Crazy in Love (Matt & Anna Book 1)

by Annabelle Costa

Yes and no. I could use them, but I’d risk another situation where I couldn’t get up. And the truth is, I’ve started to dislike trying to get around with my braces and crutches. The wheelchair is just so much easier. I’ve started mostly using it in my apartment too.

  “Can’t I use my wheelchair?” I ask.

  Anna finally nods. “Okay. I’ll just… I’ll clean off the wheels when we get inside.”

  And she actually lets me get back in my wheelchair and stashes the crutches in my car for me. Thank God.

  After all these years of knowing Anna, I’d like to say that it’s anticlimactic to see the inside of her house. But it isn’t. The thing that strikes me first about Anna’s home is, of course, the cans. There is a huge tower of them in her living room, just randomly in the middle of the room. The top can nearly touches the ceiling. It’s one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen.

  Anna’s house is technically clean, but it’s very cluttered. That’s the best word for it—cluttered. Every surface in the house is packed with… stuff. Every shelf is packed to the brim—and she’s got a lot of shelves. I’ve watched some of those hoarder shows on television, and even though I wouldn’t call her a hoarder, there are some things in this house that remind me of the hoarder houses. Like six pencil jars in a row, each packed to the brim with pens and pencils. Why would anyone need that many pens and pencils?

  It makes me wonder if she ever throws anything away. If I looked hard enough, would I find a box full of used chewing gum?

  “Okay,” Anna says when we get inside. “Let me clean your wheels. Don’t move.”

  The next thirty minutes are spent with Anna using her Lysol bottle on the wheels of my chair. I’m not exaggerating, unfortunately. She scrubs them down, has me wheel forward a bit so she can get at a new area, then continues scrubbing. I must be in love with her to allow this to happen.

  “There,” she says when she finishes. She finally allows herself a smile.

  “Thanks.” I feel like I should tip her.

  Anna’s eyes dart around her house nervously. “So, um… what do you think?”

  I can’t be honest with her. “It’s a nice place.”

  “I cleaned it up for you,” she tells me.

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  She’s staring at me and I’m not entirely sure why. I push my palms against my wheels, moving forward into her living room, just as she lets out a squeal of protest.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask her.

  “You…” She wrings her hands together. “You didn’t wash your hands after you came in.”

  I look down at my hands, at the callouses that have been rising on the surface thanks to all the time I’ve spent wheeling lately. But they don’t look particularly dirty.

  “Please…?” Anna says.

  I sigh and nod. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  She points to a door that’s clear across the living room. The only way to get there is to navigate around the tower of cans. It would be tricky if I were on my feet, but in a wheelchair, it’s damn near impossible.

  “There’s also one upstairs,” she says.

  Thanks. That’s helpful. “I’ll use the one over there,” I say tightly.

  I look at the narrow path to the bathroom. This is going to be tricky. But what can I do? Anna wants me to wash my hands. Also, if I’m having dinner here, I’ll need the bathroom at some point. The pills that Dr. Dunne gave me help somewhat to keep my bladder under control, but when the urge comes, I know I’ve got to move.

  I slowly make my way across her living room, but before I’m halfway there, I hit a pocket of cans that I didn’t notice and they go toppling. At least six cans fall to the floor and Anna lets out a dismayed gasp.

  “Sorry,” I say.

  “I’ll fix it,” she says breathlessly.

  I make it the rest of the way to the bathroom without incident. Then I see the narrow entrance to the bathroom and I get a sick feeling. How am I going to get my goddamn chair in there? You don’t realize how narrow doorways can be until you’re in a wheelchair.

  I push the door open as far as it can go and take my hands off the pushrims so they don’t get clipped. It’s tight, but my chair makes it inside. Barely. I can’t turn or do anything else, but I’m in the bathroom.

  The sink is too high for me, of course. I grab the rim of the sink and pull myself forward enough so that I can just barely reach the handle for the cold water. It’s not easy, but I manage to wash my hands. Sort of. This bathroom is definitely not set up for a guy in a wheelchair. If I need the toilet, I’m going to have to use it with the door open.

  I back up out of the bathroom, the task Anna gave me now completed, more or less. Except when I return to the living room, the situation seems to have deteriorated. The cans that had been stacked neatly now lay strewn around the room, in complete disarray. Anna sits among them, a can in each hand, contemplating the situation.

  “Anna,” I gasp. “What happened?”

  “I had to start over,” she mumbles. “It all has to be done over. It’s not correct now.”

  I stare at her. “Do you have to do this right now?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Anna stacks one can on top of another, her thin fingers trembling. As I watch her, I feel ill. I always thought of Anna as eccentric, but now it hits me that it’s so much more than that. She’s not just eccentric—she’s mentally ill. She has major, deep-seated issues. And as much as I want to get past that and be with her, the truth is that I probably can’t.

  Nobody can.

  “Maybe I should leave then,” I say.

  Anna nods. “We can reschedule for another time.”

  Despite everything, I feel a flash of anger. “Yeah. Another time.”

  And now I’ve got to get the hell out of this house. Which is fucking impossible. Because it was hard to squeeze through the living room before and now there are cans everywhere.

  “Can you clear a path for me?” I ask.

  She doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s too busy studying a can of peas.

  You know what? To hell with this. I start picking up the cans myself and tossing them to the side. I need to get out of here. This is ridiculous.

  Anna looks completely shocked. “Matt…” she says.

  “I need to get out of here,” I say to her, feeling simultaneously furious with her and like a huge asshole for the way I’m acting.

  Anna looks up at me with those big blue eyes. It almost breaks my heart. I’m an asshole for leaving, but what the hell am I supposed to do? I want to help her but how can I? I’ve got my own issues that I’m dealing with. Issues that are just as bad as hers.

  Me and her, we’re just not meant to be.

  I make enough room that I’m barely able to get by. Anna finally gets up off the floor and helps me open all the twenty million locks on her door. Good thing, because I’d never have figured it out on my own in a trillion years. She doesn’t offer to help me with the stairs, but I manage that okay. Kelly showed me how to go down stairs in my chair—I’m not great at it, but I can do it if I’m careful.

  Then when I’m at the bottom of the stairs, I just sit there for a minute, staring into the distance. All of a sudden, I desperately want to go back. I want to tell Anna I don’t care that she’s got issues that make her have a million cans in her house—I’m going to help her through it. I want to tell her I love her.

  Except those goddamn stairs. I can’t figure out how I’d get back up them. I barely made it up before with Anna helping me. The only way I could do it would be to get out of my chair and drag myself up one by one, and then what the hell would I do at the top? There’s no chance for any sort of grand entrance where I burst through the door with open arms.

  So in the end, the choice is made for me.

  Chapter 65: Anna

  As I sit across from Dr. Schultz in his tiny, cramped office, I feel the tears in my eyes, struggling to spill over. I have been coming here every week for over a
year and what good has it done me? What good has it done me?

  “Anna?” Dr. Schultz raises one of his white eyebrows. “Are you all right?”

  “No.” A tear escapes from my right eye and I quickly swipe it away. “I’m not all right. I’ve been taking those stupid pills for a whole year and I’m still not any better. I take them every single day, and I’m still just as bad as I ever was! I couldn’t even…”

  I’m unable to complete the sentence. The tears in my eyes spill over and trickle down my cheeks. I’m so frustrated. My “date” with Matt went more terribly than I possibly could have imagined—I have ruined everything with him completely and inexorably. All I wanted was to be able to have a normal relationship with him, and it looks like that can never happen.

  “Anna,” Dr. Schultz says quietly. “Look where you’re sitting.”

  I don’t know what he’s talking about. “I’m sitting on your couch.”

  “Yes,” he agrees. “You’re sitting directly on my couch, without any paper towels under you. You made me keep those paper towels there for our first ten sessions.”

  I look down at the flowered couch that had seemed so unacceptably filthy the first time I arrived here. Today it doesn’t seem pristine, but it’s not so contaminated that I require a barrier to protect me.

  “You must have cleaned it,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I didn’t.”

  Hmm. Maybe I should get some paper towels. But no, it doesn’t seem that bad.

  “Also,” he adds, “the first several months you were coming, you would spend the first fifteen minutes of your appointment cleaning my office while we talked. You don’t do that anymore.”

  He’s right. I didn’t even bring my Lysol bottle today.

  “So it’s untrue that you’re not any better,” he says. “You’re much better.”

  I shake my head. “What’s the point though? The whole reason I came here was because of Matt. And when he tried coming over to my house, I… it was just awful. Beyond awful. He’ll probably never speak to me again.”

  “Never speak to you again!” Dr. Schultz snorts. “I highly doubt that.”

  So I tell him what I did. How panicky and anxious I was through the entire experience, how I spent so much time dealing with my cans that he had to leave.

  “He probably hates me,” I murmur, suddenly certain of that fact.

  He laughs, actually laughs at me. “Matt doesn’t hate you, Anna.”

  I frown at him. “How do you know?”

  “He loves you.” The certainty in his voice lends me a shred of hope. “He’s frustrated the same way you are. But he does love you, Anna. I haven’t even met the guy, but it’s so obvious from everything I hear. And just like you, he desperately wants to find a way to make it work between the two of you.”

  I lean back against the flowered couch, dejected. “And what if he realizes there isn’t a way to make it work?”

  “I don’t think he’s going to give up quite so easily.”

  The entire drive home from Dr. Schultz’s office, I hear his voice in my ears: I don’t think he’s going to give up quite so easily. He might be right, but there will be a time when Matt does give up on me. Eventually, he will throw up his hands and say that he can’t deal with a woman who cares about her cans more than she cares about him. Even if that’s not true at all.

  When I get home, the first thing I see is those cans. There used to be 121 cans, which was a manageable number, but now there are far more. I haven’t counted, partially because I’m afraid to know. There are a lot. After all, I’ve spent years collecting them and I never throw any away. Because of this tower of cans, Matt couldn’t get through my house in his wheelchair.

  I stare at the cans for several minutes before I make a decision.

  I retrieve a bunch of folded cardboard boxes from the garage that I’d been saving since the day I moved here. I unfold the first box, taping the sides together so they stay in place. Then I pull a can of baked beans out of the tower and place it carefully in the box.

  Chapter 66: Matt

  It’s the worst time for my parents to show up, yet here they are.

  I’ve already been feeling sorry for myself since my failed date with Anna yesterday. I keep replaying everything that happened in my mind, wondering if there’s something I could have done differently. Or if there will ever be another date with Anna Flint. I honestly don’t know, and that thought makes me very depressed.

  So obviously, the last thing I want is to deal with my mom and dad.

  I’ve been avoiding my parents like plague for the last several months, ever since my walking got bad. I hate the way my mother looks at me now—like she thinks I’m about to shatter at any moment. I’ve gotten good at making up excuses not to see them.

  So I’m shocked when I open up the door one day and see them both standing in front of me. I would never have opened the door except that I had ordered Chinese food ten minutes earlier, and I’d been optimistic about the delivery time.

  When they see me sitting in a wheelchair, they both look stunned. I’m not entirely sure why, because my walking has been shit for the last six months and this was obviously on the horizon. If I had any idea they were at the door, I would have never allowed them to see me in my chair. Actually, I had this idea in my head that maybe they would never have to see me in a wheelchair.

  So much for that.

  “Matt,” Mom gasps. “I didn’t realize that you were… that you’ve been…”

  “It’s just for around the house,” I say quickly. “Just for sometimes.”

  That’s the opposite of the truth. For the last few weeks, I’ve been relying on my wheelchair more and more. I know I was hesitant to use the chair at first, but it’s just so much easier than dragging my ass around on crutches. Even the walker is a pain, because I can’t use it without my KAFOs. It’s such a relief that if I need to pee or something during the night, I can just hop in my chair instead of fumbling with braces. And it gives me so much more freedom out of the house. I was able to meet Erin at a restaurant for the first time in months. Calvin and I went out to dinner last weekend (and amazingly, didn’t talk about women at all).

  That said, I make sure to walk every single day. I’m not losing the ability to walk. So I always make sure to get my braces on and walk. I try to do a loop around the block with my walker, but even just around the apartment is enough. I do it every single day, except if I’m really, really tired.

  My mother is clutching a pan of mystery casserole and she looks like she’s about to drop it, so I tell her to stick it in the fridge and say I’ll be right back. I wheel to my bedroom, where my KAFOs are stashed in the closet. I put them on, which is a pain in the neck that I’d hoped to avoid tonight, but oh well. Then I look for my crutches.

  Which, of course, I left in the goddamn car.

  My walker is here, at least. I’ll just come out using my walker. It’s easier than the crutches anyway. And at least I’ll be walking.

  I pull myself into a standing position. Christ, it’s gotten hard to do that. My right leg is fucking useless.

  Slowly, I make my way out to the living room. My parents haven’t seen me with the walker either, so I’m not sure if this is making the situation better. Especially when my foot snags on the floor and I nearly fall.

  My parents are sitting on the couch, watching me with identical horrified expressions on their faces. Mom is clutching Dad’s arm. Like they’re watching a horror movie.

  “You can use the wheelchair if you need to,” Dad tells me.

  “No, I’m fine like this,” I say.

  Dad looks doubtful. “You look terrible walking. You seemed more comfortable in the chair.”

  “I’m fine,” I say through my teeth.

  I drop down onto the couch next to them and force a smile. I’m sure they’re planning to stay for dinner. How much more of this crap do I have to endure?

  “Son,” Dad says slowly, “your mother and I were
just talking and we think that… it’s time you moved back home. With us.”

  I knew it. I fucking knew it.

  “Dad…”

  He holds up a hand. “Matt, I know you want to be independent. But it’s abundantly clear you need help. Your mom and I are here to help you.”

  “I don’t need help,” I say through my teeth.

  “This isn’t the time for pride to get in the way,” Dad says. “Please. This is what parents are for.”

  It would probably insult him if I told him how sick I feel at the thought of moving back in with my parents. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad if I were able-bodied, but I feel like a big enough loser right now without adding “lives with parents” to the list. At least I’m independent and I’ve got my privacy. I’m thirty years old, for fuck’s sake—living with my parents is the last thing I want.

  And the truth is, I am fine. Getting this wheelchair has made me even more confident in how fine I am. I can do practically everything again.

  Before I can work out exactly what to say, the doorbell rings. It’s my Chinese food.

  “I’ll get it,” I say, grateful for the reprieve.

  I grab onto my walker. And of course, now would be a great time for me to be having trouble standing up. The part of the couch I’m on is more sunken or… I don’t know what. Maybe I’m just nervous. In any case, I keep rocking back and forth, trying to build some momentum. But I’m not budging.

  Shit.

  “Matt?” Dad’s eyebrows are furrowed together. “Do you need help?”

  “No,” I say.

  Please, God, help me get off this sofa. Please. If you let me get up, I will never ask for anything else ever again. Amen.

  By some miracle, God listens and I’m able to stand up. I have to thank the fact that my arms have gotten a lot stronger lately—Kelly has been showing me how to get off the floor and into my wheelchair without any braces. I make my way very, very slowly over to the door, and pay for the Chinese food. Thankfully, the delivery guy is very patient. He’s delivered to me before.

  Of course, once I’ve got the food, I have no way of getting it anywhere else. I stashed my tray with wheels away once I’d started using my wheelchair more. I look down at the brown bag of Chinese food then over at my parents.