have the courage or the strength to go on. How could I begin again?

  A knock struck the bathroom door. Then it opened. Jason Macinlay walked in.

  “Shit, sorry… You should’ve shouted.” His eyes skimmed over my body before he turned his back. He wasn’t so saintly then.

  I sat up, the water swilling around me. “It’s just a body. You must’ve seen a hundred naked women.” He was too good-looking to be inhibited, surely. He’d probably had tons of women in his bed.

  “I brought your coffee.”

  “Yeah, I guessed.”

  He held it out, without turning. He felt awkward about me being here, I’d seen that the minute we’d got to his front door. I knew what it was like to sleep on the streets, though, and he was right, it was freezing. But what I’d said to him in the elevator was true. I trusted him. Probably more than I’d trusted any other guy–no one had given me their swea
ty top before, when I was cold.

  I took the cup from him, and put it on the lip of the tub. Blood dripped into the water. “My hand’s bleeding.” It was shaking too.

  He looked across his shoulder, at my hand, nothing else. “I’ll find something. I’ve got a first-aid kit. There should be a bandage in there.” He went again.

  The cocaine I’d taken with Declan was still spinning through my nerves and my heartbeat lifted my breasts a little as it thumped, while my damp hair brushed the skin on my back and shoulders. I had a sense of déjà-vu, though I could never have been here before. But it was like I was meant to come to this place.

  I picked up the coffee with my left hand, my good hand, and sipped from it. Warmth ran into my blood. The cold had got deep inside me.

  “I turned the heating up,” Jason said, as he came back in. “Do you want to pull the shower curtain and just stick your hand out.”

  I looked up at him and met his deep brown gaze.

  He had large eyes, strong features, and broad lips, and his dark brown hair was cut close to his head but it wasn’t gelled.

  He looked good. He’d probably broken a few girls’ hearts back in Oregon.

  I didn’t bother with the shower curtain, I held out my hand as his gaze clung to my face, like he was trying desperately not to look down.

  He needn’t worry. I was used to being naked with men. My body was just flesh and bone. I knew he wanted to look down, all men wanted to look, it was in their nature. Well, unless it wasn’t women they were into.

  With a deep sigh his gaze fell to my hand as he gripped it. “Okay, I mixed boiled water with the antiseptic so it’ll take a moment to cool.”

  He put the lid of the toilet down and sat on it, holding my hand and looking at the gash.

  I couldn’t imagine Declan ever doing anything like this. He’d have told me to fucking get on with it and stop moaning.

  But I hadn’t moaned had I? Jason Macinlay had seen the blood and asked about it. I shouldn’t feel guilty then that he was helping. But I did. This was my own fault. I should be fixing it.

  “It could need stitches.”

  “I’m not going to a hospital. I can’t stand those places. I’ll be fine.”