From This Day Forward

by Ketley Allison

  I pulled my jacket off, using the leather as a makeshift umbrella over my head, secured my purse by crossing the strap over my chest, took a deep breath, and sprinted.

  The water blinded almost immediately, but I could make it home from the bar with my eyes closed. I ran across streets with abandon, considering traffic was sparse and the lights were in my favor. The jacket was held low on my head, and even though my hair was dripping and my jeans were like a stiff second skin, I kept it there as some sort of Hail Mary.

  When I ran into a solid mass in front of me, there was no warning. I went face-first into something wet, cold, and hard.

  “Aah—” I sputtered while backing away. I held a hand to my nose and when I pulled it back, it was covered in blood. “What the—”

  “I’m so sorry,” the mass said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Hands came at me, but I pushed them away, squinting through the pain and the water. My jacket puddled to the ground. “Stay away from me!”

  “Emme, please—”

  I held my fists out in front of me, my face hot with pain, tasting copper. “I mean it, Ed! Back away!”

  “I only want to help!” he yelled through the rain, but he listened. He didn’t move. Ed had no umbrella, no jacket even. He stood there in a red t-shirt and jeans, his cropped brown hair flat against his head, further accentuating the sharp jut of his eyebrows and the wide curve of his cheekbones, wet and shining. The darkness and rain made him into a white skull.

  “I don’t need your help!” I screamed. “I want you to leave me alone!”

  He stepped forward and I tensed.

  “Let me say one thing. I don’t want to scare you—”

  “You are!” My voice broke as I screamed at him. “You’re scaring the shit out of me, and the only way to stop is to turn around and leave me here. Don’t come closer, don’t try to touch me, just go.” Water—or blood—dripped down my nose.

  He wasn’t moving. “You’re hurt.”

  My lips peeled back in frustration. Talking wasn’t helping. Reasoning was worthless. In a split-second decision, I spun around and ran the other way.

  The splash of feet behind me had me running faster.

  “Emme!”

  Heaving, choking on blood and my nose hot and swelling, I spread my legs as wide as they could go. Muscles ripped in my thighs, sending slashes of pain up my torso, but I didn’t stop. I only needed to get back to the bar.

  “Emme!”

  Pound, pound, pound. My boots found puddles and concrete, my hair flying behind me and smacking my exposed back like riding whips. Get away. I had to escape.

  “Em—”

  An arm circled my neck and cut off my momentum with such force that I gagged, falling, landing hard on the sidewalk.

  Whether it be from the impact, the pain in my face, or pure fear, I broke down crying.

  “No, Emme, I didn’t—oh God.” Ed bent down in front of me, and I kicked out at him, scrambling back. “I wanted to stop you from getting hurt, that’s all. You weren’t looking—a car was coming—I had to do something.” He held me by the shoulders, and I screamed.

  “You did hurt me! You’re frightening me, you’re assaulting me, go away!”

  Ed’s expression twisted. “Stop saying these things! All I want is for you to like me! Why can’t you see that? Because I like you so much, Emme. I… I—”

  “No!” I wrenched away from him, able to stand first, and I sent a boot to his face. He cried out, hands covering his nose as he toppled back, and I took my second chance.

  I ran and ran the other way, stumbled, tripped, and tore over the sidewalk until familiar buildings surrounded me, until my apartment door hovered in front of me.

  Shaking, shivering, I fished through my purse, which somehow stayed across my body throughout the whole ordeal, and found the keys. It took me over five tries to fit it into the lock, but I shoved the door open and slammed it behind me as soon as I heard the click.

  I raced up the stairs, throwing open my door and putting my full weight behind it to ensure it was shut. I threw the two deadbolts, then stumbled into the kitchen, leaving cold puddles in my wake, and dragged a chair over and positioned it underneath the doorknob.

  “Becca?” I called out, turning and limping into the main room. Her name came out in four syllables with my heaves and shakes. “J-Jade?”

  Nothing. I remembered. They were out, and probably wouldn’t be back for a long while.

  My knees cracked against the floor.

  Curling over them, head in my hands, I sobbed. When I fell to my side, I didn’t feel the impact. I curled into a fetal position , blood and rain in my hands, and cried harder.

  Bang-bang-bang.

  “Emme? Are you in there?”

  Bang-bang.

  “Open the door!”

  Spence’s muffled voice penetrated the metal fire door of my apartment, but it did little to clear the fog in my head. I laid curled on my side, the same position I’d been in since toppling inside… how much time ago?

  “Emme, I’m so sorry. I got caught up in a test and I, you know what, have no fucking excuses. Please let me in, honey.”

  I couldn’t breathe through my nose. What were normally light purplish bags under my eyes in the mornings were now giant, hardened pillows creating a humped horizon over my increasingly narrowed vision. Ice would be good, or frozen coffee grinds. But the energy wasn’t there, the ability to sit up, and move, and recover.

  I was scared. I was upset. I was tired.

  “Emme, you’re freaking me out! If you’re in there…fuck, please be in there. I’ve been to the bar, called Becca and Jade, no one knows where you are.” Pause. “If you don’t open this door I’m going outside, finding a hardware store, and taking an axe to your door.”

  Wheezing through my mouth, I pushed up into a seated position. The apartment tilted, an immediate rush of blood leaving my head.

  “Even better, I’ll call the fire department and make them do it. I know how much you hate a spectacle.”

  With a groan, I made it to a hunched-over stand. I held one hand to my forehead as I hobbled to the door. My balance was off, the right side of my body was covered in pins and needles, and my nose contained its own emergency siren that whirled, pulsed, and throbbed behind my eyes.

  “I swear to—”

  Both deadlocks clicked back, and Spence shut up. I dragged the chair over to the side, and after a deep breath, I lifted my forehead from the coolness of the door and turned the knob.

  Spence’s mouth was curled like he was about to yell or at the very least, curse me out for freaking him out so much, but all words were gutted when he took in the full force of my face.

  “Jesus Christ,” he breathed, color leeching out of his cheeks.

  The sheer horror, his absolutely petrified expression, had my eyes bubbling over and the parts of my face I could still feel wobbled, trembled, and fell apart.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Spence said. He folded me into his chest, delicately, like I was his broken bird, but buried his face in my hair, his breathing harsh. Spence’s attempts at control were evident in his grip, how he clutched me, and the jackhammering of his heart behind his ribcage.

  I molded my forehead into his neck, crying rivulets onto his shirt. His hand slid up my neck, tangling in my hair. “What happened? What—who the hell did this to you? Emme, honey, talk to me,” he said when I didn’t respond. “Please.”

  I was holding dynamite in my hands, the fuse creeping closer to an explosion. I had to say something before Spence truly lost it and went searching the streets for the first vaguely threatening person he came across. “It…it was an accident. My nose. I was rushing home in the rain and I ran into Ed Carver. Literally. He—he…”

  Everything I said was coming out muffled and clogged. Spence moved back until he was holding my face in both hands, his eyes searching. “Did he hurt you? Deliberately?”

  “N-no. I don’t think so. He scared me, though. Spenc
e, he frightened me so much, the things he was saying…”

  “Shh,” he said, pulling me close again. The pulse in his neck pounded against my cheek. “I’m not going to put you through this without making sure you’re okay first. We need to get that swelling down.”

  “Is it broken?”

  Spence took a second look, prodding gently and mirroring my winces with his own grimaces of empathetic pain. “No, it’s badly bruised, but your cartilage is solid. Take a seat on the couch, I’ll get—”

  “We don’t have any ice,” I said, and it came out as a sob.

  “Right.” Spence thought a moment. “Ibuprofen? You have that?”

  I nodded. “Medicine cabinet in the bathroom.”

  “Good. Step one. I’ll be right back.”

  I delicately sat on the couch as I listened to him riffle through our various feminine staples that we managed to cram into a tiny cabinet. When a clatter of plastic against porcelain sounded, I figured he must’ve accidentally hit our pile of disposable razors. Any other moment, I’d laugh, but after risking a nose scrunch and nearly blacking out, it was wise to stay still.

  Spence reappeared, a bottle of ibuprofen and his phone in hand. He rushed into the kitchen, splashing water into a glass, and returned, seating himself beside me.

  “I enlisted a delivery service to get us a bag of ice.”

  Delicately—oh so delicately, I placed two pills on my tongue and tipped my head back to allow the water to go down easier. After, I said, “That’s going to cost you something like forty dollars.”

  He squeezed my arm. “Baby, I can’t think of anything more worth it right now.”

  Spence assessed me, and his lips thinned. “Clothes.”

  He popped up from the couch and went into my bedroom, pulling open and shutting drawers. His movements sounded hitched, almost frantic, as he tried to gain some kind of control over the situation.

  It didn’t occur to me until he came back with the softest pair of flannel pants I owned and an oversized white t-shirt—his t-shirt that I stolen during one of my nights at his house—how tight the skin around his eyes were, how deep the line between his brows was, that he might be hating himself at this moment. For not being there to prevent this.

  I stood, my heart splintering at his expression. “Spence, I—”

  “Not yet,” he said quietly. He curled his fingers under the hem of my shirt and carefully raised it up, remaining one step ahead as we pulled it over my head and ensured my nose wasn’t accidentally hit. He did the same with my jeans, peeling back the material as I sat, and holding my ankles like they were glass as he negotiated the denim that was now impossibly tight, over and off.

  He blurred in my vision. The sheer delicacy with which he was handling me nearly had me buckling onto the floor again.

  Spence used a towel to blot any remaining freezing dampness from my skin. He brushed the tip of the cotton over my cheek, holding it there for a moment longer before he wrapped the towel around my shoulders, tucked an arm under my knees, and lifted.

  My head fell back on his shoulder as he carried me, and I closed my eyes. He entered the bathroom and I felt the steam before I registered it. Somehow, through all the riffling and crashing and searching through the bathroom, he’d drawn a bath.

  Spence went to his knees, and as he did so he laid me carefully in the tub, the suds traveling up his forearms and caressing his elbows. He sat beside me, stroking back my hair for a while, then took a washcloth and cleaned the dirt and grit off my skin that rain always brings with it to the city.

  When Spence started washing my back, my arms wrapped around my knees, I looked over at him. He was intent on washing, strands of hair, damp from the steam, clinging to his forehead. I twisted, reaching for him, holding him close, my chin dipping into the point where his neck met his shoulder. Heedless of the soap and water, he clutched me tighter, his mouth burying into the back of my neck so hard I could feel his teeth through the pressure of his lips.

  We didn’t speak. Not even when we pulled away, he dried me off, and had me dressed. I walked back to the couch on my own steam, but with gentle pressure, he laid me back against the pillows. The buzzer sounded right at that moment, startling me.

  “It’s okay,” he said. The first words we’d spoken in twenty minutes. The best words. “Ice, probably.”

  Spence disappeared, and I heard his low talk with whoever had delivered a bag of ice to our door. After going back into the kitchen and fashioning a clean dish towel around a handful of ice, he came back.

  “Careful, now,” he said as he laid the makeshift pack on my nose and I’d reached up to help him. Mewls of pain came out of me—sounds I’d never made before—but we were able to place the bag so the pressure wasn’t so piercing.

  Partially blind from fabric and swelling, I heard Spence position himself so he could pull my legs over his lap.

  Eventually, I said, “I think he’s watching me.”

  Spence didn’t play dumb. “Ed’s stalking you.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that far, but he’s been paying so much attention to me, telling me information he could only know if he’s been following me. That’s why I ran. Why I became so scared. He wasn’t confrontational, not really. But he wouldn’t…he wouldn’t leave me alone, even after I asked him to. He waited for my shift to end end, for me to be on my own on the street before he—”

  “I should’ve been there.”

  The condemnation in his tone had me pushing the bag of ice aside. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “Had I been waiting for you like I said I was going to, none of this would’ve happened.”

  “I’ve walked home from the bar many times on my own, much later than ten at night, and nothing’s ever happened to me. I felt safe, Spence, and it wasn’t you who took my security away. It was him.”

  Spence rubbed his lips together, staring straight ahead. “He’s never going to come close to you again.”

  “No—please.” I sat up, my knees bending against his chest. “Don’t confront him or threaten. I just want him out of my life. I don’t think I could handle another face-off, and I don’t want you to be hurt.” My expression twisted, and while it hurt something fierce, I couldn’t control it. “Spence, all you do clean up my messes, with your mysterious physical ways that you refuse to talk about—and I’m thankful for it. I am. But there’s this part of you I don’t know. And I…I think it’s vicious.”

  His eyes cut to me.

  “Not to me,” I reassured. “I’m not afraid of you. But whatever it is that you’re trying to control, I know how much it takes out of you to keep this other part—this past Spencer—under wraps. And I feel like my shit is making it worse. You haven’t thrown a punch since when?”

  Spence shook his head. “That’s not the point—”

  “When, Spence?”

  He sighed. “Nineteen.”

  “So four years ago.” I set the ice pack on my stomach. “It’s taken that long for you to get where you are now, this good place, and I’m terrified I’m pushing you out of it.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I wish you would listen—”

  “You’re not,” he repeated. “I can handle this. Trev? He’s no worse than freezing your tongue on a winter pole. And Ed has the aggression of a prairie dog. These people have never understood what it’s like to face true terror, and that’s their weakness. I don’t have to resort to what I was to get them to fuck off.”

  The Spence in front of me was harsher, the shadows cutting deeper. The corners of his lips were no longer the sweet bookends to a sensual mouth, but deep borders containing the bloody slash in between. The words he said weren’t with an arrogant flair, but cold logic. Factual Spence, the one who weighed pros and cons and chose the path most successful, regardless of how rough the terrain, sat by me. It was a rare glimpse into the cold front inside him.

  “Talk to me,” I said. “Please.”

  “I am.”

 
; I rose up to a seated position and grabbed his hand. “I have to know this side of you, Spence. You have to let me.”

  He lowered his head. “There’s nothing to cause you alarm. I told you, I’m past it.”

  “You may think you are, but if you don’t talk to me, if you don’t help me understand, then it will always be polluting us. I will always wonder, will this be the thing that breaks him? I don’t even know where the rage comes from, where your will to survive was created. You know everything about me, and yes, I know I don’t have anything to hide, but the imbalance between us is so thick I can touch it.” I cupped his face, forcing his eyes to look at me. See me. “You won’t allow me in. You don’t trust me. That’s how I feel.”

  Spence ripped out of my hold. “You think I don’t have faith in you? Emme, you’re the only person I’ve ever let get this far.”

  “Then take me the rest of the way.”

  His muscles bunched and he glanced away.

  “I’m here because I want to be with every part of you. The good, the bad, the scary. You’re the guy. The one I want. But even you know we can’t be truly happy unless both of us are all in.” This time, I rested a hesitant fingers on his forearm. “I’m all in, Spence.”

  His lips thinned ever so gently in the quiet, and then he said, “I was in foster care since I was eight years old.”

  I didn’t move a muscle.

  “My mom died of a heroin overdose when I was a baby, so it was my dad who took me in, but he didn’t have much. He wasn’t the marrying type, or a family guy. We lived in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Back then…well, it wasn’t what it is now. He had trouble laying down a job, took on short-term construction projects, but it wasn’t enough. So he turned to dealing. Making one hundred bucks off a two-second transaction was a helluva lot better than laying bricks at the same price for five hours. When I was younger—really young—he left me with his neighbor. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, nineteen. The streets were where she made her living, so pretty much every night I was left alone.”

  My jaw went tight.