Walking Heartbreak

by Sunniva Dee

  “I had breakfast with you.”

  “Jude. That was nine hours ago. And you’ve worked after?”

  “Nadia.” His voice is stern despite the slumped posture on the bed. “I. Just. Need. To rest.”

  My next question is a make or break. “Did you take an insulin shot any time after breakfast?”

  He blows air out between lips that are unnaturally pale. “Of course. I never miss an insulin shot.”

  My point exactly.

  I don’t say anything else. I just hit up his supply of glucagon. I consider if I should take a chance on pills or go straight to the shots. He registers my rummaging in the nightstand and says, “Don’t work yourself up, babe. The gutters just worked me over is all.” He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about—that he’s in control of his bodily reactions, but I know better. Right now he isn’t.

  “Pills or syringe,” I say though I know I’ll have to decide.

  “So insistent,” he sighs. “You’re wearing me out.”

  “Shot then,” I say and pull the syringe full from the ampule it’s wrapped with.

  “A pill would work,” he breathes, already weaker. Fear for him makes me tremble, and I need to give this shot to him before my hands start shaking.

  He groans when I empty the syringe into his arm. I’m lucky—I’ve been lucky both times I’ve had to do this over the last three months. I’ve read up on how to inject it, but I’m not a nurse and will never be one. It’s a miracle no air bubbles slip in with the injection. That would be dangerous, I think… God is good and with us even though we’re bad apples disobeying our parents.

  The miracle of glucagon might never stop surprising me. Minutes later, my husband’s skin tone morphs from ghostly to his natural, golden hue. An apologetic smile stretches across his face, replacing the rigid denial painting it before. “Nadia. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Your mother told me,” I say again, just like I have before. “You’re reckless with your medicine. That’s why she didn’t want you to leave Payne Point.”

  “Yeah. Well, it doesn’t matter. I had to get you out of there, and she finally gets that,” he says firmly.

  “Sure, but it doesn’t change that you need to keep an eye on yourself. You’re an adult. You have to understand how dangerous it is for you not to eat. I won’t always be here when you forget.”

  “Hey, I take the insulin shots.”

  “As you should, but even if you’re in a hurry—have some sort of protein. Boil an egg,” I beg.

  “Yeah, yeah, bossy lady. Come here,” he whispers.

  I can’t stay mad at him. I am stubborn when it comes to his health though. “Not until you eat. I’m making hot dogs, and I want you to eat at least three,” I say.

  He chuckles low in his throat, the way he does sometimes when I crave him in the way of wives. “Okay. I owe you three hot dogs. Then afterward,” he starts, lifting to his elbows on the mattress and letting his gaze skim over my body. “Afterward, ‘I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there—’ I will make her sing.”

  Despite myself, I snicker. My Jude and his proverbs. “You’re so silly. First you’ll eat. And then you’ll make me… sing?”

  “At least sigh happily when I—”

  “Ugh, stop.”

  “Why? You’re my wife. I can tell my wife what I plan to do to her. I want to—”

  I jerk awake at the abrupt scratching from the speakers above me. “Ladies and gentlemen. As we start our descent, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full, upright position. Make sure your…”

  Jude, I’m almost home.

  NADIA

  “Because you’re depressed!” Zoe yells. “That’s why you want to sleep nonstop. I remember that from right after the ceremony too. You went into hibernation and didn’t want to come back out again. It was me and… what’s-her-face? We took turns sitting with you to make sure you always had a friend with you. We didn’t even go home to sleep. We camped out on your couch, remember?”

  “Of course,” I say from within my sheets and comforters.

  It’s the second day home from Bo’s tour, and I hate the way I feel. I go to work and do my thing there, because I’m a master at blocking stuff out. But all I want is to sink under my covers with Jude’s pillow at my nose and work hard to forget the rest.

  Like how right everything felt while I was with Bo. How happy I was. His response to me while I was there with him. The way he looked at me.

  Like how I miss him.

  I peek out from the covers, my stare landing on a photo of Jude and me on the nightstand. Zoe took it at the boardwalk, right after we came off the rollercoaster for the first time. I loved it. My first time on a rollercoaster ever. I’m wearing a wobbly smile courtesy of motion sickness. Jude’s fingers dig into my hips, barely keeping me on my feet. And his face is alight with humor.

  So amazing together.

  Zoe flips the photo over. “Enough. Get up. You’ve avoided me for two days at work, and I’m not taking any more of your bullshit. I want to hear about the tour. Emil told me that Bo totally freaked out when Elias mentioned you going home—”

  “That was mean,” I mumble. “And don’t mention him in our apartment.”

  “—but I want to hear it from my friend. You need to tell me what’s going on. Why are you regressing right now, just being a nightmare all over again? We’re not doing this, you know. That time is over.” She folds the comforter neatly to the side and plops a stack of clothes next to me.

  “We’re going out. Maybe a movie. We’ll have drinks and talk. That old-fashioned cocktail lounge on Craig’s Street will do.”

  So the tears start seeping again, and it’s different this time. I’ve tried to block out reality, but reality is in my face, gritting teeth and showing fangs. What would remain of me if I faced it? Wouldn’t it be my demise?

  She doesn’t comment on the tears. Just hands me the pieces of clothing one by one and watches me get dressed. In the living room I stop again. Sink to my knees in front of the coffee table and look into Jude’s eyes. I blow out the candles he won’t tend to while I’m gone. Rearrange the tiny cactus pots around the bigger one with white birds on it.

  “Bye, Jude,” Zoe says, lifting her hand in a wave at him. She pulls me to my feet and keeps me steady over the threshold. I turn and look again, and for a fraction of a second, I want to die so bad it’s like a gunshot to my stomach. I can’t do this. I can’t move on from our love—the beauty of that one person that used to make me whole.

  “He completes me,” I say brokenly in the car.

  “No,” Zoe says, steadfast. “He completed you. He doesn’t anymore. Now, someone else seems to complete you, and it’s time you open to the present, sweetie. Take it in. Understand.”

  I have a blue martini in front of me when Bo calls. I don’t hesitate. I pick up on the first ring. “Hey,” he says, alive and intimate, so close on my ear. Zoe winks. Gives me the thumbs-up like I’m doing something huge by answering my phone.

  I guess she’s right. I haven’t been good at picking up lately.

  “Are you okay? Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah. Thanks, I’m good,” I answer mechanically.

  “You don’t sound good.”

  That brings the lump back to my throat, and I swallow, trying to get in charge of my voice. “Nadia, darling. Did I do something?”

  You broke through.

  “No, you did nothing bad. I had a great time on tour with you.”

  I laughed. Ah I laughed out there with him. The way he looked when he barged off the stage to grab me after the shows? Jittery fun-bubbles fizzed in my throat. Those shows, his energy on stage, God. God.

  “How’s… Jude?” He finally says my husband�
�s name.

  “What do you want me to say? ‘Good?’” I quip because I can’t answer that.

  Bo is quiet, probably mulling over my retort. It wasn’t nice of me. I’m adding to my stack of wrongdoings. Another little brick of badness.

  “I’ll be home around noon on Friday,” he breathes into the phone, and something happens to my body. It remembers that sound. “Are you working then?”

  “Yeah, I’m off at five,” I say.

  “Okay. Can you… get away afterward?” he asks carefully, not mentioning Jude a second time.

  “I can.”

  Zoe whoops behind her hand and dances a little on her seat, clearly guessing the conversation.

  “Give me your address, and I’ll pick you up, say, at seven?”

  My heart drops. Pick me up… as in from the apartment? He can’t come to our apartment! No. Of course, that’s not what he’s suggesting.

  “Hold on,” I say and cover the phone with my hand. “Zoe, you haven’t told him about Jude, right?” I stare deep into her eyes to keep her from lying.

  She lifts her hands high, fingers spread. “No. I don’t break promises. I’m totally against how you’re handling this—you’re making it way worse for yourself—but I love you and you’re the one who needs to figure stuff out.”

  “He wants to come and pick me up at the apartment!” As the explanation falls from me, dread sinks to where heat pooled in me a moment ago.

  “And? It’s a natural thing. Just, you need to clean up in there. You can’t have it the way it is or you’ll freak him out.”

  “No. Our apartment stays the way it is.”

  “Then you need to explain before you let Bo in.”

  “He just can’t come in.”

  “Girl. Enough already. Just. Tell. Him. Everything.”

  I stare at her for a long moment while Bo’s voice buzzes from the speaker and into my hand. “Nadia. Are you there?”

  “Yeah,” I finally say, and I’m tired, so tired again. I don’t know what to do.

  “Hey, it’s Zoe!” Zoe says loud and clear into the phone. It’s gone from my hand, in hers now. I scramble to retrieve it, but she turns her back to me and rattles my address off into the phone. Then she strides toward the restrooms, and I lunge after her, desperate, only it’s too late. Zoe, my awful friend, slams the door and locks it from the inside, while I stand outside with my hand over my mouth.

  NADIA

  Between Bo’s phone call and Zoe’s interception, they broke me out of my hibernation. I tidy up at home. Peer at Jude’s sock on the bathroom floor. It’s been there for a while. I’ve been cleaning around it for a while. I let it sink in how he’s not going to pick it up himself.

  He can’t pick it up himself.

  It’s time I stare reality in the eye. I pick the sock up—I do. Then I cry.

  I sheathe myself in old dreams within the safety of our blankets. When Zoe calls, she surprises by saying that my “bawling” is a step in the right direction.

  “Gotta face the music, girl. About time,” she pep-talks, but the expression makes no sense and disparages the devastation in my mind. “Face the music, Nadia.”

  I spend the last days mulling over where Bo and I could meet. I wish we could agree on a different place than here, but if I start a discussion about it, Bo will probably dig deep and I don’t want to fight. Above all, I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have.

  I can come straight to the restaurant tomorrow, I type out.

  No, don’t. Your house is on the way.

  I bite my lip, worried. Seven, you said?

  Yeah. Can’t wait.

  A flutter in my chest.

  Illicit joy.

  BO

  I’m off tour. I’m tired. It’s been a long month on the road, and if it weren’t for the adrenaline kicking in at the thought of seeing Nadia, I’d be dead on my couch right now, probably not even getting my ass to bed.

  The tour bus pulls up later than expected, and I barely have time for a shower. I rush my hands through my wet hair and shake it in the mirror. I notice a little stubble on my chin—I’m not graced with a thick beard—and shave it off thinking of how it will feel to run my face along hers.

  I grab a bottle of cologne even, feeling fancy. Some musky sort of thang we got from a sponsor in Miami. I don’t want to overpower her with it, but girls tend to enjoy a little fragrance. Nadia, I’m guessing, is no different.

  It’s easy to find her apartment complex, a small, square building shaped into a U around a desert garden. The sign reading The Alhambra Apartments is more imposing than the construction itself. I park and start on the flat stones leading up to an open arc. Beyond, the building proffers numbered front doors in a line, the way I’m used to from motels.

  It’s small and intimate. Cute. Appropriate because Nadia is all of those things. As I walk on, I wonder how she’s solving the problem with her husband.

  The brief guilt over pursuing her dissipates quickly; after all, Jude drags her down, just like I did with Ingela. I always knew Ingela deserved better than me. Does he get it too? If not, he’s an idiot. He really shouldn’t be surprised that someone else comes knocking, even if the dick isn’t man enough to let her off the hook.

  “Hey!” Nadia says, breathless, tiptoeing toward me on high heels. She’s gorgeous, with long, sleek hair brushed into a shiny mass that falls over her breasts. She wears a simple dress, a green one, and my eyes go straight to her cleavage.

  “Hey. I was about to knock,” I explain as if it’s my invention and not something everyone does at people’s door.

  She blushes, eyes wild. He must be inside then, and she doesn’t want us in the same room. Can’t fault her. Can’t help the sting of disappointment.

  She passes me quickly. She almost traipses in front of me down to the stone tiles, and I have this urge to stop her and embrace her hard.

  I know it’s a possessive thing, to want to do this in front of their apartment. I’m wretched and more obsessed by the day.

  See, it didn’t get better after she left. I kept thinking of her. And I still think I love her a little. That mush in my chest hasn’t disappeared yet. I hold back until we’re right outside the garden gate, but once we are in full view of whichever windows are hers, I tug her to me by the belt circling that little dress, and she stumbles into me.

  “I’ve missed you,” I try to say in a calm voice, but it comes out gritty as a growl.

  I expect her to push me away. One thing is high school with her father glaring from the window. A whole other level is to have that person be her spouse.

  She doesn’t. Her body trembles a little, like she’s as affected as I am, but her hands move around my neck and let me pull her in.

  “Me too,” she whispers.

  “You’ve missed me too?” I ask, and then I fucking hug her so hard. A light hum escapes her mouth, and I suck it in, tasting the bubblegum flavor on her lips.

  “Yes,” she says, not moving us away from the windows of the Alhambra Apartments. It makes me daring, happy, and I risk it all for more closeness, lifting her knee so I’m cradled deep between her legs in the most intimate clutch.

  “You are… so… special,” I say. “I—am taking you out of here.”

  NADIA

  The way Bo looks at me when he picks me up. There’s no detached rockstardom to him. Nothing playful or smugly charismatic. There’s just him looking at me from beneath silky, dyed-black hair. His mouth, sensual and slack with missing me, with his need to hold me tight. I see it. I recognize it. Because it’s how I feel when I look at him.

  He half lifts me on our tangled way to his car. It makes me smile, and he kisses my cheek so sweetly, apologizing for not being a, “strong-ass body builder.”

  “Come on, fling me over your shoulder, He-Man,” I say, because sudde
nly I feel like joking, and he listens and play-tumbles under my weight so we both end up on the hood of his car.

  I sober quickly, public displays of affection are something I have little experience with—everyone could be watching. Bo’s smile is high, beautiful, and while he drives, his eyes are on me as much as on the road.

  “I wonder what Emil and Zoe are up to,” I say to disturb the blissful tension between us. I’m not wondering. They’re in his apartment, and one of them is telling the other what they’re doing wrong love-or-kissing-wise.

  “Fighting,” Bo says, grinning.

  “What? Why?” We park in front of a small Italian restaurant, and Bo helps me out of the car.

  “He picked up the phone during the meet-n-greet the other night, just when some girl was moaning into his ear. Apparently, she sounded like the real thing.”

  “Oh no. How silly of him.”

  “I know. He has been on the phone with Zoe nonstop since then, trying to convince her it was nothing. The only girl he wants to play doctor with—at least at the moment—is her.”

  “What about you?” I blurt out and bite my own tongue.

  “Does it matter?” he asks, serious. Seated in the booth across from me with candles dancing between us, a distance creeps in that’s bigger than the table.

  “No,” I hurry out, avoiding his eyes. “Of course not.” But there’s so much sinking in for me these days. These nights. It does matter.

  Jude won’t hold me in his arms again. He won’t sleep with me. Won’t tell me he loves me. What is left of my relationship with Jude is…

  Even in my head, I can’t say it. The important thing is—

  “I think I’m sort of moving on,” I begin. Let my hair cover my face as I stare at the table. “Never mind.”

  “Moving on from what?” Bo is suddenly the hyper-present star that makes people turn heads and get sucked into his space. His charisma reaches me through the curtain of my hair. He draws it with steady hands and leaves it over my shoulder before he cups my cheek with a palm. I breathe in courage, knowing it’s time to tell him about Jude.