by Imani King
I almost cried. That sensation of emotion that crawls over your face, stinging your eyes and tightening your throat almost got me but I swallowed it back down to where it had come from. The last thing he needed was to be forced to deal with my tears. I myself didn't even know where they'd come from.
Kaden didn't say anything, nor did he pull out right away. I reached up and put my palm on his cheek, awash with post-orgasmic tenderness and filled with a powerful need to take care of him, to take his pain away.
"Are you OK?" I asked, when his breath had slowed a little.
He reached down and pulled himself out of me, collapsing onto the sofa and pulling me on top of him in one move.
"I don't know, Tasha," he said, wrapping his arms around me and holding me against him. "I can't tell. Right now, here, with you? I'm OK."
It took awhile, I think, for what had happened to sink in for both of us. We lay on the sofa quietly, just listening to and feeling each other breathing.
"This feels different," I said, quietly, after we'd laid together in comfortable silence for a few minutes.
"It does," Kaden agreed.
"Why?"
He thought about it for a few seconds. "I'm not sure. Maybe because of - well, it's a lot of things. Obvious things, yeah. But a lot of time has passed, a lot of feelings have passed."
I stifled the cold stiffening in my body at that last phrase: 'a lot of feelings have passed.' His mother was in the hospital, on the verge of death. I knew better than anybody how real and profound that fear was. It wasn't for me to make that evening about me. But I said nothing, which was a mistake. If I'd questioned him he would have explained what he meant, and the mistaken beliefs that grew out of those few words could have been avoided.
A few minutes later, when I felt it was safe to do so without Kaden reading anything into it, I got up.
"I have to go to the bathroom."
I flipped the light on and closed the door behind me before catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. There was a certain amount of surprise when I saw that I still looked exactly the same. Part of me expected to look different, somehow, after what had just happened. My hair was messed up and my lip-gloss had been kissed off but nope, still the same old me.
Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it.
'It' being that comment, from Kaden. The one about feelings having passed. Maybe it was the strangeness of the evening itself, but I think I actually managed to justify it to myself - that night, anyway. Obviously feelings had passed. I was the odd one out there, wasn't I? Other people got over feelings, or developed the same feelings but for new people. That was normal. Wasn't it enough that he still, on some level, came to me when he needed someone? He'd even said it himself that he missed me.
Briefly, I looked into my own eyes in the mirror and then away again very quickly. I knew I was rationalizing and somewhere inside, underneath the happy hormones and post-coital feelings of warmth, was the knowledge that I might have just made a very big mistake. Two years and it didn't feel like anything had changed. I told myself things had changed. I no longer thought of him every night before I went to bed, I no longer spent every spare ounce of mental energy missing him. Maybe that's what people meant when they said you 'get over' someone. Maybe they meant you feel the same way about them, you just develop the ability to go on with your life without their absence affecting you all the time?
"Tasha?"
I jerked out of the spiral of neurosis that was threatening to drag me down. Kaden was outside the door.
"Yeah?"
"Are you OK?"
"Yeah. I'm just, uh, just fixing my hair."
"Are you hungry?"
I wasn't hungry, but Kaden needed to eat so I told him I was. He told me he was ordering pizza and I looked down in surprise at a sudden feeling of wetness on my thighs. It actually took a few seconds for it to register what it was but when it did I couldn't help but smile. And then, after the smile had passed, suddenly fully realize what had happened.
Not once. Not one time. I mean, I knew that one time was technically enough but surely the odds were very low. I pushed the worry out of my mind, cleaned myself up with some toilet paper, and rejoined Kaden in the living room.
"I got Hawaiian," he said, pulling me down next to him and kissing my neck.
"Hawaiian?" I asked. "I can't believe people eat pineapple on their pizza. What's wrong with you?"
He knew I was teasing him. And he was smiling. That was something. We hadn't forgotten what was going on but it felt like we'd been allowed a time out from the awfulness of reality, just for a couple of hours. The pizza came and we ate it straight out of the box, curled up together on the sofa. When Kaden reached for his sixth slice - and they were big slices - I laughed.
"What?" He asked. "I have to keep my weight up. I did the Combine in February but that doesn't mean I can just waste away before the draft happens."
"The Combine?" I asked. "Sounds like farm equipment."
"Nah, it's just a sort of - I guess it's kind of like a job fair for the NFL. The teams send people to see all the prospective players - test our skills, interview us, give us a bunch of tests. How you do in that process determines whether or not you get drafted."
I leaned back on the sofa, not sure how I felt about discussing the NFL. 'And you did well, right? I saw something in the paper here about it. I think."
I was pretending to Kaden like I hardly noticed the news stories about him when they popped up. Which was a lie.
"Yeah, I did OK."
"OK? Shut up, everyone at work was talking about how you're definitely going to be the first pick."
Kaden's face darkened. "Maybe. It never felt real, but it feels even less real now. It's funny isn't it? How you can think something is the only thing that matters until something that really matters happens - and you realize the first thing just isn't anything like as important as you thought it was?"
"Oh, I know," I replied, putting an arm around those big shoulders. "I know. I didn't mean to make light of-"
"No, no, Tasha, it's not you. It's just what I'm actually thinking. It's crazy though, huh? I've already got a manager - he's pushing me to take 'media training' lessons before draft day. What the hell are media training lessons, anyway?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's where they tell you not to hit on female sports reporters or pee on your opponent's legs?"
Kaden chuckled. "Yeah, probably. It just feels so weird knowing what's coming. I'm going to have to leave Brooks and finish my degree somewhere else. And I have no idea where."
"Well," I told him, trying to be diplomatic but ever so slightly irked by the fact that he made it sound like someone else was forcing him to make decisions he didn't want to. "You don't have to, do you? I mean, you could stay at Brooks if you wanted, right?"
"Well, yeah. I could stay at Brooks. But this is my best shot at a good contract. What if I stay playing college ball and my game goes to hell or I get injured? The NFL is my only game plan, Tasha. It would be stupid of me to gamble. And who knows? If my mom pulls through my parents might need money. They have a lot, but medical bills can really pile up, you know?"
"I know," I said gently. "I know. I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be insensitive."
"Will you stay the night?"
I looked up, wondering if I'd heard him correctly. I had. "I mean," he started, "only if you want to, obviously. I just - Tasha, I know it's asking a lot but I really don't want to be alone right now."
There was no denying the surge of affection in my heart. I wanted to stay the night. I probably would have said yes to any question Kaden had chosen to ask me. He was in pain and I hated seeing it on his face and hearing it in his voice. Seeing someone who has always been larger than life brought low is somehow more shocking and painful than seeing it happen to - well, someone you don't see as larger than life. Like yourself.
"Sure I'll stay," I told him. "I have to go to work in the morning but I'll stay."
"Good," Kaden replied. He laid his head in my lap and I felt his large, heavy body slowly relaxing until he fell asleep.
I watched him sleep for awhile. A long while. It felt almost illicit, like something I shouldn't have been doing. And maybe I shouldn't have, because I can't say as there has ever been something in my life that was sweeter than Kaden Barlow sleeping in my lap while I traced the contours of his head and his thick, muscular neck with my fingers.
Chapter 24: Kaden
I didn't want Tasha to leave the next morning. I wanted her to come to the hospital with me, and then, eventually, back to Brooks and then to wherever I ended up when I was drafted. I guess I had done some growing up since I'd last lived in Little Falls, though, because I didn't ask her for any of those things. She had a job, a whole life, and I wasn't anything more than a temporary part of it.
My dad was sitting in a private waiting room when I arrived at the hospital. The doctor was scheduled to brief us at around noon but I wanted to be there earlier. My father's face was unshaven and there was a sudden 'old man-ness' to him that scared me when I saw it. We talked about unrelated things, life at Brooks, what NFL team I was hoping for, the fact that he'd started to get into cooking. At just after eleven, a doctor in a white coat walked into the waiting room. My dad and I both looked up at him, searching his face for any sign of whether or not what he was about to say was good or bad news. There was none. At least he didn't torture us with preliminaries.
"The swelling in Mrs. Barlow's brain has come down overnight. It's still too early to talk about long-term prognosis but I think I can say we have moved into 'cautiously optimistic' territory."
Confused, I looked to my father and saw that he was crying. It was the first time I had ever seen my dad cry and my immediate instinct was to join him. I didn't, though. He needed me to be strong for him and for my mother.
"I - um, I'm not sure what that means," I said to the doctor. "Long-term prognosis? Does this mean she's, she's, uh..."
I couldn't say it. I couldn't ask if it meant my mother was going to live, because that would have meant acknowledging that she might die. Fortunately, the doctor knew where I was going.
"Mrs. Barlow is still in a very serious condition, I want you to understand that. We'll have to wait until she wakes up to get a more realistic picture of what can be expected but the immediate danger has passed."
I asked a few more questions before the doctor left, but it was clear that he expected my mother to live. Nothing else he said, about how she would be when she woke up, really sunk in. All I heard was that she was going to live. It was all my father heard, too. When we were alone again he slumped forward with his hands covering his face and sobbed quietly for a few seconds. Then he wiped his eyes and looked up at me.
"I'm sorry, son. I'm sorry, this isn't-"
"Dad," I said, my voice breaking, "don't say sorry. There's nothing to be sorry for."
And then I started crying, too, overwhelmed by the news and the emotion of the moment. My dad reached out and we wrapped our arms around each other. I've always been close to my parents, but my dad is one of those stoic dads, all back slaps and approving nods. Our relationship was different after my mother's accident. It was better, too. Like it was OK for him - for both of them - to rely on me as a grown man at that point.
We were allowed to see my mother briefly. Her face, swollen and bruised, was so covered in bandages and tubes and wires that led to beeping monitors I could barely tell it was her. I kissed her forehead and held her hand and whispered to her that I loved her, that I was going to take care of her - of them - when she got out.
I wandered the sunlit hospital hall afterward, so my dad could have some time alone with her. I was elated. My mother was going to live. It didn't matter if she needed help. She was going to live. And my life was changed forever. It took me a few months, maybe longer, to understand just how different things were but I felt it from the very moment I got the phone call at Brooks. So many of the things that I had worried about suddenly seemed so inconsequential. And so many of the other things - other people - that I had somehow come to picture in my mind as permanent, revealed themselves to be terrifyingly transient and impermanent.
When I spoke to Tasha on the phone that evening, after spending the day at the hospital with my parents, the entire conversation felt suffused with a kind of poignancy that was deeply unfamiliar to me.
"So, it's good news then?" She asked after I'd updated her.
"Yes," I replied, unable to shake the thoughts that were spinning through my mind - what if something terrible happened to Tasha? What if she got hurt and I wasn't there to take care of her? What if she didn't know I loved her?
"Are you sure?" She asked, as I reeled at the admission I'd just made to myself, that I still loved her.
"Yeah, yes," I stammered. "I mean, they don't know what kind of support she'll need when she wakes up but she's going to - she's going to wake up."
My throat was thick again but I choked the emotion back down. Tasha had spent the night with me, yes, and for a few brief hours, it had felt like old times, like a reprieve from real life. But she was businesslike as ever, her tone caring but also distant. I could hear her doing things in the background of the call, the clinking of dishware being put in the sink, the whirring of a blender and the running chatter of Rosa. Tasha was busy. Tasha was always busy, because she had to be.
Two days later, my mother woke up. Within thirty minutes we knew she was still herself. She had no memory of the accident and she seemed very confused about why she was in the hospital but she was herself, I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me - and at my dad. The first full sentence out of her mouth - if you don't count "I love you" - was directed towards my dad.
"Did you water the flower beds?"
My mom was OK. Well, she was mentally OK. It was going to be days, weeks even, before we knew what she was capable of physically. It was decided that I would go back to Brooks to finish the semester, write my final exams and pack up my life there. After the draft, decisions would be made. I wanted my parents to come to wherever it was I was going to be living, but no one knew where that would be. The day of my flight back to California I asked Tasha to meet me for coffee in town but she declined. That wall had gone up again, the wall that was always, always there with her. She wasn't mean - she was actually kind and supportive the whole time, even offering to visit my parents after I'd returned to Brooks, just to make sure everything was OK with them. But it was just like it had been in high school - as if the evening we'd spent in each other's arms simply hadn't happened. Or, if it had, that it was no big deal. If it hadn't been for the turmoil of my mother's accident and the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming draft, I don't know how I would have handled it at all.
In July, shortly after I received my final exam results - solid B's across the board - and a week or so after my mother went home from the hospital, I was drafted, as predicted by seemingly every sports journalist in North America, first overall by the Dallas Cowboys . My agent - Barry - who my dad had overseen the hiring of back in January, wanted me to allow TV cameras to film me when it happened but I just wasn't up to it. So I found out in my dorm, sitting on a leather sofa with a few of the stragglers who still hadn't left for the summer. We watched it on TV and celebrated with a few beers. According to the other guys, it was apparent that the two main factors being celebrated were a)my newfound riches and b)my newfound access to 'top-shelf pussy.'
The riches were going to help. It was costing my parents over ten thousand dollars a month to employ two people to help with my mother's care and provide them with the needed equipment, and even at that price, it wasn't going to make even a tiny dent in my new salary. I was rich. As for the pussy, I wasn't sure. I was, by that point, pretty used to the status-quo. The status-quo being women threw themselves at me and I declined. Maybe I would wake up one day and Natasha Greeley would be a faded memory, maybe I wouldn't. It was stupid of me to sleep with her w
hen I went back to Little Falls but I never could control how I felt around her.
That night, she sent me a painfully brief e-mail.
"Hi Kaden! I saw you got drafted by the Cowboys - congratulations! I'm also happy to hear your mother is well on her way to healing. I'm just messaging to let you know that my life is pretty hectic right now and I think it's best for both of us if we move on from everything. But I want you to know that I care about you and I wish you the best. Try not to spend all your money on sports cars, OK? - Tasha."
I should have been on top of the world. My phone was buzzing every few seconds with new interview requests, well wishes and congratulations. I wasn't ungrateful, I just felt oddly empty. The dorm, shorn of the posters and furniture and detritus that comes with young men, was barren. My voice echoed around the bare room when I spoke. And now I was off to Texas, a place I had never been before that was now going to be my home. For how long? I didn't know.
I called my parents that night. The first thing my mom asked me was whether or not I had a place to live in Dallas.
"Barry's taking care of that," I told her. "He's already got someone looking for a place and if it isn't sorted out by the time I get there, there's a hotel close to the training ground where I can stay. A nice hotel."
"OK, Kaden," my mom replied. She spoke slowly and with great care. I could hear her choosing each of her words before she spoke. "Does the hotel have a kitchen? How will you eat?"
I laughed. "Mom, did you see how much money I'm making? I can have Kobe beef flown in on a private jet from Japan if I want. Don't worry!"
"I guess you're right," she replied, sounding slightly sad. "You were all over the Little Falls news tonight, you know. Your life is about to change, Kaden. I wish your father and I could be with you, we-"
"Mom!" I said. "We talked about this. You can't travel right now and dad wants to be there with you. I understand. I can make it to Texas on my own, you don't have to worry. I'll have enough to eat and a bed to sleep in, everything will be fine."