by Pepper Pace
“Have you talked to a doctor about it?”
“Yeah I have an appointment with an orthopedic specialist Wednesday.”
He let it go after that, seeing the look on his friend’s face; the only thing Jason was concerned with was Robin. But Peter feared that his hip would disconnect, or his knee. Any of these things would create excrutiating pain for his friend. He just didn’t want to see it happen again. One time was enough. Before the Baclofen it had happened. He’d heard a grown man scream for the first time.
They pulled up in front of Robin’s apartment building. This time Jason didn’t have to wait for the lift to lower him. He hurried out of the van. He had tried calling her several more times but still got no response. Jason limped up the stairs. He almost fell backwards because he was moving too fast. Each time he bore weight on his legs, pain radiated up his body. By the time he got to the elevator sweat was streaming down his face.
He got to the second floor and tried to still the panic. He should have asked Peter to drive around to the parking lot on the side of the building. He didn’t even know if her car was there. She might not even be here. And if she wasn’t then…well he would just have a full blown fit. He hadn’t had one of those in ages and it was probably due. It seemed almost that life was going too well; so of course something would have to happen to mess it up. He found a girl that made his heart beat like crazy—so it only stood to reason that she would die in a fiery crash, or bleed to death of a freaking perforated ulcer!
He reached her door and practically bammed on it. He paused. No sound inside. Now he felt sick. “Robin?!” He bammed on it again.
There was a faint sound of movement and then the door swung open. Robin was standing there as if she’d just awakened from a deep sleep. Her shirt was wrinkled and she had the imprint of folded material on her cheek.
“Jason-?” She began in surprise.
“Robin! I was freaking terrified! Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“Oh my god…I’m so sorry baby! I…my phone is in my purse. What time is it?”
Jason’s heart was beating a mile a minute. “Late.”
She turned to hurry back into the apartment. “Let me get my things…I’m so sorry baby.”
“No. No no no.” He said adamantly. Robin turned and noted the angry look on his face. “I want you to go back to bed. By the time you get to my house, it will be almost time for you to leave anyways.”
Her shoulders collapsed. “Baby, I’m so sorry. I overslept.”
“I know.” He said in a short, abrupt manner. “You must have needed the sleep. Go back to bed.” He turned to leave.
“Jason!” She hurried after him but he continued to walk. “I’m sorry.” She whispered. He was really angry at her.
He pressed the down button for the elevator. “Robin. If you are rushed to Emergency, wouldn’t you think that it would be a good idea to keep your cell phone in reach?” He gave her an angry look. “I mean…wouldn’t you think that if you should want to take a nap that you would perhaps, set your alarm clock? One of the two?” The elevator doors opened and he entered the small compartment.
She followed him quickly barefooted. “I…wow. That was…mean.”
“I’m not trying to be mean.” He said. “I just think its common sense that you’d keep your cell phone where you can hear it ringing.” The doors opened and he swung his legs forward and moved quickly out of the elevator. Robin followed more slowly.
“What…are you saying? That I don’t have common sense?”
He moved carefully down the stairs. “I’ll see you tomorrow Robin.”
“Oh, no you didn’t!” She said angrily.
He paused to glance at her. His lips were straight angry slashes in his face. “I didn’t say it, you did.”
“You didn’t deny it!”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to argue with you.” He turned back to the van. Peter’s surprised face could be seen watching them.
“Thank you for your understanding, Jason!”
He turned to her again. “It’s after nine o’clock. I don’t know where my girlfriend is. She’s prone to get drunk and leave with strange men, or to bleed to death and just pretend that she’s not. Yeah, Robin, I lack understanding!”
Robin gasped. Peter’s mouth dropped, he looked from one of them to the other, and then he pulled off quickly with Jason staring after him in shock. Peter had just left him! What the fuck?! And Robin was staring at him with squinted, angry eyes. And he knew that he was wrong for what he had just said. He should have never said that. He didn’t mean it. He didn’t mean any of it.
The anger washed away as quickly as it had reared its ugly head.
“Robin…”
“You’re an asshole!” She turned and ran back into the apartment.
He looked after her and thought about that long walk back up to her apartment. “Oh for fucks sake…” Well he deserved it. It took him five minutes to get back to her apartment. The door was understandably locked.
He knocked. “Sweetheart…?”
After a moment the door opened. Her eyes were angry. “If it wasn’t for the fact that your legs are hurting you, I’d leave your ass out there.” She snapped.
How did she know?
“You think I didn’t see the way you were limping?” She opened the door for him to come in and he did.
“Robin, I’m sorry-”
“Just take of your pants.” He looked at her in surprise. “So that I can rub them!” She pointed to the armchair. “Sit there. I’m going to get the baby oil.”
Jason sat heavily in the chair. His legs hurt too bad for him to stand any longer. He unbuttoned his pants and by the time Robin returned with the baby oil and a towel he was pushing them down his legs. She knelt down on the floor and carefully pulled them off completely. Jason looked at her hurt and angry expression.
“I’m sorry, Robin.”
She glanced at him. There was a strange acceptance on her face. “For what?” She picked up the baby oil. “You said the truth, so…nothing to be sorry about.”
He frowned and shook his head. “I was just pissed because I was worried!”
She gently lifted his leg and began to rub the oil onto his skin. She said nothing. He reached down and tried to take her hands. She slipped them out of his grasp and began to rub his thighs firmly, digging her fingers deep into his muscles. He winced.
“Too much?”
“No.” She was doing it right. It just hurt.
“Your knees are red and swollen.” She gave him a worried look. “Do you want some ibruprofen?”
He nodded. She hurried to the kitchen for bottled water and then to the bathroom for the bottle of pills. She opened the bottle and shook out three pills for him. He took them carefully, swigging down the water.
“I’m not mad at you.” She whispered. “You were just scared. It’s alright.”
He stared at her sadly. “I don’t know why I say such stupid things. I think…that I just said the worst thing that I could have ever said to you, didn’t I?”
“I can think of a few things that would be worse.”
“Robin, in calculus, you write down the answer for me; what I tell you to write.”
“Yeah.”
“You start writing down the answer even before I tell you.”
She shrugged. “Because I know what you’re going to tell me to write.”
He stared at her. “Sometimes you write down things that I wasn’t going to tell you to write. You are always right, and I would have been wrong. I’m pretty sure that you could write out the entire solution.”
She shook her head quickly. “I’m just doing what I see you doing-”
“That’s all learning is. There is nothing stupid about you! I swear to god that I didn’t mean to suggest that you weren’t smart. Robin, I think you are so smart.” He said honestly.
She knelt down again and began working on his other leg, still not speaking.
&nbs
p; “Robin?”
“I’m not smart. I’m not saying I’m stupid.” She flashed him an angry look. “But it’s harder for me to get things.” Her face turned red. It’s not something you ever wanted to admit to your boyfriend. ‘Honey, I have a learning disability. I can’t understand what the teacher is telling me. I can’t do it the way they teach us, I have to figure out my own way to do things.’
She rubbed his legs for the next forty-five minutes, working silently. He watched her face seeing several different expressions; anxiety, sadness, anger, blankness, fatigue. How had she become so damaged? Had it been people like him that say thoughtless things? He had promised himself and her that he would never raise his voice to her. Now he had to make another promise, that he would stop and think before he spoke to her in anger.
He reached down and placed his hand under her chin. She looked up at him. “I’m sorry.” After a moment she nodded.
“It’s not good enough when I tell you that I only snapped at you because I was afraid. That’s not good enough. I’m so…afraid of losing you, now that I’ve found you. I’m scared to death that you will wake up and realize that you can do so much better than me, or that something terrible will happen to take you away. I am so afraid of that happening. I don’t want to lose you Robin. I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“I’m not going to leave you just because we have a disagreement.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, too.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He sighed, shaky, as if he had been pulled back from a bad fall just in the nick of time. She touched his knees. The anti-inflammatory was just kicking in and the pain was dropping back.
“Jason, if walking is going to do this to your legs-”
“No.” He assured her. “It’s not walking, it’s walking with poor structure. It would be as if you were trying to walk on the side of your feet. Eventually you’re going to hurt them. My legs need to be placed in the correct position.” She watched him.
“You’ve been walking all of this time, doing it for me?”
“Us.”
She sighed. “I don’t want you to be someone else for me, Jason. I want you just the way you are. Everything that you are is what makes me love you.”
He thought about the poem that he had read to Amberly and how he had wanted someone to see him as he really was, accepting even his imperfections.
“Can we go to bed now?” He wasn’t very tired, but he wanted to lay in Robin’s bed with his arms wrapped around her. He just needed to be close to her right now.
“I don’t want you walking again with your legs the way they are.” He slipped easily out of the chair and once on the floor he pulled himself quickly into the bedroom. She had never seen him walking like this unless it was the short distance from his chair into the Jacuzzi, but he was very accomplished at lifting himself. She admired the rippling muscles of his arms. He climbed into bed.
She stood there beside the bed and watched him. “But I’m not sleepy anymore.”
“I was kind of hoping that you’d say that.”
Robin sat down on the bed, fully dressed and removed Jason’s boxers. His amazing penis sprung forward, bobbed and then came to a rest heavily on his thigh. Her eyes scanned hungrily up his ripped biceps. She was rubbing his thighs without realizing it and Jason’s breathing told her that he preferred this type of leg massage better then the deep tissue one that she had just administered. She leaned forward and took hold of his shaft, fingers wrapping around it. He wasn’t as hard as he could get so her fingers were able to close, but she knew that soon they would have no hope of meeting.
Palms still stick with baby oil, she slowly ran them up and down his pole-like shaft. Jason grunted, shivered and then licked his lips in anticipation of Robin’s next move. After working him for a few moments he was very hard and big. She leaned forward and licked the head of his cock. Jason jumped and then grinned when she met his eyes. She did it again and this time he controlled his reaction better. Then it became a test for her to see if she could make him jump. She ran her tongue around the head of his cock, probing the small little hole. Then she licked his shaft with slow, long strokes of her wet tongue. Jason was doing a good job of controlling himself, even if he practically ripped the sheet off the bed as he gripped it. Beyond that, he stayed fairly still as she worked his dick with her tongue.
But then her tongue sought out his testicles. Jason yelped when she lapped his balls. His body arched and he began to shiver.
“Robin!” He gasped. “Seizure!” His head went back and then whipped back and forth. She saw that he was trying to fight it. She released her hold on his dick.
“Jason, let it go. Let it go, baby.” His feet kicked out and then he began humming and grunting. His hands made fists and he thumped the bed. She put her hands on his face, cradling him between her palms. But his teeth were bared and clenched tight. His body began to stretch and reach.
This was a bad one. This is the ones that she hated; where he looked as if he was in pain. His face was purple and his teeth were clenched and his eyes were squeezed shut. She stroked his face.
“I’m here, Jason. Let it go, baby. Come on, Jason. Breathe for me.” Her heart was thumping. One day he might not breathe. One day it might be like in the restaurant when his breath never returned. She rubbed his chest gently and his body suddenly collapsed. She waited for the sharp intake of breath and when it came she collapsed down next to him and hugged him. After a few moments he stirred, stretched and then winced. She looked up quickly.
“Where does it hurt?”
“Hips. What did I do to my hips?” He grinned. “Did I get up and run around the bedroom?”
She gave him a solemn look, not in the mood to laugh. “No. You just kicked.”
“I did?”
She nodded. “A lot.”
“I didn’t kick you did I?”
“No.” She said quickly. “I know to stay out of your way.” He touched her face. What amazed him is that he couldn’t make his own legs kick…yet they were able to. He always found that to be interesting. “Honey, do you want to finish with the blowjob?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“But we can pull on a condom and I wouldn’t mind riding that thing.” He gave her a happy look.
“You like being on top, don’t you?”
She nodded while reaching past him for a condom. “I like making sure that you don’t kill me with it. If I’m on top I can control it.”
“Ah, and I just thought that you wanted to be a cowgirl.” Robin rolled the condom on him. He was harder than ever, especially since having a seizure.
“I thought I’d wake up to find you riding it.” He said.
“It’s hard to think of doing that when it looks like you’re choking and dying on me.” He supposed he would feel the same. Robin quickly shed her clothes and Jason resisted the urge to play with her breasts. She had mentioned that they got sore and he could tell that they were slightly swollen. Her nipples were darker than ever which made him want them in his mouth more than anything. He wondered why things that you should resist were more enticing.
Instead, he slid his fingers between her legs and stroked her there while they kissed, until she was wet and swelling at his touch. Robin moved to mount him and he had her turn away. She gave him a confused look but mounted him in the reverse cowgirl position.