by Sunniva Dee
“Are you thinking of him?” I ask, jealousy making my voice gravelly. “Is it too much to ask that you don’t think about him when you’re with me?”
“Bo, you can’t even fathom,” she says, getting dressed like I only bought her for a few hours. I’m still on the bed. I haven’t even cleaned myself up yet. No, I’m on my back with a knee wide, showing her the goods she enjoyed so thoroughly minutes ago.
I can’t win!
“What’s happening right now,” I say. I get on my feet and swallow the distance between us. I’m in her face when she straightens, her eyes glossy again—again she’s ready to cry. “How is it that I make you cry?”
“You don’t. You make me happy.”
“Sure doesn’t look like it!”
“Please…”
“And how the hell can I ‘fathom’ anything when you say nothing? Nothing! You’re thinking about him. Why? Is it because you want to leave him?” I take her hand before she can bend back down to strap her shoe on. “Because if you do, I’d be the happiest fucking loser in the world. I’m begging for scraps, here, and it’s what I get too—fifty-seven minutes of temporary bliss. Hey, is it that you can’t help sleeping with me and regret it every time?”
I’m thinking with my heart, not my brain—I can’t believe what I’m dealing with right now. My intestines grind with the need to own her because the love just doesn’t budge! It’s destroying me. I need her to make her mind up.
Fucking pick me!
“You’ve got to choose,” I grit out, bold, so much bolder than I am.
Her gaze lifts from my hand that’s white-knuckling hers.
“Choose what? I told you there is no leaving him.” She’s cruel. Too honest. Darker, much darker is her gaze, and it’s not from passion. It’s from grief, fear, anger, and all I can do is throw my arms around her and jerk her close. I bury my nose in her hair and inhale her fast, needing her so much I ache.
“Stay,” I plead. “Just stay. Tell me more about you. Make me understand what’s going on because I’m so fucking lost. I’m lost in you, and I hate this confusion, Nadia. Nothing should be this confusing.”
Hesitant, she links her arms around my waist. We breathe together, hearts thundering between us, wall to wall.
“Do you like me?” I ask, pitiful. “A little?” She can’t say no, or I am crushed. Nadia, my beautiful girl who strings me through Hell to Heaven and drops me back off downstairs once she’s done. She lifts her face from my chest, secret-keeper eyes penetrating mine in one, big, full, right-on, truthful stare and says—
“I’m in love with you too.”
NADIA
Until tonight, I didn’t realize the extent of what I’m doing to Bo. I saw it in the words he threw at me, in the frustration of his embrace, and even now, after I’ve agreed to stay the night, the strain lingers in fine lines around his eyes.
I don’t want to make anyone unhappy.
My own misery is understandable, they say. It’s how it goes; every person’s trajectory through my evils is different. Even if my sadness lasted a lifetime, it would be natural. It doesn’t mean I should drag Bo down with me.
Bo loved me again, after I agreed to stay. And I closed my eyes and forgot about shame, about guilt, about everything ugly. With him, it’s easy to do. With him, I find a calmness to be at home in.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he murmurs nighttime-hushed. With my head on his arm and his nose in my hair, I’m good. For once, the scabs from the past don’t bleed.
“You made me.” I smile, and he feels it, pulling away enough to study my face. That small frown on his forehead reappears.
“This has gone on for long enough. You need to tell me what’s happening, darling. Don’t keep me in the dark.”
I rub my eyes with my fingers. It’s a short reprieve from his intensity. We were good. I thought we were on a break from my confessions. “But I’m barely starting to get a handle on it. How can I tell everyone until I can endure it myself?”
“‘It?’” His voice is soft as velvet and strong as steel. “I’m not ‘everyone.’”
I tug the corner of the sheet over my mouth, hiding, but he loosens my grip and draws it away. “Look at me.”
Bo’s eyes brim with concern and love. It makes me braver. It makes me want to try again. As if he sees, he says, “Talk to me.”
And I do.
“I became Jude’s emergency nurse after his mother’s visits turned less frequent. Despite his reassurances, I started worrying that he wouldn’t eat while I was at work. We’d fight over it. Then we fought over whether I should stop working and study full time.”
I close my eyes and relive what I tell him.
“Nadia, I’m a grown-up! I’m your husband—you’ve got to stop with the worrying. I’m supposed to take care of you, not the other way around, dammit. I didn’t all but kidnap you from your house for you to hound me!” he shouted.
“You’re acting like a kid,” I said. “How many glucagon injections have you been forced to take lately? I can tell, you know, how many are left. It’s not difficult. Thank the Lord your parents didn’t cut your health insurance the way they did your savings. And plus,” I’d added, “the one who should go to school and finish up is you. If you did, both of our lives would be easier. Your mom said it straight out: if you start school, they’ll pay for it and living expenses too so you don’t have to work at the gas station.”
“Bull. Shit! They know I’m not budging on this; it’s my wife first.”
We fought over what was best for each other, and nothing could alter his mind. “Here’s the order, Jude: insulin shot. Food. Insulin shot. Food. Rinse and repeat. And here’s what’s not on your short list: a glucagon injection because you wait too flipping long to eat. You take more injections than pills!”
“Nuh-uh,” he scoffed, rubbing his face hard. “I take the pills way more often.”
“Wait.” I hadn’t even checked his supply of glucose tablets. “You put yourself in danger even more often than the missing syringes suggest?”
“Shut up!” His fist slammed into the drywall between the sleeping alcove and the den. “At least I’m not double-grabbing insulin shots!”
I sit up in bed and force myself to meet Bo’s gaze. My cheeks burn with what I’m reliving, the blood speeding through my veins, because these, my worst memories, I tuck away so deep they’re hard to find.
“But then he did once,” I say, watching Bo’s dark brows sink.
“Did what?”
“He— Ah. The two types of shots look different, but he kept them in the same kit. It was a small thing, so easy to fix, but we… just didn’t. Once, he mistook an insulin shot for a glucagon shot.”
“And he got sick?”
“Very. He was unconscious already when I came back from work. Thankfully, the empty syringe lied next to him, so it wasn’t difficult to understand what had happened. I injected him with glucagon and called 911.”
Bo doesn’t try to pull me close. He sits with me, keeping my hands quiet in his and willing me to continue.
“He woke up in the ambulance, but they still hospitalized him for twenty-four hours. He needed a long conversation with the doctor, they said. Jude was good after that. Very good. Stayed on top of his meds.”
That’s when I burst into tears. The big, ugly kind of tears that don’t stop flooding. In the midst of it, I think that I don’t understand what Bo sees in me. My baggage—
Bo hushes my thoughts tenderly. “Shhhh, that’s good, Nadia, darling. It’s good.” He pulls me back in, and when he weaves his arm around me, his nearness is all that I want.
“I know,” I sob out. “I know.”
He tips my head back and holds my face, kissing my tears away and abrading me with soft stubble, a short-lived pain I welcome, one I can easily take. “Are you afraid he’s
doing it again while you’re gone? That he’ll forget to eat and take the wrong medicine—is that why you’re crying?”
“No.” I shake my head anxiously. Bo holds me, still holds me. The truth abrades in rougher ways than stubble, and I’m in danger of bursting open.
What will happen if I do?
“No, I’m not afraid of that,” I say, a truth I can acknowledge. I’ll never again find Jude in that state. “I… It’s enough for now. Later, Bo. I’m tired.”
Before me, beautiful features tense, understanding giving way to hurt before his eyes go cold as lakes freezing with the onset of a Patagonian winter. Again, I haven’t given him what he hoped for. Again, I keep the most important part of myself to myself.
Bo lets me fall asleep in his arms. On his bed. In his apartment. With no promise of a conclusion. With his only knowledge of me being my struggles.
NADIA
When the dawn scatters its first beads of daylight across the room, I rise and watch him while I slip into my clothes. He looks so young. He looks like someone you should never hurt. Like someone who shouldn’t be subjected to the onslaught of someone else’s pain.
I walk quietly to his bathroom and stare at the girl in the mirror. She has black eyes and the ability to stain her grief onto others.
When will he hate me? It is only a matter of time.
The faucet creaks as I open it, allowing a few droplets to leak out. I steal them soundlessly and wet my eyes to wake up. This new man in my life. What I feel for him is not puppy love or savior-of-the-world love. It’s different from what I feel for Jude in so many ways. Incomparable yet equally wonderful.
I push my palms down on the sink and fix my stare into the mirror. I don’t just see the sad girl. I see the selfish one too, the one Bo must see when he’s angry and can’t take my cruelty anymore. What a good man he is for still spending time with me, for letting me sleep next to him and consoling me while I stew in my too-private misgivings.
I hate my inability to bare it all. Soon. Soon, I will do it. Once I see Bo again—maybe later today?—I will tell him. If the rest of my story scares him off, then I will at least have been brave.
What will he think when he wakes up to an empty bed? That I’ve returned to soak up the last remnant of the night in Jude’s arms? He’ll think I’m a loose girl. A slut. A floozy. A tramp, a hustler, a—a—whore?
He can’t think that. If he still retains a sliver of belief in me, I need him to keep it until I am strong enough to share. So I pull my lipstick out of my purse. I press it against the mirror, and I write the only thing I can say.
BO
My dreams are a fusion of soft hands and loving gazes, images of happy guys that swell and turn homicidal when their stares glue on me. I punch them smack in the face. Somehow I wield an awesome ninja sword that I jab into Jude’s forehead and rotate until a red hole appears above his expression of murderous bliss.
I startle awake, cursing the man out for being an asshole, a fake, for stringing along women who deserve to be happy. Then I remember I’m with her, that I can make her happy right now. I turn and find nothing next to me under the sheets.
When reality bashes me in the face, I don’t take long to act. Hell no, I stand before I can think straight. With a towel around my waist, I race to the den, the kitchen, and loop to the bathroom. She’s not there either—she’s nowhere, but she has left a message I don’t understand.
Please don’t judge me.
I am not what you see.
I am the opposite.
I don’t care what that means. I’m out of here. I’m hopping into old, black jeans and the whatever-shirt I tossed on the floor last night. I hit the front door running, the handle denting the outside wall and the door smacking closed on its own.
I survey the driveway and find Emil’s truck by the mailbox. It blocks mine now? Whatever. I return to the apartment, push his bedroom door open, and shake his jeans until the keys land in my palm.
It’s seven fifteen in the morning and my girl better not be sleeping with her asshole husband. If she’s there, I’m dragging her the fuck out with me, because we’re getting to the bottom of shit. This is it!
On the way over, I think of the snippets she’s told me. Everything she hasn’t. I’m mad. Mad, that she’s still with him even though she came out to be with me on tour, gifting me all of Heaven with no side of Hell. What was she thinking?
The Alhambra Apartments’ parking lot holds five cars. I see none I can picture as Nadia’s, but there’s a big one, a road-rage Hummer waiting to be smashed. I’ve never been the caveman type, but I store that damn steel-colored machine into the back of my brain for afterward. If it’s her man’s, I’m bashing it to smithereens. Because vengeance. Because of the jerk finding my girl before I did.
I’m here, stalking through the archway giving to the building itself. Iridescent grass, coral-colored stucco, and fifteen-watt corridor lights take me to her entrance.
And there it is, with a goddamn heart on the door, and I’m raging, thinking of that heart being mine and hanging on some other guy’s door. It’s got a crack in it. Fitting too, the way he makes people suffer.
I bang on the door, hard.
My thoughts reel. The idiot doesn’t make love to her. He didn’t call or text her during the four days she was on tour with me.
When Nadia and I were together the first time, she was starving. I’ve seen every inch of her skin—studied it, loved it, devoured it. Her husband might not cause her bodily harm, but I know better than anyone that you can trap your lover with your mind. He isn’t trapping my girl anymore!
There’s no response from the other side. I bang on the door again.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and it’s absurd at this hour. I grab it impatiently, wanting to turn it off, but on reflex I check the smiling face on the screen. Ingela. My heart slams in my chest. I’m not in the mood for her probing, but my index finger twitches, and I press “Answer” anyway.
“What?” I snap.
“It’s me, Inga,” she says, sleepy.
“And?”
She’s calling out of nowhere. When I first arrived, she had a sixth sense. She’d be on the line whenever I felt alone and miserable in L.A., when I missed Sweden so much I wanted to bang my head against the wall. But since things sorted themselves out between Cameron and her, she hasn’t been calling much. I hear more from Cameron than from Ingela.
“I dreamed about you. It was sort of a nightmare,” she murmurs. “You were super-confused and sad and crazy mad over something, so I wanted to make sure you were okay. Are you asleep?”
“No. Clearly, I’m awake. I’m okay.”
“Well, you sound really awake. Isn’t this early for you?” she asks.
“It’s not that early—” My voice breaks as I say it.
“Bo. What’s going on?”
Something is blocking my throat, so I don’t answer.
“How is that girl I met?” she continues like she knows it’s my problem, and I wish she didn’t. “What’s her name again?”
“Nadia.” My jaw tenses as I lean my head against the doorjamb. I don’t want Inga to worry. I try to suppress the fury, the frustration, but it’s hard. “Shit.”
“What?” Alarmed, she turns her volume up to Ingela-level.
“Shhh,” I rasp. “Don’t do that. Is Cameron still asleep?”
“Shhh,” she retorts. “Yeah, he’s an ass, sleeping through everything. Hold on—I’ll go to the living room if it makes you feel better. One sec.”
Seconds later, she demands, “What’s happening!” in that no-nonsense, no-question tone of hers. She always was so bossy. I never understood that side of her.
“Nadia is fine. I think.” My heart boulders heartbeats down a mountainside and straight into a loud-as-hell ravine.
“BS.”
&
nbsp; “Why! Do you always insist on English, Inga?” It adds to my stress level that we don’t speak Swedish when we’ve known each other forever.
“Because if Cameron wakes up, he needs to hear we’re talking about someone else, not me, his girlfriend.”
Ah yeah. This is about my crap, not his and Ingela’s, and there’s no reason to stir up their dreamy-lovey existence back there in Deepsilver. Cameron has been through enough.
“Spill!” she yells, Ingela-loud. “You said, ‘Shit’ about Nadia, and yet you said she was quote-unquote good? Well that’s not good enough for me. Sorry. This is me you’re talking to, and you better spill everything.”
True, all of it. If there’s anyone I can trust in this world, it’s Ingela. “Things are messed up with Nadia,” I say.
“How?” She doesn’t last long before adding, “Where is she? Is she with you?”
“Nadia is about a hundred meters away from me. Inside her and her husband’s apartment. My guess is she’s in their bed, sleeping in his arms. After leaving my fucking bed”—I check my watch—“about an hour and a half ago.”
Ingela is never speechless.
Now, she is.
After the initial Whoa!, there is no sound on the other side. I count to ten while I wait for Inga to scoop out the ugly truth, paint it clear and bright for me, the way no one does better, leaving no doubt as to what a douchebag I am.
“You’re outside her door?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
Ingela is genuine to the core, and she’ll latch on to what she finds most important. I wait for her to say, “You’re pursuing a married woman, you scumbag!” or “That girl, Nadia, is blah-blah-ing you despite blah-blah!” or “How can you be such a cock?”
“That’s crazy!” she bellows. “I had no idea you had it in you—Bo, you’ve always been the, uh, Ice King! I never thought you’d, like, totally go ape-shit over a broad. What happened to you?”
