Sushi and Sun Salutations

by Hutchinson, Heidi

  Adam sighed and rubbed soothing circles on her back. “He’s fine. But you need to talk to Steve.”

  Steve? Oh right, Steve was calling her.

  She cleared her throat and Adam handed her the phone. What time even was it?

  “Hello?”

  “Tessa?” Steve asked, both urgent and relieved.

  “Yeah, what’s up?”

  “It’s Lo,” Steve said.

  Tessa felt her heart stop. She pressed her free hand to her chest in response.

  “What happened?”

  “There was an accident. She crashed. She’s being airlifted to Sydney. Shane said I needed to call you…” Steve had never sounded so worried.

  Tessa was nodding even though he couldn’t see her. “Yes, yes that’s correct.”

  Tessa was Lo’s emergency contact and medical power of attorney.

  “Is she-uh—” Tessa didn’t know how to ask the next question.

  “It’s bad, babe,” Steve answered quietly. “You should get ahold of her folks.”

  Fresh tears ran down her cheeks and she sniffed them back. “Okay. I need to get to work. Let me know the name of the hospital as soon as you can.”

  “I’ll message you all the info. Call me back though, ‘kay?”

  “I will,” she promised.

  “Tessa,” he stopped her before she hung up. “You need to be here. I’ve already called my credit card company and added you as an authorized user. You get here.” It wasn’t a request.

  Something about his words crushed Tessa’s heart and she thought she might be sick. “Okay,” she managed to get out before hanging up.

  She looked up at Adam.

  “I need to get to L.A. as soon as possible.”

  “Jess is making you some food first. You should probably shower,” he suggested moving to the doorway of the bedroom.

  “I don’t have time,” she argued, standing up and looking around at her belongings scattered around the room. Kip’s side of the bed remained untouched.

  He hadn’t even come in to see her last night.

  “After you leave here, there’s no way of knowing when you’ll get your next meal and shower.” Adam glanced around the room. “Trust me.”

  He had a point. And if she had time she might ask how he seemed to know that small detail so easily. But she didn’t have time.

  ***

  Tessa pressed her hand to her forehead and turned in a circle. As if doing so would make him appear.

  “Are you sure he’s okay?” she asked.

  Adam nodded and put his hands on her shoulders to get her attention. “Trust me. I’ve got Kip. Don’t worry. You have enough happening right now. Get to where you need to be and I’ll have him call you later, okay?”

  “Okay.” She nodded. But she knew, Kip wouldn’t be calling her.

  She climbed onto Adam’s motorcycle with Jess at the helm and wrapped her arms around the narrow waist of a woman she’d only met a few days prior. Besides a couple of meals, a bottle of pink wine, and weeping in her arms, they didn’t have a huge history. Tessa had no choice but to trust this woman to get her to L.A.

  She hadn’t been able to get ahold of Lo’s parent’s yet, but she was going to try again at the airport.

  Her flight wasn’t scheduled to leave for seven hours, but she had a lot more emails to answer and calls to make.

  And now a six-hour drive to relive her last moments last night with Kip.

  What really sucked about it was that she kind of understood.

  She had been pressing and maybe it wasn’t her place. She had assumed it was because of their declarations of love and everything else.

  But just like every other time in her life, she’d always been the one to love more. She loved too much and too fast, and she never figured that out until it was too late, and she couldn’t put the love back inside. Where it belonged.

  It was unreasonable to expect Kip to love the way she did.

  Things like that didn’t happen.

  Maybe they were right. Maybe she really was a hopeless romantic. See where the hope had gotten her?

  But she knew, she really knew, that she could love him. She could do it. She already did. If he’d trusted her, if he’d given her a fair shot at it, he would have seen it.

  She had loved him for so long that her heart wasn’t sure what to do with the idea that he might not be in her future.

  His words had always been a part of her. And now she didn’t know what to do without them.

  Without him.

  Except for keep moving.

  ***

  KIP

  Kip heard the motorcycle roar in the distance.

  He had gone for a walk last night and just didn’t come back.

  He’d been an emotional wreck. He knew they’d need to talk, but he hadn’t known what to say.

  His thoughts hadn’t exactly been coherent. He’d wanted to call his therapist, but he’d left his phone back at the house and he didn’t want to go back in to get it.

  She would have been there, and he’d have taken one look at her and fallen to his knees.

  Thankfully, the night hadn’t gotten too cold. He’d slept in one of the chairs on the back deck and woke up with a squirrel staring him down and a crick in his neck.

  He tried the door handle and found it open. Stepping into the warm house he inhaled fresh coffee.

  Okay. First bathroom. Then coffee.

  One step at a time. He used the bathroom in the hall and then went to the kitchen. Maybe if he brought her coffee as a peace offering they could talk and—

  He stopped short when he spotted Adam with a hip against the kitchen counter, mug in hand.

  “Sleep well?” Adam asked.

  “Uh…” Kip shook his head to clear it. “I thought I heard you leave a minute ago.”

  Adam raided his eyebrows. “Nope. That was Jess taking Tessa to catch a flight in L.A.”

  “What?”

  “You missed some stuff while you were tantrumming.”

  Kip ran a hand through his hair and Adam’s eyes watched the movement.

  “Is…” Kip didn’t know how to ask it. Any of it. “Is she okay?”

  Adam’s jaw worked beneath the skin and he pushed away from the counter. “You should get some coffee. ‘Cause we’re gonna talk.”

  ***

  TESSA

  “Oh, Wendy, you sloppy boob lizard…” Tessa muttered as she listened to the phone ring on the other end. The voicemail picked up. “Wendy. I have a family emergency so you’re going to have to do your job for once. I won’t be around to file your paperwork this week. Also, I gave my route to Stanley while I’m gone. Including the commissions. In other words, you can suck it.”

  She hung up the phone and caught the eye of the guy sitting across from her in the terminal.

  “Right. Like you’ve never had a crisis before,” she said, gathering her things to go find a place to plug her phone in.

  If one more person crossed her, she was going to end up in jail. She was hanging by the last tiny shred of sanity and she wasn’t sure how long it would last.

  Her phone rang just as she plugged it into the outlet.

  It was the hospital in Sydney again. She answered it and just barely kept her shit together as she listened to the confirmation of what surgeries they would be performing. She’d already sent the e-signature via email, but they said they’d call when they received it.

  At least Lo was getting the best treatment possible. She made a mental note to get Shane flowers for having the most comprehensive health insurance known to man for his employees.

  The boarding call for her flight came over the speaker and she dialed up Steve.

  “Hello?”

  “Anything?”

  He sighed. “No. No change. What about you?”

  Tessa dug through the front pocket of her backpack for her boarding slip. “I finally got ahold of her parents,” she snapped. She paused, taking a deep breath. She really didn�
��t need to rant anymore that day. It wasn’t good for her blood pressure. “They asked me to keep them updated.”

  “That’s it?” Steve snapped.

  “Yep.” She stood and slid her backpack onto her shoulders.

  “That’s fucked up,” he stated the obvious.

  There was a very special reason why Tessa, Lo, and Spencer had made such a tight little family. They were essentially orphans in everything but title. What kind of mother and father didn’t drop everything to show up when their daughter is potentially dying? Steve even offered to pay for their plane tickets.

  Horrible, garbage people.

  They didn’t deserve a child as amazing as Lo. Not that they knew anything about her.

  “My flight is boarding. I’ll see you in eighteen hours.”

  “Good. Hopefully she’ll be awake by then.”

  “Yeah…” A lot could change in eighteen hours. “Thank you for this, Steve.”

  “See you soon.”

  She handed her ticket over and walked down the ramp.

  For a moment she thought she heard her name and turned around.

  But no.

  It had only been her heart, wishing out loud again.

  She put her bag in the overhead compartment and took her seat. Despite knowing what a bad idea it was, she opened Twitter and went straight to his account.

  It had been hours since she’d left.

  Hours in which he could have taken some sort of action. Maybe he’d left a clue as to the state of his heart in his words under his pseudonym.

  But there was nothing.

  No new words.

  Nothing for her to hold onto.

  She would probably always wonder if things would have turned out differently if she’d not had to leave that morning.

  Would they have talked? Would they have been honest and vulnerable with one another, recounting the ways they had hurt each other and vowing to try better?

  Would it have been hopelessly broken?

  Would she have begged?

  Would he have cried with her? For her? For them?

  Did she take what they had and make it bigger than it was? Did she really know him the way she believed she did? How much of this was really his fault and how much of it was just her, seeing what she wanted to see?

  Tessa rolled her head to look out the window as the plane took off. Soon there would be an ocean in between them.

  Maybe it had always been that way.

  ***

  STEVE

  The moment Tessa stepped off the elevator Steve knew something was wrong.

  Something more than the fear she might lose her best friend.

  He’d grown up with sisters. A lot of them. So many sisters. He’d learned at an early age how to detect the cosmic vibrations of a woman’s energy. It was a gift that had helped him survive adolescence in a house overflowing with female hormones.

  But she was doing her best to keep it in check.

  “Can I see her?” Tessa asked, handing the clipboard back to the nurse. She’d had to sign a bunch of things when she first arrived. But she’d taken it all in stride. Just like crossing items off a list.

  “I’ll take you,” Steve offered.

  She nodded and followed him down the clean halls he’d become familiar navigating.

  “How’s Brady?” she asked.

  “He’s…you’ll see.” How was he supposed to describe the broken man at Lo’s bedside? It was as if his entire world was hooked up to those monitors in there.

  They stopped a few feet outside her door and Steve cautioned her. “She wrecked pretty bad. She has reef burns covering over sixty percent of her body. They’ll heal, but she doesn’t look good. You need to prepare yourself.”

  Tessa took a deep breath and nodded.

  They entered the room and the soft beeps of the machines surrounded the person wrapped in bandages and blankets.

  Brady lifted his head and gave Tessa a tight smile.

  She went straight to him and folded him into her arms.

  “Thank you, Tessa,” Brady said.

  Without Tessa making all the calls she had earlier, Brady wouldn’t have been allowed in Lo’s room. But Tessa had made that possible.

  Tessa faced Lo for the first time and Steve wished he’d been closer.

  She covered her mouth with one hand and reached for her friend, but realized there wasn’t a safe place to touch and just ended up resting her hand on the bed.

  “Oh, LoLo,” she whispered. “What have you done, you crazy girl?” Tessa walked closer and looked down at her unconscious friend. She sniffed and the tears ran freely. “Please. Oh, please be okay.”

  That’s when Tessa’s knees seemed to slowly give way. She sank to the floor, her body shaking. And Steve knew, she’d reached her limit for the day.

  “Okay, baby girl,” he murmured in her ear as he picked her up in his arms. He cast a glance back at Brady who gave him a chin lift. “I’m gonna take her back to the hotel so she can rest.”

  He carried her out into the waiting room, pressed the button to the lift, held her all the way to the lobby.

  “I can walk,” Tessa said, her voice watery.

  He wasn’t as positive, but he knew better than to argue. So he set her down but kept one arm around her shoulders.

  The hotel he’d been staying at was just across the street. He’d barely spent more than a few hours there, but he wanted to be sure to have it in case Brady decided to get some sleep.

  Not that he’d leave Lo.

  Once they got into the room, Steve folded Tessa into his arms and held her while her body quaked with sobs.

  He slowly smoothed his hand up and down her back, pressing frequent kisses to the top of her head. She began to shiver and he pulled away slightly, holding onto one of her hands while he used his free one to turn the blankets down on the bed.

  “Take off your shoes, baby,” he instructed gently while he did the same.

  She never questioned him or argued as he guided her to the bed and had her lie down, her body shaking uncontrollably the entire time.

  She probably hadn’t slept since he’d woken her up. Shit. That would have been more than thirty hours ago.

  “Let me be the big spoon,” he murmured in her ear as he cradled her body with his own, wrapping his arms around her like he would a teddy bear. He pulled the covers over them and settled in.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered over and over. Just nonsensical, soothing words. “I’m here and it’s okay.”

  Her body slowed the shivers, but occasionally spasmed. Her crying subsided and he kept telling her he was there. Eventually she drifted off to sleep, her body still.

  Steve smoothed her hair away from her face and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Oh, baby girl, you just sleep. I’ve got you. You’re not alone.”

  If she heard him in her sleep, he didn’t know. But it seemed like she had because she let out a small sigh. As if to say, “finally.”

  ***

  TESSA

  She woke up and stretched her arms over her head. They encountered a headboard she didn’t recognize and she paused.

  This was not her room.

  This was not a room she had any memory of at all.

  She sat up quickly, coming awake all at once.

  Looking down at her clothes she realized she was still in the things she’d worn on the plane…yesterday?

  “Oh good, you’re awake!”

  Steve let the room door slam closed behind him and he hopped onto the bed with a box full of what smelled like fresh pastries.

  “Comfort food,” he said, gesturing with the box. “Also, there are various juices and waters in the tiny fridge over there if you want. But if I remember, you’re a coffee girl.” He reached a long arm to the side table and snagged two to-go cups. “So these are both yours.”

  Tessa was a little overwhelmed with the barrage of gifts, but it was secondary to her gratitude. “Thank you, Steve.”

  He smiled a
small smile, like he wasn’t used to being thanked.

  Opening the box, he reveled the contents.

  “Donuts!” he declared. “You can have first pick.”

  She smiled because she couldn’t help herself. “I think I’ll take this cream-filled masterpiece right here,” she said, picking up her choice.

  Steve made his selection and they ate their pastries for a few minutes.

  “When you’re ready to talk to me, I’m all ears,” he said with a solemn head nod.

  “What makes you think I have things to say?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Because a woman doesn’t cry like that unless her heart is bleeding. My guess?” His eyes wandered around the room thoughtfully. “It’s the poet in the family. The one with the dreamy eyes and words that can make a girl put out on a first date.”

  “Steve!” she exclaimed.

  He shrugged. “I am the man I am, Tess. But tell me if I’m wrong.”

  She dusted off her fingers and took a sip of her coffee. “No. You’re not wrong.”

  “You two have been dancing around each other for a decade,” he said, surprising her further. “I thought he’d be ready by now.”

  Tessa scanned his features with new eyes. “What kinds of things do you know?”

  His gaze darted back up to hers and she saw it. The flash of an old soul he hid behind playful sky blue.

  He pushed the box towards her.

  “Have another donut,” he urged. “Then I wanna hear all the things.”

  Tessa did as she was told.

  And she spilled every ugly little detail about what had happened with Kip. Even the part where she kept obsessively checking his Twitter for an update.

  By the end, they were both crying and the box of donuts was gone.

  “You’re good at this,” she remarked, rubbing her full belly, her head resting on his stomach.

  “Family is important to me,” he said, tracing a line on her forehead with a fingertip. “And whether Kip knows it or not, or is ready for it or not, you’re a part of the family. I claimed you long ago.”