Trouble Me

by Beck Anderson

  He pats my hand again. “C’mon. We’ll go sit on the patio and sunbathe. Maybe you can suntan that expanding belly of yours. Tan fat is better than white fat, you know.”

  Even with my spinning head and pounding heart, I would rather sit with him than be left to my own devices. “All right. But if you call me fat again, I’ll cut your heart out with that butter knife. Do not mess with a pregnant woman.”

  “Got it.” He leads the way to the patio.

  I spend the whole time, three agonizing hours, waiting for Andrew and Tucker to come home. I’m drenched in sweat, chewing my lips, trying to breathe in nice and slow, and at least for the baby’s sake, trying to stay in control. I will not cry. This is not my moment to be all shaky and wimpy. I don’t know how badly Andrew’s hurt, and he’s going to need the TLC, not me.

  I hadn’t thought about the pain meds, not till Jeremy said something. Andrew will hurt. That sucks. “Ice. We need more ice, I bet. I should check.” I make a move to get up from the lounge chair Jeremy’s parked me in.

  “You have plenty. I had Hunter check.” Jeremy went in and talked to both boys. I suspect he made it sound all very nonchalant. I guess I’m thankful for that. There’s no way I could have told them without crying, and they’d freak out. When I had to tell them their dad had died, it was one of the worst times in my life. I suspect I would have a similar look on my face, and both of them probably would get taken right back to that moment. No need to drag them back through that.

  I hear voices in the hall and jump to get up. Jeremy grabs my arm again. “Slow down, sister. Let him come out here.”

  I hate Jeremy—have I said that? I sit impatiently.

  Tucker appears on the patio first. His face is passive, no emotion on it whatsoever.

  Andrew’s behind him, his arm in a sling. He is pale.

  I jump up, run over to him. “Andrew, oh, Andrew.” I stop short.

  He puts the free arm out. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you.” He hugs me.

  I reach up and touch his face, search his eyes for clues. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. My shoulder hurts like a mother. But I’m fine. Tucker was right there.”

  Tucker nods. “The crowd got a little out of hand. Nothing we haven’t seen before. It’s just that there’s nowhere to go on a New York City sidewalk. Andrew stepped back off the curb, and the car caught his shoulder. Police questioned the driver, but he just had nowhere to go, couldn’t get out of the way. Felt awful about hitting a huge movie star. He’s terrified Andrew will sue him or something.”

  Jeremy gets up. “What’s the damage?”

  “Sixty-seven stitches.”

  “That’s gonna leave a serious mark.” Jeremy shakes his head. “Did you at least get pain meds while you were in the ER?”

  Andrew shakes his head in return. “I told them no. They did numb the area with local. It wasn’t terrible.”

  Tucker disagrees. “Yes, it was. There was some whimpering.”

  “You or him?” Jeremy gives Tucker a nudge.

  “Both, to be honest.” Tucker walks a perimeter of the patio. He scans the surrounding buildings. I can tell he’s rattled. His heightened awareness equals nerves.

  “If you guys don’t mind, I’d like to go lie down. You all can leave now.” Andrew looks at both of them.

  Jeremy waves him off. “Oh, no you don’t. We’re the support team. I’ll crash out on the couch in the media room. I have to run damage control, and I’m answering all of your calls—your cell and Kelly’s cell. Sandy’ll be over tomorrow to help.”

  Andrew rolls his eyes, points at Tucker. “You’re already in the guest room. Are you part of the hovering too?”

  “I’ll keep the press off your back. They’ve set up camp out front. I can keep them out of the building. And then I want the building swept. Apotheosis is sending extra guys over. I told them fine as long as I get to coordinate it.”

  “One big family, eh?” Andrew leans his good hand up against the wall of the patio, defeated.

  “I’m kind of glad. It’ll make the boys feel better. They like having the guys around.” I take his hand, wrap my fingers around his. His hand is clammy.

  “Fine. I want to go close my bedroom door and talk with my fiancée. Does everyone approve of that?”

  Jeremy perks up. “What? Fiancée? Since when?”

  I haven’t heard Andrew use the word, either. I thought we were keeping it on the downlow. “What?”

  “Look, Kelly and I are getting married. Maybe we’ve been joking about the proposals up till now, but now that I’ve had an opportunity to take stock—while I lay on my stomach for an hour getting stitches—I don’t care if I haven’t had a chance to propose properly. You’re my fiancée, and that’s that. The rest is details.”

  My chest feels warm. I give his hand a squeeze. “I agree completely. Details.” I kiss him gingerly on the cheek. “Why the sling?”

  Tucker takes the question. “No movement. It’ll pull the stitches in his back out.”

  Andrew laces his fingers into mine. “Come with me.”

  Jeremy holds a hand up. “Not to dwell on details, but are we going public with the fiancée thing?” Jeremy tries very hard to keep a neutral face, but I can see the excitement spark in his eyes. This news would set things on fire for Andrew in the press in a good way, not in an almost-died-when-hit-by-car way—for a couple days, at least, until the twenty-four-hour news cycle lost interest and moved on to something else.

  “Let me sleep on it, Jeremy.”

  “It’d be great to get them off the car thing.” Jeremy flips his phone over and over in his hand. The man is a caffeinated terrier.

  “I hear you, J. But I said let me sleep on it.” Andrew walks right by him. “I think it’s fair to say I’ve already had a long-ass day, don’t you think? Don’t force me to decide about it now. I want to lie down for a while.”

  “No problem.” Jeremy steps back.

  Andrew pulls me by the hand down the long hallway to our bedroom. I stay quiet. He gets us in the door and pulls it shut.

  “I was going to give you this when I got home tonight. Proposal number five. It was going to go in your piece of pizza.” He pulls a slim silver band out of his pocket. It has a tiny red apple made out of rhinestones on it.

  I feel tears slide down my cheeks. “It’s so cute. Yes.” I slip it on, try for a joke. “I probably would’ve accidentally swallowed it if it’d been hidden in the pizza. It’s better that you’re just giving it to me.”

  “Tucker bought it yesterday from a guy on the street. He’s always looking out for me, you know.” He smiles a little, and then closes his eyes for a long pause.

  I can’t say anything. I watch him. He lets go of my hand, goes to the bed, pulls back the covers. He looks at me. “I want to lie down with you. I want to hold you and listen to your heart beat. I want you to tell me about each little twitch you feel our baby make. I want to fall asleep with my arms around you.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to get your jeans off?”

  He looks stuck. He’s gotten his shoes off.

  “Yes, damn it. I wish it was because we were going to do nasty, dirty things to each other, but the pain right now…”

  “Stop. You’re human. Stop trying to be so strong. It was a close call.”

  I come to him, unbutton his jeans. He steps out of them and kisses me for a moment.

  “I don’t even want to try the shirt. It was a beast to put it on after the stitches.”

  “I don’t recognize it.”

  He wears a big, soft gray T-shirt. I help him to take the sling off. He holds his arm folded against his torso, tucked like a bird’s wounded wing.

  “It’s Tucker’s. He gave me the shirt off his back. He can’t stand that I got hurt on his watch. He might not forgive himself.”

  I shake my head. “It’s nobody’s fault. Just an accident. And you’re fine. He caught you. Just a stupid accident.”

  Something
dark flits across his face, creases his brow and turns his mouth down. I see the expression, and it’s gone, replaced by the actor face, perfectly placid, perfectly neutral. “You’re right. Just an accident.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It’d just be a stupid way to die.”

  “We’re not talking about that. I’m treading on very thin ice here. You know that. For everyone’s sake, we’re not talking about death. No one wants me to go there.” My voice trembles as I say it, but I swallow hard. This is not about me.

  “Enough. Lie down with me.” He climbs in and arranges himself carefully.

  “I don’t know where to go. You can’t hold me; you’ll hurt your back.”

  “Stop.” He pats the spot in front of him. “Right here, baby mama.”

  I crawl carefully in next to him. I hold as still as I can. He puts his arm over me, draped over my growing belly. “Is this okay?”

  He kisses my neck. I feel his breath on me, and it’s shaky. “I love you.”

  He doesn’t say anything else. I lie there, listen to him breathe. Eventually his breathing falls into a rhythm.

  Andrew sleeps for most of the day. I keep the boys busy, make them lunch, take them to the pool.

  Jeremy holes up in the media room, as promised. He’s on the phone to everyone—all sorts of phone calls. I can imagine Aaronson needs lots of calming, and I can tell several are probably strategy calls to Sandy, the publicist, about what’s going to be said to the press.

  Tucker also talks on the phone, but I can’t tell who he speaks to. His conversations are much more secretive. More than once, I think he steps out on to the patio to spare me the details of Andrew’s accident.

  At some point late in the afternoon, Jeremy comes out of the media room with my cell in his hand. He wasn’t lying about commandeering all of the phones.

  “Kelly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This one you can take. It’s your friend? Mari?” He hands the phone to me.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Kelly. What’s going on?” Her voice sounds casual, and I want to snap at her, remind her that there’s a lot going on, thank you very much.

  And then I remember I haven’t told her about Andrew yet.

  “It’s a little crazy over here. How are you?”

  She breathes in a little. “Good, I guess. What’s going on?”

  I don’t know how to lie right now. I’m so tired, and the adrenaline of the day is wearing thin. “Tonight’s just not a good time to talk. Can we catch up tomorrow? I might need a babysitter this week. Something’s come up, and I could use your help.”

  “Sure, that’s fine. Let me know.” She ends the call.

  I feel weariness settling into my bones. I scavenge the refrigerator and make sandwiches for everyone to eat. Beau, ever the helper, takes food to Tucker and Jeremy.

  I take dinner into the bedroom for Andrew.

  He’s reading Hemingway, holding the book with his good arm. I’ve propped him up with every conceivable pillow I could find, but he still looks uncomfortable.

  “Dinner?” I hold up the plate.

  He makes a face. “I don’t have an appetite. Maybe some tea?”

  “You have to eat. Your body needs to heal. You need fuel to heal up.” I sit on the edge of the bed facing him. I fight the rising uneasy feeling tightening around my chest.

  “I promise I will tomorrow. Tonight, I’m just hoping to fall asleep.”

  I wonder how he will, with the pain. “I’ll get you new ice.”

  “You know what? Just tell me some stories. Tell me about when the boys were born.” He sets the book down.

  “I’m no Papa Hemingway.”

  “He and Robert Jordan are gearing up to blow up a bridge right now, but you don’t have to try to compete with that. I want to think about what it’s going to be like to see my baby born.”

  So, I lie down next to him and tell him all the ins and outs of when the boys were born. He’s able to manage some chuckles, especially when I tell him about mowing the lawn when I was overdue with Hunter.

  He eventually falls asleep.

  I get back up and check in on everyone, get Hunter and Beau to bed, straighten up the kitchen. Then I come back to Andrew, trying to slip in between the covers as gently as I can.

  And then I stare at the wall all night; thank God over and over again.

  The sun dawns pale in the sky as I cry silent tears of gratitude.

  17: Float On

  THE NEXT MORNING, Tucker takes the boys out for the day. Bless him. He sneaks them out one of the back freight elevators and down to the parking garage, where they take a car one of the security guys from Apotheosis dropped last night. They’re able to slip out of the building without anyone being the wiser.

  Andrew sleeps. The production will “shoot around him,” producer Aaronson declared last night. He won’t have filming stopped, not for Andrew’s injury, not for anything. Jeremy spent a long time last night making sure McDougal could pick up scenes that didn’t involve Andrew for two or three days.

  Before he left, Tucker, expert on trauma, gave me a list of to-dos to help Andrew recover on a quiet day alone. “Have him take the ibuprofen for the pain, but also to clear the adrenaline out of his body. It helps the body process it.”

  I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, so I can only imagine how Andrew feels. I want a cup of tea and decide on chamomile and green. I need caffeine, even just a little bit, but I also need something to calm my jagged nerves.

  I didn’t sleep. At all. I know this isn’t good for the baby. I will nap later, I promise myself.

  I decide to swim. It’s early, but it’s a weekday, so no one should be at the little indoor pool. There aren’t enough people in the building who use it very much. It has an adjoining workout room—gym might be what the concierge calls it, but two treadmills and a couple weight machines might be pushing the definition of gym. We might be the only interested tenants. The boys come down to swim and are usually by themselves.

  I pull on my suit. What an exercise in total humiliation. The pregnant body in a swimsuit is not a thing of beauty. Wow. I think Jeremy’s remark about tan fat might have been on the mark.

  I am careful not to wake Andrew as I leave a note on the pillow next to him. I don’t want him to wake to an empty condo and flip out.

  I sneak out and take the elevator to the pool level.

  It’s quiet. No one else is swimming. The water laps its blue tongue against old, 1920s-style black and white tiles. The room smells of chlorine, and the humidity curls the hairs at my neck.

  As I slip in, the warm water welcomes me. I forgot what a relief this is. My hips thank me immediately, the burden of a spreading midsection off of their bones for a moment.

  I warm up with a couple easy laps, the breaststroke letting my shoulders and legs stretch out.

  At the deep end, I let down my guard and float on my back. The water fills my ears, and I enjoy the cocoon. I open my eyes to someone standing on the pool deck and jump out of my skin, inhaling water in the process.

  “Andrew!” I sputter and cough.

  His arm’s in a sling. He wears trunks. “Morning. Thought I’d join you.”

  “You can’t swim with your shoulder all torn up.”

  “Why not? The sutures are all covered with that thick steri-tape. They said I could shower.” His voice sounds tired.

  “Come in, then.” I’m not fighting him today, on anything. The person who was almost run over wins all the arguments.

  “No, you’re right. I should probably keep it out of the water.” He walks to the stairs and eases in, careful to come only waist deep. He coaxes his arm out of the sling and puts the sling aside.

  “Careful.” I swim toward him. I’m timid. I don’t want to touch him for fear of hurting him.

  “I know.” He’s not protesting. I think he’s hurting enough to proceed carefully.

  I watch him take another step, a little deeper i
n the water. He’s still for a moment, testing, keeping his arm close to his body.

  “Are you all right?”

  “It’s fine so far.” He takes some slow steps, stands a little straighter.

  I just want to wrap him in my arms and hold him for the day. Or the week, or the rest of my life. I don’t want to let him go.

  I duck my head under the water before the tears come. I don’t want him to see me upset by this. He’ll take it personally, beat himself up for upsetting me, which is ridiculous.

  I come up for air, slick my hair back. I’m closer now, and I stand in the shallows next to him.

  “Are you okay?” He scans my face for the emotion there.

  “I’d be lying if I said I was fine. But I’ll be fine. I just want you to heal, not to hurt too much.” I want to touch his chest, feel his strength, and reassure myself that he’s still strong, still vital. “And I’ve decided: we’re staying here in New York with you, till shooting’s done. Then we’re going, as a family, to LA. We’ll get a tutor for the boys for the semester.”

  “Are you sure?” He looks relieved.

  “I’m positive. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

  He leans over and kisses me without moving his arms. I am careful to keep my body away from his. When he speaks, his voice is thick with emotion. “I want you so badly. I need to hold you, to lose myself in you.”

  He kisses me deeply, hungry and scared. I open my mouth to him, but I try to keep in control. The tears, sobs, are right under my thin skin, and I don’t want to cry. This is my time to support him.

  “I want you, Kelly.” He wraps one arm around me, pulls my hips to his, urgently. I kiss him hard, and now my hands go to his neck, almost instinctively.

  He jumps. “Careful.”

  “God, that hurt, didn’t it?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s okay. Kiss me.”

  I put my hand on his cheek and kiss him. He breathes heavily against my neck, his good hand grasping the small of my back and pulling me closer.