by Vivian Lux
My sister’s face was frozen on the screen. I took a deep breath, ready to repeat myself when her disembodied voice came out of the speaker. “How much?”
Abby knew why I couldn’t ask our parents. My mother still considered both of us traitors for not following her into the family business she “slaved like a dog to build” for us. But while Abriella had at least chosen an exciting and vaguely glamorous career that allowed her to travel the world as an international flight attendant, I’d chosen to, in the words of my mother, “carry pans of shit for a living,” and the fact that I’d wanted to be a nurse since I was a child meant nothing to her.
“There was a mix-up at the registrar,” I told Abby quickly. There wasn’t enough time to go into detail, not with the water running upstairs. “I need twenty nine hundred dollars to be able to graduate on time. Otherwise I can’t take my boards.”
The picture unfroze and suddenly Abby was leaning in really close. “—wire you the money,” she was saying.
“Oh thank god.”
“But Everly. One thing.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I need it back,” she said, blowing out a long exhale. “You know I’m saving every scrap I can for the wedding.”
My sister was marrying a pilot. Or at least that was her claim. The engagement period had stretched out to three and a half years now and the wedding date still wasn’t set. “When do you need it by?” I said, my throat tightening a little.
“Like in a month,” my sister said at the same time my mother’s voice rang out from behind me, “There’s my globe-trotting girl!”
My mother still smelled like sweat and sugar from the night before. She usually didn’t wake from her afternoon nap until dinnertime. The sound of the Skype call connecting must have woken her. “Hi mom,” Abby said with an easy smile as my mother shoved her face into the frame.
I swallowed. With my mom here now, there was no way to plead for more time. How was I supposed to pay Abby back in a month? This bought me time to take my boards but I was still right back where I started. Instead of a week, I now needed a month. I still needed money. Fast.
“How are you, honey?” my mom shouted in my ear, but it wasn’t me she was talking to. I inhaled sharply and leaned to the left to make space for her, only to bump into my father as he sandwiched me in from the other side. “Where are you now?” he shouted so loudly she didn’t need Skype to hear him.
“Hanoi,” Abby said. “I fly the Kyoto leg tomorrow. Then a hop to Tokyo before we make the long haul to LA.”
“Tokyo! How exciting!” Mom cooed. I could see her maniacally proud grin in the small window up to the right of the screen.
“Watch out for Godzilla!” my dad boomed. He made the same joke every time my sister flew to Japan.
“I will,” she said with a long-suffering smile.
“I’m glad you called. I wanted to tell you that they’re doing weddings at the lakefront up in Reckless Falls now.” My mother was suddenly all business. She wanted this wedding seemingly more than my sister did. “With catering from that new restaurant, Indigo?”
“It’s not new, Mom,” I murmured, but she ignored me.
“And I was just thinking, what a wonderful venue, you know? So classy and impressive with the water right there, you could—“
“Mom,” Abriella sighed. “I can’t talk about this right now, okay? I have three hours to shower and sleep before I have to get on a plane again.”
“Oh well yes, of course.” My mom was instantly deferential. “Make sure you take care of yourself, okay?”
“And watch out for Godzilla!” my Dad added, cracking himself up.
The call ended and my parents stepped back from crowding me. I inhaled sharply and unclenched my fists, absentmindedly rubbing the half moons my fingernails had dug into my palms.
My mom headed to the coffee maker. My dad yawned and leaned over me. Before I realized what he was doing he had grabbed all my carefully arranged notecards and jumbled them into a pile.
“Dad,” I said as I grabbed his arm, “I’m studying.”
“It’s almost dinnertime,” my mom called from the corner of the kitchen. My dad nodded and dumped an armload of notebooks and study aids onto the floor by my schoolbag. I blinked slowly and tried to feel outraged but the most I could muster was a sigh.
My parents ate at four in the afternoon and then went back to bed until two in the morning. That was the start of their day as the premier bakery in town. It had always been like this growing up and I hadn’t realized how odd it was until I entered the real world and realized that my schedule never matched with the rest of society. I could never have friends over. I could never even really go over to friends’ houses because my parents expected me to have dinner at four with them. And on nights when I didn’t have a clinical, the expectation was that I’d be home at 9:30pm, “so mom won’t worry,” according to my dad. I was the only twenty-two year old with a curfew on the planet, I was sure of it.
I sighed again. Then I stood up. I could start a fight and insist they let me finish studying, or I could give in and disappear into my room and allow them to forget I lived here in the first place.
But I was saved from having to make that decision by the sound of the doorbell.
We all froze. Both of my parents were in their bathrobes. “Go see who it is,” my mom instructed, tightened the belt of her robe.
I started for the door and then turned back and pointedly closed my laptop before sliding it into my bag.
The doorbell rang again. “Coming!” I shouted, feeling an exasperation that seemed completely out of proportion to the situation, but that was normal for me. I was used to being angry when there was no reason to be. At least I’d learned to hide it now so my mother no longer called me irrational.
I went to the never-used front door and stood on my tiptoes to look out the narrow rectangular window at the top.
Then bounced back down and took an involuntary step back in surprise.
“Who is it?” my mother called from the kitchen.
I slowly rose back up on my toes, convinced I had hallucinated. Then I wondered if I had somehow been sucked back in time to ten years ago and my deepest, dearest twelve-year-old fantasy was inexplicably coming true.
How else to explain Jonah King at my door?
Of course, there was the other, more practical explanation of his family being our neighbors, but my heart wasn’t feeling particularly practical to see the same hazel eyes that had looked out from the posters that adorned my bedroom growing up.
“It’s Jonah,” I said, and tore open the door so fast it banged against the wall.
Jonah King was standing on my porch. Smiling at me. And even though I wasn’t a pathetic neighbor girl with a debilitating crush anymore, one look at him had me feeling thirteen again. “Hi Everly,” he said in the voice that had launched me into puberty.
Some part of me squealed internally that he knew my name. Then I remembered that yes, once again, his family lived just up the road. We could see their roof from our kitchen and when the sun set, the shadow of it cut across our front lawn. Every day the Kings literally overshadowed us.
His half-self-deprecating, half-self-assured grin was as good as it was at the height of his career, if not better. “I’m glad you’re home.”
My heart leaped right into my throat and lodged itself there, making it difficult to speak. “Me too,” I breathed, before I realized how silly that sounded.
He pretended not to notice the blush that threatened me with spontaneous combustion. He just looked down with those hazel eyes. “You’re a nursing student, right?”
I licked my lips. There were a million reasons why Jonah might need to know this, but my mind went right to the dirty ones. I imagined him with his shirt off, asking my professional opinion on whether his muscles could get any bigger.
“I am,” I may have said. Whether he heard me or not was debatable, since my voice wasn’t working at all anymore.
“Great,” he said, rubbing his hands together.
“Well hello there, Jonah.” I had an overwhelming urge to shove my mother out of the way as she stepped into my space. “What brings one of our famous neighbors over here?”
Jonah looked at my mom so I did too and oh god, was she actually batting her eyelashes? Every instinct I had told me to back up, to fade into the background, to let her take over, but this was Jonah King here and he was here for me. “I’ve got it, mom,” I said tightly.
She looked at me like she’d forgotten I was there. But before she could scoff, Jonah nodded. “I wanted to ask Everly if she needed a job.”
“A job?” My heart started racing. A job. Money. I could pay Abby back and still finish my classes and— “What kind of job?”
“Would you mind coming with me?” He glanced at my hovering mother. “I can show you what I’m talking about.”
I was already putting on my coat.
“Dinner’s almost ready, Everly!” I could hear how irritated my mom was right now but she wanted to seem supportive in front of Jonah. “I’ll keep yours warm for you, okay?”
I didn’t thank her. I wasn’t sure I could trust my voice, walking next to Jonah the way I was. Instead of the bright sunshine and flitting butterflies of my girlish daydreams, there was gray drizzle and depressed looking squirrels, but still, I was walking next to Jonah King. I had to resist the urge to reach for his hand.
He glanced down at me. “You probably heard about Gabe, right?”
I had been studying the way the fine mist of rain clung to his stubble. “Who?”
“My brother,” he said, a little sharply.
“Right.” I snapped out of the fantasy of Jonah and dove right into the fantasy of Gabe.
Not fantasy. Memory.
But it had only been one night. And he had no idea who I was. Hell, the way I’d behaved that night, I had no idea who I was. I didn’t kiss guys in the dark like that. That wasn’t something a girl like me did.
A guy like Gabriel King, though, he probably kissed like that with girls all the time. So while that night was special to me, he hadn’t thought of it since. I was sure of it.
So I bit my lip and nodded. “Right. Gabe.” We were out on the road now, crossing the little one-lane bridge over the creek. Above us, the big rambling yellow farmhouse that had been in the King family for four generations rose like part of the landscape. “That was pretty scary, what happened to him.”
“He’s a fucking idiot,” Jonah sighed, somehow managing to make those words sound affectionate. Then he looked down at me with those hazel eyes again. “I need you to do something for me.”
I stared back up at him, hypnotized as we walked around the sloped lawn towards the back of the house. “Anything,” I breathed and dove right back in to fantasizing about Jonah and what he could possibly want. If he was heading out on tour soon, maybe he needed someone to monitor his health. I could take his vitals while he sat there looking handsome. Shirtless, of course. And of course he would probably need topical creams administered, after his shows, something to stave off the stiffness after he gave it his all onstage. I’d have to make sure to rub it deep into his muscles...
“I need you to be Gabe’s nurse.”
I stumbled a little. He reached out to grab my arm before I fell just as we pushed our way into the glass-walled sunroom that jutted out of the back of the Kings’ house. “Hey asshole!” Jonah crowed. “I found someone to wipe your ass!”
There was a huge hospital bed sitting dead center in the middle of the sunroom. The wavering light that filtered through the raindrops on the glass walls gave everything a mottled, underwater look, as if I was walking through a dream.
The man propped up in the bed looked like he was doing some dreaming too. “Shit,” Jonah hissed. “He’s asleep.”
“No need to wake him,” I said quickly. I knew Gabe had been hurt badly. It was all the town could talk about these last few weeks. How he’d survived a BASE jumping accident—which was a miracle, the ladies at my mom’s church attested—but was looking down the road of a long, arduous rehab, his daredevil days over.
But I hadn’t known just how different he would look.
My memory of Gabe King was hazy and rum-soaked for sure, but it was still a jolt to see him like this. His eyes were at half mast, lids heavy from what I assumed was a massive dose of painkillers. His sandy hair—lighter than his brother’s—was long and in desperate need of a trim, an untamed tangle that fell down along his bearded jaw. Underneath his hospital gown, I could see the dark outlines of tattoos across his rangey muscles that were somehow un-atrophied from weeks in a hospital bed. But even confined to a bed with his side bandaged and both ankles encased in booted casts, he still looked wild. Like the kind of guy who would pull a girl to him and slide his hands down to...
“Fuck,” Gabe hissed, his eyelids fluttering.
I held my breath as those hazel eyes met mine and smiled tentatively. “Hi again.” My heart was in my throat.
He blinked and then yawned. “Who’re you?” he mumbled.
Then fell back to sleep.
I licked my lips. Clearly he didn’t remember me at all. I stood there, feeling empty and blank for a long moment, surprised at myself for feeling surprised. He didn’t remember. That was a good thing, I told myself. That meant it wouldn’t be weird.
I still really needed the money, anyway. So I tamped down the competing emotions, looked up to Jonah, and smiled blandly. “When can I start?”
Chapter Three
Everly
Someone in the past twenty years had painted my car a matte black. The paint job and the lingering specter of death that hung around it all the time led me to name it The Grim Reaper, which made my dad upset since it had been his car, then my sister’s. But it was mine now. A boxy 1997 Chevy station wagon. It even looked like a hearse.
“Come on, baby,” I begged as it choked and sputtered. I had this complicated ritual to get old Grimmy started. “Come on,” I cooed, tapping the accelerator halfway down three times before flicking into neutral at the same time I turned the key.
My classmate, when she saw this ridiculous dance I performed every time I started my car, had laughed and rolled her eyes, but it hadn’t failed me, until now.
“Fuck you, come on,” I whined. But Grim sensed fear. You had to have a firm hand, and a calm heart. He could look deep inside of you like some oracle of your purest intentions. Sometimes he decided you just didn’t really need to run to the grocery store.
Thankfully, this morning Grim smiled upon me and deemed my need to leave worthy enough to choke to life. I revved his engine precisely two more times to make sure he wasn’t joking around with me, then pulled out of the driveway.
After the triumph of getting Grim started, it almost seemed criminal that I had to turn him off again so soon. I pulled into the Kings’ driveway and contemplated leaving him running, but I couldn’t afford the gas. Not until I got my first King-sized paycheck.
I stopped and grinned to myself as I headed to the back door of the Kings’ house. That was a good one, but there weren’t many people who shared my love of a good pun. My friends online might, but no one in person. I’d have to remember it and tell it to Abby next time I talked to her. Which might not be for another few weeks.
I entered through the back door. Mrs. King had given me a key, and Duke, their old dog, only raised his head a curious inch before flopping back down again. “Some watchdog,” I snorted. Then I looked around. “Gabe?” I called. “It’s Everly. You ready?”
I had only ever been inside the King house when there were people all around. They’d always thrown barbecues when the boys got home from a tour—even in the dead of winter—and as their neighbors we had an open invitation. But the house had always been full of noise and the clatter of people as curious as I was about the brothers and our town’s claim to fame. I’d never been in here when it was silent.
Mrs. King had held her job as a pa
rt-time library clerk since before I was born, gamely smiling and answering questions about her sons before directing people to the non-fiction section. That’s where she was now. And I knew that Mr. King helped out at Andolino’s Garage whenever they had a particularly finicky car come through. Claire worked for a developer in Reckless Falls, I knew that. But I had no idea where Finn, or Beau or, yeah, Jonah might be. I hadn’t expected to be alone when I came by to pick up Gabe and take him to his physical therapy appointment. I had to trust that one of them had told him I was coming in the first place.
The silence was thick. I felt strangely like a prowler and had to resist the urge to turn around and head right back out of the door again.
“Gabe?” I called, more forcefully now. I poked my head into the living room, stepping around the inert, snoring Labrador that lay like a rug in the middle of the room. Back in the sunroom, I could see the sheets were thrown back on the empty hospital bed. I’d have to change those when I got back.
“Gabe?” I said again, spinning in a slow circle in the center of the living room. The house was so quiet I could only hear little sounds. Background noises. The muffled tick of a clock somewhere. The whoosh of the heat in the vents. The faint patter of rain on the windows.
And from above me, a thump and a muffled cry.
I was running even before I registered where the sound was coming from. I took the stairs two at a time, landing in the unfamiliar upstairs. “Hello?” I called, throwing open each door in turn. Empty bedrooms and overstuffed closets were all I could find until I threw open the last door in the hallway.
It thudded into something hard and unyielding.
“Motherfucker!” Gabe cried.
The hard and unyielding object had been his head.
I clapped my hand to my mouth, dropped down to a crouch, and reached through the gap to the other side of the door. “Shit, did you fall?” I worried, reaching out and trying to find a pulse at his neck out of instinct.
He batted my hand away with an angry growl. “Who the hell are you? What are you fucking—ow!” he cried again as I tried to slide into the bathroom, only to thump the corner of the door into his head again.
