“There’s something else I have to tell you, O.”
“Oh God,” I said, sitting up again, and swinging my feet off the bed. “Where is she?”
Delaney
An upside down Oliver appeared in front of my face and I said weakly, “Hi.”
“Hi. How are you?” he said in a hushed tone, his forehead wrinkled with worry.
“They cut off my favorite tights.”
“Yeah, well, those are my favorite legs under them,” he said, his forehead wrinkled with worry, but smiling at me.
I closed my eyes as a tear ran down the side of my face. A blue curtain moved and he left. I heard him talking to the other people in the room.
When he came back into view, hovering over me, I opened my eyes again and said, “Oliver, could you leave?”
“Leave?” His voice boomed through the sterile room. “I’m not leaving. I’m helping.”
“I really don’t want you to see me like this.”
“But I want to fix this. I can do this, Laney.”
“Please leave? Please?”
There was more murmuring, and Oliver shuffled past a curtain, or at least I thought he did, since I couldn’t see him from my limited vantage point, and I relaxed as much as I could, unable to move my head or my body. I exhaled in relief.
Oliver
I was grilling Ursula, who was sitting impatiently in the waiting room, Michael’s arm slung around her. “So, she fell off her bike? And then the car hit her?”
“They said her shoelace got stuck in her chain, and she couldn’t move her foot, and then she toppled over on Sixtieth Street, and that’s when the car hit her.”
“Jesus,” I said.
“I know,” Ursula said miserably. “But it’s just her leg that was broken.”
“Her face looked like she ate gravel,” I said, and Ursula added, “That too. Her whole left side.”
“I can’t believe she wouldn’t let me help her,” I said into my lukewarm coffee.
“Of course she wouldn’t,” Ursula said, and then she smiled and patted my arm. “That’s a good thing. Trust me. That means you’re more to her than a fixer.”
I grimaced. “There was nothing to fix with Laney in the first place.”
“You wanted to,” Ursula said. “I could see it. You were stage directing her life.”
“How?” I said.
“Her tights? Her hair? Cliff?”
“Cliff!”
“The point is, she has to fix her own problems. You can’t help.”
“I can help today.”
“No.”
“But she was run over! By a car! And wheeled into my ER.”
“You hardly own the ER. There were three other doctors in there. What were you going to do besides see her naked and vulnerable?”
“Help her. Heal her.”
Ursula shook her head. “Any one of your colleagues could do that.”
“Then what can I possibly do for her?” I said miserably.
“Maybe that’s what you have to figure out,” Ursula said, and laid her head on her husband’s shoulder.
Delaney
“Are you here to set me free, Dr. Webber?” I said to Oliver, who pushed my wheelchair to the parking lot. I tilted my head back and fluttered my lashes at him, and he said, “I can’t believe they let you leave without an overnight stay.”
“I refused. It’s my right.”
“You look like hell, Lane,” he said as he looked away.
“There goes my modeling career, I suppose,” I said, and then his arms wrapped under me as he helped me into the backseat of Michael’s Volvo, since Oliver had walked to work. I winced and tried to claw his hands off of me and tried not to cry all at the same time.
“God, you’re a baby. It’s just a little road rash and a broken leg. Jesus,” he said as he shook his head at me.
“Yeah, tell that to the Percocet!” I yelled at him, since he was outside the car again, walking around it to the driver’s seat. “Are you sure you can just leave work like this to help me get home?” I said when he was settled in front.
“I’m sure,” he said. He adjusted the mirror and I saw his admonishment in the rearview before he adjusted it again, and then we were driving home.
“Oh,” I said when we got to the Victorian as I stared at the three flights of stairs up. “What am I going to do now?”
“I’m going to carry you up,” Oliver said.
“No. Oh God, no,” I said, and I started to move toward the first step when his arm wrapped around my back and he said, “You’re not walking up those stairs with a broken leg.”
“I’m going to scoot up, backwards. Very slowly.”
“No.”
“Wait, I thought I was a baby.”
“Yeah, well, babies shouldn’t climb stairs.”
“I don’t want your help,” I said helplessly.
“You need it. Face it.”
“And what are you going to do every time I need to leave my apartment? Maybe I should stay with Michael and Ursula. This hasn’t been well planned.”
“You’d rather stay with newlyweds than let me help you up some stairs?”
“Yes,” I said firmly.
“Honestly.”
“Fine. Carry me upstairs, but just this once,” I said. “I’ll talk to Mary about fixing the elevator later.” Oliver rolled his eyes, and then he lifted me up and lurched up three flights of stairs while I prayed for my life that we didn’t tumble backwards.
Oliver regained his breath as he bent over the kitchen counter, gasping, and then made it over to the sofa where he’d laid me, covered me with blankets and pillows and brought me a glass of water with a straw. He settled in the armchair and said, “You scared the hell out of me, Lane. Don’t do that again.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“I’m serious. I threw up all over myself and fainted when I saw you. I was a mess. You wouldn’t let me help, my colleagues wouldn’t let me help, I got kicked out for—”
“You got kicked out?”
He nodded. “You know, they had it under control. And you didn’t want me there, and you were obviously uncomfortable. The point is, I couldn’t help you. I was no hero.”
I softened, just looking at him there, completely helpless. “You just carried me up three flights of stairs. You drove me home. You filled my prescription. You told me I looked like hell instead of lying to me. You helped.”
He shook his head. “Not like I help patients. Not like you saved me.”
“I saved you?”
“You say I have a hero complex, but I’m the one who needed saving. You fixed me.”
“How?” I said through tears. “How could I possibly fix you?”
“You just want me. You don’t want anything else from me. You don’t want me to save you. You don’t care that I was in love with my future sister-in-law or that I’m a complete asshole most of the time. You just wanted me, like I was.”
“Yeah, well.” I wiped the snot off my face. “I want that too. For myself.”
His face fell. “You have that. I just want you. I know you said you don’t love me, but I don’t accept that. Because the way I feel about you, I would do almost anything to not feel like this, to go back to being apathetic about women, to thinking what I felt for Mia was more than a misguided attempt to make myself feel better about my life. I don’t like knowing that you can wreck me by falling off a bicycle in the middle of a busy street. I don’t like that you’ve got part of me, forever, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said as my voice cracked.
“You idiot, I love you. You don’t have to like it, but there it is. You’re my best friend, I love you, I’ve loved you since I threw that phone at you and you didn’t push me away, and I’m never going to stop. I can’t.
“Say something. Please say something, Laney,” he said.
“You don’t love me,” I said.
“I
do,” he said, exasperated, kneeling in front of the sofa and putting his hands on my face gingerly.
“No.” I shook my head. “You want me to pin back my hair and wear different clothes and be less of a doormat.”
“But those help you! You like those suggestions.”
“Yeah, but I want you to want me even when I’m a mess, not when I’m the cleaned up version of me that you like.”
“That’s just stupid. Wanting you to be a better person is bad?”
“No. It’s not bad. It’s sweet and caring and lovely, and not at all what I want. I don’t want you to fix me.”
“I’m not fixing you. I just want to help you.”
“I don’t want that kind of help. I want something more,” I said, sobbing full-force now.
“That’s what you have to say to me? You don’t want me?” he said, standing up, and I shrugged, unable to find the courage to repeat it, because I wasn’t sure of anything.
He stormed out of my apartment, and I pulled the soft grey blanket he’d laid over me up to my chin and cried.
Thirty
Delaney
“I see your problem. He carried you up three flights of stairs, tucked you in, told you you saved him, that you were his best friend, and then he said he would love you forever, no matter what,” Emily said. “How ruthless. So of course you broke his heart.”
“You don’t understand,” I moaned. “He’s Oliver. He’s beautiful and smart and perfect. Women love him. And I’ve got this for a face.” I motioned to my road rash and my patch. “And my legs,” I said, looking down at them covered up again. I’d had to cut all of my tights to accommodate the cast, shredding a few of them in the process, but I just didn’t want to feel vulnerable and ugly on the outside. I already felt like that on the inside whenever I thought about Oliver. “And I don’t want him to fix me.”
“I get that, but honestly, Delaney, are you really that dense?” Ursula said. “He loves you. He’s miserable. Michael, tell her.”
Michael said, “Yup. He looks like he’s going to enter the Bataan Death March any second, willingly.”
“It can’t be that bad,” I whispered.
“You—you don’t believe him,” Emily said, wide-eyed, and my face heated. “You don’t, do you?”
“Maybe he thinks he loves me, but look at me! Someone like Oliver will figure it out. He’s going to get bored with me.”
“You don’t believe you’re enough for him?” Emily said. “But you are. And you might not think you’re beautiful, but does he make you feel beautiful?”
“Yeah,” I said, my chin tucked into my chest. “He makes me feel wonderful, but he’s going to leave. He leaves all women.”
“So he’ll leave you? For someone younger and prettier?” Ursula said.
“Oliver’s not like that. He’d just find someone better suited to him,” I said.
“I’m done talking about this,” Ursula said with a huff of indignation. “Let’s order pizza.” She thumped on my cast a little too firmly and I grimaced and said, “No black olives. Remember, no black olives.”
“I’m ordering black olives. You can pick them off and give them to Oliver,” she said.
“He’s coming over?” I panicked, straightening my shirt. “I can’t see him. It’s been days since we’ve talked.”
“Michael invited him,” she said with a shrug.
“And you invited me,” I said. “You could have told me.”
“Then you wouldn’t have come, and talked.”
“Well, I’m leaving now.” I carefully lifted my leg off the sofa and clumsily made my way to the apartment elevator with my crutches, only to bump into Oliver coming out of it.
“Oh. You,” he said, and then stepped around me. Then I closed my eyes and knew I was absolutely making the right decision, and hobbled into the elevator.
Oliver
“Oh. You,” I said. Delaney looked like she was going to cry as I walked around her. I didn’t care. She was heartless and callous and cruel. I’d poured my heart out to her and she’d given me nothing. She wanted the impossible. I sat down on Michael’s sofa and crossed my arms, anger bubbling up in me.
She’d been running away from me since I’d met her. She’d never wanted anything from me. I told all of this to Michael and Ursula and Emily and Sam, who sat across from me and stared.
“What?” I said finally.
“Nothing,” they all said, murmuring and looking away. All except Sam, who said, “Wait, why is wanting nothing from you a bad thing?”
“Because! She doesn’t want my help! She doesn’t want my advice or my protection!”
“She wants to be her own woman? Make her own decisions? Have her own revelations?” Sam said.
“Yes!” I said, nodding madly, glad that someone finally understood. “And I want her to be with me.”
“Well, I’m glad she left,” Sam said. “Good for her, knowing what she needs. Especially after that jackhole Cliff.”
“Wait, what? You’re on her side?” Ursula said in disbelief.
“Oh, absolutely,” Sam said, and then he leaned forward and explained it all to me again.
“You really do say just the right things, Sam,” I said and then ran down five flights of stairs. She was still there, waiting for her taxi when I finally got there.
Delaney
“I’m sorry,” he said, and then took a big breath and braced his hands against his legs, bending over. “Sorry,” he said again.
“For what?” I said, leaning back against the bench to look up at him. “Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be sorry? I’m pretty sure I’m the jerk in this situation.”
He shook his head and then sat down next to me on the bench outside the apartment building. “Sam explained it to me. How what I said and what I did weren’t right.”
“What?”
Oliver
Laney’s bangs were falling in her eyes and her tights were ripped and dirty around her cast. She was wearing her pink and orange dress that made her seem generously psychotic. My heart squeezed at the sight of her. “I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
She blinked at me again. “What did you say?”
“I don’t care about what you look like, or your terrible clothes, or your hair falling in your eyes, or your evil ex-boyfriend. I’ll take you any way I can get you.”
She stared at me a moment and then said, “That’s not enough. I want you to take me at my most broken.”
“Your leg is broken. Your face is cut up. You dress like a clown. I’d say you’re there.”
“Fair enough.” She scowled and looked down at the sidewalk.
“I didn’t get it before, what you needed. But I will love you, no matter what. Unconditionally. I can’t stop. I wanted to stop, I was so angry with you, but I can’t.”
“But why? I’m not even worthy of this.”
“You’re worthy of about fifty of me, but I don’t have a cloning machine, so I’ll just try to show you I mean it.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do next.”
“This is the part where you have to trust me, that I mean it, that I’ll stay.”
She sucked in a breath and looked at me, her eyes wet and shining. “But you left Mia. She was gorgeous, and you left her. And all those girls from the Saturn. Why wouldn’t you leave me?”
“Because you’re you. None of the rest of them were you. None of them wanted me for me. They wanted something from me. I want you for you, and you want me for me. Right?”
“Right.”
“Maybe it’s too hard to explain in any way that makes sense. Is it supposed to make sense? Are we supposed to know all the reasons behind it?”
“It’s just that I don’t know if I can trust you. That’s the hard part.”
“But it’s also the best part. For me, anyway. It’s where you really learn that I mean it. I don’t want to fix you. I don’t want to make you better. I don’t care if you change, or if you don’t ch
ange. I’ll love you no matter what, as long as you’re still you.”
She looked at me, tears pouring down her cheeks, and she said, “Really?” I nodded. “Okay, I trust you,” she said quickly, quietly.
“You do?”
She said, “I don’t think I have a choice. I just do.”
“I love you.”
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, I told you, I trust you.” She gave me a smile and then said, “Come here.”
Delaney
I kissed him. It was the first time I kissed him. I’d always let him kiss me, but I didn’t want to do that. My face was sticky with tears, my tights had a run in them, my leg was heavy and throbbing with pain and itchiness, and I’d never felt so beautiful or loved. So I kissed him. I put every single feeling I had into it, and soon we were savaging each other’s mouths.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and he kissed me again, murmuring something I didn’t quite hear. “What?” I asked.
“I said, I love you. I love you.”
“Oh,” I said, and smiled against his mouth. “I love you too. I’ve loved you since I saw you.”
He pulled away then, his forehead wrinkling. “That day. That day I told you I loved you. Why didn’t you say it back?” he asked.
“Because I was scared. Because it felt wrong. Because I didn’t think you really could love me.”
“Because I wasn’t saying it right.” He inched closer to me on the bench, and I could smell him now. He was everywhere. “What I meant to say was, ‘Delaney, I love you. I don’t want anything in return, just to be able to love you.’”
My mouth dropped open. I tried to think of loopholes, of how this would go wrong, of how he would find someone prettier, smarter, better. “Oh?” was all that came out.
“You’re fun. I miss you when I’m not with you. You’re kind. You’re smart. You’re so, so pretty.” He moved my hair out of my eyes and kissed my temple. “Just let me love you anyway, just the way you are?”
“You don’t want me to pin my hair back or stop wearing tights or get a car or run in the daylight?”
“I do. I do want you to do those things, but I’m going to love you whether you do them or not, okay?”
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