by Claire Adams
“I think we should go back down,” Jace says.
“Shh!” I scold. “I’m concentrating here.”
Slowly, I start to get back to standing nearly straight up, and I hold onto the back edge of the car with one hand while I step up to the very top rung.
With my heart as the only sound I can hear, I gingerly work one foot off the top rung and over the car itself.
I’m slow, deliberate in lowering my foot to the floor of the car, but I’m almost there.
I have to kick a couple beer cans out of the way before I set my foot down, but once it’s in there, my second foot comes a lot more easily.
Still with a death grip on the back of the car, I move to the far side and start to sit down. The car rocks a little, back and forth, and I’m absolutely certain I’m going to die right until my butt hits the seat.
After a moment, the rocking subsides, and I look back toward the ladder at Jace, whose head is just coming up above the top of the ladder to the side of the car.
“The front doesn’t stay closed,” I tell him, “so don’t get cute and try to rock this thing while we’re sitting in it or I might just have to throw you out of it to save myself.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says.
It’s dark, but I could swear that he’s a few shades lighter in color as he climbs the final rungs to the top.
“You’ll want to lean forward a little bit,” I tell him, “but not too much. I think the best way is just to step in.”
“Okay,” he says, though I’m pretty sure he’s not hearing anything I’m saying.
“You’re going to be fine,” I tell him. “If I can do this, you can do this.”
“Yeah, that logic doesn’t really work, but I’m willing to try.”
I’d never considered that Jace might be scared of heights, too, but as he leans forward, bringing one foot slowly over the side of the car, I could swear that his face is a pale shade of green.
“I wish you didn’t tell me about the front of the car,” he says.
“Had to,” I tell him. “If I didn’t, you might have tried to use it for support and-”
“Please stop,” he pleads.
It’s almost nice being the one talking him through this. It might be a lot nicer if I wasn’t still so terrified, myself.
His eyes are on me as his foot comes down onto the floor of the car, and I hold out my hand to him. He’s gripping the back with one hand, but with the other, he slowly, deliberately reaches out and takes mine.
“You’re almost there,” I tell him. “When you get in, just sit down slowly and lean back a little. You’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” he says, though his voice is hardly anything but air.
He brings his other foot into the car and it crunches down on whatever that glass paraphernalia is, and he sharply raises his foot, the change in weight distribution causing the car to pitch backward and then forward, and I’m leaning back with every ounce of me to keep from having this be the last thing I ever do with my life.
His foot comes back down quick enough and he sits down, still clutching my hand, though “crushing” may be the more accurate term at the moment.
He’s shaking more than I am, although not by much, and both of his arms are around me as if I’m the immovable object that’s going to save his life if this thing pitches forward any farther.
“Lean back and stay leaned back,” I tell him. “Do it slow, though, we don’t need this thing rocking any more.”
“I don’t know how in the hell I let you talk me into this,” he says. “This thing must be a hundred years old, and it’s rusty, and they obviously took it out of whatever theme park it was in because it was-”
I shush him as calmly as I can.
That whole being the rock for him thing has lost its glamour, and right now, I’m just trying not to start freaking out as vocally as he is.
“You’re fine,” I tell him, “we both are. We’re going to be okay.”
His grip on me lightens a little, but he’s not ready to let go, and I’m all right with that. It’s just good to be able to expand my lungs again.
I look at the front gate of the car, and I notice that there’s something dangling from one side of it.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing to it.
“I don’t know,” Jace says, unwilling to look anywhere but at me.
I lean to one side a little, just enough to see where that dangling piece of metal goes: it’s the pin that locks the restraint shut.
When I start leaning forward, Jace pulls me back.
“I’m going to lock the front,” I tell him. “Trust me, we’re both going to feel better about this after I do.”
“What if you have a-” he starts, but I’m not about to let him finish.
“Jace, shut the fuck up right now.”
If I have a seizure up here, chances are I’m not going to be able to stay in the car whether the front is latched closed or not, and I’ve done really good about not thinking about that until dipshit over here just had to bring it up.
I lean forward again, but Jace is still pulling me backward.
“You have to trust me,” I tell him.
His embrace loosens. Though not much, it’s just enough for me to reach the pin and find the hole it slips into.
“I’m going to have to pull the gate shut a little more,” I tell him, hoping that letting him know what I’m doing will help ease his mind.
It doesn’t.
Jace pulls me back and the startle from the motion causes me to drop the pin. Fortunately, it’s on a little chain, but the sudden movement has caused the car to pitch back and forth again, and both of my hands are on the unlatched front gate.
I quickly release my grip on that, and in the process, I elbow Jace in the nose, causing him to jerk back fast, and his arms come off of me and up to his face.
The car is rocking, and all I can think to do right now is to try to get the front latched.
I scream at Jace to lean back — the actual words being, “Lean back, fuckhead!” — and I grab onto the restraint with one hand and grab the pin with the other.
With one hard jerk, the metal bar goes into place, but I’m having a hell of a time getting the pin to go through the hole in the right way: it’s through the top, but I can’t find the bottom.
“We’re going to fucking die!” Jace shouts, his voice muffled by his hands.
I scream right back, “Shut the fuck up!”
I jerk the bar backward again, this time throwing my body weight into it and hoping the metal pin goes in place before the car has a chance to pitch forward again.
“This is so fucking stupid,” Jace says, and I’m about ready to elbow him in the nose again.
With the palm of my hand now, because my fingers keep sliding against the smooth metal, I force the top of the pin through the bottom hole just as we start to pitch forward harder than before.
There’s no reason to believe it’ll hold, but both Jace and I instinctively grab for it as we tilt so much it feels like we’re already falling out.
The restraint holds.
Jace is finally out of his panic just enough to realize that he was acting like an idiot before. He doesn’t say anything, but he does his best to make amends by staying perfectly still in a backward lean.
It feels like it takes a long time even though it can’t be more than a few seconds, but the car slowly stops rocking and finds its equilibrium.
“You know,” I tell Jace, “I was thinking of fucking your brains out up here, but after that, I think you might just toss me out of the car for moving it too much.”
“We can’t,” he says. “It won’t hold.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about — everything’s going to hold,” I start, though as the words are leaving me, they strike my ear as being extremely naïve. That’s not helping. “To tell you the truth, though, I’m really not in much of a mood to give you anything that might be construed as a rew
ard for your behavior.”
“That’s fine,” he says quickly. “Let’s just be as still as possible.”
As I sit here, about 50 feet off the ground in the car of a broken-down Ferris wheel, which, by the way, can’t be any older than 30 years, despite what Jace may think, it starts to sink in why the front restraint was open when we got here.
It comes over the knees.
For us to get back out of here, we’re going to have to take the pin back out and open the front a few inches like it was before.
I’m trying not to think about how we’re going to get down from there.
Chapter Sixteen
Solid Ground, Meet Quicksand
Jace
It’s been about a week since the Ferris wheel, and I think Grace is slowly starting to forgive me for slightly losing my cool when we were at the top of the thing.
I know that because I’m sitting on the couch in her living room. Yeah, she’s barred me from jumping in the shower with her, but at least I’m still in the apartment.
From the other room, I can hear the shower turn off, and a second later, there’s the clatter of the shower rings as the curtain opens.
I get up from the couch and make my way to the bathroom door, but it’s locked.
“Occupied!” she calls out.
“How long are you going to be mad at me? We got back down safe enough, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, with absolutely no help from you,” she says through the door.
Okay, I might have thrown a bit of a fit when she took the pin out of the front of the car, but in my defense, she hadn’t given me a proper amount of time to digest what she was telling me.
The door to the bathroom opens, and Grace has one towel wrapped around her upper body and another wrapped around her head.
“I’ve got a surprise for you,” she says, “but you’ve got to promise that you’re not going to start flailing your arms again. That really wasn’t you at your most attractive.”
I groan, but say, “I promise.”
“Okay, but just bear with me. It’s something I’m still working on and it might take a little while longer before it’s where I want it, but — well, you’ll see. Go sit down.”
“All right,” I answer, and go back to the living room.
“Are you sitting down?”
“Yeah,” I tell her, and plop down on the couch.
“Okay, just a second,” she calls.
All things considered, things are going great right now. Yeah, Grace is still denying me the random privilege out of sheer spite, but we’re together.
Her treatment, from everything she says, is going along just fine. Her oligodendroglioma hasn’t shrunk, but she hasn’t had any worsening symptoms. In fact, she told me a couple of days ago that she’s been without a headache for almost a week.
“All right,” she says from just around the corner, “are you ready?”
“I’m ready,” I tell her.
Grace comes around the corner, and at first, I’m wondering what it is that she’s trying to show me, but soon enough, it clicks.
She’s taken the towel off of her head, and she’s not wearing a wig. Her hair, while only a couple of inches long, is starting to grow back significantly.
“I can actually do stuff with it now,” she says. “Feel.”
This is the first time since Grace and I met that she’s not jerking away from me when my hand approaches the top of her head.
The hair is soft, smooth. It’s dark, and although she just got out of the shower, it almost looks styled.
“It’s wonderful,” I tell her. “Very beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she says. “I’ve never been that big on short hair — at least, when it comes to my head — but I’m pretty fucking proud of it right now.”
“You should be,” I tell her. “It looks great.”
“Doesn’t it? It was kind of cool to get to change my hair in every way on a daily basis, but it’s so much nicer to have my own starting to grow back.”
“I love it,” I tell her.
“All right,” she says, “I think I can let you out now.”
“Let me out of what?”
“The kennel,” she says. “I’ve decided to no longer be mad at you for trying to kill me at the top of the Ferris wheel.”
“I was not trying to kill you,” I start, but her left eyebrow is rising, and I take the hint.
“Anyway,” she says, “I have something to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you know how I’ve been trying to get my footing back at work since my boss decided not to retire?”
“Yeah,” I answer.
“I ran into one of the members of the board yesterday,” she says. “At first, she was a little hesitant to talk to me, because apparently, John’s been spreading some yellow press about me over the last little while.”
“What a jerk,” I scoff.
“Not my point,” she says. “I finally got her to relax enough to listen to some of my ideas, and she’s going to put together an exploratory committee to look into the feasibility of spreading our network into new markets.”
“That’s wonderful!” I tell her, only half comprehending what she’s talking about. I wonder if this is what people feel like when I start talking about anatomy. For me, it’s simple enough that it barely requires thought, but I’ve lost track of how many times Melissa’s eyes just glazed over when I answered the question, “How was your day?”
“So, I’m going to finish getting ready,” she says. “You’re still up for taking me to the hospital, right?”
“Of course,” I tell her. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Huh,” she says, turning and leaving the room, “I thought you were here because you couldn’t stand the thought of being away from this hot ass of mine for any extended period of time.”
“That is a big part of it,” I call after her.
It doesn’t take Grace that long to get ready, considering that Melissa used to be three hours in the bathroom and another hour to hour and a half in the bedroom before she’d be willing to leave the house.
When Grace comes out, we go.
Today’s my day off, but Grace has to go in for another day of tests and treatment.
I really wish I knew more about what was going on, but Dr. Willis has apparently scared the bejesus out of everyone involved with the trial. I can’t get anyone to give me a sneak peek at Grace’s file.
“I was thinking,” Grace says. “You and I have been a thing for a few days now.”
“A few weeks,” I tell her. “Actually, it’s been well over a month.”
“Whatever,” she says. “What I’ve been thinking is that maybe we should exchange keys or something. I’m always misplacing mine, and the guy who has my key right now is either never home or he hides when he hears me knocking on the door.”
“Who do you have holding your key?”
“A neighbor,” she says. “That’s not the point. I guess what I’m more worried about is that this treatment doesn’t work and I have to go back on chemo.”
“Don’t worry about that,” I tell her. “You seem to be doing really well. If it does turn out that you do have to go back on chemo, assuming no significant change in your oligodendroglioma, we’ll just go back to five days a month oral treatment.”
“I’ll give you oral treatment five days a week if you don’t put me back on that shit after this trial’s over,” she says.
“I wish I could promise that,” I tell her. “Without being able to see your scans, though, I can’t even make an educated guess where your treatment might end up.”
“Comforting,” she says. “I don’t want you to misunderstand me here, I’m not suggesting we move in together. I like you, and we have a great time naked, but I’m not looking to rush into a situation where I just end up being Melissa the Sequel. I just know that there are going to be days when I go back on the chemo, that I’m not going to be up to doing jack
shit and I’m going to need some help. I would just hire a housekeeper, but they really get up there in price when it comes to sexual favors.”
“Sexual favors?”
“That was just to see if you were listening,” she says.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
“I still haven’t had a headache in a while. I’m not counting the one after the seizure.”
“That’s good,” I tell her. “Still, I wish I could see your scans.”
“Too bad for both of us, then,” she says.
We pull into the parking lot and I drop her off at the curb. I know it’s a bit silly drawing the line there, but I just have this feeling that if the two of us were to be seen actually walking into the hospital together, the secret would be out.
Grace wouldn’t be the first patient of mine I’ve ended up giving a ride to, but after the way I came into the room after her seizure, I’d rather not take any unnecessary chances.
I park in my reserved spot and head up to my office.
If I can’t walk Grace in, I certainly can’t meet up with her when she’s with the trial doctors.
The office is dark as I’m approaching, but I could swear that I see a flicker of light.
I unlock the door, figuring that it’s just a clock that lost power and started flashing or something, but as soon as the light from the hallway meets the darkness of my waiting room, the figure of a woman sitting in one of the chairs becomes clear.
“What are you doing in here?” I ask the person sitting there looking up at me, and I flip on the light.
“Jesus, boss,” Yuri says. “Give a girl some warning before you blind her.”
“Let me amend my question,” I say. “What the fuck are you doing in here, Yuri?”
“Nothing,” she says. “I just like to come in here sometimes. You know, there really aren’t that many places a person can be alone in the city.”
“What about your apartment?”
“Oh, that place is a fucking dumpster fire,” she says. “It may be quiet, but that doesn’t mean it’s comfortable.”
“And, you’re smoking in here,” I sigh. “That’s just fantastic.”
“I’m not smoking,” she protests. “I’m vaping. There’s a difference.”