Ask Me Again

by E. J. Noyes

  Dinner was quiet, but the conversation still easy. Dessert was Bec showing her culinary genius by scooping ice cream into bowls and adding fruit. Michelin-Star stuff. We cleaned up together the way we always did, then settled on our couch—Bec with a glass of red, me with a glass of sparkling water. Titus noisily slurp-bathed himself on the floor behind us. Just a regular night.

  There was a comfortable lull in our conversation, both of us leaning into one another. Bec’s free hand played under the hair at the back of my neck and I relaxed into her caress, my hand resting on her thigh. The tension I’d been carrying drained, leaving me feeling pliant and ready to talk. Oh boy.

  Out of the blue, I offered, “I feel okay being here with you now, like I’m not really anxious about it. But I’m just not ready to stay here, sorry. I think I need another few days before I’m ready to come home.” A little more time apart where I could think without what I was trying to fix staring me in the face.

  The fingers stroking my skin paused momentarily. “Oh?

  “I…there’s a couple more things I need to attend to before I’ll feel comfortable enough to stay. Like, this kind of feels the same as when I wanted to go off-base that day. You know? When we were stuck with all the rules and shit smothering our feelings, and I just needed to get away from the thing that was causing so much anxiety and upset. Now, I feel like I need some space so I can sort through my thoughts without worrying about you seeing them.” I grinned. “Not that you can see thoughts, but you always seem to know mine.”

  Bec’s answering smile was controlled. “Oh, I hadn’t realized that’s why you asked to go on that unlikely mission back then. It makes sense.” She was almost too calm now, her words measured.

  I twisted to face her, bringing one leg up and settling it under my butt. Readying myself to bring up the topic I’d been avoiding for so long had my nerves firing. Step one—be honest and open. “Babe, about that. Jana made me realize that we’ve never talked about how I feel that it was you who…put me back together. She, um, she also said that we’re so busy protecting each other from how we feel about The Incident that it’s actually hurting us.”

  “I guess that’s a good way to put it.” Bec set her wineglass down on the coffee table, the movement exceedingly slow and cautious. “How do you feel about me being the lead on your surgery?”

  I blew out a breath, my cheeks puffing with the force of it. “I don’t like it. Actually, I think I hate it. It upsets me that you had to deal with it. That you saw me that way. That you had to carry the weight of such a fucked-up thing.” Right on cue, my right side cramped. Stupid body.

  Her gaze was unwavering, her voice steady. “I can understand why you feel that. At the same time, I’m sorry, sweetheart but I couldn’t have done it any other way.”

  “Why not?”

  Bec’s answer was immediate. “Because I couldn’t let anyone else do it. If they’d screwed up, if you’d died or been permanently compromised, then I would spend the rest of my life hating myself. It was me who put you in that position and it had to be me who fixed you.” The words had come out in one long breath, and Bec drew in a lungful of air, twisting away from me, her body tensing perceptibly.

  …maybe stop to think, and ask a question or two about how she feels about what happened…

  “Bec…” I reached for her, gently touching her forearm.

  She started. “Yes, darling?” Her hand came to her chest, but it didn’t disguise the short, shallow rise and fall of her breasts. Was my stable, strong Bec having a panic attack? Would that be possible?

  I slid my hand under hers, gently stroking up and down her sternum as though that might help her remember to breathe deeply. “How do you feel about what happened that day? Like, how do you feel now, not how you felt then.”

  She seemed almost perplexed that I’d asked. After The Incident, we’d cried together as we talked details. The horror she’d felt when she’d realized that it was me coming in. The way the explosion made my head feel like it was in a vise with my teeth being ground into dust. What the team, my friends, had said when she’d told them to prep. How I’d panicked in the Humvee and couldn’t remember anything I’d learned all those years ago about being in combat. But everything we’d shared was dry facts designed to convey information, not true feelings.

  It took almost a full minute for her to frame a one-word answer. “Guilty.” Bec exhaled, her shoulders dropping, and I wondered just how much weight she’d felt holding that word inside for the past two years.

  Her confession stole all the air from my lungs. Left my heart feeling so suddenly weak and sluggish that I feared it might cease beating. “Why?” I asked quietly. I realized then that it’d never occurred to me that she could possibly feel that way. Stupid, so fucking stupid and so caught up in my own head.

  “Because I should have said no,” she said simply.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Rebecca

  I couldn’t believe I’d actually answered Sabine’s question with the whole, unpolished truth. The instinct to brush past anything regarding my part in that dreadful day, to shield her from my awful reality was so overwhelming that I wanted to take my words back. But what Jana had apparently said to Sabine was right. The way we kept doing this to one another, the way we kept trying to protect each other, was hurting not helping us.

  That familiar guilt. Disgust. Self-recrimination. I took a few moments to acknowledge each emotion and then sort them into the place where I kept everything that wasn’t helpful. Allowing those feelings to take over wasn’t helpful. Not now, when we’d finally arrived at the place we’d been trying to get to for so long.

  I looked up, transfixed by her expression of shock and horror and sadness, and my words streamed out in a torrent. “I think about that day a lot. About how you came to my office, knocked so tentatively on my open door like you didn’t think I was going to let you come in. As soon as you asked if you could go off-base, my command-brain took over and I was about to say no, because why would I take a surgeon off the roster just to go and give flu vaccinations?

  “I think you knew it, because you looked like you were about to beg me, which made me think about everything else you’d begged me for in those hours we were together. And it just cascaded from there. I thought about how it’d been thirteen days since I’d touched you, really touched you not just accidentally brushing against each other. Which made me think about the sound you made when I first kissed you, that little sigh as though I’d finally given you the answer to a question you’d been asking me for an eternity.

  “I remembered how perfectly your breasts fit in my hands. How you tasted. The smell of your hair. How much I loved making love with you, and that it was exactly as I’d always imagined. I thought about how desperately I wanted to drag you to the floor behind my desk and do it again and again. I’d been in love with you for so long and making love with you had just confirmed how I felt, but I didn’t know how to tell you. I was thinking all these things in the space of a few seconds, and then I thought that this was the reason why what was happening between us wasn’t allowed.”

  I sucked in a breath, quickly, as though oxygen were sparse and I had to grab some before it vanished. “But I said yes and I still don’t know exactly why. Maybe because I’ve always found it hard to not try to give you what you wanted. So I let you go when I shouldn’t have, and I probably wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been so weak and hadn’t already crossed that line. And for the rest of my life, Sabine, it’s the only yes I’m ever going to regret saying to you.”

  Sabine only got one word out around her tears that’d begun falling freely halfway through my monologue. “Bec.” She took a hiccupping breath at the same time as she drew her thumb under my eyes. She wiped my tears, not hers.

  I reached up and drew her hand away, kissing her palm before twining our fingers together. “It’s okay, sweetheart, really it is. I don’t like it, it’s upsetting and it hurts, but I’ve accepted my part in it.” I had t
o, otherwise I would have drowned, and if I drowned then I couldn’t keep her afloat as well.

  “It’s not okay, it’s not!” Sabine gripped my hand like it was a lifeline, pulling herself closer until there was no space between us. She flung her arms around me, buried her face in my neck and sobbed. She rocked me slowly as I clutched her tee, my own tears wet against her skin as we cried together. Our shared grief was all at once both my greatest sorrow and the most comforting thing I’d ever experienced.

  Around her sobs, the words came out jerky and broken. “I didn’t even…I’d never thought you might feel that way or blame yourself or anything like that. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  I pulled back slightly, swiping my palms across my eyes. “Because living with the guilt was hard enough, and I couldn’t stand thinking of you absorbing it on top of everything else that’d happened to you. Not when you were already struggling so much.”

  “But it’s not your fault, Bec,” she insisted hoarsely. “It’s really not. It just happened.”

  “I know, but the feeling is still there. Even without all the other stuff between us, I was responsible for you, for your safety and I made a mistake.” After a ragged breath, I countered, “None of this is your fault either, darling.” I took her face in both my hands, forcing her tear-stained gaze to stay on me. “We both played a part in this.”

  She curled her fingers around my wrist, holding my hand against her face. “I’m such a selfish idiot. I’m so sorry, Bec.” Her apology broke apart. “I didn’t mean to make you carry that on your own. These past few years, I thought I was doing the right thing but really I’ve just been screwing up. Why do you keep giving me all these chances? I’m not saying I don’t want you to, or that I’m not so fucking thankful you’ve stuck by me. But sometimes I can’t figure it out.”

  I kissed her then, because I couldn’t help myself. Her lips were salty from crying, and as warm and soft as ever. “I do it because I love you. Because you and your family are the most important things in my life. Maybe the only thing that’s ever felt right. I stay, I fight, I try because I love you.”

  A warm palm came to my tear-wet cheek, warmer lips touched mine. Sabine tugged me close, drawing me almost into her lap and cradling me in strong arms. She kissed my neck, along my jaw, my damp cheeks and finally both of my closed eyelids. I moved closer, burying my face in her neck.

  We sat snuggled together, my hand playing up and down her stomach, until our tears eased and our breathing steadied. I let my eyes close again and felt her slow, measured breathing under my hand. She drew in a few short, almost stuttering breaths then exhaled, the sound catching in her throat. I opened my eyes in time to see her twisting away from me. It looked as if she was trying to fold herself in half, and her left hand came up to press against the ribs on her right side. The posture was vaguely familiar, like the one I’d seen her adopt when we were having one of our arguments.

  Alarmed, I drew back. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  Sabine sucked in another quick breath. “It just hurts.”

  “Where? What kind of pain?”

  Another sharp inhalation. “My ribs. It’s not real, Bec. It’s just a fucking fake pain.”

  “How bad? How long has this been happening?”

  She paused, and the flicker of emotion on her face told me she didn’t want to answer. But after a beat she said, “Ever since, you know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because it’s not real and it’s not relevant.”

  I moved to touch her torso, and she pulled back out of my reach. I didn’t chase. “It is relevant and what you’re feeling is real. What does it feel like?”

  “Like a twingey kind of ache…” Her voice dropped. “Sort of how it was when the tube was there.”

  “Have you told Andrew?”

  “Yes. He agrees it’s psychosomatic and that it might ease over time, or it might not.” Her jaw muscles bunched. “I’m upset, Bec. That’s all. Just my brain, reminding me. As if I could forget.”

  “Please, may I look?” Even as I asked the question, I readied for her to say no. Instead, she nodded, the movement short and jerky. I lifted her shirt and she tensed as my fingers brushed over the scar from the chest tube incision. But she didn’t move away. I gently examined the surrounding area, certain I wouldn’t find any physical cause but needing to be sure. “Does that hurt?”

  “No. It’s inside.” She flashed me a facetious Sabine grin, her usual response to something difficult she didn’t want to discuss. “Inside my head.”

  I bent down, ducked under her arm and kissed the scar lightly. She sighed, a long drawn out exhalation, and I took my time, softly kissing the area around it, deliberately avoiding the actual scar tissue. My fingers stroked the tense muscles of her abdomen until eventually I felt them relax. Her hand came to the back of my head and when I sat up again, her expression had changed from irreverent to so serious I thought she was about to drop another bombshell on me. “I know I’m not totally okay, Bec, but are we okay?”

  “Absolutely,” I said without hesitation, and her relief was so palpable, I could have touched it.

  She shifted on the couch until she was lying down on the edge, facing away from me. “Come here.”

  I slid in behind her, pulling her close with an arm over her waist and the other under her neck to curve around until my hand rested below her breasts. Burying my face in her soft, fragrant hair, I said, “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable or if the way I tried to help made it worse.”

  “It’s okay, baby. I know. I’m sorry I find it so hard to let you help.” Sabine reached down for the hand I had across her waist, gently kissing my fingertips before guiding it under her shirt to her right armpit. I stayed quiet as she used my fingers to trace the edges of the scar where a bullet had torn into her. She was tense in the way I knew meant she was unsure about something, rather than fearful and I kept silent, my lips against her neck. With deliberate movements she drew my fingers over every part of the small, ragged mark and the associated surgical scars surrounding it.

  “What do you think changed your thinking?”

  Sabine rolled over until we were face-to-face. “Acceptance.” She raised a shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I can’t be perfect, I never could be. But I can try to be what you need and what you deserve.” She rested her head on my breasts. A hand found its way under my shirt, fingertips gently stroking my stomach. After a long sigh, she murmured, “Can I stay here a little while before I go?”

  Stay. Go. The two words clashed against each other. I kissed her forehead. “Of course you can. As long as you want.”

  * * *

  Thursday night after I’d watched Sabine drive away back to her sister’s, I made a mug of herbal tea, and took the cat upstairs with me to read in the hope it would help me relax enough that I could sleep. Even after the ten months of Sabine’s deployment, I’d never grown used to sleeping alone, and the past few days had been a fresh kind of torture.

  She hadn’t spent a night in our house since the gun incident. The night we’d shared our truths, we’d lain on the couch, curled up together talking until almost midnight. Yawning, Sabine had sat up again, glancing out of the den to the stairs that led up to our bedroom.

  She’d murmured her apology, told me she just couldn’t do it, and with a tight hug and soft kiss we’d said our good nights. And she’d left me. The next few nights had been more of the same—Sabine coming for dinner, playing with the cat, us watching television together, and talking. I didn’t push because every time I’d seen her, I could see a change—the slight relaxation, an openness and willingness to talk. These nights apart were helping her, and that made it worth it.

  After half an hour I gave up trying to read, unable to concentrate and slid off the bed to put the novel back. One of the books on the middle shelf sat back to front, the pages facing out instead of the spine. I eased it out and flipped it around to check the cover. Sabine’s beloved
Kafka.

  I traced the worn embossed title. Die Verwandlung.

  The Metamorphosis.

  Fitting really that this would be the book I picked up. The past few years had been a metamorphosis of sorts. I pushed the book back onto the shelf, the right way around. The right way… Why was it the wrong way around in the first place? Sabine was meticulous to the point of OCD, and it made no sense that she’d put one of her most treasured possessions away so carelessly. Especially not a book that didn’t usually live on the shelf, but on her bedside table.

  As I stared at the rows of books, I made an uneasy connection with the plot of the classic and why she’d hidden this particular book from view. Did Sabine think she’d undergone some metamorphosis, and was now so changed that the people who loved her would somehow be happier or better off without her?

  God, it’d been right there in front of me the whole time, she’d practically left me a goddamned note telling me what the problem was. I could have seen it earlier, if I hadn’t been so hyper-focused on all the tiny things. On trying to fix her, rather than doing what she needed. I could only hope that after everything we’d shared, she now knew that I needed her. That I trusted her to hear my truth.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Sabine

  Semi-awake, I fumbled my phone from the coffee table and clumsily swiped a few times to accept the call. “Sabine Fleischer.”

  Mitch laughed. “What kinda formal shit is that?”

  “I was sleeping.” On the couch like a grandma after dinner. I cleared my throat, trying to push away the just-woken gravel.

  “At eight on a Friday night? Darlin’, that is the saddest thing I ever heard.”

  “Leave me alone. Doing nothing all day makes me tired,” I mumbled. “What’s up?”

  “Mike and me are goin’ to Seventeenth Street. And you, sugar, are comin’ along to blow off some steam.”

  Perfect, a night of dancing with Mitch and his boyfriend. Third wheel much? I rolled over, flinging an arm over my eyes. “Mmmph. I’m still at Jana’s and I don’t have anything here I can wear.” Flimsy excuses are flimsy.