by Peter Styles
Was Jason guilty? Had he actually gone back on the order and given a patient a medication he knew he was probably allergic to? Could he possibly be that petty?
My gut told me hell no. Jason might be high-strung, and he might be a royal pain in the ass on occasion, but he would never knowingly endanger a patient.
Facts are facts. No Dilaudid in his system. Only morphine.
I thought of everything I knew about Jason. He was caring. The kind of guy who would adopt a blind cat. He was dedicated. I’d seen him work harder than anyone else to save a patient even when it was clearly hopeless. And he’d put himself on the line on more than one occasion to question my actions when he thought it would benefit a patient.
No, there was no way the Jason I knew could have done what Rosenfeld was suggesting.
But what if he could? The insidious little voice whispered in my head. And what if he had? What if Jason had killed a man just because he was angry with me?
The thought was enough to turn my blood to ice.
9
Mark
Jason wasn’t answering his texts or his phone, and I was getting nervous. As soon as I’d gotten my head screwed on straight following the harrowing experience in Dr. Rosenfeld’s office, I’d gone looking for Jason, but no one knew where he was. Finally, I’d spoken to Jolene, who told me she’d seen him leaving work early.
I’d texted and texted, and then when that failed to get a response, I’d called. A lot. Twenty-two times, to be exact.
The more time that went by without an answer, the more frantic I got. Jason had just received news that he was probably going down for manslaughter. Would he do something stupid? People had hurt themselves for less. I kept picturing Jason swinging in a closet or being wheeled into the ED on a stretcher with the back of his head blown out. Or lifeless and blue from an overdose. Morbid, yes, but it wasn’t something I hadn’t seen a hundred times.
Sometimes, as a doctor, I felt like I had seen far too much to keep my sanity intact.
When the end of my shift came, I was ready to come out of my skin with worry. I’d been to Jason’s apartment once before when his car was in the shop. He’d hitched a ride with me to the club to play tennis, and I’d dropped him off at his place afterward. He hadn’t invited me up, so I didn’t feel entirely welcome there, but I had to check on him. To make sure he was okay.
I got in my Porsche and sped over to his place, praying that I wouldn’t get pulled over. Praying that I wouldn’t find anything—Jason swinging in his closet—amiss.
The stairs to his third-floor apartment were too long. It seemed to take forever for me to get to his door, and then I was knocking. Then banging. Then yelling. “Jason, open up! It’s Mark.”
Finally—finally—the lock on the door clicked, and Jason was there, staring out at me with unfocused eyes. His hair was a mess. He was a mess, with his clothing askew and dark circles under his eyes. He wobbled on his feet and had to use the door to keep himself from hitting the floor.
“Are you okay?” I asked tentatively. Part of me was shocked at his unkempt appearance, but another secret part of me was relieved that he was still alive.
“What are you doing here?” His voice was thick, his words slurred.
“I came to talk to you.” To make sure you were still breathing. “Can I come in?”
He staggered back to let me in, and I had to reach out and steady him. My fingers wrapped around his forearm, but it wasn’t enough. He was like a tree that had already been cut and was ready to topple with the slightest breeze. He took three stumbling steps to the side, and I slid my arm around his waist, pulling him against my body. The smell of alcohol rolled off of him.
“God, Jason, how much have you had to drink?”
He waved in the general direction of his living room, where a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels sat open on the floor. “Lil bit,” he said. “Prolly more’n I should.”
I pushed the door closed with my foot and walked him over to his ratty sofa. The springs squeaked with his weight when I lowered him to the seat, and when I sat down beside him with an identical squeak, he slid to the side and ended up with his head resting on the sofa arm.
A gray cat approached cautiously, then wound a path around my legs. The one-eyed cat, I thought, and when he looked up at me, it was confirmed. A sunken mass of scar tissue stared out at me from one of his eye sockets, but the other eye was clear and bright. He jumped up onto the sofa and rubbed his skinny body against Jason’s chest, then turned his attention to me, rubbing insistently against my thigh. My arm.
“Hey, buddy.” I ran a hand tentatively over his soft fur, and he nuzzled my hand. “You worried about your master? Huh?”
His answering meow was confirmation, and for the first time in my life, I felt like an animal actually understood what I was saying.
“Bill’s his name. Got one eye,” Jason slurred. “He’s pretty messed up. Like me.”
“You’re not messed up,” I said. “Well, you’re drunk as hell, but you’re not messed up in general.”
“I’m a murderer. Thass what they think.”
“I don’t think that,” I said. Though, in all honesty, the jury was still out. I hoped he wasn’t, though. God, I hoped Rosenfeld was wrong.
“You hate me,” he said, sounding like a petulant child.
“I do not hate you. I drove all the way over here to the ghetto just to talk to you. I wouldn’t do that for just anybody. My Porsche will probably be stripped down when I get back out there.”
“Such an asshole,” he mumbled. “You and your damn Porsche.”
“You said you liked my Porsche.”
“I do, but it’s still fucking pretentious.”
I buried my fingers deeper into the cat’s fur, and he shifted onto me, curling into a ball and purring so hard it felt like an electric toothbrush had gotten loose in my lap. “Would you like me more if I drove a Toyota from before they had power windows?”
“Hey, my Toyota’s got electric… windows. So, you can kiss my ass.” He snuggled down into the sofa, squirming around to get comfortable, and his bare feet ended up pressed against my thigh.
I sighed and tried to ignore the sensation of Jason touching me in such an intimate way. If he’d been sober, it never would have happened. I wondered if he even knew his feet were on me. As if in answer to my silent question, he wiggled his toes against my scrub pants.
“This is uncomfortable,” he said, punching the padded armrest. Then he spun around on the sofa, surprisingly graceful for a drunk guy, and put his head on my thigh right next to Bill. “Thass better. Y’know, I thought about doing this before.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Putting my head in your lap.”
“Hmmm… interesting.”
Jason giggled but didn’t say more. Still petting Bill, I sank my other hand into Jason’s hair. I massaged them both at the same time, wondering how I had ended up with everyone who lived in this shabby apartment using me as a human pillow. It was surreal and strangely comforting. Except this apartment was awful. Why did he live like this? He may not have had wealthy parents like me, but he made enough to at least live in a better part of town.
I sat that way for a long time, afraid of moving and disturbing Bill and Jason. They were so peaceful, and I figured both of them deserved a little peace. But after a while, my legs were going to sleep, so I had to move.
I slipped out from beneath the sleeping beauties and wandered around Jason’s apartment. I wasn’t trying to be nosy; I was just bored. I pulled open the fridge. Nothing. A half-gallon of milk, some condiments, bottled water, a pack of cheese slices, and a jar of dill pickles.
I was not going to eat a pickle and cheese sandwich. Fuck that. The freezer was a shade better, with an assortment of frozen meals, but by that time I was irritable. Why the hell didn’t he have any food?
Without thinking it through, I hefted Jason up off of the sofa and walked him down to my car, barefoot and pretty much passed out. I l
eft him slumped over in the passenger seat and went back for Bill. I knew the cat got left alone plenty while Jason was at work, but the thought of leaving him there all lonely and dejected while I whisked his master away to my place just didn’t feel right.
And besides, I felt like the one-eyed cat and I had sort of bonded. I still didn’t like cats all that much, but as felines go, I supposed Bill was A-Okay.
I found his litter and a bag of cat food, and I carried them under one arm with Bill tucked under the other. On the way out, I grabbed Jason’s keys off the tiny kitchen table, locked the door, and pulled it closed behind me. I was nearly worn out by the time we were all tucked into the Porsche and heading downtown toward my building.
The hard part was getting Jason and Bill from the car to the elevator, but after that, it was smooth sailing all the way to the fourth floor, where my apartment was located. Once the two of them were safely inside, Jason on the sofa and Bill exploring his new surroundings, I went back out to the car and got the food and litter.
Jason had become almost coherent a few times during the trip, mostly while I’d been moving him around, but he didn’t argue when I told him where we were going. If he’d been sober at all, it might have been a different story, and there was still a part of me that was afraid he was going to be angry. Maybe he would see this as another New Year’s Eve and think I was taking advantage of his condition. But hell, I couldn’t leave him alone after spending half the day being afraid he was going to hurt himself, and I couldn’t have spent one more minute in that dingy box of furniture he called an apartment.
“Come here, Bill,” I called to the cat. To my surprise, he actually came trotting into the large guest bath, where I was sitting on the floor. My maid, Serena, had stored a bunch of rarely-used toiletries in large plastic bins under the bathroom sink, and I pulled one out, dumped out the contents, and poured in a pile of litter. “There you go, buddy. A nice new toilet for you.”
Bill immediately climbed into the litter box and started scratching around. He didn’t use it, but he did make sure he’d touched nearly every grain of the clean litter with his little paws. Then he climbed back out and trotted off to explore again.
I kicked my shoes off and left them by the front door, then padded barefoot into my bedroom. I was dead tired, and that soft bed was calling to me. I hadn’t made it up that morning. It usually only got made three times a week when Serena showed up and changed the bedding.
I climbed in and turned the TV on. Some documentary about nomads was playing. It looked pretty interesting, but I was asleep within minutes.
“Hey, what’s going on?” A voice woke me from a deep sleep, and for a few seconds, I was disoriented. It was dark outside, and the apartment was cool and quiet. Jason stood in the doorway, swaying ever so slightly. “Where am I?”
“My place,” I said. “Sorry, I fell asleep. Would you like a cup of coffee? You must feel like shit.”
“I’m okay.”
“Well, you look like shit.”
He looked down at himself—at his rumpled blue scrubs and his bare feet—and back at me. “Thanks. Care to explain why I’m here?”
I shrugged. “I abducted you. You gonna call the cops?”
He groaned and put a hand to his head. “Okay, you’re right. I feel like shit. But I shouldn’t be here. I think I forgot to feed Bill.”
“Oh, shit!” I jumped up out of bed and ran to the kitchen, where I’d dropped Bill’s food on the counter. “I brought his food in, but I didn’t feed him.” I pulled a bowl out of the cabinet, filled it with cat food, and set it out near the largest window in the kitchen. Bill was on it in a flash, crunching the dry food with his tiny razor teeth.
Jason looked shocked. “You brought my cat to your house?”
“He wanted to come.” I squatted down and started to stroke Bill’s back, but the look he shot me said he might bite my fingers off. “Damn. Do a cat a favor, and this is how you get treated.” I stood up and faced Jason, whose eyes were narrowed. “Why are you looking at me that way? You’re as bad as Bill.”
“Why are we here?”
“I told you I abducted you.”
“Cut the bullshit, Mark.”
“No, really. I literally abducted you. You were passed out drunk, and I stole you and your cat and brought you to my apartment without your consent. I think I had good reason, though. You were a danger to yourself. And Bill—well, he’s just a good cuddler.”
Jason just stared at me as if I’d grown an extra head.
“Why don’t you go take a shower,” I suggested with a pointed look. “I’ll get some dinner ready. I don’t know about you, but I’m starving.”
“Did you bring any of my clothes?” Jason asked. “Any shoes?”
“Nope. You can wear some of mine since we’re about the same size. Just look in my closet and take whatever you like. You can use the master bath. There’s a towel in the linen closet and a new toothbrush in one of the bins under the sink. Toiletries, razors… It’s like a freaking Walgreen’s in there, but if you need anything else, just holler.”
With a skeptical glance over his shoulder, Jason wandered off to find the bathroom, and I set about throwing together a dinner. A half hour later, Jason emerged wearing a pair of red gym shorts and a blue T-shirt that said, Don’t Even Start, which I’d outgrown a couple of years back. The fabric stretched across his chest and abs, hinting strongly at the tennis player’s physique beneath. The shorts rode up just high enough to the reveal rippling thigh muscles I’d drooled over too many times on the court and in the locker room.
I smiled. “You look good in my clothes.”
Jason smirked and ran a hand through his wet hair, slicking it back from his forehead. Fuck, he was gorgeous. The shower had plumped his drink-sallow skin, and the dark circles under his eyes were a distant memory. He looked fresh and alive, and the spark had returned to his blue eyes.
This was the Jason Whitham I knew. The Jason I’d wanted since the first time I laid eyes on him. I should have touched him back then. Should have just reached out and touched him instead of jerking off in bed to thoughts of him or hooking up with randoms and imagining they were him.
“What?” Jason asked, shocking me out of my horny reverie.
“Oh.” I cleared my throat and turned back to the stove. “Dinner is ready. Go sit down at the table, and I’ll serve you.”
He barked out a surprised laugh. “The great Mark Johnson is going to serve me? I must be dreaming.”
I scooped the main course out onto two plates and carried them to the table. “I might not be good at this, so…”
“Good at what? Being a waiter?”
I set the plates down, one in front of Jason and one at my place across from him. “The domestic thing. Cooking, serving…” I grabbed the salad out of the fridge and placed the bowl in the center of the table. “Wine?”
Jason chuckled. “I think I’ve had enough alcohol for one day. Water will be fine. Or sweet tea if you have it.”
I poured a glass of iced tea for Jason and a glass of white wine for myself, then took my seat and looked at him, suddenly feeling very awkward.
Jason cleared his throat. “This looks delicious. What is it?”
“Shrimp pasta with garden vegetables in a white sauce. And don’t ask me what’s in the sauce. My mother’s chef sends it over, and I just add it to the noodles.”
“Oh, a chef. How bougie.”
I laughed. “It’s my family, man. I can’t help how I grew up.”
Immediately, I felt bad about my comment. Jason’s upbringing hadn’t been anywhere near bougie. He’d grown up in a lower-middle-class family that still struggled with money problems. And, while Jason had distanced himself from his relatives and his roots, he still had a lot of that struggle mentality. I could see it in his eyes every time we talked about money or material things.
“You’re spoiled,” Jason said, a bitter edge to his voice that may not have been apparent to anyone but me.
“Nothing wrong with a bit of spoiling,” I said. “You shell out the exorbitant monthly fees for the Belle Meade Country Club, don’t you?”
Jason clamped his lips shut and stared at his plate. “That’s different.”
“Why is it different?”
“Because, Mark. It’s all I have. You and your friends can do whatever the hell you want. Country club dues are nothing to you—just another few dollars tacked onto your expensive lifestyles. I don’t have any friends outside of you and the people I talk to at work, so I have to practically go into debt just to get a few hours a week of tennis with you.” He averted his eyes. “With everyone, I mean. You and Kaden and the guys.”
I bristled at the mention of Kaden, but then I felt bad. I’d never considered that Jason was spending money he didn’t have just to have some semblance of a social life. He was right about a country club membership being nothing to me. Hell, I didn’t even pay my own dues; my father did. And here was Jason confessing that he was strapping himself financially just to hang out with me. It was a sobering thought.
“Maybe I can get you a discount,” I said. “My dad is close friends with the—”
“No,” Jason said. “I’m not asking for charity. I’m just pointing out that some of us have to work hard for the things you take for granted.”
I nodded and took a sip of my wine. “Food’s getting cold.”
We ate in silence, but I watched Jason as he twirled pasta onto his fork and chomped his way through mounds of salad. The smallest little things he did—just the way he held his fork or licked an errant smear of salad dressing from his top lip—were mesmerizing to me. Always had been. But for some reason, the fact that he was doing those things here, in my apartment, made the attraction stronger.
He was in my space, sitting right smack dab up in the middle of my life, and I liked it more than I should have. I’d been certain he didn’t fit in my world, yet here he was. Him and his one-eyed cat, who was slinking around my legs beneath the table in a way that made me feel warm and content.
