Hands. Tongues. Lips.
They were everywhere.
He entered me slowly. Achingly so. It hurt. A lot.
But the pain was secondary to the incredible closeness I felt when he pushed inside me.
It was a feeling I’d never forget.
Ever.
“Imi. I love you. God I love you,” he groaned into my mouth as we started to move together. His tears fell on my face, mingling with my own.
We sobbed.
We laughed.
We promised.
We fell apart.
And when it was over I knew that neither of us would ever be the same.
I loved him with the foolish loyalty of a naïve heart. Every piece of me belonged to the lost, lonely boy who had saved me. He held on and I would never let go.
Because I knew that when I gave him my heart, he’d never give it back.
“Let’s leave. Today. Somewhere new. Far away from here,” I said afterwards. Yoss’s fingers trailed lazily up and down my back. Sweat cooled on fevered skin.
He kissed the top of my head that was tucked comfortably underneath his chin.
“Where will we go?” he asked, sounding tired.
“The beach. Remember our story?” I rolled onto my stomach, propping myself up so that I could look at him.
Yoss grinned. “Yeah, I remember it. Can I try telling it this time?”
“Only if you get it right,” I teased.
Yoss sat up, leaning against the headboard. He pulled me along with him so that I was settled against his chest. “Once upon a time there was a girl from a happy family. She was loved and adored and never wanted for anything. She spent her days surrounded by friends and family. She smiled all the time, never having a reason to cry.”
“So far so good,” I interjected.
“Shh, let me finish,” Yoss chastised gently, giving me a squeeze. “Then one day she met a boy who was just as happy. And together they realized how wonderful life could be. He wanted to take care of her. She wanted to stay by his side.”
I loved the sound of his contentment. His hope.
“The girl had never been to the beach.”
“Neither had the boy,” I added, just as I was supposed to.
Yoss ran his hand through my hair. “Nope, neither had the boy. So they decided to run away to the shore. Where they could dip their toes in the water and walk on the sand. Because everything was always better when they were together.”
“Is that our plan? To live our story? Go to the beach and walk on the sand?” I asked him, barely able to contain the gleeful anticipation that bubbled up inside me.
“That’s our plan,” Yoss agreed.
I sat up and turned to him. “Promise?”
He nodded.
I let out a squeal and launched myself at him, kissing every inch of his face. I straddled him and only when he moaned did the laughter stop.
It wasn’t until later that I realized he had never given me the words.
His promise had remained silent.
Present
I didn’t want to go to work, but I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. Even if all I wanted to do was stay in bed with Yoss curled up around me.
He was still sleeping when I quietly got out of bed the next morning. We had slept together. And it had been more intimate than sex could ever be. I woke up several times. Not because of Yoss’s nightmares, which there were none, but because, even in my sleep, I had to remind myself that this was real.
I got out of bed and grabbed my clothes as quickly as possible. I got ready in the hall bathroom so as to not wake him.
When I came back into the bedroom a while later, Yoss wasn’t in bed. I heard the sound of retching coming from my bathroom.
I gently knocked on the door and waited. I could hear water running in the sink. “Yeah?” his muffled response finally came.
“Is everything okay?” I asked. The door opened and Yoss came out. His skin was much more jaundiced than it had been yesterday and I could smell the acrid scent of vomit in the air.
“You were sick,” I stated, not asked.
Yoss closed the bathroom door behind him quickly. “I think it was something I ate,” he excused.
“You didn’t really eat anything last night,” I pointed out. In fact I couldn’t remember him eating anything. We had been too busy with other things.
“Please don’t worry, Imogen.” Yoss ran his hand down my arm and squeezed my fingers lightly. “Don’t you need to get to work?”
We walked to the kitchen and I turned on the coffee maker. I noticed Yoss was leaning heavily against the counter as though he couldn’t stay upright.
“Why don’t you come with me to the hospital. You need to see Dr. Howell. Nausea isn’t something we should brush off. You’re due for another round of blood tests anyway,” I remarked worriedly.
Yoss forced himself upright. “Who should I see?” he asked, frowning, seeming confused.
A lump formed in my throat.
“Dr. Howell. Your physician. Remember the guy with the glasses and bushy, white hair?” He seemed to be having a hard time remembering.
This was bad.
Very, very bad.
“Dr. Howell,” he repeated, gnawing on his bottom lip.
I nodded. “Yes, Dr. Howell,” I replied calmly, even if I felt anything but calm.
“My blood work is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll bring it all up with him then. I’m just a little tired this morning, that’s all. We were up pretty late.” Yoss gave me a tired grin.
“You were throwing up,” I pushed. “And you can barely stand up straight.”
Yoss straightened his back and held out his hands. “See. I’m fine. No limping or excruciating agony.” He poured some coffee into a mug and held it out for me. “You can’t miss work. I thought I’d head over to see my old boss. Sweet talk him a little bit before I hit him up for some work.” He slowly crossed the room and I watched his every movement like a hawk. Was he stumbling? Did he wince in pain?
He kissed my temple, breathing me in. “If we’re going to have that fresh start, I need to do it right. And that means getting a real job. I can’t get that by lying around on the couch wallowing. I believe you were the one that told me not to do that.”
“Yoss, I really think you should come in to see Dr. Howell,” I insisted.
He kissed me again, this time on the lips and it was hard to hold onto any thought that didn’t have to do with touching him over and over again.
“If I feel bad later I will go to see him. I promise.” Kiss. Kiss.
“Okay. If you promise,” I replied weakly. Yoss took my coffee cup and washed it before handing me my phone and car keys.
“I’ll see you at home later.” His smile was so convincing.
I had no reason to doubt him.
“At home,” I grinned.
“Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” I had never seen him so happy.
I couldn’t focus at work. My stomach was in knots and my mind kept drifting.
To Yoss. To his promises. To his smile.
To kissing him last night. It had been familiar and exciting. My heart hammered in my chest at the memory.
“You’re my smile, Imi. Always have been.” He kissed me with abandon. A passion unleashed. “Always will be,” he murmured into my mouth.
“Muffin?”
I startled, dropping the pen I was nibbling and knocked over my coffee cup.
“Whoa, it’s only a muffin!” Jason exclaimed. “You were a million miles away just then. I said your name three times.”
I looked up at my boss and gave him a wan smile. “Maybe I was ignoring you on purpose.”
“And maybe you should share what has put that silly grin on your face while you’re reading case notes for—” He peered over the desk at the paperwork for my new case. An elderly woman who came in with a broken hip and would need placement in a residential facility upon release, given that she had no family to take care of her
. “Agnes Sutton. Aged eighty-four. Broken hip. No family. I’m not really sure why that’s making you smile like you’ve won the lottery.”
Jason sat down across from me and unwrapped the muffin and took a bite of it.
“I thought that was for me,” I asked.
Jason shrugged. “You waited too long. I figured it was fair game.” He finished the muffin and wiped his mouth before folding his hands across his stomach. “I spoke with Dr. Howell this morning and he told me that you haven’t completed Mr. Frazier’s discharge paperwork. That they were still waiting on a forwarding address. That you hadn’t updated him on Mr. Frazier’s placement. I told Dr. Howell you were out ‘sick’ yesterday but you’d update the file today.” Jason gave me a piercing look. “I also told Dr. Howell that you are my best employee and that not completing necessary paperwork wasn’t your style. So I figured I’d ask you what was going on. Because you’re not acting like yourself. At all.”
“Oh, is there a meeting going on that I didn’t know about?” Tess asked, poking her head around the door. I had never been more relieved to see my co-worker.
“Muffins? Jason, you haven’t brought me any,” she scolded, coming into my office and standing by the door with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I’m buttering up Imogen so she’ll take on another new case. Think it’ll work?” Jason joked.
Tess giggled. “Our Im is a do-gooder. Of course she’ll take it. No muffins required. So you should give them all to me.”
“Hey, I need convincing. I want all the muffins.” I glared at Tess who smirked.
“Girls, girls, there’s enough muffins to go around.” Jason paused. “Why does it feel like we’ve entered into uncomfortable sexual harassment territory?”
Tess and I laughed.
Jason got to his feet. “Okay, Imogen, please update Mr. Frazier’s paperwork and go talk to Dr. Howell. This is your priority this morning.”
“Got it,” I remarked a little sullenly, not looking forward to that conversation. Mostly because I had no idea what I was going to tell him.
After Jason left Tess sat down and crossed her legs. “Spill it.”
I gave her a look of confusion. “What am I spilling?”
“You’re wearing a shirt with cleavage. You never show off the goods. And you’re smiling. Really smiling. It’s weird.”
I looked down at the file in hands in an effort to hide my face. “Maybe I’m just in a good mood.”
Tess pointed at me. “See. That’s what I’m talking about. You’re never in a good mood!”
“Sheesh, you make me sound like a pain in the ass,” I muttered.
“And you kind of are. But that’s just you. So I’m not sure what’s going on to make you look all rosy and stuff, but you’re going to spill it now.” Tess leaned forward and folded her hands in front of her. “Pretty, please. Tell me.” She batted her eyelashes for good measure.
“It’s really nothing—”
“It’s a guy,” Tess announced. I flushed.
“Yep, it’s a guy. I can tell. Who is it? Stop being so damn coy, Im!” Tess pouted.
“I can be happy without it being about a guy, you know,” I said, flipping through the meaningless paperwork in front of me.
“Sure you can, but that look.” She pointed at my face. “That one right there is because of a man. And I want to know who he is.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, okay, so there’s a man,” I admitted, knowing that if I didn’t toss her a bone she’d never leave me alone.
Tess squealed. “Who is it?”
“Someone from my past. Someone I never thought I’d see again,” I told her.
“Oh, juicy! A second chance romance! Those are my favorite!” Tess clapped her hands together. “You’re being very stingy with the details,” she scolded.
“It’s new, Tess. I want to keep it to myself for a little while,” I said with a smile.
Tess grinned. “I get it. That’s fine. But once the bloom has faded, I want to know all about it.”
I thought about Yoss kissing me last night. About waking up beside him this morning.
I didn’t think the bloom would ever fade.
It had been growing stronger for a long, long time.
“Sure, Tess. When the bloom has faded.”
“Yoss! Are you here? I bought a couple of bags of Hershey’s Kisses, just for you.”
I never took lunch off the premises, but today I couldn’t make myself stay. I had tried calling the house a few times but no one answered. I didn’t really expect Yoss to pick up the phone, but I tried anyway.
I went by to see Dr. Howell, but he was dealing with a patient most of the morning.
I started to fill out the updated paperwork in Yoss’s file.
I never got very far.
Because I was antsy.
So around noon I told Jason I was going home for lunch and quickly made my escape before he could interrogate me over my deviation from norm.
I made a stop at the grocery store on my way and picked up a couple of sandwiches and a few bags of Yoss’s favorite candy. Hershey’s Kisses.
“Hello? You here?”
I dropped my keys and the grocery bag with the candy on the coffee table before walking into the kitchen. Yoss had obviously been cleaning. I had never seen the place so spotless.
The coffee cups from this morning had been washed and were on the drying rack. He had scrubbed down the counter tops and the stove was so shiny that it practically sparkled.
“Yoss?” I called out again. “I’m home for lunch. I brought you a sandwich.”
Silence.
Eerie quiet.
My throat was uncomfortably tight and I felt a strange anxiety fluttering in my gut.
Maybe he was still talking to his old boss. That was it. He simply wasn’t home. Nothing to worry about.
So why did I feel dread like a lump in my chest?
I walked down the hallway, checking the bathroom. The spare room was also empty.
“Yoss?” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
Stop panicking. You’re being ridiculous, I told myself.
Why did I feel like my world was collapsing?
“If you’re not here, I’m going to feel like a total dumbass for yelling all over the house,” I called out.
I pushed open the door to my bedroom. The curtains were open and sunlight streamed through the window. It seemed Yoss had been at work in here as well. My dresser was dusted and the books that had been piled precariously in the corner were lined up neatly on a shelf.
He had folded my clothes and put them in the rocking chair in the corner. My dirty clothes that normally lay strewn across the floor had been put in the hamper. I felt a margin of mortification at the thought of him picking up my dirty under garments.
Then I noticed him lying on my bed, curled in on himself. His back to the door.
“Yoss?”
I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my hand on his arm. “I brought you some lunch…”
He didn’t move. Or acknowledge me in anyway.
“Yoss.”
I leaned over him to see his face and it was then that I noticed the blood on the pillow beneath his head. It had dripped from his nose and splattered onto the white linen.
“Yoss,” I said again, giving him a shake. I tried to stay calm.
Maybe he was only sleeping. He looked like he had just closed his eyes for a minute.
“Hey, sleepy head. I got you some Hershey’s Kisses. Your favorite.” I bent down and kissed his cheek. Warm. He was so, so warm.
But he was so, so still.
The blood continued to drip from his nose.
“Yoss,” I whispered. I knew.
“Yoss!” I said louder. “Yoss!”
Over and over again I screamed his name.
I pulled out my phone and was about to dial nine-one-one when he moaned a little.
“What’s going on?” he asked, sounding groggy, trying to open his e
yes.
“You’re bleeding. I couldn’t wake you up!” I told him, trying to control my impending hysterics.
“What’s going on?” he asked again, trying to sit up, but clearly having no energy, collapsed back onto the pillow. “Where am I?” He looked around my bedroom, his eyes flitting over me.
“It’s me Imi. You’re in my house. Don’t you remember?” I took his hands and held them between my palms. “You’re here with me.”
“Imi,” he sighed, closing his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to keep them open. “I’m just so tired.”
“Yoss, please don’t go to sleep again. We need to get you to the hospital. Now!”
Yoss opened his eyes again, squinting at me. He frowned. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be…?” His voice trailed off.
“At work. I was at work. But I wanted to come home to check on you. To see how you were doing. I brought you lunch.”
“I love you,” he whispered, closing his eyes again. He made a strange strangled noise in the back of his throat.
I froze. He hadn’t said those words. Not in fifteen years. It terrified me that he was saying them now.
“I love you,” he said again, his voice sounding as though he were choking on glass.
“Come on, Yoss! If you don’t want me to call an ambulance, we’re going to the hospital right now!” I pulled on his arm, making him sit up.
“Call an ambulance? Why? They’re only a block away. Bug told me.” He wasn’t making any sense. He seemed confused. Out of sorts.
And the blood was still dripping onto his shirt. I grabbed a handful of tissues and pressed it against his nose to staunch the flow. “Hold this against your nose. Can you get to your feet?”
“I’m not sure why we need to go to the store,” Yoss murmured, slumping down.
“Yoss! Come on now, I can’t carry you. I need you to try to stand up.”
His hands fell limply to his side, his chin hitting his chest.
“Yoss!”
He didn’t wake up.
So I called nine-one-one.
One day soon we’ll dance on the sand…
Not all happy stories have happy endings.
Fifteen Years Ago
It was after ten o’clock when we woke up. Happy. Relaxed.
Before the real world crashed into our blissful bubble.
One Day Soon Page 32
