by Abby Jimenez
“You know her?” she said to the side of my face. “How?”
“My cousin Josh is married to her best friend. He lives next door to them in Ely. And I went on a date with her once.”
“Bullshit.”
I looked at her and her eyes were wide. I pulled out my cell phone and went to Instagram. I found Sloan’s private page and handed her the phone.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, scrolling through the pictures of Sloan and Jaxon, my cousin and his family intermingled in the feed, sitting around a campfire, at the table for Thanksgiving, playing with each other’s kids.
“This is so cool! You just got cooler by association,” she said, smiling up at me. “I’m a total fangirl. I love her—she is so talented. There’s like a three-year waiting list for one of these.”
“I can see why,” I said, looking back at the artwork. This couldn’t have been cheap. She must make pretty good money doing this vlogger thing to afford fine wines and a Sloan Monroe.
I moved down the wall to look at the next piece. It was made out of real butterfly wings, arranged in a colorful, intricate design. “They’re all so different.”
“I surround myself with things that make me happy. That’s sort of a rule I have. I got that one in Costa Rica.”
“And this one?” I pointed to a black-and-white pencil drawing of a half-naked woman draped in a sheet. Her head was tipped, and her hair covered one eye.
“An artist in Sicily. That’s me, by the way.”
I arched an eyebrow at her.
She laughed. “Antonio is about seventy-five years old and very professional. I wanted someone to paint me like one of Jack’s French girls before I die.”
I looked back at the drawing. It was tastefully done. But she was nude from the navel up. “You could have given the old guy a heart attack.”
She laughed again. “He painted Sophia Loren topless. My boobs didn’t stand a chance of doing him in.”
I begged to differ on that.
She’d hung it, so she must be okay with people looking at it, but I wasn’t really appreciating the art—I was appreciating the view, and that wasn’t the same thing. I went on to the next one, just so I wasn’t staring at her naked.
It was a photo of a graffitied brick wall with a woman dressed like the Statue of Liberty painted on it holding up a globe. “Why does this look familiar?”
“That one’s a Banksy,” she said.
I narrowed my eyes at the woman’s face. “Is that you too?” I looked back at her.
She shrugged. “Yeah. I met him at a water park in Shanghai.”
“You met Banksy, the famous anonymous street artist, at a water park in Shanghai,” I deadpanned.
She shrugged again. “I mean, I didn’t know it was him. We talked for like twenty minutes by the kiddie pool. And then like two days later this photo gets delivered to my hotel room—which was super weird because I didn’t tell him where I was staying. He wrote on the back ‘From the guy you talked to by the kiddie pool—Banksy.’”
I blinked at her.
“He authenticated it on his website. It’s supposed to represent global unity through traveling and embracing other cultures or something? I don’t know, it’s sorta confusing. They sell prints of it.”
I shook my head. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know. A normal guy? Not as handsome as you.”
I snorted.
She looked up at me. “So what kind of law do you practice, Adrian?”
“I’m a criminal defender.”
“Huh. Why?” She tilted her head.
I looked back at the Banksy. “I like the challenge of it.”
“Are a lot of your clients guilty?”
I scoffed. “Most of my clients are guilty.”
“And that doesn’t bother you, trying to get people off when you know they deserve to go to prison?”
“Everyone deserves a defense,” I said.
She went quiet next to me for a moment. “You know, somebody like you could really change the world if you wanted to.”
I turned back to her. “And do what?”
“Fight for something that needs fighting for. Like disability rights.”
“Disability rights. That’s specific.”
“My sister was a wheelchair user before she died. You wouldn’t believe what it’s like for the disabled.” She ticked off on her fingers. “Discrimination, lack of resources, lack of basic accessibility. I mean, housing alone. Do you know how hard it is to find accessible, affordable housing for the disabled? It’s why so many disabled people end up in institutions or living in substandard or unsafe living conditions.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “And you think the cause could use another good lawyer?”
“Oh yeah.” Her lips twisted into a grin. “Especially one who likes a challenge.”
I gave her a small smile and looked at my watch. “I should probably let you get to sleep. It’s almost midnight.”
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I saw a flicker of disappointment on her face. She handed me Harry. “Thanks for hanging out.”
“Thanks for having me over.”
Half an hour later, I was lying in bed and Vanessa knocked on the wall of my bedroom over my headboard.
I smiled and knocked back.
CHAPTER 6
IF YOU HAVE THIS SYMPTOM, YOU MIGHT BE DYING!
VANESSA
The numbness was back in my right hand.
I’d woken up this morning and fumbled my phone with fingers that felt dead.
It was 6:34 a.m. Saturday morning. I was sitting in the dark in my room wrapped in a blanket, my legs crossed on my bed, trying to do the in-through-the-nose, out-through-the-mouth breathing Yoga Lady had taught me to calm myself down. But the terror rolled through me like waves. It got bigger and bigger until it burst from my lips in a choking sob.
I didn’t want to wake Grace, so I stumbled to the bathroom with a hand over my mouth. I put the lid to the toilet down to sit and swiped open my phone to read the article on WebMD again, squeezing my right hand into a fist, feeling certain that I’d lost grip strength.
ALS can start off with something as simple as a weak feeling in your hands or feet. It’s a disease that attacks the brain cells that control a lot of your muscle movement.
ALS Association:
Gradual onset, generally painless, progressive muscle weakness is the most common initial symptom in ALS. Other early symptoms vary but can include tripping, dropping things, abnormal fatigue of the arms and/or legs, slurred speech, muscle cramps and twitches.
Mayo Clinic:
Hand weakness or clumsiness…
I don’t know why I needed to keep reading this. I knew exactly what this disease looked like.
I bit the inside of my cheek so hard I tasted blood.
At first I’d hoped it was just carpal tunnel. But I’d gone in for testing, and it was negative. They’d wanted to send me for more study and I’d refused.
There was no test for ALS. They diagnosed it by excluding other diseases that mimic it and monitoring the progression of your deterioration. It could take up to a year of invasive procedures and poking and prodding before they slapped ALS on what was happening to me—and when they did, there was nothing to be done anyway. It was 100 percent fatal.
And now maybe the countdown had finally begun.
My life might officially be going from living to dying.
An average three-year life expectancy from the onset of symptoms—less if my family history was any indication. Melanie had lived only nineteen months after her voice started to slur, and she took the medications—which I would not.
I figured I had about a year. My muscles would continue to waste away, a little at a time. Then I wouldn’t be able to walk, feed myself, move. I was going to die unable to swallow, unable to speak, like Melanie had. Entombed in the prison of my own body, fully aware, until it paralyzed my lungs and I suffocated to death.
> I put my phone facedown on the bathroom sink and sobbed into my hands.
CHAPTER 7
THINGS YOU CAN DO TO
MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY
(YOU WON’T BELIEVE #4!)
ADRIAN
I woke up to knocking on my door. I glanced at my phone. It was 7:03 in the morning. It was Saturday, so I didn’t have to work and I’d been planning on sleeping in. Damn. Probably Becky.
She’d texted me a few times last night to check in on the dog, and I hadn’t texted her back. She was probably here on her suicide watch.
Harry Puppins growled from the pillow next to mine as I threw off the covers and put on slippers. I’d started letting him sleep in the bed. I couldn’t stand the frail, confused way he looked at me when I’d put him in the laundry room at night.
He still bit me every chance he got.
I opened the door expecting my assistant, but it was Vanessa standing there. She had Grace strapped to her front in a baby sling. “Hey.” She beamed up at me.
I hadn’t seen her since Monday, five days ago, when we’d done dinner and The Office at her place. I’d worked late every night this week, and I hadn’t knocked to take her trash out again because I didn’t want to wake her up when I got home.
She’d been randomly sending me Office memes. It was like a tiny little smile that popped up on my phone once in a while to surprise me. I liked it—though I was too busy to respond most of the time.
I smiled at her. “Hey. Good morning.”
Her eyes were a little red. Maybe she hadn’t slept well last night.
She bounced the baby. “Sorry I didn’t text. This is sort of an impulse visit. I was on a walk around the building. I get stir-crazy in there. I passed by your door and the next thing I knew, I was knocking.”
She was very perky for 7:00 in the morning. I felt my smile reach my eyes.
She was in pajamas. Fleece bottoms with the Grinch on them. I couldn’t see the gray shirt under the baby sling, but it was baggy. Her hair was piled in a messy bun on top of her head and she had on unicorn slippers. She was a hot mess and it was oddly attractive.
I wondered what the real reason was that she didn’t date. She certainly was datable. Good-looking, intelligent, fun to be around. Inherently likable. I’d really enjoyed hanging out with her the other night.
I hadn’t had a chance to check out her channel yet. I’d been slammed at work. I was in the middle of a jury trial. But now I wished I’d taken a few minutes to look at it.
She cradled Grace’s bottom in the sling. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to…” She wrinkled her forehead and peered past me. “Are those crime-scene photos?”
I looked over my shoulder. “Oh, yeah. I was working from home last night.”
She edged past me without being invited in and made her way to my dining room table. She scanned the photos with her back to me. “You know, without the lawyer thing for context, this makes you look like a serial killer. Like you might as well have a necklace made of teeth or something.”
I chuckled. “And yet you’re not afraid to be alone here with me?”
She looked back at me and shook her head. “This is not how I die. Believe me, I know.”
She was wearing a brace on her right hand. I nodded at it. “Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
“No. Carpal tunnel.” She cocked her head. “Is your tetanus shot up to date?”
I wrinkled my forehead at her. “What?”
“There’s a thing I thought you might want to do with me. Do you have time?”
I smiled. I actually did have time.
The weekends were hard these days. It’s when my personal life, or lack thereof, really glared. No more dinner every Sunday with Mom and Grandma. I’d had Rachel to look forward to every few weeks, but now that was over. I wasn’t training for anything at the moment, no marathons or fun runs, and it was winter, my least favorite time of the year to be outside. If Vanessa hadn’t shown up, I think I would have opened my eyes to an instant gloom. I appreciated the distraction.
“I have time,” I said. “What’s the thing?”
“You’ll see. We can do it at my place, or here, since you have the floor space.” She looked around with her hands on her hips. “Why is your apartment so big? I feel like mine used to be a file room or something.”
“This used to be two units. I took them both and knocked down the wall. Put in the bigger kitchen.”
“Do you cook?”
“Not really. Kitchens equal resale value,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Okay. But you obviously make coffee,” she said, nodding at the $2,000 espresso maker I had on my counter. “That thing is vulgar.”
I glanced into the kitchen. “I like good coffee. I get the beans locally roasted.” I looked back at her. “Do you want one?”
“Well, I’m not gonna say no to that. But I need to eat before I caffeinate. I’ll go have cereal real quick and I’ll be back in ten minutes?”
“I could make us eggs,” I offered.
She grinned. “I thought you said you didn’t cook?”
“I’m perfectly capable of eggs,” I assured her.
“All right. If you say so. I do need to go get the thing we’re doing, though, so I’ll be right back. Can you take Grace?”
I held the baby while Vanessa made two trips back to her place. One to get Grace’s swing and a diaper bag, and the other for the mystery activity she had planned. In between I brushed my teeth and washed my face as best I could while holding a baby. I didn’t change. I was in house slippers, a white T-shirt, and gray pajama bottoms.
I didn’t usually let myself be dressed down like this in front of anyone. But since Vanessa didn’t have the sling on her chest anymore, I saw that not only was she wearing a Schrute Farms shirt with a picture of a beet on the front—an Office reference that I now understood—but she also wasn’t wearing a bra. Changing might make her uncomfortable, like she was underdressed.
And I liked it. I liked that she didn’t feel the need to impress me and I didn’t feel the need to impress her. There was something comforting about it, about just being you in whatever state you happened to be in.
Vanessa came back lugging an enormous canvas bag behind her. The sack was so full it jammed in the doorway and I had to put Grace down and run to help her.
“What the hell’s in here?” I asked, setting it in the middle of the living room floor.
She was panting from the effort, leaning forward with her hands on her hips to catch her breath. “Adventure and excitement. It’s fan mail—sure to be both thrilling and horrifying in equal measures.”
“You get this much mail?” I asked, eyeing the sack.
She shrugged. “Sure. It comes from all over the world, so…” She crouched down and grabbed the bottom of the bag, then lifted it and spilled the contents onto the carpet. Letters fanned and boxes tumbled out.
“Jesus, how many months’ worth is this?”
“About two weeks,” she said, kneeling back and looking it over.
I blanched. “Two wee— How many people follow you?”
She shrugged again. “A lot.”
I made cappuccinos while Vanessa sorted the envelopes and boxes into piles. Then I went to the fridge and started to rummage. I didn’t have much. I ate most of my meals out. But between some cheeses, the sauce from some leftover chicken cacciatore I’d brought home a few days earlier and some crème fraîche, leftover Italian bread, and a container of Chipotle guac Vanessa ran to get in her apartment, I managed to make us some pretty decent Spanish omelets.
We sat on the floor of the living room to eat them in our laps so we could start to open mail.
“This tastes amazing,” she said, licking some sauce off her thumb. “You seriously undersold your egg-making abilities.”
Grace was napping in her swing next to us and Harry was snuggled up against Vanessa’s thigh, sleeping. She put a hand on his head.
He growled.
> She set her plate on her knees. “Okay, some fan mail disclaimers.”
I took a sip of my coffee and set the mug back down on the carpet. “Shoot.”
“All right. I don’t know what’s waiting for us in this pile. Most of my fans are perfectly normal and nice. But it is the Internet. I’m not saying there’s a severed ear in here, but there might be a severed ear. General rule of thumb, if it’s dripping, smells bad, or vibrating, I don’t open it.”
I put my plate in my lap and spread the crème over my omelet. “Why? Because it could be a bomb?”
“No, because it’s probably a vibrator.”
I almost choked on my laugh. Jesus, she cracked me up.
“There’s going to be nudes. Hopefully for your sake, you only open up the female ones.”
I was still chuckling. “Women send you nudes?”
She looked me dead in the eye. “All. The. Time. And I don’t eat anything anyone sends me.”
“Even if it’s untampered with?”
“Yup. Somebody might have rubbed their balls on it or something. It does not go in my mouth. Also, I don’t touch anything from Monett, Missouri. We’ll need to set it on fire. Don’t ask.”
She reached into the diaper bag she’d brought over for Grace and pulled out hand sanitizer and baby wipes and set them off to the side between us. “We’ll need this. Are you ready?”
“Ready,” I said.
She gave me a mock serious look. “You’re a brave man for doing this, Adrian Copeland. Braver than most.”
I smiled as I grabbed the first box and tore the tape off it.
An hour later we were sitting in a pile of empty envelopes and cardboard, wearing an assortment of paraphernalia from the fan mail. Both of us were covered in glow sticks. Vanessa wore a necklace strung with Froot Loops. She’d made me put on an extra-large shirt from a fan in Maryland that said I HAVE CRABS on it, and we both had stickers on our arms.
It was ridiculous. Normally I’d never do something this juvenile, but I had to admit I was having fun.
Vanessa did all the cards and I did all the packages, since she had a hard time with her hand. This meant she got the majority of the dick pics.