Her Real Man

by Natalina Reis

  My mind wandered to the day I’d met Gavin and every other time since then. My very active imagination had me come up with all kinds of scenarios where our lips always ended up joined together—not to mention other equally exciting parts of our bodies. Gavin was away for a long while, but lost in my daydreaming, I didn’t even notice until I heard the firemen yelling out something.

  “Hurry up, bionic man.” I wasn’t sure who they were calling, but after counting the players already on the court, I figured it was Gavin—the only one still missing in action. The door to the building opened and the men all whistled at the same time. “Did you get enough time to put on lipstick?” Gavin emerged through the door and gave them all the finger as he trotted to the court.

  My heart stopped—at least, that’s how it felt. Gavin’s sports shorts revealed a perfect, muscular leg and—

  He has a fake leg.

  I knew what I was seeing, but my brain refused to accept it. Gavin’s right lower leg was a mechanical one. He ran and jumped as easily and athletically as all the other men. On a prosthetic limb. How could that be? Why didn’t he ever say anything about it? I didn’t know what to think. Him being an amputee didn’t change the way I felt about him. Or did it? I was so confused.

  For the rest of the game, I must have zoned out, because I couldn’t remember whether anyone scored or who was winning. My head was stuck on pause. I was only half-aware when the players high-fived each other and began filing off the court. With a start, I realized Gavin was heading toward me.

  What am I going to do? What am I going to say?

  As it turned out, my brain decided for me. “When were you going to tell me you have a fake leg?” Whoa, not exactly sensitive or nice, but I was angry. My hands were out of control, gesturing the strong feelings assailing my heart. “Were you going to wait until we got naked in your bedroom and surprise me? Did you think I couldn’t handle it? Or just thought it would be a great joke?”

  Gavin grabbed my fast-moving hands and held them still against his chest. “Calm down, Ana,” he whispered. “I thought you knew. Everybody knows.”

  “Obviously not everybody, because I had no freaking idea.” Anger seethed beneath my skin, burning its way out. “How was I supposed to know? And what do you mean, everybody knows?”

  “It was all over the local news. My accident. My leg, or lack thereof.” Nothing was making much sense to me right now except the fact that I was furious. A boiling sense of betrayal, like bile, rose in my throat, threatening to gag me. “I’m so sorry, Ana. I really thought you knew. You’re not mad at me, are you? I didn’t mean to hide it from you or anything.”

  I didn’t know how I felt about him at that moment. I was angry, that was certain. But was I mad at him or mad at myself for not having noticed? I had wondered about his funny kind of walk sometimes, but I thought it was due to some lasting injury, nothing this enormous. I couldn’t be mad at him for not having a leg, but I certainly could be mad at him for keeping it a secret, couldn’t I? How could he think I knew about it? I needed time and space to think about how I felt. I needed time to process it all.

  “I have to go.” I pulled my hands from his and turned to walk away, but he was faster, running to stand in my way. “Gavin, I don’t know what to feel right now. Give me some time to think about it.” He nodded, his lips twisted into a frown. “I’ll call you.”

  I hated myself for feeling like that. What was I thinking? Wasn’t Gavin the same amazing guy who had made my toes curl with his lips? Wasn’t he the same exact romantic fool who had prepared my favorite sandwiches for our first date? Wasn’t he the same gorgeous man I was falling in love with?

  I hate this. I hate this.

  As soon as I threw myself on top of my bed at home, the phone rang. It was Delta.

  “How did it go? I’m surprised you’re home already. I thought I’d leave you a message.”

  “Did you know?” I asked her, a terrible suspicion growing inside of me. Had all of them—even my best friend—been conspiring to make me look like a fool?

  “Did I know what?”

  “Did you know that Gavin is an amputee?” Saying the word made me feel small and petty. Why was I mad at him for something like that? “He said everyone knew. That it was in the news. Did you know about it, Delta?”

  There was a gasp. “Fuck! Is he that Gavin?”

  My voice became shrill. “You knew!”

  “Now there, my friend. I didn’t know that was the Gavin in the news a few years ago.” She was using the tone of voice she always did when trying to appease me. “I had no way of knowing.”

  “Goodbye, Delta.” I was done. For a moment, I wished I still had one of those old corded phones so I could slam the receiver. As it was, my clicking the off button on my cell phone didn’t have quite the same dramatic effect. It would have to do for now. I was going to wallow in my own misery—justified or not—if I wanted to.

  Humble Pie and Forgiveness

  Gavin

  My ear burned against the cell phone speaker. It was the fifth time I’d called Ana that day and probably wouldn’t be the last. There was a long string of messages left for her that varied from the simple “call me” to the frantic “please, forgive me for being such an asshole.” She wasn’t biting. So far, I was developing a very close relationship with her voice mail. I dropped the phone on the kitchen counter and sat on one of the tall stools, my head drooping to the marble surface.

  What have I done? I truly thought she knew. It was common knowledge in town that I had lost my leg in that horrible accident many years ago. I had just started my career as a fireman when it all went down the drain. Losing a limb was always traumatic, but for a twenty-four-year-old, barely out of college and starting a job that required full use of limbs, it was devastating. I went through all the stages of grief before I came to accept that I could either be a sad burden to my mother and everyone around me, or make the best of it and adjust to living with a fake leg. I chose the latter. It had been a long, painful journey, but I had made it and I was proud of myself.

  Was she mad at me because I was disabled? I couldn’t imagine that. Ana didn’t hit me as the kind of woman who would care about something like that. So why had she been so pissed at me? Why had she run away and wouldn’t talk to me? Not hard to guess, stupid. She’s mad at you because you didn’t tell her.

  I snatched the phone from the counter and punched in her number again. I wasn’t going to give up on her. Not now, not ever.

  “You have reached Ana. Please leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can.” It was a recording, but her voice was like a soothing balm for my aching heart.

  I waited for the beep before leaving the sixth message of the day. “Ana, please call me. I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you didn’t know. Let’s talk about it. Please, Ana. I need—” You. Too early in the relationship? Possibly. Yet it was true. I needed her like the air I breathed. “I need to talk to you.”

  My leg looked perfectly normal, covered by jeans. The bionic parts in the joint mechanism allowed me near-normal movement. It was no wonder Ana had never suspected it.

  It had been years since I’d felt this much disgust for my injury. At that moment, I wanted to be perfect and whole. I hated that. It had taken me years to like myself the way I was, and in one moment it was all gone.

  The phone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin. It was my mom.

  “Mom?” She always seemed to know when something was wrong. Even all the way from France where she had moved a couple years ago.

  “What’s wrong, Gav? Are you okay? You don’t sound okay.” She had the quirky habit of answering her own questions.

  “I’m fine, Mom.” I wasn’t fine. Not even close.

  “You’re not fooling anyone,” she said, her voice pitching higher as it always did when she was worried. “What happened?”

  I swallowed, trying to decide how much I should tell her. I didn’t want to worry her too much. It was bad enough she
had to go through the pain and anguish of seeing her only son almost die and later lose his leg. She’d been there the whole way, through my recovery and therapy, sitting by me the nights when grief wouldn’t let me sleep, and cheering me on when I built up strength and courage to get back on my feet. My champion and my strength.

  “I think I’m in love, Mom.” Where did that come from? Until I opened my mouth, I’d had no idea that was even true.

  She squealed like a little girl and I almost laughed. “My boy is finally in love. Who’s the lucky girl?”

  It poured like a torrent of water out of an open dam. As I spoke of my heartache, I felt lighter, relieved. My mother listened patiently, never interrupting except to ask questions. After what seemed like forever, I was finally done spilling my heart out.

  “Well, son, you know what I’m going to say, don’t you?”

  I did. “Get back on your feet, shake yourself off, and move on.” I’d heard that my whole life. “But I need her, Mom. I think I love her.”

  I heard a chortle from the other end of the line. “Then go tell her.”

  “She won’t answer her phone.” God, I sounded like a little boy.

  “No phone. Go to her place, knock at the door.” She cleared her throat. “Throw yourself at her feet if necessary. She’s pissed because she thinks you hid this rather important fact from her. You have to show her you didn’t do it on purpose.”

  I wiped my face with my hand and sighed deeply. She was right. “I’m going there right now.”

  “Not right now, dummy. Give her some time to simmer down. Give her a day or so. Then go there and give it all you got.” She sounded as if I was about to climb into a boxing ring instead of talking to the woman who invaded my every thought and dream. “You can do it, sweetheart.”

  “Thank you, Mom.” The darkness had lifted. She was right. I could do this. “Why did you have to move to the other side of the ocean? I could use your skinny shoulder to cry on.” I chuckled.

  “No ocean is wide or deep enough to separate us, son.” I love you, Mom. “I give thanks to technology every day.” She laughed in crystalline bursts of sound. “But I have to go now. My yoga class starts in fifteen minutes.”

  We said our goodbyes and I put down my phone. My whole being was screaming to run and throw itself into Ana’s arms. It was going to be hard to wait even a few hours, much less a day or two. Hell, hard to believe I was in love.

  ***

  Ana

  The phone blinked in silence. A quick look told me there were more than twenty missed calls, and God only knew how many messages. I was torn inside as I typed away on my laptop, trying to drown my confusion and anger with words. Writing had always been my best therapy, and it was no different now. Being inside one of my stories and the lives of fictional characters was the best way I knew to escape my own problems and de-stress.

  Delta had also been knocking at my door nonstop—either feeling slightly guilty for not connecting the dots, or worried that I would never come up for air again. I didn’t want to talk to her. As much as I needed a shoulder to cry on, I was so confused about what to feel and how to act that I couldn’t even consider talking to another human being.

  The phone vibrated and danced along the top of the coffee table. I glanced at it briefly. Shit! It’s Mom. I had to pick up.

  “Honey, are you okay?” My mother’s half-hysterical voice pierced my ear. She had always had a flair for the dramatic and loved to make a mountain out of a molehill. What was she going on about now? “Delta called me last night and told me you’ve been locked in your house for over a week now. What’s going on?”

  Delta, you traitor. You’ll pay for this.

  “Delta is exaggerating,” I lied, gulping a bit too loudly. “I’ve been busy with a new novel, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I know how you are, duckling.” Oh my God, I hated when she called me that. It made me feel like I was ten years old all over again. My mother had never accepted the fact I was a grown woman. An almost middle-aged woman. “Something happened and you’re hiding from the world like you always do. Have you showered? Eaten?”

  “Mom!” Now I really sounded like a kid. Why did she bring out that side of me? “I’m not a slob or stupid.”

  “Well, there was that time when the boy you liked told the whole school you were a four-eyed piglet.” Thanks, Mom, for bringing that up. “Remember?” How could I forget? It was one of the most humiliating times of my whole life. “You went for almost two weeks without brushing your hair and refused to get dressed and eat.”

  “I was fifteen, Mom.” My protest was heartfelt and loud. “I have grown a bit since then.”

  “Anyway, I should come over and make sure you’re getting your meals.”

  Hell, no. The last thing I needed was my overprotective mother hovering over me as I was trying to figure out what exactly was bothering me about this whole thing.

  “No, Mom. I have a few deadlines and I can’t have visitors right now.” I could already see her, bags in hand, running through the hallways of the Sea-Tac airport as if running away from a raging fire—oh, shit, why did I have to think about fire? “You can’t come. Not now, Mom. Promise me you won’t come.”

  “Are you sure? Are you going to eat regular meals?” Oh, boy. “And take showers every day? I worry about you, duckling.”

  After promising her a million times that I wouldn’t starve or allow myself to turn into a bag lady, she sounded appeased and hung up. I sighed deeply. Talking to my mom always exhausted me. I loved her dearly, but she could be so overbearing. And weird. Let’s face it. My mother was weird.

  The phone vibrated again and I picked up without thinking. “Mom, I promised you—”

  “Who are you calling mom?” It was Delta. “What the hell is going on, girl? I’m coming over and you better open that fucking door.”

  I was about to protest but she hung up on me, and I knew she would be at my doorstep in no time. Better put a comb through my rat’s nest or I’d never hear the end of it.

  In front of the mirror, I wondered over my puffy eyes—been crying a lot—and my splotchy skin. I looked a fright and didn’t feel any better. Confusion clouded my judgment. I didn’t know what to think. On one hand, guilt assailed me: how could I be angry at Gavin for being an amputee? But was I mad at him because of that or because he had never told me, because he was afraid of telling me? Yes, he claimed he thought I knew, but I couldn’t bring myself to fully believe that. Had he not trusted me enough to not care about the fact he was missing a limb? How dare he? How dare he think I was that shallow?

  The doorbell rang in a rapid sequence of squeaks. I have to fix that bell. Delta stormed into my house, umbrella in hand and an angry frown on her lips. “You are really pissing me off. What did I or the poor fireman do to make you so mad? Can you at least tell me that?”

  I followed her into the living room and perched on the arm of my sofa, avoiding her eyes. I wasn’t sure what to say, having just now realized what was bothering me.

  “Well?” She sat on my couch, her lips pursed and her hands primly on her lap.

  The truth came pouring out of me faster than I was even aware of it. All my insecurities had come back to bite me in the ass. It wasn’t Gavin or the fact that he walked on a fake leg. It was that deep doubt in my heart that maybe, just maybe, he hadn’t trusted me enough to share it with me. The fear he didn’t think well enough of me to believe I wouldn’t care. That I would love him no matter what.

  “Love? Did you just say you love him?” Delta’s eyes were open wide, round like tiny full moons, and if it weren’t for the fact I was so upset, I would have laughed.

  I guess I did say that. Is it true though? Am I falling for this gentle, beautiful, and courageous man I have known for such a short time?

  “Damn it, Delta. I don’t know what I’m feeling anymore.” I buried my face in my hands. “I’m so confused.”

  For once, my loud friend was quiet. For a m
oment, at least. “If you’re confused, how do you think he’s feeling?” No idea. I had been too preoccupied with my own feelings to spare too long on his. A wave of guilt washed over me. Shit. How can I be so callous? “Here you are all into the idea of you as a couple, and then he shows you his disability and you bolt, mad at him.”

  I was horrified as the full ramifications of my actions took roots. “Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t even think about that.” I slapped my knees in anger. “I’m a mess. I thought I had put this whole relationship fear behind me, but apparently, my heartaches of the past are not as buried as I hoped they were.”

  Delta drew me into her generous arms and patted me on the back as if trying to burp me. “What are you going to do then?”

  What can I do? Apologize, of course. And hope Gavin was big enough to accept it and not hate me too much for it. I sniffled and straightened up.

  “Time to eat some crow.”

  I was not above apologizing, but it was humiliating to think I had been so freaking unfair to him just because I was unsure of myself and afraid of getting hurt all over again. My female characters were not at all like me. They were brave and audacious, sure of themselves and accepting no crap from anyone. I, on the other hand, was always afraid of being stepped on and not having the spunk to do anything about it other than cry. Time to dust myself off and move on.

  Under Delta’s watchful eye, I stood up, took a deep breath, and punched in his number on my phone.

  Gavin picked up on the second ring. “Ana, thank God! I was so worried.”

  He was worried? Not mad or hurt? I fell in love with him a little more right then.

  “I need to talk to you,” I managed to say. “Apologize, really—”

  “Apologize for what? You have nothing to be sorry for.” What? Is he serious? “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I just assumed you knew. It must have been a shock.”