The entire time she worked on me, I was concentrating as hard as I could not to let myself get hard. I even started mentally disassembling and reassembling carburetors in my head to keep my mind off how distractingly close she was.
Thank Christ she finally stopped with the torture, and then led me back out to the main room. She started me through a course of exercises: quad sets, hamstring sets, and something she called “heel slides,” where I slid my heel across the floor with a strap around the bottom of my foot, to get better at bending and straightening my knee. It was all pretty boring, and sometimes frustrating as shit.
I was getting pretty sick of the whole damn thing when Eva told me to launch into yet another set.
“Okay. Try it again.”
“I’ve been doing this exercise for five minutes,” I complained.
“That’s completely irrelevant.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one with the goddamn gunshot wound.”
“Are you questioning me?” Her eyes flashed.
“No. Jesus. I’m just saying I’m getting sick of it.”
“Also irrelevant. Give me another set.”
I shrugged. “Whatever you say, princess.”
She froze. At first, I didn’t even know why, but then the realization of what I’d said hit me. I hadn’t planned to make any reference at all to the fucked-up past, but apparently my stupid mouth had other plans.
“Sorry,” I grunted. “It just slipped out.”
Eva’s entire body had become a mass of tension, like a coiled cobra ready to strike. She glanced up at the large clock on the wall.
“Session’s over,” she said coldly.
My gaze followed hers. “It’s only eleven thirty,” I said. “I thought we were supposed to go until twelve.”
“My gift to you.”
Without looking at me, she stood, and pushed my crutches toward me with her foot. “Don’t forget about wearing appropriate clothing in the future.”
And then she was gone.
8
Eva
I paced back and forth outside the back loading dock of the hospital, my heart hammering in my chest.
Goddamn it. God damn it.
I thought I could handle being Trig Jackson’s PT. I thought I was professional enough to push the past out of the way and concentrate on him as just another patient. But all it took was one word — one callous, cutting word — and all of the pain had come rushing back.
How dare he call me princess? Was he a child? Did it actually give him pleasure to try to make me feel like an awkward outcast again?
When I had calmed down a little bit and my breathing had slowed, I tried to think of any possible explanation for what he said that wasn’t edged with brutality, but I just couldn’t. It was too specific. There was no other way he could have meant it.
Whatever you say, princess.
It was, word for word, what he had said to me that day at the hot springs. Right after I shakily told him we should stop making out before things went too far for me to resist him any longer.
At the time, I had thrilled when he said it. It felt like a special name, just for me. A term of endearment. Something private. Tender, even. The word echoed through my head all the way home.
How wrong I was.
‘Princess’ was the one thing he could have said to me to cut me to the quick, even though I never would have believed he’d even remember calling me that. But he did. How could I possibly not believe he’d done it on purpose to make me remember the past? To remember what he’d done? Why, after all these years, would he be so invested in hurting me?
I had no idea. But what I did know is that I would not give him another chance to do it again.
When I had calmed down enough to go back inside, Trig was long gone. I wandered around until I found Vanessa just finishing up with a patient of her own.
“Hey,” I greeted her. “Listen, do you have time to get some lunch? I have a favor to ask you.”
“Sure, just give me a minute to make some notes,” she smiled. “Meet you out front?”
It was a beautiful day out, so we went to one of our favorite spots, a food truck taqueria across the street from the hospital that had the best fish tacos in town.
We found a bench to sit down and munched on our tacos for a few minutes in silence.
“So,” Vanessa said between bites. “What’s the favor?”
“I’d like you to take over a patient of mine,” I began.
She frowned. “What’s up?”
“I just don’t feel I’m the best person to help him.”
“What’s his story?”
I hesitated. “He, uh, has a gunshot wound. Femoral neuropathy. Dr. Larkin assigned him to me. I saw him this morning, and I think we’re not a good fit.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “The hot one? With the tattoos? I saw him leave a little earlier. Why in God’s name would you want to get rid of that tasty morsel?”
Shit. I was going to have to tell her at least something. “He, uh… Well, I know him from a long time ago. I’m not comfortable being his therapist.”
I did my best “it’s no big deal” shrug, but Vanessa is a bloodhound when she’s on the scent of what she thinks is a juicy story. Her face broke into a wide grin. “No way! You and he did the nasty? Oooh, girlfriend, I did not know you had it in you!” She held up a taco-less hand to high five me.
“No… No. It’s not like that.” I shook my head. “This was a long time ago. High school. And we never had sex. He was just… kind of a jerk,” I finished lamely.
Vanessa cocked her head at me skeptically. “Seriously? You’re scared to do PT on a guy who, like, pulled your pigtails or some shit way back when?”
“Vanessa, will you just please, please take him for me?” I begged. “You would be doing me the hugest favor ever.”
She gave me a pointed look. “Girl, that is some dumb shit. But okay. When’s his next appointment?”
She clearly thought I was being an idiot. But I didn’t care.
“Tomorrow. Ten a.m,” I said, relief flooding through me.
Vanessa gave me a harrumph. “Well, I’ve already got someone at that time, so he’ll have to reschedule. I’ll tell Norma or Adele to give him a call.”
The rest of the day passed a little better, knowing that I wasn’t going to have to work with Trig anymore. I made sure to drop by the appointment desk on the way out to see when he had been rescheduled to come in the next day, and was happy to see that Norma had put him in for the late afternoon. I could be gone by then, no problem.
Maybe, if I kept an eye on his schedule, I could avoid ever seeing him again.
This was the happy thought in my head as I pulled into the driveway of my house later. I got out of my car and headed down the street to pick Zoe up from Mrs. Hayes, the woman who took care of her after pre-K four days a week. As I knocked lightly on the screen door and let myself in, the aroma of freshly-baked cookies wafted out to greet me.
“Mommeeeeee!” yelled a voice from the kitchen. Then, a bullet of blond hair and freckles careened around the corner and crashed into me.
“Hey, baby,” I laughed, burying my face in her hair. She smelled like shampoo and sunshine.
“We made cookies!” she told me, her entire face beaming.
“I can smell that. What kind?”
“My favorite! M & M cookies!”
“Mmm, my favorite, too!”
“I know!” Zoe yelled excitedly. “And Mrs. Hayes’s, too!”
“Hello, Eva,” Mrs. Hayes said warmly as she emerged from the kitchen, a dish towel in her hands. “We’re just finishing up. We even have enough cooled cookies to send some home with you, don’t we Zoe?”
“YEAH!” Zoe yelled. She was clearly pretty keyed up.
“Shhhhh, honey, no yelling in the house.” I smiled at Mrs. Hayes. “How was she today?”
“Oh, fine, fine,” she smiled back. “Maybe just a tad hopped up on sugar, I’m sorry to
say.”
I laughed. “Understandable.”
“But it didn’t spoil my dinner!” Zoe yelled.
“Shhh, Zoe!” I said crossly. “That’s enough now. Come on, let’s head on home. Grab your cookies and let’s go.”
I thanked Mrs. Hayes and we walked back down the block, Zoe clutching a Tupperware container with her cookies in it.
I had known Mrs. Hayes since I was practically Zoe’s age. She had been a fixture of this neighborhood for almost forty years, since she and her husband moved here when they were first married. I had grown up in the house I lived in now, which I had more or less inherited from my mom last year when she finally succumbed to the alcoholism and dementia that had ravaged her.
I had come back to my hometown from Seattle to help my sister take care of her when things started getting really bad, and had stayed until the end, when Mom was far enough gone that we had to move her to a care facility. My older sister, Patricia, lived a little over an hour away with her husband and family. She didn’t want Mom’s house, so when we split up what little was left of the estate, we agreed that I would take it as part of my half.
So far, I hadn’t made any decisions yet about whether to stay here or sell the place and move back to Seattle. As much as I missed life in a bigger city, I liked my job and my colleagues here. And I liked the idea of Zoe growing up in an actual neighborhood, with actual kids in it, instead of having to schedule play dates all the time.
Mrs. Hayes had known my mother, of course, and had seen from a distance her slow decline. When things started to get really rough, she reached out to me and offered to babysit Zoe whenever I needed it. The two of them had really hit it off, and Mrs. Hayes had become the grandmother Zoe would never have in my own mom.
Zoe had had a very active day, and she was babbling excitedly about everything she had done at pre-K as I made us dinner. I opened a bottle of white wine, poured myself a glass and let her talk. After dinner, we played checkers. Mrs. Hayes had taught her a few weeks ago, and it was her new favorite game.
Thankfully, Zoe had had such a busy day that by bedtime, she was exhausted. By the time we finished reading her picture book together, her eyes were drooping, and I turned on the nightlight and crept out of the room, knowing that she’d be conked out within minutes.
Back downstairs in the living room, I sank down on the couch and picked up the glass I had left half-drunk on the coffee table. It was warm by now, and I made a face and set it back down after one sip. I clicked on the TV and flipped through the channels with the sound down, but there wasn’t really anything on that looked interesting. Eventually, I just left it on mute and went to the kitchen to refresh my glass.
I stared at the screen without really seeing it as I mindlessly sipped my now-slightly-less warm wine. Without the whirlwind of activity that was my daughter to distract me, my mind went inevitably back to Trig and the events of earlier that day.
The shock and anger I had felt had dissipated somewhat. In their place came a quiet ache of loneliness that I hadn’t felt in a while.
I had been a single mom for almost three years now — ever since I had finally found the strength to leave Zoe’s dad and file for divorce. My recent disastrous date with Dr. Kevin Larkin notwithstanding, I had more or less reconciled myself to being single for the foreseeable future. I just had never had good luck with men.
And most of the time, the idea of it just being me and Zoe was fine. It was a little tough sometimes, being the only parent. But it was also simpler, in a way. The only thing I had to worry about when I was at home was being a mom. Not a lover, not a wife. Just a mom.
But it also required that I more or less ignored the fact that I was also a woman.
After my date with Kevin, I told myself I was actually relieved to have “proof” that dating just wasn’t worth it. All the fantasies about having someone to share my life with were just that — fantasies. The reality was having to expend tons of energy stroking a man’s ego, in exchange for a fleeting compliment, or an hour of sexual relief now and again. I told myself it wasn’t worth it. After all, that was why vibrators had been invented. Most of the sexual satisfaction, with none of the accompanying baggage.
But of course, there was more to it than that.
What I really wanted was companionship. Intimacy. An actual adult to talk to when I got home from work. Was that so much to ask for?
If the date with Kevin had reminded me how elusive such a simple thing was to find, something about seeing Caleb again today just made it feel even worse. But unlike Kevin, who made me want to proclaim my allegiance to the Perpetually Single Girls’ Club, Caleb (Trig, I reminded myself sternly) made me long for the days when I still believed in true love. When I still believed true soul mates were possible.
The sad, sad truth was, even though Caleb Jackson had turned out to be a terrible fraud who had pinpointed all of my deepest insecurities, the afternoon we had spent at the hot springs all those years ago was still one of the most intimate, romantic moments of my life.
God. How pathetic was that?
Princess…
After we rode back to town from the hot springs on Caleb’s motorcycle that day, he dropped me off at my house. I was a couple of hours later than usual getting home, but I wasn’t too worried. Normally by that time of day, my mom was so drunk she was passed out on the couch with the TV blaring. As long as Caleb just dropped me off at the curb, he wouldn’t have to know what awaited me inside.
Unfortunately, luck was not in my favor that day.
I was saying a shy goodbye to him when the screen door slammed behind me. My mom, hair sticking out in all directions and wearing a stained T-shirt and jeans, began screaming at me from the front steps to get into the house. I turned to Caleb in horror to see him taking it all in.
She was so clearly drunk, so clearly out of control that there could be no doubt he must have been absolutely disgusted by her. All I could think to do was to get my mother inside the house as quickly as possible.
I ran up the steps without looking back at him, pausing only to hiss at my mother, “Come inside. God, the whole neighborhood can hear you!” I didn’t stop until I got to my room.
Then I slammed the door, flung myself down on my bed, and scream-cried into my pillow until I was hoarse and exhausted.
But my humiliation wasn’t over yet.
Two days later, on Sunday afternoon, I had the misfortune of running into Debbie Turner, my across-the-street neighbor whose locker was next to mine as well.
Debbie and her family had long looked down their noses at my mother and our family. More than once, I had heard her father saying to another neighbor, just loud enough for me to hear, how our unkempt lawn and peeling paint brought down the property values of the entire neighborhood.
Debbie crossed the street and walked up our drive just as I was leaving the house to go stock up on groceries for the week. I should have known right away that something was up. Most of the time, she ignored me as being too far beneath her to talk to.
“I noticed you riding on the back of Caleb’s bike after school on Friday,” she said, a smirk curling her pink-glossed lips.
“So what?” I tossed back. I had been trying as hard as I could not to think about Caleb after what had happened with my mother. I was too afraid to nurse the tiny, tiny kernel of hope inside me that my mother’s outburst wouldn’t change the way he felt about me.
“So, nothing,” she said. She flipped her hair over one shoulder in a practiced gesture I’d seen her do a hundred times. “It’s just that I didn’t want you to think he actually, like, liked you or anything.”
“What do you know about anything?” I challenged.
“Well…” Her expression was smug. “I ran into Caleb at a party last night. At Meredith Singer’s house? And he was telling me about what happened when he drove you back here to drop you off.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Suddenly, I thought I might
vomit. I should have just gotten into the car without saying another word, but I couldn’t make my body move. I couldn’t make myself leave the conversation before I heard what she had to say.
“He said,” she continued smugly, “that your mom came outside and she was acting all drunk and crazy. You know, like she does?” It was true, Debbie had seen my mother out of control on more than one occasion. Most of the neighborhood had. “And, he said you think you’re some kind of princess, but your mom is trash and you live in a trash house.” She gave me a pout of mocking sympathy. “So, you know, I just didn’t want you to think he liked you. Because he doesn’t. Obviously.”
The blood began to rush in my ears as she flounced away.
In a daze, I fell into the driver’s seat and tried to process what she had said. I knew Debbie had told me all this to hurt me; I was under no illusion about that. But it didn’t matter. I also had no doubt that Caleb had said it. Princess. It was the word he had called me when we were at the hot springs together. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
I didn’t leave my room for the rest of the weekend.
When Monday came, I couldn’t make myself get up and go to school. My mother barely noticed. On Tuesday, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer, and trudged my way toward the campus, steeling myself for the inevitable moment I would see him again.
Caleb had the gall to act like nothing had happened when he showed up at my locker that morning. It was as though he had never said those horrible things Debbie told me he did. But I knew better. I was through being such a naive little idiot, to think someone like him would ever have been attracted someone like me. I didn’t know why he had gone through all that trouble just to humiliate me, but I didn’t need to know. All I needed to know was that he had done it.
I screamed at him to leave me alone, loudly and crazily enough that anyone around would hear me. All he could do was back away. Even though it was humiliating to have caused such a scene in front of my peers, I didn’t care. All I cared about was that he knew he would never, ever get the opportunity to hurt me again.
RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) Page 6
