“No,” I said confused. “No, I’m not.”
“Then why does it gross you out so bad to touch me?” She stood. “Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.” There was no anger in her voice, just resignation.
“I saw the night that your boss tried to force you to have drinks…or whatever with him. I felt the mud sucking at your shoes. The angry tears you wiped away when you had to walk home.”
Jade froze. Her eyes were huge, and even though what I said shocked her, I could tell she was trying to figure out how I knew.
“I saw…felt you talking to Lauren. How you felt when you decided you wouldn’t call her anymore. You knew she was having an affair with you, and you believed the lie as long as you could. Just now when you hugged me, I saw the faces of all the women you thought of and how you felt used, and you…hoped I might be different. I am—”
“Stop!” she yelled. She took a deep breath and held up her hand. “Just stop for a minute.”
I couldn’t. “Jade, that’s why I didn’t touch you. Why I avoided you touching me. I felt like I was invading your privacy.”
“I asked you to stop.” Her voice trembled. She sat slowly on the edge of the couch again. She didn’t appear to want to, but her legs seemed to give out. “When the guy dropped a weight on my foot…you touched me.” Her fingers were tapping her leg like she was counting in her head. My heart felt like it stalled in my chest. “All this time…you knew.”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“For what?” she said angrily. “For seeing how pathetic I really am?” Tears streamed out of her eyes.
I got out of my chair and walked toward her, wanting to take her into my arms so bad it physically hurt. When she realized what I intended, her eyes went round and she jumped up. “Were you going to touch me again? Haven’t you seen enough?” Her voice broke. “Why were you even going to go out with me?”
I stood stock-still with my arms limply at my side. “I really like you. I want to get to know you.”
Jade shook her head like she was trying to wake from a bad dream. “How could you?” She sounded so wounded.
“I won’t use you like the others. I—” She gasped as the gravity of it all seemed to hit her. She backed away, tripped over the kennel, and fell into the doorjamb. I moved toward her.
“Stop!” She held her hands up after she righted herself. “Don’t touch me again.” She grabbed the kennel. “I don’t want to see you again. If you come to the gym, I’ll quit.”
I watched her run down the walk with Guy in his kennel, climb into her truck, and speed away. In a matter of minutes, I’d crushed her hope, and she’d crushed mine.
Chapter 11
I didn’t open the store next day. I knew people would see the “closed” sign and maybe come back later. I didn’t care. I slept on and off, never more than an hour. I lay in bed in that dream-like state from exhaustion. I was hurting in ways I never imagined, and I knew Jade was, too. If Miranda was right and what I felt was the precursor to love, I wondered why anyone would seek such a thing.
I had just drifted into merciful sleep when I heard the bedroom door open. Wordlessly, Miranda crawled into bed next to me, carefully keeping her distance. “You told her,” she said softly.
“She hates me.” My voice sounded dull, lacking emotion. “She told me she never wants to see me again. She’ll quit the gym if I go back there.”
“I’m so sorry, Sloan.”
“I don’t want to hear any ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ speeches right now.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Miranda said in the darkness. I could just make out her silhouette. “You need your time to grieve.”
“Why do you trust Marty?”
Miranda was silent for a minute or two. “I couldn’t help it.”
The concept seemed foreign to me then. I was more willing to trust someone to pull me from a burning building or a cliff’s edge but never with my feelings. I had no idea how Miranda could trust Marty with her vulnerabilities, reveal her innermost secrets, and trust that they’d be accepted and cherished. Miranda had been the only one I trusted, but it wasn’t the same way I wanted to trust in Jade.
“I know she’s out there hurting, and I’m the cause. I don’t know her phone number. Every time she called, it was from the gym, and I have no idea where she lives. I can’t even go to her and beg her to forgive me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “She’s a runner. She admitted to living a lot of places. Every time she gets hurt, she pulls up stakes and starts somewhere else. What if she runs, Miranda? I know I’ll never see her again.”
Miranda didn’t say anything. I knew she couldn’t. If she were to be honest, she’d have to say, “Let her go.” I couldn’t.
“I wish I could hold you,” Miranda said. She was close enough for me to feel her breath on my face.
“I wish you could, too. I’m too weak to fight my brain, and we both know what will happen.”
“So what? Get lost in my memories for a while. Maybe it’ll put you to sleep. You already know all my stories.” I rolled onto her shoulder, and as her arms went around me, I began to live vicariously through Miranda. I felt her deep sorrow for me as I watched her memories unfold before my eyes.
*******
A week went by, and I tearfully begged Miranda to go work out at the gym to make sure Jade was still there. She stayed gone for an hour and returned to me. “She’s still there.” I stared at her, awaiting anything she could tell me. “She looks bad. Dark circles are under her eyes. I don’t know if it makes you feel any better to know she looks just like you.”
“Did she talk to you?”
“No.” Miranda looked away. “When she first saw me come in, I think she was looking for you. She stopped staring, I guess, when she figured out it was just me.”
“Should I take that as a good sign? Maybe she wanted to see me?”
Miranda plopped down on the couch and propped her feet on the table. “I don’t know. She might’ve wanted to see you, or she might’ve been ready to bolt if she did.”
I opened my mouth to say something but sighed instead.
“Are you about to ask me if I would talk to her?”
“Yes,” I said, exasperated.
“I thought about it tonight, but there was no way I could do it privately.”
“She usually leaves work around nine. Drives a blue beat-up Ford truck.”
Miranda groaned and looked at her watch. “If you have a cookie or something sweet, I’ll do it.” Six Oreos later, Miranda walked out the door pissed that I had them and had kept them hidden. I waited and paced. Thirty minutes passed, and she still wasn’t back. I took that as a good sign. An hour passed, even better, but the waiting was driving me insane. I saw headlights on the street and ripped the door open only to watch an unfamiliar car pass. I paced some more. Two hours had passed since Miranda had left, and I debated sending a text message. I put it off for thirty more minutes, then I heard a car door slam.
I was standing in the doorway when Miranda came up the steps. “Did you talk to her?”
I stepped back inside when I noticed that Miranda’s eyes were red and tear-stained. “Sit down, Sloan,” she said somberly.
“I don’t think I can.”
“Please.” Miranda pointed to the couch, and reluctantly, I sat. She sank down on the other end. “That girl cried her eyes out on my shoulder. She’s as pitiful as you are.”
I swallowed hard and ached inside.
“She admitted that she really likes you. She hoped to get to know you and thought something good might develop.”
I smiled and felt so much relief that I thought I would cry again if I could, then it struck me that Miranda was talking in the past tense.
“I had to swear on my mother’s grave that you did not tell me anything of what you saw about her before she would talk to me. I think that ratcheted her trust up a little bit.” Miranda rubbed her hands on her gym pants. “Right now, she’s grappling with
the shock of what you told her. We talked a lot about that. I think it made her feel a bit better to know how much of a struggle this has been for you. That it wasn’t something you took lightly.”
“You told her I felt bad about prying?”
“Many times.” Miranda looked over at me. “She feels terribly exposed. You saw things that she’d never admitted to anyone. She didn’t go into detail, but I gathered that her past has been extremely painful.”
Jade’s memories flashed through my mind on fast forward. “Yeah, she’s had a rough time of it.”
“She…needs some time.” Miranda smiled weakly. “I don’t want to get your hopes up. She said we’ll talk again soon.”
“Meaning you and her, not me.”
Miranda reached for me and stopped. “Yeah. But that’s a start. She isn’t running, so that tells me that eventually she might be willing to give you a chance, which is why it’s so important for us to continue your mental workouts.”
I took it for it what it was—a chance and a glimmer of hope. “Okay then, go home and get some rest. We’ll hit it hard tomorrow.”
Chapter 12
Of course, Jade and I did not go on our planned date. Miranda and I spent weeks working on my brain. I had good days and bad. The bad ones came when I was tired and couldn’t focus. I was on a roller coaster of highs and lows. The day Miranda came into the store with good news, I was particularly low, but what she said sent me soaring.
“Jade says you can come back to work out at the gym if you want.”
I was so excited, I could barely speak.
“Easy, Sparky Junior, that doesn’t mean you’re gonna pick up where you left off. She basically meant she wouldn’t leave if you showed up. She’s still not ready to talk to you yet.”
It was a start and more than I had hoped for. “I’ll leave her alone. She can approach me if she wants to…when she’s ready.”
“Good,” Miranda said with a nod. “Marty talked to Deb. She gave her a while to cool down.”
I raised a brow.
“She’s still furious with us. Marty reminded her of how much we love her, and she said Deb sort of chilled after that.” Miranda smiled. “Marty’s so good at that kind of thing. I guess we should’ve sent her in first. She didn’t ask Deb about the weight thing. She just let her bitch, but she thinks she might get Deb to gradually open up to her. So we’re gonna delay Lonna and Paige’s surprise party until things are smoothed over.”
Lonna and Paige returned from Provincetown as a married couple. I pretended to be just as shocked as everyone else by the news. Marty wanted to have a reception-slash-party for them, but with the tension among Miranda, Deb, and me, we’d put it off for a while. Unlike Jade, Deb wasn’t willing to be in the same room with us.
“She’ll come around,” I said.
Miranda nodded as she ran her index finger down the bridge of her nose. She’d been the most vocal and intrusive in our conversation with Deb, and I figured she felt she alone shouldered the fault that Deb had placed on us. “So we’ll go to the gym tonight at six?”
“Yeah, and I promise to behave myself.” I held up a hand like I was taking an oath.
“Okay, I’ll meet you there. Don’t go in without me.”
“Where are you going?” I asked, surprised that she wasn’t going to stay with me.
Miranda smiled. “I’ve got a lunch date with Marty. Haven’t seen her much lately.” She pointed at me when my shoulders slumped guiltily. “Stop feeling bad. She understands you need me.”
“What’ve you been telling her?”
“You’re still coping with the accident. That’s not a lie, you know.”
That Miranda had to clarify that statement told me that she felt maybe she wasn’t being totally honest with Marty. “I think I…we should tell her the truth. I’m close to her, too, and I think she should know. We could accidentally touch.”
I could tell by the way Miranda’s body seemed to relax that she’d been waiting to hear that. The burden of keeping my secret, especially from her partner, was a lot to carry. “That’s your decision.”
“Maybe I could go home with you after the gym tonight?”
“Sure.” Miranda’s grin was huge. “I gotta run. I’ll see you at six.”
*******
I sat in the parking lot staring at Jade’s truck, feeling completely nervous. I wasn’t sure how seeing her again was going to make me feel. I prepared myself for the chance that she might ignore me altogether. And then there was Marty. My suggestion to tell her had been bouncing around for a while. It wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing when I suggested it to Miranda. Once it was out of my mouth, I committed myself to doing it because I was afraid that if I mulled it over any longer, I’d lose my nerve.
Miranda’s car pulled up alongside mine, and I released a long breath before I got out. “You okay?” she asked the minute she opened her door.
“Nope, but I’m ready as I’ll ever be.”
We walked into the gym and dropped our bags off in the locker room. As we walked down the hall, I had a feeling I was about to walk out on stage when we entered the gym. My performance would have to be a good one. I knew I couldn’t hide behind a mask of stoicism. I’d have to let my real feelings show on my face. That in itself terrified me.
I felt a rush of breath escape when I walked into the room. Jade had her back to me, her head down, as she pushed down the feet of some poor soul doing leg lifts. I could faintly hear her counting above the din of noise in the crowded gym.
“You really need to stretch out today. You haven’t been here in a while,” Miranda reminded me.
I went to work on my legs, trying to keep my eyes on the mat, but they betrayed me, and my gaze drifted to the mirror, and there it met Jade’s. Her brow was furrowed as she slowly nodded at me. I couldn’t control the muscles in my face. I had no idea what my expression looked like, but I mouthed a silent “thanks,” and she nodded again. It was her place of work; she didn’t have any choice but to be there, but I did. That she let me return meant a lot.
It was lower body night, and after Miranda and I finished our cardio, we moved to the leg presses. I had done a pretty good job of not looking at Jade, but I could sense her gaze upon me. I was on my stomach hoisting the weights nearly to my backside. They seemed heavier than before, but I figured that since I’d been away for a while that it would take more exertion.
What I had failed to realize was that I had not checked the weight. It dawned on me that the reason I was having so much trouble was because I was lifting too much. That thought was going through my head when the muscle in the back of my right thigh felt like it was curling into a ball. I let out a groan, maybe a squeal, and rolled onto the floor.
I was writhing when Miranda squatted beside me. “What’s going on?”
“I think I pulled something,” I grunted out breathlessly.
I heard Jade’s voice then. “Don’t touch her. She doesn’t like to be touched.”
I looked up, and she had her arms spread, keeping the other trainers from getting to me. The crowd around us was looking at Jade and Miranda like they were callous assholes for not helping me. “She’s right, let me just breathe for a minute,” I said between clenched teeth.
“Sloan, try to stretch that leg out,” Jade said. I could hear the stress in her voice. “Pull it back toward your shoulder.”
I was in so much pain, I could barely lift it. Miranda grabbed me by the ankle and gently pushed. The relief was such a surprise, and I was so lost in it that the images stayed just at the edge of my mind’s eye. I felt her anxiety and sympathy, though.
I looked past Miranda at Jade, and I could see the perplexed expression on her face. Miranda was touching me, and I was certain that mystified her. Her brow relaxed, and her head cocked slightly to the side. Something I couldn’t decipher passed over her face for a fleeting second. Her eyes met mine. “Do you feel relief?”
“Yes,” I pushed out breathlessly. “But it fee
ls like if she lets go that it will ball up again.”
“You need to stand. Miranda, slowly lower her leg and see if you can get her up,” Jade said.
When Miranda released me, I felt the muscle coiling back, and I rolled onto my stomach, gasping. She looped her arms under my shoulders and tried to pull me. I was in such a hurry to get up that my left foot kept sliding from beneath me. I couldn’t stop the whimpers that were preceding a full-blown cry.
Miranda released me, and I felt two sets of hands reach under my arms. The pain was so intense, it was still at the forefront of my mind. Emotions felt like they were hitting me on both sides of my body. To my right was compassion and empathy. I knew that was Miranda. To my left, the same, but tinged with fear and the knowledge that she couldn’t stand to see me hurt, and I knew it was Jade.
They walked me over to the wall where I put my hands and straightened my legs. I felt their touch slip away and my emotions return. “Thank you both,” I rasped out. Not caring who was standing around, I said, “I know what you risked to help me.”
Jade’s voice was tremulous. “You need to go home and get off that leg. Ice and elevate it as soon as you can, okay?”
Miranda walked me to her car and helped me inside. I had to leave my mine behind. There was no way I could work the clutch. “Spend the night with me. You were coming over anyway. We’ll get your car in the morning.”
I pushed hard against the floor board to keep the muscle in my leg from contacting. Miranda climbed into the driver’s side and drove slowly. “I couldn’t get into your mind. The pain was so bad, I couldn’t have done it if I had wanted to.”
“Jade was touching you, too. Was it the same with her?”
“Yeah, but I felt both of your emotions. I could feel sympathy coming from both sides.”
“That’s something.” Miranda’s fingers tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “I wonder if intense arousal would have the same effect,” she said with a smile.
“She touched me knowing what could happen, but she did it anyway because I was hurting.”
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