Michael clears his throat. “So, um, now what?”
I shift my body, carefully lifting and repositioning his feet on my lap, so I’m facing him. I move his feet again, making sure his ankle bones aren’t touching. He’s taught me that. He’s taught me so much. “I was going to ask you that. You’re the one with the answers.”
“Oh, shit, we’re in trouble here, then.”
The smile spreads on my face. “I have no idea what to do. How … what … do we want to explore this?”
“You tell me. This, if we decide that thisâ” he motions between the two of us “âwill be anything more than it is, has to work for both of us. And that’s probably totally different from anything we’ve ever done in the past.”
“What do you mean?” I’m not following him.
“Well, the big elephant in the room is the physical part. Honest to God, I’m afraid to touch you the wrong way. I’m afraid to do anything, other than what you do. It doesn’t mean I’m not interested, it just means I’m scared to frighten you.”
“Oh. Yeah. I mean, I was okay with … before.”
Michael smiles. “So was I, but when you started to get up, I wanted to pull you back down and kiss you again.”
I think about that for a minute. “It would have been okay. I got up because I was embarrassed about attacking you like that.”
“You’ll have to tell me what’s okay and what’s not.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll know until Iâwe’reâin the moment.” Then I look at him. “Um …” I can’t continue. My face is getting hot, so I hide it in my hands.
“Yes?”
Oh, God. I know I shouldn’t even be thinking about it. I don’t want to be thinking about it. I’ve sworn off men and sex. Except, maybe I made that decision too rashly, like I seem to make every decision in my life. But now, I can’t stop thinking about it.
“So how …” I trail off, not sure how to form the words to ask the question.
“There are ways,” he says, as a wicked grin spreads across his face. I remember our conversation a while back.
“But, like how?” As soon as I say it, I want to take it back. “Oh, God. Don’t answer that. I don’tâit’s none of my business.”
“Let me ask you this: if I were able-bodied would you want to have sex with me?”
I think for a minute. “The old me or the new me?”
“There are two different yous?”
“Yes, there are. The before me would have screwed the able-bodied you in a heartbeat without even asking your name.”
“Score.”
“But this is the new me.”
“Would the new you screw the old me?”
“No. The new me isn’t screwing anyone. I’m not like that anymore.” It’s the truth. “I know I opened this Pandora’s box, but I’m not sure what I’m like anymore. I don’t know what I want.”
“I see.” His face falls.
“No, Michael, that’s not what I mean. I mean, shit, I don’t know how to say this. I don’t know if I’m ready for anything physical yet. I do know I want to be around you.”
“I want to be around you too.”
“That’s probably the most unromantic way to put it.”
“But …”
“But, it’s what I can do right now. I don’t know if I can give you more. If you need more, I’m not sure I’m the right person for you.”
“Samirah, we’re two of the most messed up people I’ve ever met. If we’re not right for each other, then I don’t know who we’d be right for.”
I look at him. “I don’t know what I want. I want to live for the moment. But, if I had to look to the future, thisâI’d want to live for this.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MICHAEL
If life were a movie, I’d have swept the girl off her feet and carried her to my bed where I’d impress her with my prowess and moves.
We all know this isn’t the movies. In fact, it’s like the kiss never happened. It’s like we didn’t tell each other we were falling for each other. It’s like she didn’t tell me that I was the one thing in her life worth living for.
It’s cool. I don’t need any of that.
I’m lying.
She consumes my every thought, waking and sleeping. I need to be near her. I want to touch her. It’s probably a good thing that I can’t move two-thirds of my body. If I could, I don’t know how I’d keep myself off of her.
It’s been four days. Four days of polite smiles. Of even politer words. Excuse me. Oh sorry. I’ll get out of your way.
She told me she wasn’t ready. But I got my hopes up. That someoneâno, not someoneâthat she saw past the wheelchair and the paralysis and saw me. The guy I always was. The man I wish I still could be.
Deep down, there’s some rational part of me that knows this is about her. That she’s not ready. The larger part of me is simply fucking insecure. Who’s gonna take all this on? Who would want this?
You know, even in a wheelchair, I’m still a good catch. Why can’t she see it? Hell, I know, if roles were reversed, I’d run screaming in the opposite direction from me. And I don’t think she even really understands the half of it. I can’t blame her for not wanting to have a romantic relationship.
“Dude, you need to calm the fuck down. You’re acting like a girl.” My brother is always so comforting in his words. I’m in the standing frame, and the phone’s on the tray with Mitchell on speaker.
“I am calm. Totally calm. I’m like a Zen master.”
“Yeah. I can tell. What’s your blood pressure like right now?”
“I bet it’s low. Hang on.”
I’ve been wearing an automatic blood pressure cuff when I’m in the stander. I’ve been having some issues, so the doctor said to monitor it. I press the button and wait the thirty or so seconds while the cuff inflates and then slowly releases. “Ninety over fifty-eight. See? Zen master.”
“You’re a fucking cheat. You’re in your standing thing, aren’t you?”
I laugh. Mitchell could always spot a bullshit call. “You got me. But, if I weren’t all worked up, can you imagine how low my blood pressure would be?”
“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing this girl has got your panties in a bunch. Just be careful.”
“I know. Having my panties in a bunch can lead to skin breakdown.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know. I wish I didn’t feel the way I do.”
“I don’t suppose there’s anything you can do about it, is there?”
I’m getting a little lightheaded and need to sit down. “I don’t think so. Listen, thanks. I gotta bounce.”
“You okay?” I can hear the concern in my brother’s voice. I don’t think it will ever go away.
“Yeah, need to sit. See you tomorrow.”
I hang up, disconnect the trunk straps, and slowly pull back on the lever to lower me into a sitting position. I’m definitely lightheaded and short of breath. Maybe I’m pushing it with standing. Maybe I am just acting like a girl. Either way, I’m not feeling too hot, and I want to go to bed.
Samirah isn’t home. I don’t know where she is. I shouldn’t care, but I do. I don’t know if I pushed her too hard, made her look too deeply. I’m gonna go to sleep and escape, at least for a little while.
Like everything else in my life, going to bed is no longer simple, and my evening routine takes almost an hour. Sometimes I can do it in forty-five minutes, but I’m moving slow tonight. My bed looks so welcoming, and once I lie down, I don’t think I’ll ever want to get back up.
The room is black. I can’t see anything but something’s woken me. I don’t move, but my neck muscles tense, straining to hear. This is when I feel helpless. Defenseless. I’m lying on my stomach. Even to maneuver around to get into my wheelchair would take a good fifteen to twenty seconds. Too long if someone’s breaking in. Then I hear it. Her voice, soft and shy.
“Hey.”
&n
bsp; I push up onto my elbows and crane my head toward the door. There’s a distant light from the nightlight in the hall, and it’s enough to illuminate her shape.
“Samirah?” I don’t know why I say that. Obviously I know it’s her.
“You expecting someone else?” She’s moving closer.
“You could be one of many. I have to beat them away with a stick, you know.”
“I’m sorry to wake you.”
I push up and flip my body over to lie on my back. “No problem. I was tired.” A yawn escapes my mouth. “Sorry.” A glance at the clock tells me it’s after midnight. “What’s up?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Have a seat.” I pat the empty bed next to me. She pauses a moment and then walks around the foot of the bed. Gingerly, she sits first, and then reclines, stretching out next to me. “What’s going on?”
“I think I’ve made a decision.”
I do not like the sound of this one. I have to remind myself to breathe.
“Okay.”
There are a few more minutes of silence. Then, in a voice so soft I have to strain to hear it, she says, “I think I’m going to the police.”
This is not what I was expecting.
“Oh. Okay.” It’s all I can say. She’d always been so dead set against it. “Why? I mean, what made you decide to do that?”
“You.”
“Me? What do I have to do with it?”
Her hand slides over and into mine. “I need to finish it. I need to think about the long term for once. And the long term is that Chase has a wife and a baby girl who need to know what sort of monster is living with them. The long term is that, even though I’m going to be dragged through the mud, and portrayed in the worst possible way, it’s worth it if they get their punishment. The long term is that I need to do it to prove to myself that I am worth it. Because I need to feel worth it, so that I can be worth it for you.”
“For me? I don’t understand.”
“The easy thing is to shove it under a rug and pretend it never happened. But I can’t do that. I need to face it, to accept it, and to deal with it. Because, if I don’t, I’ll never be able to be there for you. And that’s all I want. To be what you deserve me to be.”
She snuggles in, wrapping her arm across my torso. I only know because I feel it with my hand. As my hand moves down, I can tell her leg is over my legs. My hand gently moves up her thigh and brushes lightly over her ass. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t tighten up. She’s relaxed. And finally, so am I.
*******
In my head, waking up with Samirah in my bed, in my arms, is a glorious thing. Reality is a different beast. I can’t just roll over. Like everything else in my life, it’s a process. And I’m not used to having to do it with someone sleeping on the other side of the bed. So I lie there, trying to weight shift without waking Samirah. Then I start worrying about having an accident. I doze off here and there, adding up to a few hours total of sleep.
Samirah sighs often in her sleep and occasionally mumbles some words here and there. I think I hear her say, “Mom.” She’s been through so much. Even more than me. Much more than me. I can’t imagine how terrible it must have been to lose her mother at such a young age. From the sound of it, she was totally in denial about the graveness of her mother’s condition and was in no way prepared for the outcome.
I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine my mom not being there for me. I see her almost every day at the office. I’ve gotten her to stop dropping in on me. After I came home from rehab and finally moved into my house, she wouldn’t leave me alone. I get it. She was worried. I don’t think she’ll ever stop being worried about me. It chafes me sometimes, because I don’t see her hovering over Mitchell that way. But I do understand.
In a moment, my life changed and spiraled out of control. In a similar, yet totally different way, Samirah’s life is the same. Except she is without a safety net. Was without a safety net. She has me now. And with me come my people. She’s got my network, whether she knows it or not.
Before my alarm goes off, I’m out of bed and in the bathroom. I’m afraid that she’ll wake up and think I deserted her. But my fear of embarrassing myself is even larger.
When I finish my morning routine and head back into the bedroom, she’s gone. I can hear her in the kitchen, making coffee. I hope she’s not upset.
“Hey, coffee’s ready!” I hear her call.
“Be right there.” I head out to meet her in the kitchen. A steaming mug sits at my place on the kitchen table.
“Morning.” I roll up and take a sip. I’m going to need a lot of coffee to get through today. Samirah is making … pancakes? “Are you cooking?”
“Yeah. I woke up and you were in the bathroom, so I figured I’d do something nice.”
“This is very nice. Thanks.”
“No, thank you. I had the best night sleep I’ve had in awhile.”
“Oh, that’s good. You seemed to be out.”
She sits down in the chair to my left, her back to the kitchen, and places a plate of pancakes before each of us. “Did you not sleep well then?”
I shrug. “I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I was afraid I’d wake you turning over and I … was worried.”
“About waking me up?”
How do I tell her? Do I get into all the gory details? The things that drove Lainie away. The reality of living with a person with a spinal cord injury. Better to lay it all out here and now than to get closer to her only to have her shut me out.
“I was worried that I’d have an accident.”
“An accident?” Her brows knit together, not knowing what I’m referring to. Oh boy. This is not going to go well. I give her the most basic explanation I can give of how I handle my bodily functions. I see her grimace a bit when I get to the gross parts.
“Wow.”
“I know. I mean, I know no one wants to know about it, but I need you to know. I don’t need your help. I don’t want your help. But I do need you to understand some of what my life involves. Because there will be times when the unpleasantness creeps into my life. It sucks, but it’s my reality.”
“Okay.”
A wave of despair washes over me. “You say that now.”
She puts her hand over mine. “No, Michael. I mean it. Okay. I mean, if you were normalâI meanâ”
“I know what you mean.” I smile at her. She means if all of me worked.
“Guys have bodily functions. Guess what, girls do too. And sometimes things go wrong. Hell, the first time I met you I had a raging UTI.”
“Those are the pits.”
“If I never have one again, it will be too soon.”
“And I don’t know I have one until it makes the rest of me sick. That’s why I …” I continue telling her all the gory details of what I have to do to keep my bladder healthy, including medication and Botox.
“You mean, like the stuff for wrinkles?”
“The same. It’s kind of cool, thinking about it. It’s the poison that causes botulism. It paralyzes muscles.”
“So they inject that where?”
“I can’t feel it so it doesn’t matter. Other than the parking, there aren’t a lot of perks. That’s one of them.”
She gets up and starts cleaning the kitchen. “We’d better get going for work. I can’t be late. The boss is a bear.”
I head to my room while she goes to get ready. I’m moving slowly, the coffee not helping me slog through my fatigue. I think I’ve lost her before I even had her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: SAMIRAH
Michael’s given me a lot to think about. I don’t know what I thought he was doing in his room and bathroom all that time, but now I know. I’m glad he told me. I mean, I’m not. I don’t really want to think about those things, but I’m glad he was able to confide in me.
I’m afraid though.
The medical stuff scares me. It scared me awa
y from my mom. I won’t let it do that this time. I need to face this. I don’t know if I can.
I am the biggest shit on the face of this earth.
It’s too much. Too much for me to handle. Maybe if I didn’t have all my own shit to deal with right now.
I can’t let him know I can’t handle it. I cannot do that to him.
I wish he hadn’t told me yet. That way I could have dealt with my stuff first.
Okay, first things first. I’ve got to focus on work. Nikki’s been great, and I’m learning so much. She loves my repurposing and shabby chic design aesthetic. It works really well with many of our clients’ needs. Plus, she’s helping me come up with a plan for my own business. It will be a year or two down the road. If it happens.
And then, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do about going to the police. The more I think about it, the more I know I have to step forward. Not for me, but for the next me. And for Grace. And Arabella. That baby can’t grow up with that monster of a father. I know this will ruin their present lives, but I hope someday they can build better onesâlives not based on deception.
I wonder if Grace will believe me or if she’ll think I’m a gold digger. I don’t want her money. I don’t want anything, other than for Chase, Scott, and Todd to pay for what they did to me.
I know what I have to do.
I pick up the office extension and dial Michael.
“S’up?”
“That’s a real professional way to answer the phone. What if I were some important client?”
“Why would an important client be calling from your extension?”
“Good point.”
“So, like I said, s’up?”
“This may be horrible timing, in light of last night and this morning.”
There’s silence on the line. Finally, I hear him say, “Yeah.”
“I need to leave.”
“I see.”
“No, I need to leave for the weekend. I have something I need to do.”
“I see.”
I tap my fingers on my desk. I should have gone down to Michael’s office to tell him this. “No, I’m coming down.” I disconnect without waiting for him to reply and head down the hall to his office.
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