Accidental Love

by Max Hudson

  If it were up to him, he would have never had to deal with how real the situation was.

  He didn’t have to ask Brooklyn what he meant, because he was sure that the question was visible in his eyes. He wanted Brooklyn to keep talking. He needed him to keep talking, because now, if he didn’t finish this, that would have felt wrong.

  Brooklyn must have been able to tell, because he looked right at Luca when he spoke. His voice was quiet but low, always so low. It was barely above a whisper and there was a part of Luca that wanted to put his head on Brooklyn’s chest so that he could hear the vibrations of his body when he spoke.

  “There's a difference between being hurt, and not being able to do things, you see,” Brooklyn continued. “When you're hurt, you know that you can heal. But when you're in an accident, your life changes. And you need to realize that relying on other people is not a sign of weakness. It's a sign of strength. God knows it took me fucking forever to get there.”

  Luca knew that, in theory, what he was receiving could only count as good advice. In practice, though, it felt like an insult. He needed to be able to handle his own recovery however he saw fit and Brooklyn’s little intermission didn’t just feel unnecessary, it felt condescending.

  “Well, thank you very much, Mr. Therapist.”

  That earned him an eyeroll, which he supposed he deserved.

  “Look, I don't mean to impose,” Brooklyn said. “I’m just… I'm worried about you.”

  “You’re worried about me,” Luca echoed.

  “Yes, I am,” Brooklyn said. “You shouldn't be going out for milkshakes at this point. You should be staying home and resting.”

  Lucas shook his head. “I think that you don't understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was different for you,” Luca said quietly. He leaned forward to grab his drink and took a sip as he thought about what to say next. He didn’t want to offend Brooklyn, but at this point, he didn’t think that he had much of a choice.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Brooklyn, seriously, look at you,” Luca said. The glass was on his lap and he was playing with it, nervously fidgeting around. It wasn’t as much as he would have before, because he simply couldn’t fidget like he had before, but it was still there and the way that he was moving the glass caught Brooklyn’s attention.

  Brooklyn looked down at Luca’s hands and raised his eyebrows. “I really don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “You're obviously the kind of person that can just do anything.”

  Brooklyn laughed at that, throwing his head back. It was quiet, not as high pitched as his giggle had been. It sounded fake. “That's not true.”

  “Isn't it? I need to prove to myself that I can still do things,” Luca said. “Just regular things, before I move on to the big ones.”

  “That makes sense,” Brooklyn said as he nodded.

  “I couldn't go back to living with my parents or with my sister. It would have been horrible,” Luca said, shaking his head and shrugging. “I don’t know. I’m sure you don't understand.”

  Brooklyn was quiet for a second before he spoke. When he did, his tone was accusatory. “You really think I don't understand?”

  Luca nodded gravely. “Yeah,” he said. “I really think you don't understand.”

  Brooklyn scoffed. “Well, I guess that does go to prove that you don’t know me at all. You know what I was before I was a nurse, right”

  Lucas nodded. “A football player?”

  “Yes, I did tell you. I was a football player.”

  Luca blinked. “Do you mean that was your job?”

  “Yeah,” Brooklyn said. “Not just my job, my… fuck, you know, I truly believed that it was my vocation.”

  “Your vocation,” Luca echoed.

  “Right,” Brooklyn said, biting his lower lip. He leaned forward, grabbed the glass of beer in front of him and drained it down his throat. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s in the past now. But don’t pretend I didn’t have a shit ton to lose because I definitely did.”

  “I didn’t mean to do that.”

  “It’s okay,” Brooklyn said. “I get it. This change is new for you and you’re raw.”

  “I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, though,” Luca said. He hoped the contrition was obvious in his voice. “I’m sorry for doing that.”

  “It’s okay,” Brooklyn replied, shaking his head. “You don’t have to apologize, really.”

  “So what happened?” Luca asked. “Only if you want to talk about it. I don’t want to impose.”

  “You’re not imposing,” Brooklyn said. “I’m the one who brought it up.”

  Luca nodded, though that didn’t feel like that was enough of a response. In any case, Brooklyn seemed to want to talk about it, and it wasn’t as if Luca was going to be the one to stop him.

  “I was on my way to be a professional football player,” Brooklyn said, quietly. “I was at school, I was on an athletic scholarship, and I was going to make it big. Even if I didn't make it nationally for very long, I was going to be set for the rest of my life.”

  “Shit.”

  “Right,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

  “That sucks,” Luca said.

  “Yeah, it’s not great,” Brooklyn replied. “At least I didn’t think so at the time. Ever since I was in high school, I knew exactly what I was going to do with my life. Until my sister graduated.”

  “That sounds so hard,” Luca said, thinking back to his own work. His work was athletic, kind of, but he wasn’t an athlete. He couldn’t imagine what his life would have been like without his work and this was far from a vocation. It was just a job, one that he had basically fallen into.

  “Yeah, it was hard,” Brooklyn said. “I was young and I was confused. That was the hardest part, how confused I was. You know, it’s weird, but I’ve never… I’ve never been confused. I’m not the kind of person that gets confused. Does that make sense?”

  Luca watched him, saying nothing.

  “I mean it,” Brooklyn said. “My feet are always firmly on the ground, unless something happens. And this was the first time in my life when something had happened enough to take the rug out from under me.”

  “Yeah,” Luca said with a giggle. “I know exactly what you mean.”

  Brooklyn smiled at him, his eyes shimmering. Luca suddenly wanted to be closer to him. All of the judgment that he had felt before, none of that mattered. All that mattered was that Brooklyn got it. As Luca was listening to him talk, he was beginning to understand it.

  He got it. There was no one else in his life who got it. Making him a permanent fixture of his life had suddenly become the most important thing that had ever occurred to Luca. Even if they were only friends, even if they could ever only be friends, Luca needed someone in his life who got it.

  He was being a fool by acting dismissive of Brooklyn.

  He needed him there.

  “So what did you do?” Luca asked.

  “Well, the accident really meant that I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I couldn't play football again. They wouldn't let me. I tried, but it wasn't as good as I had been before.”

  Luca nodded.

  “And the pain, you know, that never really went away,” Brooklyn said.

  “It didn’t?”

  “No,” Brooklyn said. “It never does. You kind of just have to learn to live with it.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Luca said under his breath.

  Brooklyn looked at him with a smile. “For what it’s worth, the pain is rarely like the one you’re experiencing now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, it gets better,” Brooklyn said. “It gets… manageable. It also lessens with time, both the physical and the psychological pain.”

  “I hope so,” Luca said. He hadn’t realized that he was hugging himself.

  “It does,” Brooklyn
said. “I promise you that.”

  “I don’t know,” Luca said. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “Yeah, I totally understand that,” Brooklyn replied. “You know, I was there too, after my own accident. Especially when I saw how bad my sister was. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to get over it.”

  “Did you?”

  “We both did,” he replied. “In our own way.”

  “What happened?” Luca said.

  “Well, Marie went to rehab,” Brooklyn said. “And so did I. Slowly, we started to get better and better, both of us. I could see the difference that care was making in her life, so I decided that I wanted to care for people.”

  “Because it made a difference in your sister’s life?”

  “And in mine too,” Brooklyn said. “I got off easy but my injuries were no joke.”

  “That makes sense. So what did you do?”

  “So I went to nursing school instead of business school,” he replied, “when I went back. And for a little while there, I honestly didn’t think I would ever go back.”

  Luca licked his lips. “Did it hurt?”

  “What?”

  “You know, going back and realizing that you couldn’t… do what you were doing before?”

  “Yes,” Brooklyn replied after a while. “Kind of. But honestly, football was never my passion, it was just the way to make a living.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I happened to be good at it. Football, I mean.”

  “I believe it,” Luca said as he nodded.

  Brooklyn chuckled. “What gave it away?”

  Luca waved his hand in front of Brooklyn’s body. “I don’t know,” he said. “This whole thing.”

  “Fair enough,” Brooklyn said once he was done snickering. “I don’t know. When it came to football, it wasn’t like I wanted to do it. Like I said, it was just something that I always did.”

  “But you didn’t like it?” Luca asked, cocking his head.

  “I liked some things about it,” Brooklyn said, shrugging. “I had a lot of pent-up aggression when I was a teenager and it helped to get it out in a structured way. But also, everyone was always talking about how this would be what I would do for the rest of my life. I bought into the hype.”

  Luca nodded. “That makes sense.”

  Brooklyn nodded. “I also really liked not having to pay for college,” Brooklyn said. “That was my favorite.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  Brooklyn smiled at him. “But my scholarship covered me for a long time, and when the accident happened, the bursar felt sorry for me.”

  “Handy.”

  “Right? So I switched my major, finished school pretty quickly, and then I started working. It turns out I really like nursing.”

  “More than football?”

  “Yes,” Brooklyn said. “More than football. I mean, I like making more of a difference, you know? What difference does it make if I win a tournament or not? I mean, sure, it puts a smile on people’s faces, but it’s not a big deal. I mean, people remember the results of sporting events, but it’s not a big deal. But I’m helping save lives now. And that matters.”

  Luca nodded. “Yeah.”

  “But it was an adjustment,” Brooklyn said. “And it wasn’t easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Brooklyn leaned back and looked up at the ceiling before he spoke. “You know, my social life totally changed, for a start,” he started. “I used to spend most of my time with my teammates. But we weren't able to spend as much time with each other, mostly because I wasn't there with them when they were training.”

  “And you didn’t spend time with them outside of training?”

  “No, I did,” Brooklyn said. “And they were great. I consider some of them family. But the most time that they spent together was during training and I wasn’t there.”

  “That makes sense,” Luca said as he nodded.

  “It wasn't that they didn't want to spend time with me, because they did.”

  “Right.”

  Brooklyn closed his eyes and thought for a second before he spoke again. “I was not alone, which was important.”

  “They sound nice.”

  “They were great,” Brooklyn said with a smile. “I still talk to some of them. To most of them, actually. I’m going to my buddy Pete’s wedding at the end of this month, for instance.”

  Luca smiled. “But after the accident…”

  “It’s okay,” Brooklyn said when he trailed off. “You can ask me whatever you need to ask me.”

  Luca swallowed. “But it was different, right? After the accident. They looked at you differently.”

  Brooklyn cocked his head as he seemed to consider that question. “Yeah,” he said. “It was different. But I couldn’t blame them, Luca. First it was the shock of what had happened and then it was the fact that I wasn’t the same. I would never be the same. I think that shook them all a little bit.”

  Luca licked his lips. Part of him thought he got it, but part of him didn’t, and he wanted to hear more about it. He was still in the middle of it, and things were still up in the air. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they didn't really understand why I wanted to go into nursing instead of try to stay with the football team.”

  Luca laughed. After the conversation they’d just had, he couldn’t imagine Brooklyn as anything other than a nurse. “Did you try to explain?”

  “Not really. Part of me thought that they wouldn't understand, anyway, so it was pointless to try and explain it to them.”

  Luca narrowed his eyes. “Okay.”

  It was clearly Brooklyn’s turn to laugh. “Stop looking at me like that. I know that it was a mistake, that I should have told them. But everything was happening so fast, and things were changing really quickly. Managing other people’s expectations was never part of the post-accident period for me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Honestly? That’s what I thought nurses were for.”

  Luca watched him, wide-eyed, and only started to laugh when Brooklyn did.

  Chapter Five

  After a while, the conversation moved on to other things. There was only so much to talk about when it came to the accident, and there was only so much that Luca could take.

  He wanted things to be ordinary, too. He wanted to be able to talk to Brooklyn about other things, so he asked him anything. About his sign, where he was born, what his family was like.

  Luca learned about Brooklyn's family, about his sister, Marie, who was still in outpatient rehab and might be for the rest of her life. She was doing a lot better, but she needed some occupational therapy for managing her head injury.

  Luca wasn’t exactly sure what occupational therapy was, but he knew that he would have to get some himself. Considering what had happened with Derek, Luca wouldn’t have been surprised, and part of him was tempted to ask Brooklyn about it. Mostly, though, he didn't want to stop Brooklyn from talking.

  He liked hearing him speak. He just wanted to sit there and enjoy the conversation that he was having with him, a conversation that most of the time wasn't about the accident.

  It just felt like two guys getting to know each other. There was no expectation of anything there, and Luca had forgotten how much it had felt like the pressure was on when he had been dating. This wasn't anything like that. It was just cool and sweet. He wanted Brooklyn to stick around, mostly because he liked hanging out with him.

  There was something that relaxed Luca about his presence. Brooklyn didn’t seem to hesitate when it came to talking or sharing his knowledge and Luca found him something of an anchoring presence. Brooklyn might not have gotten as hurt as he had, but he had gotten hurt too and that counted for something.

  That shared experience was important. More important than Luca had realized. Brooklyn was saying something about how much he liked his life now when Luca’s phone vibrated on the coffee table in front of hi
m.

  Thinking that it was ringing, Luca grabbed it. He looked at it as it ran out of battery in his hand, which made Brooklyn pull his own phone out of his pocket.

  “Shit,” Brooklyn said. “I didn’t realize how late it was.”

  “How late is it?”

  “One thirty,” Brooklyn said.

  Luca’s eyes widened. “You’re joking.”

  “Not joking,” Brooklyn said. “I should really get home.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve kept you for so long,” Luca said. “I didn’t mean to. If you have work in the morning…”

  Brooklyn shook his head, smiling. “Actually, lucky for you, tomorrow is my day off.”

  Luca grinned. “Aren’t you a little full of yourself?”

  “Yes, but that makes me lovable,” Brooklyn said with a wink.

  Luca playfully and softly punched him on the arm. Not that it would have made much of a difference if he did it with any force, because Brooklyn looked like he was built from bricks and Luca’s hands still hurt.

  “You’re annoying,” Luca said.

  Brooklyn snickered. “That makes me lovable too.”

  Luca stuck his tongue out at Brooklyn, which made Brooklyn laugh. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re lovable too?”

  “My boyfriend… ex-boyfriend, I guess? Used to tell me that I wasn’t too annoying,” Luca said with a shy smile.

  “Honestly, he sounds like a dick,” Brooklyn said. He was looking into Luca’s eyes, and Luca was finding the intensity of his gaze slightly disorienting. Without realizing it, Luca’s breathing had quickened.

  It was the first time that Brooklyn had touched him in a way that wasn’t explicitly about helping him and Luca wasn’t sure what it was doing to him. He was sure that it wasn’t supposed to be doing whatever it was right then.

  It was the first time that he had really looked at Brooklyn’s face up close. There was a scar on his right cheek, right over his cheekbone, and Luca couldn’t help but wonder if that was part of the accident or if that had been there before. His eyes were huge and beautiful, his eyelashes long and curled.

  Luca wanted to open his mouth to say something about how Derek wasn’t a dick, how he was a nice person, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He wanted Brooklyn to close the space between them, to kiss him fully on the mouth, but Brooklyn cleared his throat and his hand fell to his lap.