Ripple Effect

by J. Bengtsson

  As I turned the corner on my street, I noticed my mother out front speaking with two men. She hadn’t mentioned any visitors. And then I saw him. RJ, standing there looking beautiful and healthy and whole. Blood instantly began pumping through my rusty heart as RJ stepped toward the curb and revealed my next surprise… and it was as jaw-dropping as the man himself: the Bronco he'd promised me in the parking garage.

  With the help of crutches, RJ walked to my driver’s side window and stared down at me through the glass. There was both hope and fear in his eyes. And I felt so bad. So hopeless. Because we wanted the same thing—to resume the fragile life we’d started together before despair brought me down—and I just couldn’t give it to him.

  RJ helped me from the car, and with my shoulders slumped from the strain, I sagged into his arms. His strength enveloped me, and I cried. RJ didn’t let go; he held me longer than any man ever had. He let me cry. He let me grieve. And when I’d finally emptied the tank, he pulled away long enough to cup my face in his loving touch and kiss me so gently, so tenderly, I wondered if he thought I might break.

  Our lips parted, and I ran my fingertips over his jawline.

  “You shaved.”

  He laughed. “I did. For you. Every day. Just in case.”

  Just in case I came home, he meant.

  Taking my hand, he led me to the Bronco. “My promise to you.”

  It was beautiful—my dream car, just as he’d promised me. I ran my fingers along the side, marveling at the grand gesture. “RJ, you know you didn’t need to do this. That was just a silly conversation.”

  “Not to me it wasn’t. I meant every word. I want you to know, Dani, my gratitude is not contingent on us. Don’t get me wrong; I want us. And I will fight like hell for us. But this gift is separate from that. This gift is not for the girl I love. It’s for the hero who saved me.”

  Love? His words nearly melted me to the curb. I could not give him up without a fight. “Can we talk?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” he said, then turned to the other man and shook his hand. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

  “No. You owe me nothing.”

  “At least a beer.”

  “Yes. I’ll accept a beer. Dani,” he said, tipping his head in greeting.

  I returned his greeting even without knowing who I was interacting with.

  “My brother, Manny,” RJ said.

  “Oh.” I rocked back in surprise. “Your brother.”

  Manny flashed me a quick wave before heading over to his own car and driving away.

  “Come on,” I said, leading RJ through the house and up a flight of stairs, his first on his prosthetic leg. By the time we got to my room and I shut the door behind us, he was seriously winded.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” he asked.

  “If I were, I’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

  “This is true.”

  I crossed to the oversized chaise lounge. “Sit.”

  Once he’d settled into the heavenly cushions, I crawled in after, facing him with legs crossed. We stared at one another for a long moment before he reached out and slid his fingers over my cheeks.

  “God, I missed this pretty face. Tell me what I have to do to get you back.”

  “There isn’t anything you can do. It’s just something I have to work through on my own.”

  “Why on your own? I’m fairly certain this all stems back to the earthquake we both survived, so there doesn’t seem anyone better suited to help you through this than me.”

  He was right. I’d tried to get past this on my own. I’d tried to get past it with piping warm soup. I’d tried to get past it with professional help. But I’d never tried to get past it with him, the person who should’ve been at the top of the list. Edging off the lounger, I retrieved the bag I’d been taking to the therapist even though I’d never revealed the contents. I pulled out a folder with a stack of papers inside. And as I reclaimed my spot on the chair, RJ’s eyes were fixed on what was in my hands.

  I looked down at the blue folder, hesitating a moment before handing it over. RJ was slow and methodical as he flipped through the papers. It wasn’t until page four or five that he finally realized what he was holding.

  “You did this?” he asked. “You gathered all these together?”

  I nodded.

  RJ slumped back against the cushions; he even ran his hands over his face and through his hair. “Why, Dani?”

  “I was trying to find closure.”

  “No,” he said, holding up the papers. “You were trying to torture yourself.”

  I grabbed my precious papers out of his hand. “No, RJ. I was trying to understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  I could barely force the words out through my strangled throat. “Why I lived and they died.”

  The only sound in the room was the hum of the fan overhead. Every emotion appeared to be cycling over RJ’s face. Maybe he didn’t understand my methods, but he sure as hell understood my pain.

  “Look,” I said, holding up the first paper on the stack. “Her name is Doreen Dodd. She was the one in the parking spot you stole from me. She was crushed by concrete near the exit. She lived on our floor, eight doors down. Or Lamond Brown. He was sick, so he stayed behind when his wife and kids went out for ice cream. When they came back, he was dead. They lived in the apartment above us, three to the left. And…”

  I paused, trying to catch my breath. “Sarina. She’s six. They pulled her from the rubble alive. Her mom and her grandmother and even her dog—all of them died. They lived directly below us, RJ. Directly below.”

  “Okay, I get it,” he said, removing the papers from my hands. “They were living, breathing people, and they died. You don’t think I have the same thoughts going through my head? If anyone would understand, I would. Why wouldn’t you just share this with me, so we could work through it together?”

  “Because I didn’t want to drag you down with me, not in your state of mind.”

  “My state of mind? What are you talking about?”

  “Bodhi thinks you’re in denial, that you’re a hurricane waiting to come ashore. I worried if I burdened you with this, it would put too much stress on you, and it might prevent you from healing.”

  “Wait, since when are you having discussions with Bodhi… about me?”

  “We talked in the hospital just before I left. He was concerned by how calm you were. He thinks maybe you haven’t fully processed what happened to you, and that at some point, you’re going to freak out about your foot.”

  His fingers were now so tangled in his hair, I thought RJ might pull the strands clean out. “My god, Dani, do you really think I’m that shallow? That I care about my foot more than my life? I’m glad my foot’s gone.”

  “Don’t say that. You know it’s not true. Bodhi said you’d never be okay with losing it.”

  “Bodhi wasn’t in the parking garage!”

  RJ’s burst of anger startled us both. He reached for me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

  “Don’t be,” I said, folding my fingers into his.

  RJ sighed long and hard. “I need to tell you something.”

  I watched as he flipped through the stack of papers. “There’s a man named Albert Arthur Aldrich in that stack, isn’t there?”

  “I… yes. Did you hear about him on the news?”

  “No. I listened to him die.”

  Chills swept through me as the full scope of his trauma came to light.

  “Oh god, RJ, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  “Because I never told you… just like you never told me about this stack. You and me, we gotta communicate better. We’re survivors, Dani, but we’re not bulletproof. We need to lean on each other for support. Running away doesn’t fix anything. It just pushes it down the road, prolonging the misery.”

  My misery. His misery. Oh no, what had I done? Cradling his face in my hands, I whispered, “Never again.”

  �
��You and me, Dani,” he replied, his words heavy with strain. “It has to be. You and me.”

  “Yes.” I kissed him. “You and me to the end.”

  I drew in a breath and realized it didn’t hurt as much as it had when I opened my eyes this morning.

  “Tell me about Albert.”

  He sifted through the pile until he found the man, staring at his picture for a long while before opening up to me. “When you left that first time, to go get help, that’s when I realized I wasn’t alone. Did you know him? That old guy in apartment 140? Always wore a Dodgers hat and carried a tote bag with him to the mailbox.”

  “I never spoke with him, but I recognized him from his picture.”

  “He was in his first-floor apartment when the earthquake struck. Somehow, he ended up above me in the parking garage. By the time I realized he was there, Albert was barely alive… had a rebar skewered through his stomach. He was scared but was talking about how he’d lived his life well and had no regrets. The last thing he said to me—” RJ halted, the memory gutting him. “He said, ‘I lived a damn good life.’”

  I lay my head on RJ’s chest, hurting for him. We sat like that a long time before he was ready to talk again.

  “When he died… I don’t know, something changed in me. I realized that I was doing life all wrong. And if I wanted my last breath to mean something, like Albert’s did, then I had to start living. Not like I was doing before—with excess amounts of anger and resentment—but really living. I promised myself if I made it through, I wouldn’t waste another day.

  “And Bodhi’s right about one thing. I’m not the guy he knows. The day I woke up in the hospital was the day I was reborn. So, if you really want to see me freak out, by all means, give me a slow internet connection, but if you’re waiting for me to go ballistic over my missing foot, that’s never going to happen.”

  There was power in what he spoke. RJ had changed not because he was forced to but because he had the strength to. And I could rediscover my strength too. I was, after all, the ‘bite-sized’ woman who’d dragged RJ through the debris.

  “So, what do we do?” I asked.

  “I know what we can’t do. We can’t bring them back, and we can’t trade places. You want to know why you lived and they died but there isn’t an answer to that, Dani. It’s all random, a game of fate. If Doreen would’ve backed out of her parking spot even three minutes earlier, she would’ve lived, and you would’ve died in your apartment. Or maybe if I hadn’t been stuck at the grocery store behind the guy who couldn’t remember his PIN number, I would’ve been there before you, snagged that spot, and died in my apartment. We just got lucky. That’s it. You want to play the ‘what if’ game when what you need to do is accept that we won this round and be grateful for our second chance.”

  It was all stuff I knew. Of course it wasn’t my fault, yet somehow my brain had made it seem that way. This was survivor’s guilt at its most destructive, and now that I had RJ to guide me through the fog, I knew everything would eventually be all right. My heart beat faster as a surge of voltage awakened it.

  “I am grateful.”

  “For what, Dani? Say it.”

  “For you,” I replied, my voice strengthening. “And to be alive.”

  “I’m grateful for the same things.”

  “Good,” I shouted.

  He answered back with his own shout. “Why are we yelling?”

  “I don’t know,” I continued at the top of my lungs. “But I like it. The pressure was building. You popped the cork. And now I’m gonna blow!”

  “Okay,” he mused, a smile jumping to his lips. “Should I get out of the way?”

  Lifting to my knees, I leaned over and smacked a kiss to his lips before tossing my arms to the sides and screaming. Seconds later, the door was flung open and my horrified mother rushed toward me, her eyes flooded with panic.

  “It’s okay.” RJ held his hands out to stop her.

  “No. No, it’s not okay.”

  “Yes, Gladys. She needs this. Let her empty the bottle.”

  And they did, both waiting patiently until my throat was raw and I collapsed to the side, laughing.

  “I’m just so confused,” my mother said.

  I reached my hand out to her, and when she grabbed it, I pulled her down and gave her a hug. “I love you. Have I told you that lately?”

  Her tense body began to loosen. “No. I don’t believe you have.”

  “Well, I love you,” I said, kissing her cheek. “Thank you for everything, Mom. Now I’m ready to go home.”

  28

  Dani: Doctor Dani

  It should have been a grand experience—me gliding into the stately mansion while attentive staff fussed over my every need.

  “Park over there,” RJ instructed.

  “Behind the shrubs?”

  “Yes.”

  I eyed him but said nothing as I pulled into the dirt, my fancy new Bronco getting her first real taste of adversity. RJ steered me along the outskirts of the property, welcoming me to my new digs through the back door. Again, weird, but I’d never been to his house before and just figured it was sort of a ‘garage’ entrance. It wasn’t until he began tiptoeing through the kitchen—on crutches—that I realized something was up.

  “What’s going…”

  My question was interrupted when RJ abruptly pushed me into the pantry and slapped a hand over my mouth, his lips puckered in a ‘shush.’

  I squawked indignantly, prying his fingers back. “If you don’t explain what’s going on right now, I’m going to scream… and then I’m going to knee you in the nuts.”

  RJ didn’t take my threat lightly. “My nurse,” he whispered. “Julio. He’s pissed. Left me like eighty messages.”

  “So what? He’s your nurse, not Heather! The RJ I know doesn’t hide in a pantry the size of my old apartment because he’s afraid of the hired help. Who is he, Freddie Krueger?”

  The door suddenly blew open, and we both screamed like we were on Elm Street. A short, disgruntled dude in swim trunks stood in the entrance to the pantry.

  “Oh, hey, Julio,” RJ said, quickly recovering from the shock. “Just getting a snack. Nice to see you threw a shirt on.”

  RJ hopped past his nurse and into the kitchen. I followed right behind, having no clue what was currently happening but feeling like I was in the middle of a domestic dispute.

  “You were getting a snack in the dark?” Julio questioned.

  “Yes,” RJ confirmed. “It’s more fun that way. A surprise every time—like snack roulette.”

  Julio narrowed in on RJ. “I do not appreciate you leaving…”

  “Actually, Julio, sorry to interrupt, but Dani can’t keep her hands off me, so we’ll have to discuss this in the morning.”

  I wanted to punch him for putting me in an awkward position, but instead I dutifully followed after RJ because the house was massive enough that I would’ve gotten lost without him.

  “Thanks a lot, Chad!” I smacked him in the pecs. “Now I have to find a new place to live.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, reaching around my back and tugging me to him. “Until I have you quaking on my bed.”

  “You sound confident in your skills,” I teased, biting his luscious bottom lip as my hand dipped to his pants and I took a firm grip of his manhood. He groaned, pulling the shirt over my head before reconnecting our lips. “But I’m a finicky climaxer.”

  I could feel his lips curving against mine. “You won’t be tonight.”

  “All right, well, I’m rooting for you,” I said between kisses.

  “No need. You’ll see.”

  He was so confident in his skillset that I almost believed him. The fact of the matter was, while I was a whiz with a vibrator, I’d always struggled to achieve orgasmic bliss with the Jeremys. But I was more than willing to give the studly pop star a try.

  “Bed,” I instructed, walking him backward until his legs touched the bed. Dislodging the c
rutches from under his arms, I pushed him back onto the mattress and wasted no time climbing on top of him and straddling his waist. I leaned over, hands on either side of his head, staring into his lustful eyes. Lifting his head, he took a swipe at my lips with his tongue.

  “Do you want me?” I purred, teasing him by rotating my hips over his ever-expanding erection. That I’d worn a skirt with itty bitty silk panties today seemed almost like divine intervention.

  He answered by unhooking the clasp of my bra and setting my breasts free. But they weren’t really, because RJ’s calloused hands were on them in seconds, using his thumb to gently brush against my nipples. I sucked in my lower lip, gripping his chest and grinding deeper onto him. He winced.

  I froze. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” he lied. “Don’t stop.”

  “RJ, you’re fresh out of the hospital. Still breakable.”

  He thrust his pulsing dick between my legs; the only thing keeping it from penetrating me was the fact that it was still in his pants. “Does that feel breakable to you?”

  “No,” I whispered in his ear, squeezing my thighs around him.

  He dragged in a sharp breath. “So, stop worrying about me.”

  “Okay. But I’d feel better if I did a real quick health exam on you,” I said, tilting his face toward me, and when he opened his mouth to protest, I stopped him with a finger to his lips. “Yes, just as I suspected. You appear winded. Dr. Dani prescribes mouth to mouth resuscitation.”

  I lowered my lips to his, inhaling him long and deep. He caught on to the game in record time, slipping his tongue into the resuscitation efforts, a giant no-no in every medical personnel’s survival playbook. But this doctor didn’t mind, the forbidden excitement of RJ reaching all the way to my core. I was living out a fantasy millions of girls around the world could only dream of. And he’d sought me out, coming to my house to win me back. He was mine for the taking.