by Amy Harmon
She climbed the stairs and cracked his bedroom door. He was sprawled across his bed, shirtless, wearing the same sweats he’d been wearing when she’d checked on him the day before.
Heather had called her at work Saturday morning, Gia babbling in the background. “Mercedes? Noah just brought Gia over. She had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. Had her shots, poor baby. But she seems fine . . . not even sore. Something’s wrong with Noah, though. He looked bad, Mercedes. He said he’d called in sick to work, but he still wanted me to watch Gia. I told him I would keep her tomorrow too, and he agreed. He never does that! I asked him if something else was wrong, and he said he’s just tired, but I don’t believe him. The anniversary’s coming up.” Her voice broke. “Do you think it’s that?”
Mercedes had promised Heather she would check in on him, and slipped over on her lunch hour Saturday afternoon. Noah was in bed asleep, and she didn’t bother him. She left a note and a quart of chicken soup from the deli down the street. He hadn’t called back, but she hadn’t been too worried. Until now. Now she was back again, twenty-four hours later, and he didn’t appear to have left his room.
“Noah?”
He pulled a pillow over his head but he didn’t greet her.
“Good. You’re awake. Are you okay?”
“No.” The sound was muffled, but she heard it.
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Are you . . . sad?”
He didn’t answer, and she walked around to his window and opened the blinds, letting the weak afternoon light into the room. She cracked the window and breathed deeply, sensing rain in the air. The room was stuffy and smelled of musky man and fabric softener, an odd combination, indicating Noah’s face-plant was sudden and not a slow decline.
“You haven’t left this room in two days. You’ve been asleep since yesterday morning. Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she asked, turning back toward the bed.
Noah pulled the pillow off his face and stared at her mulishly. His hair was messy, his eyes bloodshot, and if he’d actually slept, he hadn’t slept well. Dark circles rimmed his eyes.
“I don’t want company right now, Mer.”
“Why?”
“I’m tired.”
“Why?”
He groaned, clearly annoyed by her questions, but a moment later he tried to explain. “What did Abuela used to say . . . about the three things? The three things that matter?”
“Only three things matter. Who He is. Who you are. And who your friends are,” Mercedes parroted.
“Yeah. Well, I don’t know the answer to any of those things right now.”
“Um, hello?” Mercedes said, incredulous. She stomped over to the bed and sat down beside him, making the mattress bounce. “I’m right here. Say that to my face.”
“I don’t know who Cora was, Mer. I thought I did. I was sure I did. But I didn’t know her.”
“What happened, Noah?” she asked, trepidation churning in her belly.
“She told me once that nobody is safe. Is that true, Mer? Is nobody safe? I tried so hard to make her feel safe.”
Grief swelled and swam in Mercedes’s eyes, but Noah simply shut his and shook his head, as if he didn’t know the answers anymore. For a moment they were quiet, both lost in their own thoughts.
“It’ll be a year on the fifth,” he whispered.
“Yeah. It will.” Mercedes felt a sliver of relief. Maybe Noah was still coming to terms with the way Cora died. Maybe that was all this was.
“I’m just going to sleep a little longer. Okay?” Noah rolled away from her, and for a minute Mercedes considered letting him have his way.
“No. You need to get up now,” she said softly.
“I’m tired.”
“No, you aren’t. But you do stink. You need a shower, and you need food, and you need to go get your daughter from Heather’s. She’s worried about you, and I want to see Gia.”
“You go get her. I’ll sleep,” he mumbled.
Mercedes threw the blanket from his legs and wrapped her arms around him, trying to hoist him up. He was all warm skin and stale breath and shuttered eyes that made her heart quake and her stomach clench.
“Damnit, Mer.”
“How long has it been since you had something to eat?” she asked. “I’m not leaving until you’re washed and fed.”
He didn’t reply, but he relented and stood, letting her herd him into the bathroom. She put toothpaste on his brush and wetted it beneath the faucet, talking to him like he was five years old, and she was his mother.
“Brush,” she demanded. He obeyed, scrubbing listlessly at his teeth.
“Get your tongue too,” she bossed.
He just shook his head and bumped her out of the way so he could spit and repeat. She filled up a capful of mouthwash and held it out to him as he finished.
“Gargle. And then get in the shower.”
“Get out, Mer,” he whispered.
“No,” she snapped.
He gargled loudly, swishing the minty antiseptic—guaranteed to make a dog’s breath smell fresh—around his teeth before spitting it into the sink and shoving Mercedes toward the door.
“Go,” he rasped.
“I don’t trust you. You’ll lock me out and stay in here until I leave.”
“I need to take a piss.”
“Go right ahead. I’ll turn my back and plug my nose, so I don’t have to smell your urine.”
“Mer, I’m not a child,” he sighed. “Go.”
“I know you’re not a child. So grow up and do your business. I’m not leaving.” She folded her arms and stared him down. Or up. Even in her four-inch heels, she only came to his chin. His hair, bristled and standing on end from sleep and neglect, made him even taller.
“I can’t pee with you listening,” he argued.
Mercedes stepped around him and turned on the water in the shower, adjusting the knobs so it would warm up.
“I can’t hear you now. It’s all just water flowing. Pee,” she insisted.
He moved away from the sink, and she heard the toilet seat clank against the porcelain back. She kept her back turned as promised. She didn’t want to humiliate him. She really didn’t. But she knew him too well, and there was something in his face that reminded her of Cora’s dad the day before he shot himself. It was the look her mother had in her eyes after Papi’s funeral. It was the quiet, awful realization that life would never be the same and the growing temptation to leave it all behind.
He was scaring her. She could endure many things. She had endured many things, but life without Noah wasn’t one of them. His despondence made her frantic. Her heart was pounding and her palms were hot, her fingers numb. She curled her hands into fists, willing them to cooperate, willing Noah to cooperate.
“I’ll wait right here while you wash,” she demanded, but her voice wobbled, and she winced and cleared her throat. But she didn’t step down. “Then I’m going to make sure you get dressed and brush your hair and put on deodorant and maybe scrub your teeth again for good measure. Then I’m going to make you breakfast and hold your damn hand while you walk out the door. Then we’re going to go for a walk. A long walk. And we’re going to sweat and breathe the fresh air, and you are going to stop thinking about how much life sucks.”
“Are you going to watch me undress?” he said, his voice flat.
“If I have to.” She knew she was being completely unreasonable, but the severely depressed were not trustworthy. “You’re already half naked.”
“Not the half that matters.”
The toilet flushed behind her, and she stepped away from the bathtub, moving toward the door, happy to give him space but unwilling to leave. The bathroom was arranged with the sink and the shower facing each other, the toilet tucked back in the corner.
After several moments of silence—no sounds of splashing or the shower curtain being pushed aside—she turned around and found him facing her, his sweatpants still c
linging to his lean hips. His naked chest was rising and falling rapidly, as though he was hanging over a precipice, as though he was holding on for dear life. Steam began to billow from above the cheery yellow shower curtain, but he made no move toward it.
“Noah,” she urged, her voice a frantic call for action. He didn’t even lift his head.
“Noah!”
“Just go, Mer,” be begged.
“No. I won’t. You have to take care of yourself. You have to keep moving. Remember numb? Numb is better than dead. You are not dead! So quit acting like you are.”
He turned his back on her.
She rushed him, slapping at his lean back and broad shoulders, pummeling him, desperate to make him react. There was no weight behind her blows, no power. There was only fear and frustration and a refusal to let him be. He turned, his right arm rising to ward her off.
“Stop it,” he roared. “Can’t you leave me alone for five seconds? Just leave!”
“It’s not going to happen! I will never leave you alone, do you understand? I will never leave you alone,” she shouted.
He grabbed at the towel rack above the toilet so vehemently it came loose in his hand, bits of plaster and a tiny screw winging through the air. He slammed it against the vanity above the sink, cracking the mirror in a jagged web. His rage filled her with relief.
He threw the towel rack aside, and hit the mirror again with both fists. The cracks continued to scurry, rushing away from his rage, distorting his reflection, making her flinch. He swore in time with his blows, each curse punctuated by bits of falling glass. His hands were bleeding, and Mercedes cried out for him to stop. Instead, he turned and grabbed the yellow curtain, pulling the whole rod down on top of him. He howled in outrage, shoving it aside before he came at her, his intentions clear. She refused to leave, so he was going to make her leave. She was about to be bodily removed from the bathroom.
With no thought other than to force him to follow her beneath the spray, she stepped into the shower fully-clothed, heels, hoops, updo, and all.
Noah stared at her in stunned outrage as water soaked her blouse. It was silk, and it would be ruined, but she didn’t care. She stepped out of her heels and handed them to him. He flung them aside, and they clattered against the door.
“Let me help you.”
“You would be a terrible therapist,” he rasped.
“That’s why I’m not one. But I’m a damn good best friend. Now get your ass in here and wash it.”
“This is not what I need, Mercedes. This won’t fix anything,” he groaned, his anger spent as quickly as it had come. His shoulders drooped and his hands fell to his sides, the blood dripping down over his fingers.
“It will fix one thing,” she said quietly. “You’ll be clean.”
With a sigh of submission, he stepped beneath the nozzle without removing his sweatpants, blocking her from the pounding spray. The water sluiced over his unkempt hair and down his face, and he dropped his chin to his chest, leaning toward her, hunching beneath the warmth.
His blood dripped and swirled around their feet, and she picked up his hands, examining them.
“You’re going to feel this tomorrow,” she breathed. It pained her, seeing his shredded knuckles, physical proof of his despair. She held his hands under the water, looking for bits of glass. He winced but allowed her to mother him for a minute before he withdrew his hands from hers.
“They’re fine, Mer.”
She pushed his hair back from his forehead, willing him to meet her gaze, looking up into his beloved, bereft face, and wishing with all her might that she could take his pain away. She would take it all if she could. Taking his pain would ease her own.
“What do you need, Noah? Tell me how to fix it. And I’ll do my best to give it to you,” she murmured, stroking his bowed head. This brand of comfort was universal. The soothing, the stroking. He pulled in a ragged breath and let it out again, as if giving himself permission to accept it.
His hands rose to her hips, tentative. Then his fingers splayed, gripping her, his hands circling her waist, kneading and desperate, and he groaned with such pent-up sorrow and despair that she stepped into him, wrapping her arms around him to buoy him up.
They stood in a loose embrace, their eyes closed against the water that streamed over their heads and down their clothes. Her hands continued moving over him in a steady caress, soothing and comforting, desperate to wipe his despair away, to slough it off and watch it swirl around the drain with his blood. She pressed her mouth to his chest to quiet his troubled heart, and felt her own pulse quicken instead.
All at once, collective sorrow and shared solace became something else.
Something new.
Something old.
Sympathy morphed into empathy and became a physical response. The heat around her became heat inside her. It bubbled and simmered, licking at the small of her back and the pit of her stomach. It climbed up the length of her legs and curled around her breasts, growing in her chest and billowing out her lips. And she was not alone. She felt a new tension beneath Noah’s skin, a change in the rhythm of his heart, an awareness in his touch.
His hands found their way under the edge of her blouse to the skin beneath, and she raised her face to his, offering herself up without hesitation. His jaw was no longer clenched, and his countenance was lit with unexpected fire, his lips parted, his breathing rapid. For a moment their eyes clashed and clung, and an inaudible series of clicks—left, right, left, unlock—echoed in her head and reverberated in her chest. It was a lethal combination, and they were opening the safe.
They didn’t speak at all. Didn’t say each other’s names. Didn’t ask permission or test boundaries. It was simply there, between them, the knowledge that they weren’t going to stop or step back. And they knew exactly what they were doing.
Then Noah kissed her, anxious and harsh, his mouth colliding with hers in old emotion and fresh defiance, as though he expected her to retreat or wrench her face away. When she did neither, his mouth softened, his tempo slowed, and a tremor shook him, shaking them both free of their senses. He unzipped her drenched skirt and pushed it down her hips until it slapped against her bare feet. He yanked her blouse over her head, dislodging the pins from her streaming hair so it fell in reluctant coils around her shoulders.
His mouth was as insistent as his hands, searching and clinging, looking for an answer she was only too willing to provide. Her consciousness—all of it—was riveted on the moment, centered on their mouths, fixated on their wet skin, intent on the scrape of his beard and the soft slide of his tongue. There was no past or future, no consideration or deliberation. There was now.
Here I am, her thoughts screamed. Here you are. Here we are. This is us.
But she did not know this Noah.
She did not know this side of him, the way his breath caught when she stood naked before him, curved and full-bodied, warm-skinned and round-hipped. The way he moved his hands around her thighs and lifted her, pulling her legs around his waist, one arm beneath her, one arm behind her, cradling her head from the cool tiles at her back. The way he gasped when he entered her, like he’d never been with a woman before. The way he moved against her, lost in the rhythm and the gathering storm.
She did not know this Noah.
She was making love to a stranger, and her eyes were wide, her heart pounding with curiosity, her body warbling with inquisitive wonder.
She didn’t expect to feel so much. She didn’t expect to come undone. She was so engrossed in him, so awed by the dreamlike cast of each elongated second, that the sensation caught her off guard, sweeping up through her in a sudden gust, and she pulled her mouth free from his, desperate for air, for escape from the intensity of it all, only to have him sink his hand in her hair and force her mouth’s return as he followed her over the edge.
Then the present widened and stretched, reconnecting itself to yesterday and the day before, to tomorrow and all the moments to come. S
he was no longer riveted on now. She was skewered by then, by everything that had come before, and she didn’t know if she could face what would happen next. Oh, dear God, what had she done? She shivered, the wall of the shower clammy against her bare back. She listened as Noah’s heart slowed, as his breathing quieted, and when she couldn’t avoid him any longer, she gently pushed him away.
Noah released her hesitantly, easing back as her legs slid down his and her feet found the bottom of the tub. She raised her chin, refusing to cower or cover herself. She was beautiful. She liked her body. She liked herself. You’re nothing like Cora, her insecurity whispered. Noah loves Cora. She flinched before shoving the thought away.
“Is that what you needed?” she asked softly, needing to remind him, to remind herself, how they arrived at that moment.
He didn’t answer, his lips pursed, his jaw tight. His eyes were so wide and tragic she wanted to cover her body with her hands and beg him to look away. She had not helped him. She’d simply woken him up, and pain lined his face and billowed from him like the steam clinging to the shattered mirror. He wasn’t numb anymore.
But she held his gaze.
“You still haven’t washed,” she continued, donning her sass like an old robe, covering her naked flesh and her bared emotions. “Finish your shower and get dressed. I’ll be downstairs getting us something to eat. I’m starving. And don’t think for a minute I’m going to let you off the hook. We’re going outside. And then we’re going to a movie. And tomorrow you’re going back to work, and I’m bringing Gia home.”
She stooped and picked up her sodden clothes, then stepped out of the tub like she was climbing out of a limousine. She would not be ashamed. She dropped her wet clothes in the sink, wrapped a towel around herself, and left Noah standing under the lukewarm spray.
* * *
In the end, they didn’t go to a movie or out for a long walk. Mercedes borrowed some shorts and a T-shirt from Noah’s drawer, but she couldn’t stroll around the neighborhood in baggy boxers and four-inch heels. She whipped up a pan of bean and cheese burritos—refried beans, store-bought shells, and cheddar cheese with some diced onion, cilantro, and tomato to make them taste good—and they huddled around his kitchen table, eating in silence. She wanted to run. God, how she wanted to run. Her pulse thrummed in her throat and her thighs shook beneath the table.