Off Limits

by Vanessa North

  “Ritchie.” I stop him. “If seeing his mom triggers suicidal behaviors, he needs to talk to someone. He needs to.”

  “I don’t like being away from him. I hate to think of him being alone.”

  “I know, babe. But he needs the doctors right now. And you need some sleep. Let’s get you home.”

  I text Teri from the back of the cab on our way to Jacks and Ritchie’s place.

  Meet at R&J’s ASAP

  Ritchie seems to be functioning solely on adrenaline, so I push him down on the couch and wrap him in a blanket.

  “Get some sleep. I’ll call the restaurant when they open and tell them you won’t be in today.”

  He nods, closing his eyes but still sitting upright. I leave him to his monsters and steel myself for cleaning duty.

  The bathroom is a horror-show, reeking of blood. I open the tiny window over the shower to let in fresh air and get to work.

  I toss the package of razor blades from the medicine cabinet along with the bloody one from the floor. One of Jacks’s starched white work shirts is balled up on the floor, covered in rusty splotches. It goes in the trash, along with the bathmat underneath it.

  Fucking hell. I break out the scrub brush and the 409 from the tiny cupboard under the sink, and I scrub, and scrub, and scrub. And that’s where Teri finds me, on my hands and knees, scrubbing like it can make anything in this world right for Jacks or Ritchie. Or even me.

  “Hey.”

  I wipe my face on my shoulder and look up at her.

  “Hey, yourself.”

  “He’s going to be okay,” she says. “We’re going to get him through this.”

  I nod, and turn back to scrubbing.

  “He didn’t do it because of you.”

  Sitting back on my heels, I close my eyes. “I know. I’m not that special.”

  “The fuck you talking about?” She scowls. “You’re irreplaceable. In the band and in our lives. His mom showing up is just…” She shakes her head. “Look, it’s shitty timing. But the band—”

  “How many new singers have you auditioned this week?” I swipe half-heartedly at a brown stain on the floor, one that’s more likely hair dye than blood. Glancing around, I can see that the blood is gone, but the urge to scrub persists.

  “None.” Ritchie’s voice comes from behind me. “It was rotten of me to say we were going to. I was hurt.”

  I swallow the lump in my throat. “So this? This is what it takes for us to all come clean to each other? Jacks damn near killing himself?”

  Ritchie flinches. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop being sorry. Tell me what you fucking want.” I stand and get right up in his face, with Jacks’s blood on both of us and the smell of 409 everywhere.

  His nostrils flare as he shouts, “I want you to be in this with us. I want us to be a fucking family. I want Jacks healthy and whole and knowing you’re not going to leave us. I’m a selfish prick because I see you breaking and I’m glad.”

  Teri grips my shoulders in both hands, a solid presence at my back. I turn to her.

  “Is that what you want too? My life to fall apart? For the fucking band?”

  She doesn’t flinch. “Yeah. That’s what I want. But not for the band. For you. Because you’re my best friend in the world and I want you to be happy.”

  “What if working at the Thorns makes me happy?”

  Teri shrugs. “Then work at the Thorns, quit the band, and host us all at your place on holidays. Fuck do I know?”

  I step out from between her and Ritchie, look back and forth at both of them. Ritchie crosses his arms over his chest and scowls at Teri, who glares right back.

  “Does working at the Thorns make you happy?” Ritchie asks. “Cause it’s making the rest of us all fucking miserable.”

  The scrub brush falls to the floor with a clatter. I stare at it, and my feet, and I shudder violently.

  Somethings got to give somethings got to give somethings got to give

  The next thing I know, I’m walking toward Fourth Ave, shaking and crying.

  They don’t follow me.

  I’m not sure I want them to.

  Bex

  * * *

  Despite Nat’s admonishment to stay in bed, I toss and turn for a few minutes, then throw the blankets off and pull on my clothes. It feels wrong to be in her house without her familiar presence. At the club, she’s invisible. On stage, she’s a giant. At home—mine or hers—she’s the light in every room and the warmth in the radiators. Without her, the bed is cold and the rooms are lonely, and I feel the weight of her uncle’s disapproval every time I glance at the photos on the walls.

  From what she’s told me, he wouldn’t want this for her. She doesn’t think he’d want her fucking me. I don’t think he’d want her to give up her family.

  I call a Lyft and ride in silence back to Manhattan, desperate for something I can’t put a name to. I let myself into my sublet apartment, decorated to another woman’s taste, to another woman’s needs. The strangers in the photos here don’t condemn me for who I am or who I need.

  Need. Crave.

  Love.

  I gave her the space she claimed to need, and she called me home, only to give up everything I wanted for her. She still looks at me like I’m the last glass of water in the desert, but sometimes, when she doesn’t think I’m looking, her face crumples up like she’s breaking from the inside out.

  And how do you ask someone to let you in for repairs when they won’t even admit they’re breaking?

  My phone rings; her face appears on my screen.

  “Hey, I was just thinking about you. Is everything okay?”

  “I just got home. I’m—fuck. Jacks cut his wrists.”

  The world goes silent and white for a long moment and then I realize she’s still talking. “—seventy-two-hour hold. And Ritchie and I were awful to each other. I can’t help but feel like I fucked everything up. Like maybe if I hadn’t quit, I could have been there for Jacks. Or seen signs Ritchie didn’t. Which is stupid, because Ritchie’s always got one eye on Jacks.”

  “Whoa, hey. Whatever happened to Jacks, that’s not on you.”

  I hear her breath, all ragged, like she’s sobbing. “I just want everything to stop hurting. I’m angry, and I’m selfish, because I can’t give you up, and I don’t want to give them up, but I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “Give me up? What do you mean?”

  “I mean when you leave. Or to save the job I need but don’t even know if I want. It’s going to end one way or the other, isn’t it?”

  “It doesn’t have to.” I sense her wildness, her desperation to fit our messy world into orderly boxes, and my heart shatters for her. “I’m not going to tell anyone. Not unless you want me to.”

  “I told Karina,” she blurts. “I want to tell everyone. I want to shout out to the whole world that I’m the one who gets to love you.”

  She loves me.

  “If that’s what you want, we can make that happen. I can make it happen.”

  She huffs. “You mean your money can make it happen.”

  “Yeah. My money can make that happen. My money can make anything you want happen, save raising the dead. All you have to do is ask.”

  “I can’t.” Her voice cracks. “I just can’t.”

  Twenty-Three

  Natalie

  * * *

  Can you come get me? I left my wallet at home.

  The text from Jacks takes me by surprise. Surely he’d want Ritchie? Or Teri? Why me?

  Why the fuck does it matter? He needs me; I go. I pull on a pair of jeans and grab my phone and wallet.

  When I arrive at Mt. Sinai, he’s waiting for me, his mohawk combed back and his face drawn. He’s wearing faded hospital scrubs, and he ducks his head when he sees me, then smiles.

  “Hey.” I hug him gently and try not to stare at his bandages.

  He buries his face in my shoulder and squeezes me. “Hey.”

  “Do
you need to do any paperwork, anything?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “Did it already.”

  “Then let’s go. My place or yours?”

  “Yours.”

  I hail a taxi outside the hospital and bundle him into it, despite his protests about spending too much money when he’s perfectly able to take the subway if a girl would lend him her card.

  “Hush.” I nudge his arm and he acquiesces. His face takes on that faraway look it sometimes does when he’s stoned, staring out the window with a gaze more inward than out.

  “Is Ritchie okay?” he asks finally.

  “Yeah, I guess.” I shrug, and we stare at each other. His lips flicker.

  “He’s pissed,” Jacks whispers.

  “Ya think, asshole?” I slap his shoulder and he winces. “I’m pissed too.”

  “Everything hurts all the time, Natty. I’m so tired of everything hurting. But then when it stops hurting, it’s even worse.”

  “So when that happens, you call me. Don’t fucking hurt yourself anymore.”

  “It’s not that easy.” He fidgets with the edge of one bandage, rubbing at the adhesive absently. “I was supposed to be a scientist. She said that to me.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, but Jacks doesn’t seem to want to talk anymore, so we ride in silence. When we arrive at my apartment, I pay the fare and steer Jacks inside. I push him down on the couch and grab us each a beer out of the fridge, even though it’s only ten in the morning.

  “You go back to work on Monday?” He glances around the room.

  “Yeah. It’s going to be hell on wheels. The Smith-Horvath wedding is in two weeks.”

  “Why are straight people getting married at a queer club?”

  “Because weddings are money. We like money. Also Bex is planning the wedding and I said they could.”

  “Barbie?” He raises an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, her.”

  “So it’s more than a passing interest in your coochie.”

  Part of me wants to tell him to shut the fuck up about my coochie and mind his own business, but this is Jacks—the guy who warned me in the first place. And I didn’t listen, because I was thinking with my coochie, and now I’m in over my head.

  “It’s a hot fucking mess. I’ve gone and done the stupidest thing I can do. And it’s never going to last, but I can’t stop having feelings for her.”

  “Feelings like you want to bone her all the time, or feelings like you want to take care of her and sing to her and write songs about her?”

  Fucking Jacks.

  “All of the above.”

  He sighs and yawns, then shakes his head. “You’re so fucked. Can I sleep on your couch?”

  I fetch him a blanket and leave him to his nap. After making a few calls to the club and to the wedding vendors to make sure everything is on track for my return on Monday, I retreat to the kitchen and X’s recipe box.

  I might not be able to keep my friends from hurting, but I can feed them comfort food when they wake up on my couch.

  Bex

  * * *

  In a departure from normalcy, loud music blares from Nat’s apartment as I climb the steps. I knock loudly, but no one answers, so I knock again.

  The door swings open, and Nat’s mohawked drummer peers out at me, dressed in incongruous—until I remember where he’s been—blue scrubs. “Oh, hi.”

  “Hi. Jacks, right? I don’t think we’ve actually met. Rebecca Horvath.”

  He smiles shyly and shakes my offered hand. “Nice to meet you. Your mom is amazing.”

  A bubble of laughter escapes me. “Yeah, she is. Is Nat home?”

  “I’m sorry.” He shoves the door open wider. “Come on in. I’m a little stoned.” He holds his finger and thumb an inch apart, as if to show me how stoned. “She’s making us biscuits and gravy from Xavier’s recipe.”

  Oh, yum. Over fried catfish and macaroni and cheese the other night, Nat shyly confessed to me she was trying to learn X’s favorite recipes. That they made her feel like a bit of him lived on.

  “I’m convinced everything in Xavier’s recipe box is magic,” I quip, and he smiles.

  “You’d have liked him.”

  We make our way into the flour-dusted kitchen to find Natalie whisking away at a sage-scented roux. I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her shoulder, charmed by her competence and the homey scene. For a second, she leans into the embrace, tilting her head for a kiss.

  I brush my lips against hers, the lightest pressure, and then she breaks away and resumes her whisking. I let her go and sit down next to Jacks at the tiny kitchen table.

  “It smells amazing in here.”

  “Thanks.” She smiles at me over her shoulder. “Comfort food for my best guy.”

  Jacks flushes pink, clearly embarrassed. “She’s being nice cause she doesn’t want me to off myself.”

  “She’s being nice because she loves you,” I say.

  Nat grins over her shoulder. “Yeah, whatever. I’m pissed enough to off you myself, but I’m being nice because Ritchie will fucking kill me if I let anything happen to you.”

  Jacks smiles back, looking less embarrassed. “Speaking of, I should call him now that I’m awake-awake.” He stands and leaves the room. After a moment, I hear the bathroom door close and muffled, indistinct voices.

  “How’s he doing?” I ask.

  “I think he’s got a lot of work to do.” Nat pours milk into the roux, letting off a wave of steam and a furious hissing. “And I think he’s scared and embarrassed and hurting. I’m trying to give him shelter from the storm.”

  “Has he said anything about the band?”

  She shakes her head. “No. And he won’t. Not now. Ritchie blames me. I didn’t tell Jacks but…” She trails off. “I’m sure he knows.”

  When Jacks returns, a tired smile on his face, Nat pulls the fluffy biscuits from the oven and slides them onto a rack to cool.

  “How’s Ritchie?” she asks.

  “Pissed. But he still loves me.” Jacks rubs his eyes with one hand, like he’s trying to stave off tears. “He’s at the restaurant for the lunch shift. He’ll be home by supper time.”

  “Then we’ll make sure you’re home by supper time too,” Nat says. “And you can bring him the leftover biscuits.”

  “Peace offering?” I tease, and both Nat and Jacks turn to stare at me. Shit. I probably just crossed a line. “I mean—”

  “It’s okay,” Jacks says. “Nat doesn’t realize what a mother hen she is. Even when she’s justifiably angry.”

  She snaps her kitchen towel at him. “Am not.”

  Jacks rolls his eyes and continues. “She thinks Ritchie blames her for my—” He pauses. “—Incident. And she’s hurt and trying to fix everything with food. Because that’s what X would do.” He smiles. “She’s taking care of her family like he took care of her.”

  She meets my eyes and shrugs. “I’m more than my dirty words.”

  Jacks stands and starts plating the biscuits and gravy. He sets a plate in front of me. “You’re family too.”

  Twenty-Four

  Natalie

  * * *

  The two weeks leading up to the wedding are a blur. To a casual observer, the Thorns is the same serene gathering place it’s always been. But behind the scenes, I’m running ragged. With two days to go until the biggest bash we’ve ever hosted, I’m living on energy drinks and cigarettes.

  Priya pops her head in the doorway to my office and flashes me a thumbs-up. “I received the balance on the Smith-Horvath wedding this morning.”

  “Did Be—Rebecca Horvath drop it off?”

  She nods. “Yup, left it with Ashleigh. She’s having lunch in the restaurant.”

  “Oh, good. Thanks.” I turn my focus back to the restaurant schedule, trying to concentrate on not fucking up anyone’s vacation requests while the squirrel in my brain screams Bex is here.

  “Natalie?”

  At Priya’s voice
I glance up again. Had she said something else?

  “What’s up?”

  “Would you like to join me on the roof and share a smoke?” Her voice lifts up at the end, a hopeful lilt in the question.

  “Can’t. I’m so busy, Pri. I thought you were trying to quit anyway.”

  “Yeah. Maybe next week.”

  I return to my schedule. Having put my most experienced bartenders and servers on staff for the wedding, I have to work in all their comp requests, leaving coverage in the bar thin—which reminds me.

  I pick up the phone and dial the extension for the kitchen.

  “What do you want?” Djimon answers with a huff.

  “Is the Smith-Horvath wedding order in?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the wine? They wanted that Krug blanc de noirs for the toast—did that come in?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you pissed at me? I’m trying to do my job here.”

  “No, I am not pissed at you. I understand you’re doing your job. But you’re climbing up my ass during lunch service.”

  Shit. Calling the chef during lunch service is a dick move, and one I usually know better than to pull. Where is my head today?

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Obviously.” He hangs up with a click.

  Ashleigh appears in my doorway. “Rebecca Horvath is at the concierge desk asking for you.”

  “Send her back.” I lean back in my chair, taking a moment to catch my breath.

  “Oh my god, your hair.” Bex covers her mouth to hide her gasp as she walks in. “Awwww, Nat. Have you actually been pulling it out?”

  “What? No.” I smooth my hands down over my hair, which has to be sticking out in every direction. “I’m stressed over your father’s wedding.”

  “Everything is going to be fine,” she reassures me. “You and I are a kickass team. Karina is absolutely over the moon. You got this.”

  My shoulders slump and a heavy sigh escapes me. “I want it to be perfect.”