by Shealy James
My hundred-dollar cab ride took me to the front door of my new (old as sin) apartment building via the most inconvenient route of all time according to Stink Pot. I unloaded the bags and gave Smelly an extra fifty dollars to wait while I dragged them up the stairs one-by-one. The guy refused to help me, so it took a little while. When he drove away without a word, I mentally flipped him a bird and prayed for some Southern hospitality to come my way.
Sure enough, it came by way of a handsome blond Yankee with perfect teeth. Jameson Charmichael was tall, well dressed, and gorgeous, and he was to be my neighbor for the next twelve months. Calling Ralph Lauren! Your print ad is missing a model.
“Need help with that?” he asked when he saw me dragging my luggage up the four flights of stairs. I thought bringing it inside would be enough, but this dump didn’t have an elevator for its six floors. Who would’ve thought?
I put on my best smile and geared up to flirt my ass off if it meant not having to lug my own bags up those stairs. “If you don’t mind, I could use a strong man’s help gettin’ my bags up to the fourth floor. Then I could use a cold drink to forget all about that cab driver.”
His blue eyes sparkled back at me. “How about I do you one better? I’ll carry your bags up and then take you to dinner. How does that sound?”
Perfect. Couldn’t have said it better myself. “I don’t know. Dinner with a stranger? Sounds dangerous.”
He moved closer, and I kept my flirty smile plastered on my face. “Dangerous for a beautiful woman such as yourself, maybe. I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep my hands to myself. Jameson Carmichael,” he said as he offered his hand to me.
I gently set my hand in his, and he squeezed just enough to let me know there was a promise behind his touch. Excitement coursed through me. “Sarah Grant,” I told him as he continued to hold my hand.
“Since we’re no longer strangers, Sarah Grant, how about my offer?”
“Carry my luggage and dinner?”
He nodded with a wicked gleam in his eye that I took as a flirtation.
“Sounds wonderful.”
And that was how I met Jameson Carmichael.
Two
Michael
Phillip’s dad had owned a racetrack in Jersey for as long as I had known him. He started working there the day he turned twelve and was tall enough to reach the dipstick without standing on a stool. For some reason, Phil hated it. I, on the other hand, loved working on cars. As a teenager, I got off on the thrill of the win, but now I preferred building the winning car to ever sitting in the driver’s seat.
I was seven when I went to the track with him for the first time. It was loud, smelled like burnt rubber, and I loved every second of it. I met Joe there, the head mechanic and man who taught me everything I know about cars. Joe was the smartest guy I knew, and I was happy to be the kid who garnered all his attention. His daughters could give a rat’s ass about cars, and my dad was too busy working. Since the day Joe caught me eyeing the cars parked in the garage while everyone else was watching the race, he had been more of a dad to me than my father ever was.
“You like cars, son?” he asked when he caught me sneaking into the garage to check out a 1987 Ferrari F40, one of the fastest cars at the time until Bugatti recorded a two hundred and nine mile per hour test.
I nodded and told him, “I like this car.” I had never seen anything like it. My dad drove a Ford, and my mom drove an Oldsmobile at the time. Neither car was anywhere near as cool as the Ferrari.
Joe came and stood next to me while we admired the sleek black car. “I’m not surprised. This is one of the fastest cars in the world. Two hundred and one miles per hour. Woo wee! I’ve never seen anything go that fast. The owner got it up to one eighty-seven last week on the long track here. He’s gonna try again next week after the races clear outta here. I’ve got some work to do before then.” As he walked me through all the work and checks that he was going to do on the car, I knew Joe was someone I wanted to listen to more often. He spoke like I knew what he was talking about. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have a clue; the guy had a passion for cars, and I couldn’t help but feel it, too.
Joe taught me how to build an engine from the ground up. He showed me how to throw a punch, and most importantly, he taught me all about girls. When I signed up for the Army, he patted my back and said, “I’m proud of you, son. I’ll hold down the fort ‘til you get home.” The old man had never steered me wrong.
His shiny, bald head welcomed me when I pulled my bike into the garage. You could hear my Ducati coming from a mile away, so he always knew when I was pulling into the track. Usually his head was in an engine, but today he was standing outside the third bay waiting for me.
“Hey, bud. I was ‘bout to call ya. Got something good.” Joe was grinning like a loon while I dismounted from my bike and followed him into the garage. He led me to a car hidden by a gray cover. My mouth watered and I itched to drag the fabric off my hidden treasure.
People brought us their cars for a good reason. We could build a winning racecar from a scrap of metal—but our real specialty was high-end European cars. Rich people brought their cars in to try to reach the top speed on one of the tracks. We made sure they were ready, and the driver knew how to handle the car on the track in any condition. I didn’t ever need to buy myself one of these beauties. I was fortunate enough to have access to a new one every week, not that I ever climbed inside of them.
“You ready for this?” Joe asked as he gripped the cover on the car.
“Yeah. Let’s see it.” I nodded then crossed my arms over my chest.
The cover came off and revealed a canary yellow car that resembled the Batmobile. “Is that…” I paused as I walked a full circle around the car. Joe watched me with that stupid grin plastered on his face. I pointed to the beauty. “This is a Hennessey Venom GT. I thought these weren’t legal on US streets.”
“They’re not. That’s why the guy had it delivered here. Showed up today on a truck. Phil said the owner had it shipped from the UK for his brother. Apparently, he’s a collector.”
“Has he tested it? Looks like it. Needs tires.” I gently ran my fingers over the barely-there tread of the bald rubber.
“Tires are here. He wants us to put them on and check it out. The car’s been driven all over Europe. If you had a car like this, would you send it to your brother without getting some road time in? I sure as hell wouldn’t.”
I shook my head. “Can’t imagine buying a car like this.” I kept walking around the car to check out every inch of it. Joe had the back open so we could get a look at the engine.
“Needs an oil change. Check the suspension. Brakes need some attention by the looks of it,” Joe commented absently then continued to list everything the car needed as I kept a mental checklist. I was a little starstruck with this one. I probably walked ten laps around it before I could fully grasp what was in front of me.
I opened the door and leaned over the driver’s seat to look at the interior. Simply sticking my head in the dark interior had my palms sweating, but I told myself to count to ten and look around. I had taken in as much as I could before darkness started closing in on me and my ears started ringing. Forcing myself to focus, I pulled myself out of the car, cursing myself for my weakness. I reminded myself to take in my surroundings while wiping the sweat from my forehead. I’m not back there.
“Here.” Joe slapped a clipboard against my chest. “You want this, you got it.” He walked away without another glance. He trusted me like only a few had before him, eleven others to be exact. His faith in me was the only thing that kept me going some days. Today it made me feel edgy and a little tense, so I figured it must be time for a refill on my anxiety meds.
I found myself heading to the VA a couple of days later for an appointment with the respectable Dr. Wright. I dreaded walking through those doors, but I would keep coming back as long as it meant hanging on to my last shred of sanity. Dr. Wright was a good doctor, even
if his brand of therapy didn’t work on me. I sat in the groups. I did the journaling. I listened to everyone’s horror story and sympathized when they talked about the brothers they lost. I watched grown men break down and sob like children. It was disheartening to see men who were once strong weep uncontrollably. While my friends claimed talking about their experiences helped them, it only brought the past to life for me. The only thing that helped me was the cocktail of pharmaceuticals that blocked the memories for six to eight hours each night and kept me from lashing out during the day.
I had Dr. Wright to thank for making it so I could function when awake and sleep for an extended period of time. He referred me to the doctor who gave me the pills to make that happen and helped me define limits I could follow. You know, no drinking into oblivion, no relationships, etcetera, etcetera. Knowing those little white pills could keep the demons away meant that I could stick with my prescribed set of limitations without fear of the memories controlling my every move.
As I approached Dr. Wright’s office, a girl exited with a wide smile on her face. She thanked him with the sweetest voice then started heading my way with her head down. It was like time slowed down when we walked past each other. Walked wasn’t the right word, though. She moved so gracefully—so confidently—it was as if she was floating. Her head lifted just in time, and I swear her smile widened. The space around her was blurred, but the image of her was crystal clear. She was heart-achingly beautiful. I stopped outside the door to Dr. Wright’s office and watched until the blond beauty turned the corner as if it was all a dream. Maybe she was a mirage. That seemed to be the only reasonable explanation as to why my body was reacting to her as if I were a thirsty man who saw a pool of water in the desert.
Only one thought remained as I stood in the middle of the hall staring at nothing. She was the kind of girl every guy hopes for, but the one I would never allow myself to have.
Sarah
My roommate, Lana, was everything I wasn’t, my total opposite. I wore pink dresses and had bright sun-bleached blond hair. Lana wore black and gray and had black and blue hair. I’m not kidding. Her hair was dyed black with electric blue tips. She reminded me of a girl I knew and hated in college, Alexis, which made me immediately wary of her when we first met. Fortunately, Lana was nothing like the bitch troll who tried to ruin my bestie’s life. Instead, she was cool and unconventional. As I said, she was everything I wasn’t.
We were both psych students, but where I worked to understand the human condition post-trauma, she worked on animal behavioral studies, which explained the lack of concern for her appearance most days. In undergrad, she assisted on a major behavioral project with pigeons and a computer. Apparently, she published her results in every major journal and even did an interview with CNN. I had my measly two publications and three presentations to my name. Compared to the other students in my cohort, I was a bit of an underachiever. Somehow, my degree from Emory University meant nothing here.
To make up for it, I made sure that I earned the highest grades possible in every class. This meant meeting with my professors during office hours. It meant studying until all hours of the night. All the fun I had planned was put on hold in order to keep up with the ultra-elite cohort I was competing against.
The most exciting day of my first year was after one of my meetings with Dr. Wright, my professor of Cognitive Processes. I had just left his office, thanking him for the help, when about halfway down the hall some outside force lifted my head and my eyes, only to make contact with him. I almost believed he was a figment of my imagination because I would have sworn only my brain could create a man so beautiful. He was the epitome of what I dreamed the perfect man to be. You know the one—dark hair, dark eyes, tall, broad shoulders, muscular. He was the kind of man that could have you drooling over him with a simple look and begging for more at his touch. I was running on a combination of little sleep and a lot of caffeine, so I was sure I imagined his oh-so-sexy smile. The way his lips opened to reveal perfect teeth wasn’t the only thing that had me staring. His eyes crinkled and his cheeks widened; that smile seemed to be so real, so genuine, and meant only for me. I kept walking because I was sure my brain was playing tricks on me, but it was the happiest moment of my first year at Colombia. Coincidentally, it was the closest I came to flirting since the night I went to dinner with Jameson Carmichael.
Otherwise, the whole first year was a blur, and I spent a total of maybe one day with my roommate. Our lives were different, even though we lived in the same eight hundred square feet. I told you, tiny. No one was more surprised than I was when Lana told me she found a cheap apartment close by for summer and wanted me to live with her. Our graduate student apartment was sterile, old, and reminded me more of a prison than a place someone would choose to live. I was more than happy to get the hell out of dodge and try something else, especially with someone who made cohabitating a breeze because she was never around.
The new apartment still wasn’t the Upper East Side dream I’d hoped for, but it was definitely a step up from graduate student housing. The walls were painted bright colors from the previous tenants. As soon as we opened the door to the bedroom painted pink, Lana turned to me and said, “This one’s yours.” Of course, I agreed without hesitation.
The building didn’t have any additional security, and I was missing the chance encounters with Jameson on the stairs, but it didn’t smell of mothballs or look like a prison. We signed the lease and moved in as soon as classes ended in the spring. I spent the next year there and still managed to spend next to no time in the presence of my roommate, who seemed to have a different hair color every time I saw her. It was a tad bit odd and a lot lonely, but school consumed all of us. We were all competing for places on research teams and internships. The harder you worked, the better the opportunities. We all knew that to be true before we signed up for this rat race.
The end of my second year snuck up on me, but I was thrilled to finally start my work with Professor Wright. He was doing cognitive behavioral therapy at the VA with soldiers returning from active duty overseas, and I was documenting their progress for a research study. The study was longitudinal and had started several years ago. They had been tracking the outcomes after cognitive behavioral therapy in regards to PTSD symptoms, drug and alcohol use, and quality of life. I was particularly interested in PTSD research, but I knew I wasn’t nearly as qualified as some of the other students in my cohort. When Dr. Wright agreed to supervise me, I not only wanted to jump around and dance a jig, but I also wanted to rub it in the faces of all the other pompous assholes in my cohort, Lana excluded, of course.
Funnily enough, Dr. Wright was also Jameson’s supervising professor. Where I never saw him before, suddenly he was everywhere.
“Well, well, well, look who we have here.” Jameson had a flirty grin plastered on his face as he came down the hall to where I was waiting outside of Dr. Wright’s office for our first research meeting.
I smiled, my typical reaction to an attractive male flirting with me. “Jameson.” I batted my eyelashes and straightened my back, forcing the girls into the prime attention-seeking position.
He took the bait, glancing down at my chest while absent-mindedly asking, “What are you doing here?” His gaze finally found my eyes after briefly pausing at my lips.
“Working with Dr. Wright now. You?”
He liked that answer judging by the twinkle in his eyes and the dimple that suddenly appeared on his cheek. He was incredibly symmetrical and attractive. He may have missed his calling in life. I was sure he was put on Earth for women to admire.
“Looks like we’ll be spending more time together then. Good thing since you moved away.” And so charming, too.
“Miss me?”
He stepped closer and looked down at me with heavy eyes. “Absolutely.”
“Funny, I didn’t think you’d notice I was gone considering how little I saw of you.” I pressed my lips together fighting a smile while glancing up in
to his crystal blue eyes. They were really quite mesmerizing.
“Oh, I noticed all right. You wouldn’t believe what I noticed.” His eye salaciously paved a trail down my body as he mindlessly said the comment that would have been otherwise creepy. Instead, it had every nerve ending on my body standing up and taking notice.
He started to lean toward me, like he was going to whisper in my ear, when Dr. Wright came bounding off the elevator. Jameson pulled away from me and leaned against the wall as if we were doing nothing more than waiting for the good professor to show, but I saw his eyes sparkling with mischief.
“Sorry, I’m late,” he shouted while waving a stack of papers in his hand, “but I have great news.” He paused while he unlocked the door to his office. Once he opened the door, he allowed Jameson and me to step in first before he followed, dropping the papers in his hand onto the other piles of papers already littering his large wooden desk. He moved things around on his desk as if there was a system to his madness, but it was unclear precisely what that system was.
“I’ve heard back from the grant committee.” That pulled my attention from my wayward thoughts. Grants were the lifeline of research. “The university and the VA are extending the CBT project another five years. This is excellent news.” Jameson let out a breath of relief. I was not aware of funding issues but based on their reaction, they seemed to have been worried about the funding. I knew it affected my position on this team just as much as Jameson’s, if not more.
“Congratulations,” I said kindly.
“Congratulations, indeed. This means you both can use the data we collect for your dissertations. Jameson, the project you proposed last month should be fine. We need to do some tweaking and ensure that you can collect a large enough sample in your timeframe. You also need to contact all members of your team and let them read your proposal before we meet.” Dr. Wright then turned to me. “You will need to take a look at the data we’re collecting and start thinking of projects. In the meantime, I’d like to start training you for interviews. Jameson conducts all of the post-therapy interviews, but I’d like for you to do the five-year follow-up interviews once you’ve familiarized yourself with the study.”
