When he found out what I did for a living, he had me investigate a couple of principals in a company he’d wanted to take over. It worked out well, and after that the acquaintance grew into a sort of friendship. Through him I met Kaga, who’d done a few deals with Ian, and I’d connected with these men, despite our varied backgrounds.
Kaga and I had watched with bemusement as Ian fell hard for Tiny, just a year earlier. He’d seen her on the sidewalk and told me she was the one.
The one to what? I’d asked.
She’s going to either remake me or break me, he’d answered.
I’d been remade and broken and I wasn’t interested in going through that again, but I won’t deny that seeing Ian and Tiny together has made me feel . . . restless. Maybe that’s why my thoughts have been lingering on Natalie. She’d been bent by a rough hand but was fighting back. That’s intriguing to me in a way that the popular supermodel who has been gazing longingly in our direction isn’t.
“You should take her up on her offer,” Kaga says, dipping his head toward the model.
“I think you’re the one she’s trying to consume with her eyes.”
“No, I don’t think she’s that discriminating. Any one of us would do.” He nudges me as the beer arrives.
“Not interested.” I take my beer with my prosthetic and give the server a twenty. “Keep the change.”
Her eyes widen in surprise that I can hold the plastic cup, but holding things isn’t an issue. Gross motor tasks are fairly easy for me. It’s the fine motor skills that are problematic.
“I thought you had finished with your journalist friend.” Kaga makes a shooing gesture toward the waitress and she scurries away.
“I did. What about the girl over there don’t you like?” It’d be nice if he started seeing someone. That way Sabrina could move on.
Kaga weighs his response carefully, his tension visible. Finally, in deference to our friendship, he says, “I am not interested either.”
He wants to say that he has interest in only one woman and, to give him credit, I haven’t seen him with anyone in recent memory. Granted, he is not in New York for great swaths of time, so he could be fucking a dozen different women in different cities, but Kaga’s too decent for that. It’s his honor that keeps him from Sabrina as long as I disapprove. But it’s also his honor that has gotten him into his current predicament.
I take a long draft of the flavored water that the Garden serves as beer. A shift reveals Ian’s interest has been drawn away from the game. Both of them look at me expectantly.
“You have to clean house first,” I say in answer to the unstated question as to when I’ll give my blessing.
“Maybe I will,” he responds quietly. Ian nods in satisfaction and turns back to the game.
I hide my surprise by lifting the beer again. It looks like I’m not the only one unsettled by Ian and Tiny’s pairing.
“Sir, would you like to come out at halftime and be honored for your service?” A dark-suited young man with a lanyard around his neck proclaiming his position as Entertainment Staff appears at my side.
Kaga covers his face to hide a smirk, while I try to summon a smile to soften my emphatic response.
“No. I never served. I lost my hand in an unfortunate meatpacking incident,” I lie.
The young man colors and his gaze flicks behind him. “I must have been mistaken then. So sorry to have bothered you.”
As he leaves I scan the crowd behind him, only to see my old therapist, Dr. Crist, in the mix.
I give him a one-fingered salute with my prosthetic, which he acknowledges with a wave and a laugh.
“You know him?” Kaga asks.
“Isaiah Crist served in the army during the first Gulf War, and suffered a hip disarticulation.” At Kaga’s raised eyebrows, I elaborate. “His amputation is at the hip instead of below the knee like mine.” I tap my lower left prosthetic. “After he was medically discharged, he went back and got his head-shrinking degree. He’s expensive as fuck and has a clientele list that would make your head spin, but I met him when he was doing pro bono work down at Bethesda.”
“What was that all about then? I know you do not enjoy being on display.”
“He’s just fucking with me. It’s an army thing.”
Kaga looks unimpressed. “Did the nosy journalist turn you off women?”
“The game must really bore you if we’re delving back into my personal life.”
“Yes,” he says with a grin and an expectant look. I’m not ready to talk about my surprising attraction toward Natalie. I can’t explain it to myself yet, but I’m honest enough to admit it exists.
I like her taste in books, her plucky attitude, and her unwillingness to be cowed by her fear. She’s interesting in a way that the other women I’ve been with since I was discharged haven’t been. That may be a bigger reflection on me than the women of New York, though.
“When I have something to share, I’ll be sure to call you up right away,” I reply.
“I’d share my own personal female woes, but I suspect it would make you uncomfortable.”
“You’d be right.” The last thing I want to hear is what he wants from my sister. But I like Kaga, so I add, “Sorry.”
Kaga shakes his head slightly. “Your devotion to your family is one of the things I admire most about you, so there is no apology necessary. But you realize it is in my best interest to see you helplessly in love like our friend Ian.”
Ian gives a nod of acknowledgment, though he doesn’t turn away from the game. “He’s right. You need to pair up so that Tiny has someone to do shit with when we go out to dinner. She’s tired of your single asses. If you aren’t going to give Kaga and Bri your blessing, then you need to step up.”
“Oh well, then I’ll get right on that for your wife. Hey, single lady, want to hook up for an unspecified period of time? My buddy’s wife is tired of talking to penises when we go out.”
“I’d phrase it slightly differently,” Kaga offers unhelpfully.
“What if I had an agoraphobic girlfriend who couldn’t leave her apartment?”
Ian scoffs. “That’s your excuse now? How’d you meet this agoraphobic person if she doesn’t go out?”
“I’m extraordinary,” I say, in hopes that the ridiculousness of my reply deters further inquiry.
But Kaga looks at me thoughtfully. “This is happening in large numbers to young people in Japan. It is called hikikomori and means a withdrawing or pulling inward. They do not socialize with anyone but their own families and retreat to their bedrooms. It can last for a few months or even years.”
Surprised, I gesture for him to continue.
“I don’t know much more about it,” Kaga admits. “I have only heard small pieces. Supposedly it affects at least one percent of our young male population. It is a concern. As time passes, the withdrawal feeds upon itself. Social abilities atrophy and even the desire to escape is eaten away.”
“She’s not like that,” I find myself saying. Kaga merely nods—his perceptiveness is eerie at times.
“I thought you were joking,” Ian says. He’s abandoned the game, probably because the massacre is too painful.
Sighing, I give in.
“I’m looking into something for someone.” I hold up my hand to forestall further questions from Ian. He shuts his mouth and slides back in his chair. “I met a woman who has severe anxiety, but she’s not withdrawn. She’s actively trying to get better—she’s suffered a setback and I’m investigating some circumstances that might have adversely affected her recovery.”
“She’s a fighter, then,” Kaga muses.
“That’s right.”
“Of course,” he says. “You, as a soldier, must not only admire that, but respond to it as well.”
Ian makes a gun with his fingers and points them at me. Is he saying I’m dead or down? I’m neither, but I might be falling and it doesn’t seem to be painful at all.
CHAPTER NINE
NATALIE
I allow myself to have a brief pity party that my wonderful progress has been halted and then peel myself off the metaphorical floor. Daphne is correct when she says my best writing comes from torment. But as I stand and type out an entire chapter, I find myself inserting a tall, potbellied space ranger. He’s got a wry smile and good hands that capably manage his phaser.
I work for hours until I forget the outside world exists and my fingers are cramped and my own shoulders ache. When the sun becomes just a thought on the horizon, I put my computer to sleep and fall into the darkened bedroom, asleep before my head hits the pillows.
Somewhere around noon the phone wakes me up. I try to ignore it because I’m having a very nice dream involving Jake. He’s under the covers with me, nuzzling my neck. My hands cling to his broad shoulders as the coarse hair of his legs rub against mine. His hands move down my sides and I start aching in places that I didn’t know could ache.
His head follows the direction of his hands, pausing to lick on my tightened nipples and then lower still. The first touch of his tongue is so tender, I almost weep. He draws his tongue in slow, long movements until I tilt my hips forward in an unspoken plea for more. He palms my butt and rocks me toward his mouth. I’m shaking with pleasure and desire, desperate for more. I beg him to stop tormenting me. He rises to his knees and drags me down with hungry hands until my wet heat presses against his hard erection. He leans forward, all two hundred and sixty pounds of fierce need, sinking on top of me, but the stupid phone will not stop ringing. I shut my eyes tighter, but the heavy pressure of his body dissipates and I’m left clutching my sheets.
It’s probably Oliver. Unhappily, I stick my hand out and fumble on the nightstand without emerging from the covers. If I don’t lift up the sheets, maybe the dream will come back.
“Hullo?” I mumble.
“Did I wake you?”
It’s Jake and he sounds amused. My heart gives a silly pulse as I scramble to answer him. I feel off-balance, as if he somehow knows I was having a naughty dream about him. “I went to bed at four in the morning. It’s still early for me.”
I run a hand over my hair, smoothing the wild strands down, and then laugh silently at myself. Jake can’t see me. If he could, he’d hang up and never call me again because I know from experience my bed head is frightening. My ex used to say that for someone with thin hair, I was able to create an alarming Medusa-like cloud after only a few hours of sleep. Although seeing my hair is the least of the reasons he should run away. The first and foremost is that I’m using him as fodder for my sexual fantasies.
“Were you having trouble sleeping?”
“No, I was working. The words kept falling out and I didn’t want to stop.”
“I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“I’m not,” I answer with frank eagerness. I don’t want him to hang up. Talking to him feels good, like spring in my heart after a long dark winter.
“Then I’m not sorry either. I called about some security ideas.”
Oh, I like that he called me and not Oliver—that he thinks I’m capable of making decisions like this. “Thank you,” I murmur, huddling deeper into the covers. I wish he was here with me. We could discuss this over coffee, still in bed, our limbs tangled together. I barely remember the last time I slept with a man. Daphne’s stayed over a few times, but she sleeps in my pull-out in the living room, and as much as I love her, she’s no substitute for a warm male body.
“For what?”
“For treating me like an adult.”
“You look like an adult.”
Is that . . . an innuendo? I want to tell him that I’m very adult. That I just had a grown-up sex dream he starred in, and would he like to come over and act it out in person. Of course, I don’t because rational people don’t go around telling strangers that they are spank bank material, and even if he is okay with that, what if he showed up and I couldn’t bring myself to turn the doorknob. That would be a humiliating experience.
Abruptly I sit up, tossing the covers aside and banishing my foolish thoughts. Jake is not flirting with me; he’s being kind and I need to start acting like the adult we both are pretending I am.
“What are your ideas for improving the safety of my home?” I ask with brusqueness.
He picks up my cue and responds in kind. “I’d like to place proximity sensors around your doors—the front and the balcony. The alarms are outward-facing and wouldn’t be triggered by opening the door from the inside or even walking onto the balcony.”
“You can do that?”
“Technology is pretty great.”
I guess it is amazing. It’d be great if we could implant a device in my brain that would turn off my fear, but then I’d probably walk into traffic and get myself killed. “That sounds good. You wouldn’t have a proximity sensor for an individual, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, let’s say I fell. Could you have a proximity sensor that could detect the motion of falling and then a period of, say, thirty seconds of no movement?”
“I don’t have anything like that, but it’s possible it could be rigged up. A proximity sensor can detect certain motion, like the deceleration of mass, but it’s not a system I stock and could bring over today. Why?”
I blow out a stream of air and then decide what the hell. He already knows I have issues. “I’ve been trying to force myself to go outside, leave my apartment.”
“Is that safe?”
“It’s how I won before. After—” I don’t even like to bring up the attack, but I force it out. “After the attack, I got scared of everything and everyone, but after like six months of solitude, I started going a little stir-crazy, so I tried to leave. I got as far as the stairs—I lived on the second floor—and had to turn around and go back. But I kept going back and I’d mark down in a little journal how long I stood there. After a couple of weeks, I looked at my log and saw I had stood five minutes outside my door. That was . . .” I try to find the right word to describe my triumph that day. “I felt like I’d won the Pennant and the Super Bowl all at the same time.” Please don’t find this pathetic, I cringe.
“I understand,” he says. “When I took my first step with the prosthetic, it felt as good as when I’d passed Ranger School.”
Okay, he did get it. Wait, did he say prosthetic? “You have a prosthetic?”
“Yes, left hand, left leg, below the knee.”
“Wow.” I didn’t know anyone who had a prosthetic. A couple of my characters in the Dark Worlds series had biomechanical limbs, but I’m a science fiction writer, so I can write any kind of thing I please, within the rules of the world I’d built. While I’d done some research, I had no idea what it meant to have a prosthetic.
“Is that a problem for you?”
There’s a hint of defensiveness behind his strong voice. If he only knew how exponentially more attractive he just made himself, he’d be frightened. He’d suffered a terrible blow to his body and probably his self-image, yet he had started his own business and is clearly very successful or Oliver would have never hired him. He is someone who’s overcome. Basically the person I want to be someday.
“No, not at all. I was just thinking how amazing you must be.”
“How do you figure?” He snorts.
I shrug, but he can’t see me. “Because you’re a bad-ass at protecting other people. Not to mention you can go outside whenever you want.”
“Are you saying you would give your left arm to be able to walk in Central Park?” It’s a joke. At least I think it’s a joke, but I’m not sure, so I don’t respond right away. He clears his throat. “Bad gimp joke. Anyway, let me know when I can come over and install the system.”
I chew on my lip. I’d like him to come over right now. I’d like to look at him, his tall frame, his prosthetics, what I presume to be a sweet and decent face. But then if I puked, passed out, or did anything embarrassing, I could kiss all my dreams good-bye. Actua
lly, no, that’s all I’d have left of him—those dreams. “This will require you to come inside, right?”
“It would.”
“I . . . I just don’t know.”
“Can I help you in any way, honey?”
It is the endearment that does me in. Whatever defenses I had against him, and I didn’t think I had many, tumble down. I want to impress him, but more than that, I want to know him.
“I don’t get you.”
He doesn’t answer right away and I like that. Maybe I read more into it than I should but his hesitation makes it seem like his response is important enough to him that he’s not going to throw out a glib answer. “I like the sound of your voice.”
“Really?” I’m skeptical and thrilled all at the same time.
“Really.” Sometimes his responses are so dry I think he must be making a joke. “Why don’t I bring some food over?”
“Why?” I ask like a fool.
“So we can share a meal. Get to know one another.”
“What if—what if I can’t open the door?”
“Then I sit on one side and you sit on the other.”
“You’d do that for me?” My heart pounds frantically at the thought—half in panic and half in excitement.
Another of his long thoughtful pauses follows before he answers. “You’d be surprised what I’d be willing to do for you.”
For the next few hours, I write and then take breaks to practice opening the door. I visualize my portly fellow with the receding hairline—I added that detail because it fit with my safe image of him—outside, wearing khaki cargo pants, tennis shoes, and a white polo. No flannel. I shake my head and remove the receding hairline and replace the white polo with a dark blue polo, otherwise he looks too much like the cable repair guys on television. By the tenth time, I’m able to make it to the doorway and twist the knob. I don’t open it yet. While my palms are sweaty and my knees are weak, I don’t feel bile at the back of my throat and I’m still standing up.
Success. I can do this. I can let him in. I shut out the little voice in my head that chirps Dr. Terrance would not approve.
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