by S. L. Scott
All night he fought against exposing them to the others, revealing that not only did he know her, but that he might have real feelings for her. But when they were apart, something happened to her, something distressing, something destructive.
But what?
PRIVILEGES WERE EARNED.
Like a child, Jude earned back her freedom half hour by half hour. After an acceptable day, she was rewarded thirty minutes to leave on her own. Two days after that, an hour. She waited, counting the days, until she had earned two full hours. It took seven days, but that’s what it would take to get there and back in time.
The second Monday after she had last seen Hazel, she sat at a deli across from his apartment building. She only had fifty minutes left to risk. Traffic was too unpredictable and she didn’t dare be late.
The first day she had spied on him, she made it back home with ten minutes to spare. She only wished her heart had been spared in the process. She didn’t know why she chose to sit and wait opposed to knocking on his door. Maybe she only needed to see him happy—happy without her—so she could walk away once and for all. She could take their week together and pocket it like she pocketed all the things that mattered most to her. Like her brother. She had thought the hole her brother had left in her heart was healing, but it throbbed without Hazel, a constant reminder of the gaping wound.
On the third day, she figured out why she hadn’t been able to go to his apartment. She knew she had to stay as far from his apartment as she could. Her favorite memories resided there. And if she were brave enough to talk to him again, it would have to be in neutral territory. By the following Sunday she was in full stalking mode, determined. But it was Sunday and by the time she arrived, she didn’t know if he had already left his apartment or if he would leave.
Another hot chocolate was ordered and she sat on a barstool facing the street. When he appeared, coming out of his apartment building, she spilled her drink just as she took a sip. Just seeing him again sent a thrill through her body. The last time she’d been dealing with the effects of mind-numbing drugs. In hindsight, she wished they would’ve worked on her heart instead.
Jumping up, she threw the cup away and ran outside. She only had five minutes. Five minutes left before she had to leave for home, so she ran across the street, jaywalking, and almost getting hit by a cab.
The honking of the car didn’t faze Taylor. It was Manhattan and honking horns were a part of the melody here. He shoved his hands into his pockets and kept walking. Until…
“Hazel! Wait!”
He’d been hurt. There was no sense in hiding it anymore. He never believed his own lie anyway. But hearing that name stung, deep. He didn’t want to assume, but when he heard it again, and again, he couldn’t stop himself from turning around. His mouth opened in surprise as he saw Jude running toward him, arms flailing, causing a complete scene.
And he smiled.
She stopped just short of him, out of breath, and bending over at the waist to recover.
He said, “You’re here.”
Looking up at him, she looked relieved. “I am. For you.”
“Why?”
“Because I owe you an apology. I’m sorry. You deserved better than I gave you.”
Seeing her now, he struggled to be mad, and considered the good times they’d shared. “You gave me everything I needed.”
She shook her head. “I mean at that dinner.” Finally in control of her breathing again, she stood up straight. “I hated that you saw me that way, but it happened. I just need a few minutes to explain.” She checked the time on her watch. One minute left. “But I can’t today. Maybe another time?”
“Why? Why not now?”
“I have to go.”
“No!”
His anger and pain vibrated though her, her heart still tethered to the man before her. “This is not what I wante—”
Stepping closer, he almost touched her to see if she was real. “What do you want, Jude?”
“I want you to live a gloriously happy life. And that can’t be with me.”
Only the tips of his fingers touched her coat, but the sensation spread throughout her whole body. He whispered, “One week wasn’t enough.”
“One week is all we have.” She backed away, needing to leave, but not wanting to leave him again. She has to fight her instincts, to protect herself from what will happen if she doesn’t. “Maybe we shouldn’t meet again. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have.”
“I’ll meet you. Just say when, Jude. I’ll do it. I’ll take what I can.”
She understood his desperation. She felt that for him, but she had no idea until just then how much he felt for her. She couldn’t refuse him, just like she couldn’t refuse herself this one last taste, this one last time with him. He’ll hate her soon enough. She would savor any time she could get. “Tomorrow? I can meet you between eleven and two.”
“I have two meetings tomorrow. Can you come over tomorrow night? We can make dinner and talk.”
“No,” she said, “I can’t.” Flustered, she started walking backward. “I have to go, but soon.”
He stepped forward. “Don’t leave. We can talk now.”
Holding up her arm and touching her watch, she tried to explain, “I can’t right now. I’m sorry. Soon.”
“I’m going to hold you to that, Jude Boehler. I’ve got your name and number now.” He smiled so innocently, but Jude’s blood iced in her veins.
“No!” She stopped suddenly, in the middle of the sidewalk and went back to him. “You can’t come for me. Promise me you won’t come over.”
Her rapid transformation sent up a million red flags of concern. He’d have more to address than her constant disappearances the next time he saw her.
“Okay.” He told her what she wanted to hear, but it pained him to agree. He wanted to see her. This was his Jude—all over the place, a crazy hat on, wrinkled skirt, and red snow boots—and he was holding himself in place so he didn’t grab her and take her inside to talk now. Instead, he watched her nod as she backed away again.
In return, she gave him a small, familiar smile, then blew him a kiss. “Soon,” she said. “I promise.”
While she walked away from him, he realized how much he had missed her, missed Jude. “Tuesday,” he yelled down the street. “Meet me here on Tuesday at noon.”
She waved, and even with the distance between them, he could see that life had returned to her eyes. She was vibrant. Kodachrome. She was that rainbow she’d spoken of the first time he’d met her, come to life. “I’ll be here,” she called back to him before rounding the corner.
He couldn’t stop his smile in return.
On Tuesday, Taylor left work early to get back to his apartment by noon. He didn’t want to be late. He didn’t want to keep her waiting, so he took a taxi. The cab pulled up out front and he saw Jude leaning against the wall looking from left to right for him. She didn’t notice him right in front of her until it was too late. He cupped her face and kissed her. When he leaned back to look her in the eyes, he said, “You use impossible a lot. Well, I find it impossible to resist your lips.” He kissed her again. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He grabbed her hand and started leading her against the breeze to the door, but her feet were planted and she didn’t budge. “No, Hazel.”
Turning back to her, he questioned, confused why they had stopped. “What? Why not? I thought we were going to talk?”
“We are, but somewhere else.”
“Why not my place?”
“If I step foot in that apartment, I don’t know if I’ll be able to leave.”
With a playful grin, he pulled her hat farther down her forehead, and said, “I don’t see the problem.”
Jude blushed, which was part of the problem. He did things to her… he made her want to do things she couldn’t want to do anymore. Mustn’t want anymore.
That was the natural pink he’d missed. Bending down, he kissed her on the cheek. “
I’ll go wherever you want to go, Jude.”
She looked around and suggested, “What about the new gallery two blocks up?”
“Okay.”
They held hands as they walked, neither protesting. They had minutes left together and they didn’t want to waste one of them.
Taylor felt happy, happier than he had in weeks. Jude appeared happy to him as well. She was trying hard not to look at him, but he would catch her eyes on him every now and then, and he liked it. He didn’t know how today was going to go, but he was ready with an arsenal of reasons of why they were worth a real try.
When they entered the gallery, she took a pamphlet, folded it, and tucked it into her pocket. He followed her in and while she stood in front of the first installation, tilting her head all the way left, he watched her. Her long neck was beautifully curved, her hair falling unevenly to the side, her feet together, and hands behind her back. Standing upright, she turned over her shoulder, and asked, “What do you think?”
“Beautiful.”
She scrunched her nose and looked back at it. “Really? I think it’s gross.” When she stepped to the side, he could see the mass of green mold covering the compost contained in the acrylic box. “But you know the old saying, ‘Art is in the eye of the beholder.’”
He started laughing, sort of embarrassed she thought he’d said rotting food was beautiful, but he didn’t correct her. “I thought it was beauty? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”
Pondering that, she shrugged and smiled. “Well I have no idea then. But I still think it’s gross.”
He got up and they walked side by side to the next installation—a series of very tiny paintings, landscapes. They stood very close to the wall and took in each one, moving around each other to see the intricate detailing. She bumped him and he staggered a step over. Laughing, he returned and bumped her. Harder than he meant to. She ran right into a very serious-looking man who didn’t appreciate the distraction from the art. Jude brushed her hand down his arm, and said so sweetly, “I’m so sorry. I lost my footing.”
He snapped at her, “You should have that checked out.”
So Taylor stepped in, brought her into his side, and said, sternly, “She apologized. You should be grateful she bothered.”
He eyed Taylor and walked away.
New Yorkers. So jaded, Taylor thought. He kept his arm in place and said, “I don’t have much time. We should talk.”
Jude nodded, dreading the conversation she never wanted to have. As they walked silently through the gallery, holding hands, they looked everywhere but at each other. Finally they reached a terrace on the second floor, and even though it was cold outside, they chose to talk out there.
She spun around once with her arms in the air before leaning against the railing and pulling him to her by his coat. His expression was soft while his body was pressed hard against her. “Kiss me,” she said.
To Taylor, Jude was irresistible. So he kissed her. But the talk hung over their heads, casting shadows on them. When their lips parted, she kept her eyes closed and her lips ready, waiting for more from his.
“Where did you go?” he asked, wanting to kiss her more than he needed answers. But the questions still plagued him. “Why did you not return?”
“I did return. I’m here.”
“Now. You’re here, now.”
Leaning her cheek against his chest, she replied, “Yes, Hazel. I’m here now. Hold me.”
His arms wrapped around her and they swayed together, the sonata of the street below played their song. Minutes passed before he finally spoke. “Are you going to leave me again?”
“Not if I have a say,” she whispered, her arms tucked between them.
“Can I see you tonight?”
The heavy burden of her life weighed her down twenty-two hours a day. She didn’t want it to be a part of the two hours she lived for, the two hours she survived for, the two hours that kept her breathing. But he deserved more, even if it was more than she could give. “No.”
His arms tightened around her and he kissed her forehead. She had become a puzzle that refused to be solved, but remained the answer to the most important questions in life.
In his arms, she could hear him gulp, gulping down the protests that she herself felt confined by. There was no good answer she could give to ease him, so she closed her eyes and listened to his heartbeat instead.
Quietly, he asked, “You’re not going to give me anything, are you?”
She placed a kiss on his chest though he couldn’t feel it through the layers of fabric. “I’m giving you all I can. The rest, we’ll have to trust to the future.”
Taylor understood blind faith. He lived with it every day, just like he lived with Parkinson’s. When he felt the tendons begin to shake, he held her tighter to stop the onslaught. “Trust is like the wind, my sweet Jude. It slips away before you have a chance to catch it.”
She sighed. “I wish we had met in another time and another place. Life would be so much easier if I wasn’t broken.”
“Life is tragic,” he said, knowing this too well.
“Love is tragic,” she whispered, feeling lost to the life she lived.
“Love is devastating to one’s heart.”
She looked up at him, resting her chin on his chest. “You say that as if you’ve loved before.”
“I say it from feeling it.” With you. He backed away from her and took hold of the door. “My lunch is over.”
TOGETHER, JUDE AND Hazel’s time became an interlude to their lives. Each day, they sneaked away to spend a precious few minutes, if lucky, a few hours with each other. But they never went to his apartment and he never came to her home. They went to all the galleries in the area, and visited coffee shops, saw a movie that made Jude cry on Taylor’s shoulder, and they walked through the park.
The park was her favorite. It was wide-open space. When they were there she felt free. She felt like she could breathe.
They sat on a bench together and he read a book while she rested her head on his lap and stared up at the sky. “Do clouds have souls, Hazel?”
“Yes. How else would they hold their sadness in until the next time it rained, Jude?” She loved that he never hesitated to answer her questions. She also loved who he was with her. His calm and fury; his passion and love. He made her laugh and made her feel something other than pain and betrayal for the first time since her brother’s death.
Taylor closed his book and looked up at the sky. Clouds floated by and he realized that these times together, just the two of them, two against the world, the quiet times and the times they talked for hours, was what he had been missing his whole life.
It was then he understood that it wasn’t her chaos that had drawn him to her. It was her soul.
The depth of her heart.
The width of her imagination.
The breadth of her knowledge.
The gravity of her pain.
They all made up this beautiful woman whose head was in his lap. He reached down and touched her cheek, choosing the peace of the park to any chaos she conjured. Yes, he preferred this Jude to medicated Jude any day.
January melted into February and on a random Thursday, Jude looked at the tall man to her left, who was reading over her shoulder. She loved how handsome he was. She knew she shouldn’t care about things that were so shallow, but he was very pleasing to the eyes. She especially liked that line between his eyebrows, the one he got when deep in thought. Wanting to see it, she said, “Did you know there’s a phone app that distorts your face so much that you’re almost unrecognizable?” Jude scrunched her nose. “Isla has it. It makes her skin so smooth and removes every mark that makes a person who they are.”
Taylor chuckled. “Everyone wants to look perfect.”
“Perfection is an ugly beast. It’s our blemishes that make us pretty. Never be perfect. Okay, Hazel? I like you just the way you are.” She lifted his glasses and kissed the light line between his eyebrows.
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He laughed again. “I’ll try not to be, but some days it’s a real struggle.”
That made her laugh and she wandered to the next aisle of books at the store. Military. He followed behind, following the girl he’d follow anywhere. “Why don’t you have a phone?”
“I do. I just didn’t have anyone to call.”
“You’ve had me for over a month.”
“I have you?”
“You do. Completely,” he said, grabbing her and giving her a kiss that would lead to more right here in the middle of a bookstore if they weren’t careful.
She pushed him gently and flitted away, saying, “Well, maybe I’ll give you my number then.”
He caught her in the Family Psychology section with her nose pointed down at a book. “Whatcha reading?”
Quite quickly, exhaustion seemed to creep over her beautiful face, “I tried to kill myself.” Desperately needing to get it out there. Desperately wanting him to know her deepest secrets, tired of hiding it from the one person she wanted to be completely honest with.
Taylor was shocked. His mouth dropped open, and he leaned his hands against the shelf, needing some sort of support. His eyes knit together and he looked down. His voice was low and calculated, too controlled when he asked, “When?”
“Two years ago.”
He could tell he was going to have to pull every detail out of her. She had turned away from him to put the book back on the shelf. “Why?” he asked, his voice sounding croaky. He hated his easily exposed emotions.
Jude leaned her back against the books and looked at him, then turned so she was leaning against him instead. The fabric of his pants was smooth as she ran her hand over them. She loved him in suits and this gray one was especially sexy on him. Her only mistake was opening a can of worms that would take the rest of his lunch hour. He’ll either stay or leave, but she needed to give him that choice. Taking his hand, she led him to the fiction section, feeling more comfortable in the land of fantasy. “My family blames me for my uncle’s death.”