Second to No One

by Palmer, Natalie

  When I settled back against my pillow, I was finally able to focus in on the room around me. The first person I saw was Trace sitting on a couch near a window, his head between his hands. The next person I saw made me blink once and then again just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. It was Jess, and he was holding my hand against his closed mouth and watching me with sad, distant eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked, silently praying that I wasn’t delusional.

  Jess allowed a faint smile to move at his lips. “You were in an accident. But you’re going to be okay.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I called him.” Trace’s voice was weak and filled with shame. “The cops couldn’t get ahold of your parents. I didn’t know who else to call. I found his number in your cell phone.”

  “They couldn’t find my parents?” I only looked to Jess for an answer.

  He shook his head. “I went over there after Trace called and tried ringing the doorbell, but no one answered. But then my mom called the hospital up in Sylva, and they’re there. I guess your dad was having a hard time breathing, and they’re doing some tests.”

  “Is he okay? What did they say about me and the accident?” I had so many questions I could barely think straight.

  “I think he’s okay,” Jess said calmly. “But they don’t know about you yet. They weren’t available for my mom to talk to, so she left a message for them to call her.”

  I tried taking in a sigh of relief, but the pain was unbearable. “What’s going on with my chest?”

  Jess lightly swept his hand over my hair, which I loved and hated at the same time. But I was in too much pain at the minute to worry about my conflicting emotions, so I defaulted to soaking in every minute I felt his skin against mine. “You bruised your ribs,” he said gently. “But they don’t think anything is broken. You’re really lucky.”

  With Jess’s hand in my hair, I became aware of a bandage tied snuggly around my head. “And my head? I remember a lot of blood.”

  Trace answered this time. “You had a pretty good gash, but they stitched you up.”

  “You’re head went through the passenger side window.” Jess’s eyes drifted angrily toward Trace. “Things could have been a lot worse.”

  The nurse came back into the room with a doctor following closely behind. They retold me about my bruised ribs and my stitched-up head, then told me I could go home.

  “Go home?” Jess sounded upset. “She can barely move.”

  “Look,” the nurse said boldly, “we have a lot of people coming in tonight, and not a lot of rooms. We can’t keep her in here for a couple of bruised ribs and some stitches.”

  “But she could have a concussion,” he demanded. “Someone should keep an eye on her.”

  “We don’t hospitalize people for possible concussions,” the nurse snapped. “If you’re so worried about her, you keep an eye on her and bring her in if she is showing any signs of serious problems.”

  I felt like an intruder, like a fake. There were other people who needed my room a lot more than I did. “It’s okay, Jess,” I said, doing my best to sit up. “I’d rather be at home anyway.”

  “But she was unconscious.” Jess continued, “Couldn’t she slip into a coma or something?”

  The doctor who had been quiet during the argument stepped close to my bed, “We’ve been observing her for a few hours now. She shows no signs of abnormal brain activity.” He gently looked at Jess. “You can wake her up every hour or two through the night if you’re really concerned. But she should be just fine.”

  A half hour later, Trace pushed me out the door in a wheel chair while Jess ran to get his car and pulled it around. As they were helping me in the car, Trace’s parents showed up all stressed and worried and eventually irate. Then they escorted him away. I felt sorry for him, but not as sorry as I was going to feel for myself the second my parents found out what had happened.

  Jess and I drove to my house in a strange silence. Things had been pretty normal between us at the hospital. I guess with all the pain, I had forgotten to be mad at him. But now that we were alone together, in the car, I wasn’t exactly sure how to act around him. I didn’t want to be mad at him anymore. It was taking way more energy than I had to hold a grudge against him. But I couldn’t act normal either. Somehow it just wasn’t possible. When we got to my house, he helped me out of the car and through my front door. Sure enough, the house was empty and dark, and I thought about my parents forty minutes away in Sylva getting tests done and having no idea that I was just in a car accident. “Thanks for the ride and for everything,” I said to Jess with what little energy was left in me. “I’m sorry I interrupted your date.”

  “It wasn’t really a date,” Jess said. “Cole likes that girl Gina, and he begged me to go along.”

  I looked at the clock. It was almost four in the morning. “Well, thanks again, um…” I hesitated with what else to say. “I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

  Jess looked at me strangely. “I’m not leaving.” He seemed hurt that I actually thought that he would. “The nurse told me to check on you every couple hours to make sure you don’t have a concussion. I need to stay.”

  I could have cried at the thought of him staying with me all night. I wanted so badly to be able to step toward him and let him hold me and take away all the pain and resentment of the night. A year ago, before the kiss, I would have been able to. Back then, a hug didn’t mean anything. Back then, it was just a hug. But now, post kiss, a hug meant so much more. A hug meant that I still wanted him even though he didn’t want me back.

  “Okay.” I stepped toward the kitchen, pretending not to care either way. “Are you hungry? It’s almost morning. Do you want breakfast?”

  Jess smiled and reached out for my hand. I let him lead me around the couch until we were sitting close to each other on one end. “It’s still the middle of the night, and you need to rest.” He wrapped his arm around me, and my head naturally fell against his chest. I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I loved feeling his heartbeat against my cheek. I loved feeling his fingers softly caress my neck. I loved that no one else existed in the world beyond the two of us at that moment, and I found myself forgetting all about the past month. All about the weirdness and the heartache and my pride. I allowed myself to melt into him and pretend that none of it had ever happened.

  I hesitated to speak, afraid that words might ruin the moment, but then I found myself saying, “I have something to tell you, but you can’t laugh.”

  I felt his chest press against my cheek with a puff of soft laughter. “Okay.”

  “I haven’t even told you what it is, and you’re already laughing.”

  “Sorry,” he cleared his throat. “I’ll be serious.”

  “Tonight at the peak,” I started, “we were all sitting around talking and somehow we got on the subject of,” I paused a moment. Did I really want to talk about this with Jess?

  “It’s okay.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I think I know.”

  “How would you know?”

  “Because Kit Walker was there, and I’ve been around Kit Walker enough to know that he has one thing on his mind.”

  “Don’t most guys have that thing on their mind?”

  Jess ignored my question. “So what happened?”

  “Kit told us it’s number one on his list of things to do before he dies,” I started.

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Then everyone started talking about how natural it is. Drew wants to wait until she’s ready, but the way she said it, I think she means kind of soon. And Kit says you should do it a lot of times with a lot of people so you’ll know if you and your wife are compatible. And Trace agrees, but he says he won’t cheat on his wife even though I think Kit will.” I finally took a breath. “It was
really confusing.”

  “What’s so confusing about it? They’re just a bunch of idiots.”

  I looked Jess in the eyes. “You don’t agree with them?”

  “What, that you need to do it with a bunch of people in order to know if you’ll love your wife? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “It kind of makes sense,” I rebutted, “I mean, how else would you know?”

  “Do you have to eat at every pizza joint in North Carolina to know that Lucy’s Pizza is the best?”

  “Well, no. But if it was the only one I had ever tried, then maybe I would be missing out on something better.”

  “Okay, forget the pizza analogy. I’m just saying that it’s supposed to be special. It’s supposed to be saved for the person you marry.”

  “You know you sound like a nun, right? Like a little old lady nun that was born in the thirties and lives in Switzerland.”

  “Nuns are smart ladies.”

  “Nuns look like penguins.”

  Jess breathed a heavy sigh. “That’s okay. You don’t have to agree with everything that I do. Just promise you’ll be careful.”

  “Don’t worry.” I nudged him playfully in the stomach. “I’m not going to run off and get pregnant tomorrow.”

  “I’m serious, Gemma.”

  “I know.” And I was serious too. As much fun as it was to joke about it with Jess, I actually hated the topic altogether. I didn’t want to think about Drew giving herself up so soon and so easily. I didn’t want to have to think about dating guys over the next few years who would actually expect that of me. But Jess changed the subject to the lame nurse at the hospital, which led us to talking about broken bones and blood and the most disgusting episode of ER we had ever seen, and somewhere between my secret crush on George Clooney and his secret thoughts about maybe being a doctor someday, I grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over us. Eventually we began to drift to sleep, Jess with his head resting on the back of the couch and me curled into a ball under his arm. It was the most comfortable sleep I’d ever had.

  As instructed, Jess woke me up every hour to make sure I was still conscious. But I was glad. It would have been tragic to have slept straight through an entire night of Jess time, especially since it was so scarce these days. Morning came too quickly, and before I knew it, we were both shifting and blinking our eyes open. Jess awoke slowly, taking some time to rub at his eyes and shuffle his cute bed hair. But the moment I tasted the sleepy grossness in my mouth, I bolted from the couch and slipped into the kitchen. My body was stiff, and my head pounded under the gauze, but if there was ever going to be a chance of Jess liking me again, I couldn’t possibly let him smell my morning breath.

  “You want something to eat for breakfast?” I yelled from the kitchen. “We have Cheerios or…” I searched our empty cupboards for more options, but with my dad sick and the hospital bills piling up, Mom hadn’t made it to the grocery store much lately. “Or Cheerios?”

  Jess appeared in the doorway, his eyes half open and a cute, tired grin spread across his face. How was it possible for him to look absolutely perfect first thing in the morning? I bet even his morning breath tasted like peppermint and cold raspberries. “I’m okay,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “I’ll just grab something when I go home.” He looked at the clock over the stove. “Not to abandon you in your time of need, but I really don’t want to be here when your parents get back.”

  Oh no. I had been so wrapped up in the excitement of having Jess around that I had forgotten all about the reality of my parents. They would most likely be calling or coming home at any second, and it was going to be frightening. I didn’t blame Jess for not wanting to be a witness.

  Despite his eagerness to leave, Jess groggily straddled a bar stool and put his head on one fist. “I still can’t believe Drew and Lauren left you stranded last night. I can’t believe they didn’t turn around.”

  I poured some Cheerios into a bowl and thought about the night before. I may have felt a little more upset about them leaving us had Trace and I been with them when the cops showed up. But the fact that Kit had to come looking for us, the fact that we were kissing in the chicken room on the second floor, the fact that we were so absorbed in what we were doing that we didn’t react to the sirens ourselves made it hard for me to be too upset with them. “They didn’t want to get caught. It’s okay.”

  “I mean I can see Kit feeling proud of himself for getting off scotch free and that Bryce kid too,” Jess continued. “Even Drew leaving you in the lurch doesn’t surprise me too much. But Lauren?”

  My attention was pulled from my Cheerios with the way he said her name. It was obvious that he held her on a pedestal and that aggravated me more than I wanted it to. “What about Lauren?”

  “I’m just surprised that she left, that’s all. But she wasn’t driving. She probably tried to get Bryce to turn around, and he wouldn’t. That’s probably what happened.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said, a little perturbed. “Why are you defending her?”

  Jess shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. I just think she’s a good person.”

  I felt the molars in the back of my mouth starting to grind together. “Do you like her or something?”

  Jess didn’t look flustered or caught off guard by my question, but I definitely didn’t get the resolute, “Heck, no!” that I was looking for. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully. “I mean, I think that would be weird. She’s your good friend.”

  What was that supposed to mean? That he would like her if she and I weren’t good friends? In that moment, I saw it all laid out before me. Because of me, they wouldn’t date, but secretly, they’d be obsessing endlessly for each other. Every single day, the romantic tension between them would grow thicker and thicker. Meanwhile, Lauren would become Jess’s main focus in life, the heroin of his personal love story, and I would become, well, nothing but the ex-girlfriend coming between them and their perfect ending. “You should date her.” I found myself saying, not because I really wanted them to date—in fact, I’d rather have my toenails plucked out one by one—but I said it because it was better than the alternative.

  “Really?” Jess acted like it was a novel idea, but I could tell the thought had definitely crossed his mind.

  “Sure,” I feigned innocence. “I mean, what happened between you and me is in the past. I’ve moved on to Trace. You should move on too.”

  Jess watched me carefully. “So you and Trace are official?”

  I wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad about that. (I neglected to think about the fact that it wasn’t true anyway.) I studied his expression and tried to figure out a way to respond. “Yeah, I mean. As official as you can get in high school.”

  “Huh.” Jess stared at the counter in front of him.

  “I know Lauren likes you,” I heard myself say. “She told me last night.” I watched his reaction carefully, willing him to turn green and nauseous at the idea of dating Lauren. But that didn’t happen. Not even close.

  “I don’t know.” Jess finally said. “I guess I’ll have to think about it.”

  I hate that I was too consumed in our conversation to hear the garage door open. It would have given me some time to prepare, a moment to switch gears from being the world’s worst matchmaker to a meek, repentant daughter. But I didn’t hear the garage door open, and so I was digging into my next bite of Cheerios and entertaining nightmarish thoughts of Jess and Lauren walking through school hand-in-hand when my parents were suddenly standing in the middle of the kitchen, my dad, weak-looking and pale, and my mom, red faced, fangs bared. “What is Jess doing here?” she growled as I slowly set my bowl of cereal on the counter in front of me.

  I looked at Jess with apologetic eyes. “He was just leaving.”

  But my mom wasn’t re
ady to release him yet. “Why is he here? Did he sleep here last night?”

  Steam was practically rising from her head. I had never seen her breathing so fast. “He had to Mom. The doctor told him to check on me every couple—”

  “Please tell me that you slept upstairs in your bed and that Jess slept way down here on the sofa.”

  I thought about Jess and I cuddled close on the couch all night. “He had to check on me, Mom. But nothing happened, I swear.”

  Jess finally stood to face my parents. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Mitchell. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  My dad took an exhausted step forward, then sat on a chair at the kitchen table. Exuding all the strength that was in him, he whispered, “Thanks for helping, Jess. Why don’t you go on home?”

  Without saying another word, Jess slipped out the front door and left me alone to be tried and punished. My Cheerios were soggy by now, but my appetite was long gone anyway. Mom set her purse on the counter, then balled up her fists for the fight. “Last night,” she started in an even and terrifying tone, “was the longest night of my life. At approximately eleven forty-five, I woke up next to your father having a breathing attack that for all I knew could have been the last breaths he would ever take. I drove him—in my nightgown, bathrobe, and slippers—forty minutes to the hospital where I watched him undergo extensive and painful tests. I sat on a cold, hard bench for nearly four hours, waiting for it all to be over. I watched your father fall asleep, then I set up my tiny cot next to his stale, white hospital bed so that I could try to have a moment of peace. But just before I lay down, I decided to check the messages on my cell phone. Just. In. Case.” Mom took a deep breath and brushed her hair straight back with her fingers. “I had four messages. Four. Since the time I shut off my phone on the way into the hospital at one o’clock in the morning, I had received four new messages. There was one from the police saying my daughter had been caught breaking into an abandoned house and had been in a car accident. There was one from the hospital telling me my daughter was there but was unconscious. There was one from Caris Tyler frantically trying to find out where I was because for all she knew my daughter was in a coma. And just when I was about to highjack an ambulance and race back to Franklin, I heard the final message. It was also from Caris. Telling me that you were fine. That you had a bruised rib and a few stitches and that you were home.”