by Katia Rose
She pulls away from my grasp and nearly collapses against the banister after taking one stumbling step, reminding me that this is not the time or place for any of that.
“Oh really?” I can’t hide my sarcasm. “You’re fine?”
She grumbles and makes it up two steps before letting out a groan. “Đéo. Why do we live so high up?”
“I don’t know, Paige, but it looks like you’re going to have a lot of time to think about it, proceeding like that.”
“Screw you.”
She turns around and tries to give me the finger, which almost sends her tipping over onto her damaged arm. I lunge forward and steady her just in time.
“Okay, noble warrior, let’s make a deal. I won’t tell anyone I helped you up the stairs if you let me get us there before sundown.”
She looks about ready to pass out where she stands, and it only takes me shifting myself into position beside her to make her give in. She directs me to the right apartment once we’re on her floor, and I fit the second key into the lock before revealing a small entryway that leads into a living room furnished with a mix of IKEA classics and side-of-the-road finds.
It looks like a textbook example of a bachelor pad.
I don’t bother with our shoes as I shuffle us into the living room. There’s a kitchen off to one side, and two closed doors at the far end.
“Do you have a roommate?” I ask.
“He’s gone,” Paige slurs, her steps extra heavy after the exertion of the stairs. “Vacation.”
It’s stupid and primitive, but a flare of jealously sparks in my chest at the word ‘he.’
She lives with a guy—a guy who gets to see her every day, gets to know what she eats for breakfast, gets to say good luck when she’s heading out to play a show, gets to greet her when she comes home, maybe even gets to touch her and bring over to that couch right there to—
Not the time, Youssef.
I pour the mental equivalent of a pitcher of ice water over the envy now boiling my blood and steer Paige to the closest door.
“Other one.” She flops her head to the side to indicate the next room.
It’s so dark inside it takes my eyes a second to adjust. There’s a blackout curtain drawn over the window, but as the light from the living room seeps in, I can make out some of the details of the tiny bedroom.
The walls are covered in an array of tapestries and record covers used as art. Most of the floor space is taken up by a twin-sized bed with an ironwork frame, a navy blue duvet thrown haphazardly over the unmade sheets. The rest of the room has been overtaken by a huge collection of music production gear, stashed in milk crates or strewn across the desk she also seems to use a bedside table.
The whole place is very, very Paige.
“Almost there.” I navigate a path around the stuff on the floor and get her to the bed. “Okay, down we go.”
Her eyes are already closed when I peel back the blankets and lower her onto the mattress. I bend down to take her shoes off, and a surge of tenderness makes my throat get thick. I drop her sneakers onto the floor and start tucking the covers around her, careful to keep her arm steady as I guide it into position across her chest. I remember the nurse saying something about elevation, so I hunt around for a second pillow and prop it under her elbow.
“All settled,” I murmur.
I’m sure she’s already asleep, but when I stand up and head for the door, she mutters something too quiet for me to hear.
I come back to the bedside. “What’s that?”
She mumbles something that kind of resembles words.
“I didn’t catch that.”
Her forehead creases in a very adorable way, and I chuckle.
“I said,” she tries again, a little clearer now, “where you going?”
My heart jumps into my throat, and I reach to brush a lock of hair out of her face. “I’m not going anywhere, Paige.”
Nine
Paige
ISOLATION: A recording environment optimized to absorb unwanted background noise
I can’t move, and everything hurts.
A heavy darkness presses down on me, obscuring all sight and sound, the weight of it so suffocating I can barely breathe, never mind move my body.
I can still feel my body. The aches that run so deep they seem to be coming from my very bones roll through me in waves. They crash over me again and again, blocking out all other thoughts until they subside and give me a few seconds of respite between surges.
I need to escape. I need to move. I need to leave this place, but my arms won’t respond. My legs are bricks where they’re stretched out in front of me, too heavy to lift.
I’m trapped.
Then something starts brushing across my chest, small and scuttling like dozens of tiny insects.
I try to scream. No sound comes out.
The pitter-patter along my skin continues. They’re going to bite me soon. I know it.
Get off. Get off. Get off.
I try to shake my head, and finally, a part of me responds. I shake it harder and harder, thrashing from side to side as my voice finally roars to life.
“GET OFF!”
My eyes fly open, and I find myself in a bed.
My bed.
There’s just enough light to make out the shape of a man bent over me, adjusting the blankets tucked across my chest. I start to scream, and he lifts his head, looking straight at me with eyes gone wide in alarm.
My scream becomes a strangled cry of confusion that dies out as I splutter for words.
“YOUSSEF?” I shout at the top of my lungs once I can do more than stutter. “WHAT THE FUCK?”
“Ah, you’re awake.”
“WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”
I try to sit up, but a wave of pain so intense it makes my stomach twist with nausea forces me to lay back down on my pillow.
Youssef winces. “Sorry. I was fixing your blankets. You got all tangled up, and I didn’t want you to hurt your arm.”
“MY ARM—” I cut myself off with a gasp when I look down and see the sling. “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?”
“Okay, let’s just try to calm down and—”
I don’t want to calm down. I want to know what the fuck is going on.
So I tell him just that.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? WHY ARE YOU HERE? WHAT HAPPENED?”
“Paige.” He takes a step back from the bed and looks down at me. “Do you think maybe you could stop screaming? Just consider it.”
I glare at him, but I do take a minute to consider things—primarily the state of my arm. I examine the sling and the cast-type thing around my hand, echoes of the pain from sitting up still shooting through my shoulder.
A flash of images starts to emerge in my mind.
I was chasing a taxi. Then I was flying. There was screaming, and it hurt, and a woman was looking down at me.
Youssef was there. An ambulance. The hospital. X-rays and doctors and more and more pain. Youssef—
Horror turns my spine to ice.
“Mierda.”
“What?” Youssef is leaning over me again, his face pinched as he glances over my body like he’s trying to figure out what’s wrong. “What is it?”
My lip curls as I admit it. “I told a nurse I think you’re sexy. Oh my god.”
Youssef freezes for a second and then starts laughing so hard he has to grip the edge of my desk for support.
“Yeah,” he finally chokes out. “Yeah, you did, like, multiple times.”
I turn my death glare on him, but he just starts howling all over again.
“Oh my god, it was all you could talk about.” He’s wiping his eyes now and gasping for breath. “You said it to the doctor, the nurses, even the guy who pushed your wheelchair.”
“Wheelchair?” I squint at him. “I don’t remember that part.”
“I’m sure there’s lots you don’t remember. You were pretty high. Not high enough to forget how sexy I am, th
ough.”
“I will cut you.” I give him the finger with my good arm. “Never mention that again.”
“Good luck cutting me with your left hand.”
I look down at my bandaged arm, and the dread hits all over again.
“Oh fuck no. No no no. This is so bad. What the fuck am I going to do?”
“Paige, it’s o—”
“It is not okay!” I stare into his concerned face as panic loops itself around my chest, constricting my rib cage. “How am I going to play? How am I going to work? How am I going to feed myself? Did anyone even tell the club what happened? Where’s my gear? How long do I have to wear this fucking thing? Is my—”
“Paige.”
“—hand going to heal right? What if I can never play properly again? I have gigs coming up. I have—”
“Paige.”
Youssef leans down to grab my chin, bringing his face just a few inches from mine.
“Breathe.”
The stream of questions running through my head flicks off like a light switch, replaced by an overwhelming awareness of how close he is. I can see myself reflected in his eyes. I can hear him breathing. I can smell his skin.
“You’re going to be fine.”
He lets my face go, and the moment breaks. He straightens back up, clearing his throat as I try to ignore the way my chin is still burning from his touch.
“I’m really going to need a detailed explanation of everything that happened between approximately nine-thirty last night and—” I glance at my alarm clock. “Shit. Five PM?”
It takes almost an hour for me to be satisfied with all the information. Youssef describes everything he can remember from the hospital, and despite my threats, he does mention me calling him sexy several times in his recollections. He brings the pile of prescriptions and care information sheets to the bed, and I almost lose it when I see the lists of all the things I’m supposedly going to need help with—which include showering and feeding myself—but I pull it together before I can start screaming again.
I have a follow-up appointment a week from now. I’ll get better answers then. They can’t have meant it when they said it would be a six week recovery time. I didn’t even need surgery.
I start firing off protests when Youssef suggests going to pick up my prescriptions for me.
“How exactly are you going to get there, Paige? You can barely sit up in bed.”
He has a point; he had to guide me up into a sitting position and create a little pillow nest for me just so we could talk face to face. He might be right, but that doesn’t mean I like it.
“Don’t you have, like, stuff to do?” I ask. “You’ve been here all day. I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t ask me to do anything, Paige.” His tone gets serious. “I’m here because I want to be. Because I care about you.”
His eyes are blazing with something I’m not sure I want to see, something that makes my heart cry out as loud as the broken bones in my hand.
I look away.
“You don’t even know m—”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. We’re not strangers. I don’t care how long it’s been. I don’t look at you and see a stranger, so don’t tell me it’s not my place to make sure you’re all right.”
When I glance at him again, his shoulders are shaking.
“Okay.” I look away again, staring down at my sling. “Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it.”
He lays one hand on my duvet cover, just an inch away from my leg, and speaks softly this time.
“Where’s your pharmacy?”
After getting all the information and making sure there’s nothing else I need, he leaves the bedroom with my prescriptions in hand, and I listen for the sound of the apartment door shutting before attempting to sit up farther in bed.
The pain in my shoulder nearly knocks me back down, but I’ve needed to pee since I woke up. With a lot of grunting and breaks so I can pant my way through the pain, I make it to a standing position and all the way to my bedroom door. I’m a little dizzy from the head rush and what must be the remains of the drugs, so I brace myself against the doorframe until things stop spinning. Thankfully, Youssef left the door open. I don’t know if I could deal with a handle. Walking itself is all right, but anything that involves upper body movement sets my muscles on fire.
I get across the living room and into the bathroom, where a chorus of angels sings in relief when I can finally pee. Getting up off the toilet is a bit of a struggle, but I’m even more relieved when I manage to do it myself. This situation would go from bad to incomprehensibly worse if I couldn’t do that on my own.
I stand in front of the mirror above the sink and get my first look at myself since the accident.
There’s a gauze patch taped to my temple, and a dark bruise in mottled greys and purples takes up half my face, making it almost unrecognizable. My whole shoulder is one giant bruise too, the fabric of the sling a stark white against the angry violet. Both my arms are slashed with some shallow scrapes and dotted with even more bruises.
My hair is greasy and limp, and my skin is weirdly waxy. My eyes seem sunken, like I’ve somehow become emaciated within the past twenty-four hours.
I look like shit, and it only gets worse when tears start gathering in the corners of my eyes and spill down my cheeks. I can’t hold back the sobs, and I hang my head and brace myself against the sink as my shoulder screams out to protest the way my gasps for air shake my body.
I want my mom.
I start crying even harder when I realize that’s not true; I don’t want my mom. I want a mom. I want someone who will rush into this apartment and hold me while I cry before ordering me to get back in bed. I want someone who will stroke my hair and bring me more soup than I can eat, someone who will put all my worries to sleep and tell me this is going to be all right. I want someone who will just do everything for me for a little while.
But that’s not how it works. That’s not how I work.
I lift my head to look in the mirror again. I ball up a tissue and clumsily wipe the tears and snot off my face with my left hand. The tears threaten to start again when I look at the tissue and stupidly consider how long it’s going to be before I can put makeup on again, but I swipe them away. That should be the last of my worries.
I splash some water on my face and rinse my mouth with Zach’s Listerine since I don’t think I can manage squeezing toothpaste. After I leave the bathroom, I grab my phone off my desk and bring it out to the living room. I lower myself onto the couch as gently as I can, bracing against the impact, and unlock my phone once the pain subsides.
I have two texts, one from an unknown number that must be someone from Shi Bar, telling me my friend called about what happened and that they’ll hold my stuff for however long I need them to. The other is a photo from Ingrid taken onstage last night to show off the huge crowd at some Toronto music hall her band played.
My finger hovers over the textbox.
If she was in Montreal, I’d ask her to come over. She could help me make some food at least, and she wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. I’m already so sick of smelling like hospital that I might even be desperate enough to swallow my pride and ask her to help me shower.
But she’s not in Montreal, and she won’t be back for at least ten days.
I scan through the rest of my text conversations. Most are with music industry people to confirm gig details, and a few are repeat graphic design customers who have my number.
I swallow down the panic that starts creeping up my throat when I think about my jobs and what this is going to mean for them, forcing myself to keep scrolling.
My last text with Zach was almost a week ago, when he asked me if we had toilet paper. If he and DeeDee were in town, I’d have the answers to at least some of my problems. I’ve already let them farther into my life than most other people—-purely out of proximity. I could handle a few days of assistance until my shoulder calms down.
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But again, they aren’t here.
I try not to look at the date on my last text with my dad, but I see it anyway. Nearly three months ago. He was asking me about coming home to visit, and I shut it down in just a couple sentences. I don’t have a conversation thread with my mom. She texts me once in a while, but I don’t like keeping it on my phone.
That’s the end of my messages. I click over to my contacts list and scroll through it. The biggest wave of pain I’ve felt all day hits when I see Isabella’s number. I don’t even know if my little sister uses that number anymore, but I can never bring myself to delete it.
The tears threaten to fall again, but I take a deep breath and hold them in. Youssef will be back soon, and I need to figure out what the hell I’m going to do. He can’t stay in this apartment until I’m mobile enough to take care of myself again.
I don’t want him in this apartment. I don’t want him looking at my stuff and doing things for me and feeling like he knows me.
Having him here makes it too hard to remember he doesn’t. I’m supposed to be reminding myself that there’s nothing between us, no future or friendship or addendum to the past. Our ‘deal’ was supposed to be about letting him go, not pulling him closer.
It definitely was not supposed to involve him helping me do things like change my clothes and get in the shower.
My face gets hot as I remember talking about him to the nurses again. That’s one of the biggest problems here: he is sexy. Too sexy. Distractingly sexy. He has no fucking right to be that sexy.
The way he grabbed my face earlier sent a thrill through my whole body. If he’d stayed that close for a second longer, I would have parted my lips for him. I would have leaned in and waited to taste him.
I’m squeezing my thighs together on the couch just thinking about it.
In an effort to demonstrate my self-control to my own brain, I grit my teeth and get up off the couch, heading to the kitchen. The mouthwash made me realize just how parched my throat is, and I’m not going to sit around waiting for someone to help me get a damn glass of water.