Unloved, a love story

by Katy Regnery

  “The bathroom?” I prompt.

  He rolls to his back, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands up. He rakes a hand through his hair, then offers me his hand.

  I sit up and take it, surprised that the pain in my left hip is less than it was yesterday morning. Not that I feel great, but I don’t hurt like the devil anymore.

  “I feel better,” I say, sitting on the side of the bed for a moment, bracing for the pain I’ll undoubtedly feel when I stand up.

  “Five of your incisions are looking really good. One’s a problem child. I need to take a look at it after you . . . go.”

  I nod. “Okay.”

  Today I move to the bathroom a little faster, and it’s not as strange to me as it was yesterday. I lower myself carefully to the toilet seat, remembering that I don’t need to flush when I get up. As I am washing my hands in the sink, I look up at my face. It’s still battered, and maybe I’m just used to it now, but I think it looks better than it did yesterday morning.

  Good night, angel.

  The words hum through my head.

  Hmm. When he called me angel a few minutes ago, I assumed it was part of a dream he was having. But now I wonder—did he call me that on purpose?

  “Cassidy?” I call as I open the bathroom door, but there’s no need. He’s in the hallway, across from the bathroom door, waiting for me.

  “I’m here.”

  “What exactly happened yesterday?” I realize that there’s a sizable gap in my memory, but during that time, apparently, I was given a pet name. Angel. But when? How did I earn it? What did I do? What did he do?

  “What do you remember?”

  I lean against the wall in the dim hallway, staring up at him. He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and I’m wearing his dead mother’s underpants and T-shirt. It should make me uncomfortable, since we barely know each other, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me at all.

  I cut to the chase. “Why are you calling me angel?”

  His eyes widen and his cheeks flush. “You said . . . I mean . . .” He rakes his hands through his hair.

  “Here’s what I remember: we had eggs, then you offered me some books while you went to the store,” I say slowly, trying to create a timeline. “I was reading one . . . and then . . .”

  “And then . . .?”

  I finish quickly. “And then we wake up together, and you’re calling me angel.”

  He sighs, dragging his bottom lip between his teeth before releasing it. “You had a fever yesterday. A really bad one. When I came home from the store, you were burning up.”

  Jem, I’m sorry.

  Fuzzy memories start bobbing up from my subconscious. Intense heat. Memories of Jem. Cassidy taking care of me.

  “I . . . I was pretty out of it?”

  “You were. The fever didn’t break until after midnight.”

  “I don’t remember much. What . . . what was I doing?”

  “You were talking about someone named Jem when I got here. Upset. You had an infection. I had to open one of the incisions, clean it, flush it, and resew it.”

  “My God.” I am not uncomfortable that Cassidy tended to me, because he’s given me no reason not to trust him, but I really don’t like not being able to remember. “Are you a doctor?”

  His lips twitched. “You asked me that last night. The answer is no . . . I’m, well, I’m sort of a paramedic.”

  “Sort of?”

  He grins. “You asked me that last night too.”

  “And . . .?”

  He grimaces. “I’m not actually certified . . . but I took the test and aced it.”

  Another strange Cassidy-ism. I’m starting to get used to them.

  “Huh. Okay. So I was feverish and out of it, and you fixed me up . . . again.”

  He shrugs but nods, still standing across from me in the hallway. I suddenly realize that this is the longest I have been out of bed in days. It feels good too. The pain in my hip is achy, but not sharp and burning like yesterday. It’s a dull and constant throb, and I know instinctively that this is good news, not bad. I’m healing.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “I shouldn’t have left you,” he says, frowning at me, his gaze intense. “I won’t do that again. I promise.”

  His eyes, so intriguing, nail mine, and I feel the gravitas of his promise meet my body like something actual, like something . . . physical. It makes me so aware of him, I backtrack on my earlier thought about not wanting him sexually. I think maybe I do.

  “It’s okay,” I say, my voice a little breathless.

  “It isn’t okay,” he insists. “You’re my patient, my . . . my guest. I should have been here for you.”

  I take a deep breath and can feel some of my stitches pull a little. “Seriously? You were doing me a favor. Stop beating yourself up.”

  He looks down at his bare feet, eyebrows furrowed, lips straight and thin.

  “Cassidy,” I say sharply. He looks up at me. “You saved me. Again. Thank you.”

  He gulps, staring at me hard before nodding. “I’ll do better, Brynn. I promise.”

  I’m about to say that he’s already doing great, but I sense we’ll just keep going around in circles, so I don’t. Speaking of circles, as much as I like being out of bed, I’m starting to feel a little dizzy now.

  “I think I better get back to bed.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “No,” I say, starting back down the hall, toward the bedroom. “I’m good.”

  “Want half a Percocet?”

  I shake my head, blaming part of my memory lapse on the strong painkiller. “I think I’ll tough it out from now on, okay? I don’t like being out of it.”

  “Brynn,” he calls to me, just as I’m about to turn the corner.

  I stop to face him. He’s still standing across from the open bathroom door.

  “You asked me a question.”

  He takes a few steps toward me, his bare feet silent on the carpeted floor. I try not to check him out, but the way his jeans are slung low on his hips almost gives me the shivers. He’s tall and lean and muscular, beautiful in a messy way, and I don’t know if this is some sort of fucked-up Florence Nightingale–style crush on him because he’s taking care of me, or if it’s more, but my heart skips a beat, and my stomach fills with butterflies.

  “I called you angel at one point last night,” he says softly, like he’s confessing something to me. “I don’t know why. I was . . . I was about to give you a shot of lidocaine, and I knew it would hurt. I called you angel just before I stuck you.”

  I don’t have a memory of this, but it feels right, sounds right.

  “I don’t care if you call me angel,” I say softly.

  He grins at me thoughtfully, and I feel my whole body warm up in reaction to the small smile.

  “That’s what you said last night,” he says lightly.

  “I did?”

  He nods. “And just so you know, I was in your bed because you . . . you asked me to hold you.”

  I don’t remember asking him to do this either, but I know it’s true. Not just because I trust Cassidy to tell me the truth, but because there is something so natural, so nice, so potentially addictive, about sleeping beside him that I long for it even now, after a whole night spent together.

  “Thank you,” I whisper.

  His eyes are forest green and navy blue when he nods at me slowly.

  I turn back to my room and crawl into bed, leaving the curtain open, and wishing he was next to me as I close my eyes and fall back to sleep.

  Cassidy

  After I make Brynn some toast with butter, sugar, and cinnamon, I spend the morning outside, milking Annie and mucking out her stable, and collecting eggs from the girls and vegetables from the greenhouse. I spray organic pesticide on the indoor plants, and change out the tray in the composting toilet, dumping what’s been cultivated about a quarter mile from the house, in the fertilizer heap. I decide to leave wood chopping, c
istern filter changing and treating, and solar panel cleaning for the afternoon.

  At about noon, I head back inside to make some lunch and check on Brynn.

  The curtain to her room is open, which must be her doing, since I’ve been careful to leave it closed, and I peek in to find her sitting up and reading Then Came You, by Lisa Kleypas.

  Like most of the other books in the house, I’ve read it at least a dozen times, and though I prefer science fiction and fantasy to romance, it’s among the better choices in Mama’s old love story collection, which is why I offered it to Brynn.

  Well, that, and because there is a quote in the book that I should keep in mind while Brynn is visiting: “Sooner or later everyone was driven to love someone they could never have.”

  A good reminder . . . especially since my thoughts are increasingly—heck, constantly—of Brynn. And my feelings for her? Growing exponentially. After last night’s fever scare, I know that losing her will hurt. When she returns to the world, I will grieve the loss of my angel.

  And you know what?

  So be it.

  All morning I have, more or less, resigned myself to that fate. I’ll have a lifetime to get over her once she goes. I’m determined to enjoy her—her company, her smiles, her occasional chuckles, her warm body sleeping beside mine—while she’s here.

  Although, if I am honest, my warm and happy feelings for Brynn are compromised by another, darker, feeling that I haven’t known in a long, long time: jealousy.

  And one question has circled relentlessly in my head since yesterday:

  Who.

  Is.

  Jem?

  “Hi.”

  “Uh . . . oh!” I stutter. “Hi.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Just a minute. Came in to check on you.”

  She holds up the book, then grins at me. “I like this one.”

  “Me too.”

  “Wait. What?” She smiles so wide, I wonder if it hurts her healing lip. “You read this?”

  I shrug. “When you live out here, you read everything you can.” Five, six, seven, twenty times.

  “Huh,” she says, still grinning. “It’s good. He wants to marry her.”

  I cross my arms over my chest. “Should she marry him?”

  “I don’t know yet.” She looks back down at the book. “I mean, I know she will because they’re the main characters, but . . . I don’t know. I’m not sure they’d be good for each other yet. She’s wild and crazy. He’s . . .”

  “What?”

  “Will he be happy with a wild woman? Or does he want some prim society girl?”

  “I guess you’ll just have to see what happens.”

  “I guess so.”

  I am so curious about Jem, I use this moment of speaking loosely about fictional relationships to try to figure out who he is.

  “Were you ever married?”

  “No,” she says softly, her smile quickly fading.

  Part of me feels like I should apologize and slink away for violating her privacy, but my jealousy, hot and low in my stomach, boils up, refusing to back down. I want to know. I need to know who he is and if he has a claim on her.

  “Who’s Jem?”

  Her eyes widen, and she takes a soft, jerking breath. “W-what?”

  “You mentioned his name yesterday when you were . . . out of it.”

  She nods distractedly, still staring at my face with sad, surprised eyes. “Oh. Right.”

  My arms are still crossed over my chest, and though I don’t take pleasure in her distress, it’s the collateral damage of assuaging my curiosity and, therefore, jealousy. Negative emotions like envy, anger, and greed frighten me because I feel sure that the seven deadly sins are even deadlier for someone like me, who has the blood of a murderer in his veins. Part of being Cassidy Porter means handling such feelings head-on and quickly, lest they become a gateway for behavior. I won’t let them fester. I won’t let them guide me into darkness if I can help it.

  Realizing that I’m patiently waiting for an answer, she furrows her eyebrows, then says, “I was engaged to Jem. But he . . . he died.”

  Later I will feel ashamed of the sharp relief I feel at hearing her words. But for now? I let that relief cover me like a blanket, soothing the beast within me.

  “I’m . . .” I uncross my arms and clear my throat. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She nods, reaching up to swipe at her eyes, which I now notice are glistening. “He was a good man. He was from here. Maine. Bangor, but we met in California.”

  “How long ago did he . . .?”

  “Two years,” she says, sniffling, then offering me a brave smile. “He was shot. He was, um, he was at a concert. He was caught in one of those mass shootings.”

  “Mass shootings?” I’ve never heard of such a thing.

  She takes a deep breath. “It’s when, um, someone goes to a crowded place and shoots a bunch of people. That’s called a mass shooting.” She exhales slowly, like she’s forcing herself to let go of memories that hurt worse than any of her healing injuries. “I lost him.”

  My shame doubles as I realize I have forced her to talk about something incredibly painful just to satisfy my jealousy. Before now, I have never heard of a mass shooting, but for me, with only history as context, it conjures images of Nazi soldiers firing on innocent people wearing yellow stars pinned to their coats. The mental image horrifies me.

  When I search her face, I see that same elapsed horror in her eyes. She has had to come to terms with this mass shooting concept—something so unspeakable, it should be impossible.

  My heart aches for what she has endured.

  “God, Brynn. I’m really, really sorry.”

  She gives me another brave smile and nods. “He was a good person.”

  “I’m sure he was, if you loved him.”

  “I did love him,” she says softly. “I didn’t want to live for a while after I lost him.”

  “I lost my mother to cancer,” I hear myself saying. “I was close to her. It was . . . awful.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Thirteen years,” I say, though the number surprises me because it feels much more recent.

  “How old were you?”

  “Fourteen.”

  She winces, and a small sound of pain escapes her lips. Leaning to her left, she places the book on the bedside table, then reaches her hands out to me.

  Gramp wasn’t much for grieving. He loved my mother, and I know it hurt him to lose her, but he poured his grief into work, keeping busy and exhausting himself before bed every night. Me? I had no one to talk to, no one to hold me or let me cry about the parent I’d lost.

  Except now . . . now here is this angel-woman holding out her hands to me in sympathy and compassion. I take them in mine, lowering myself to the bed beside her, drinking in the soft kindness of her eyes as she squeezes my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “You were so young. I can’t imagine losing my parents. They’ve . . . I mean, they were everything to me after I lost Jem.” She gasps softly. “Hey! Did you manage to call them?”

  “Your folks? Yeah. I left a message. I said you’d been injured, but you were okay and you’d call them when you could.”

  “You’re very kind, Cass.” She breathes deeply and nods, still holding my hands. “Your mom must have been amazing.”

  She’s always been there for you, son.

  Gramp’s words from our talk in the greenhouse come back to me so fast, you’d think he just said them yesterday.

  “She was,” I say, wondering how bad it must have gotten for her in those years after my father’s arrest and conviction. She never really talked about it, but it must have been hell. She would have been a pariah, and yet she protected me the very best she could.

  “You okay?” asks Brynn, her voice gentle.

  I look up at her and nod. “I don’t talk about her much. It’s . . .”

  “I know,” says Brynn. “
It’s sad. And it hurts.”

  I nod, amazed by her empathy, by her ability to understand how I’m feeling. Somehow it lessens the sadness in that moment. And the pain. As I look into her eyes, she smiles back at me, and the miracle of it is that it’s possible I might be doing the same for her. That, by sharing our pain with each other, we aren’t doubling it, but halving it.

  “You know?” she says, squeezing my hands again. “He would have . . . he would have loved it here. Jem.” She turns to the windows and looks out at the mountain. “Oh, man, he would have really loved this place.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He loved Katahdin.” She sighs softly, facing me. Her eyes drop to our joined hands, and she gently untangles hers from mine, pulling them away. “Can I tell you something?”

  “Sure. Anything.”

  “The whole reason I was here was to bury his cell phone on the mountain. About a week ago, I took it out of an evidence bag for the first time, and I realized it had a smudge of blood on it. I came here to bury that small part of Jem up on Katahdin. I thought I should do that.”

  “That’s what you were doing? When you were attacked?”

  And suddenly I realize that last night wasn’t the first time I heard Jem’s name. I remember the first time I saw her—the way her friends kept asking her to turn back with them and the way she kept refusing:

  I wish I could. But this is something I need to do . . . I’m coming, Jem. I’m coming.

  “You were burying him,” I whisper, running a hand through my hair as the pieces come together.

  “Sort of,” she says, unaware that I’d been watching. “His body was already buried, of course. But . . . I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to say goodbye in my own way.”

  I think of Mama and Gramp buried side by side by Harrington Pond, and I understand exactly what she’s saying. Saying goodbye to those we’ve loved and lost isn’t just about burying them, but also about having a special place to remember them. Brynn wanted that place to be Katahdin.

  “The phone was in my backpack,” she says. “Didn’t work out the way I hoped it would.”

  And now I understand completely.

  She wanted to bury her fiancé on Katahdin, and the chance to make that happen had been stolen from her.