His pale green eyes focus on me with an intensity I can’t quite place or explain. “I’m having some tests tomorrow.”
“What kind of tests?”
“Medical.”
“Why? What are you saying?”
“The doctor thinks I might have multiple sclerosis. They found a number of alarming signs.”
The room seems to close in on us until I have trouble breathing. “You’re twenty-six, Jack,” I mutter, feeling my skin ache and my head lighten.
“Apparently youth doesn’t mean shit,” he says with a bitter smile.
I know he’s not lying or trying to trick me. Not tonight.
“Jack, I don’t know what to say. Maybe there’s a mistake. Doctors can be wrong. It could be something else.”
“I know. It could be something worse.”
“Please, don’t do that.” The world feels vacant and dark. How can this be happening? I loved Jack for so long. I never want any harm to come to him.
Despite the way things ended, he’s one of the good guys: strong, funny, dependable, willing to help and such healthy good looks. I know his appearance shouldn’t matter but my heart looked upon him so many times with adoration. I would shower that beautiful man with kisses every chance I got, on his lips and neck and chest. I told him I loved him day and night.
I ache with all those memories at once, trying to absorb the fact he will become so ill and lose so much in life.
He notices my distress and tries to lessen the impact. “It might not be so bad,” he says. “I googled it. It’s possible I could live another forty years with minimal disabilities.”
“You will,” I say almost as if a command. Forty years just doesn’t sound enough all of a sudden. Not nearly enough. I want him to outlive everyone.
“Don’t be sad,” he says, taking my hands in his. “It’ll be fine. I’ll take the forty years. That’s plenty of time for them to find a cure. As long as I have you by my side, I can deal with anything.”
I get that old feeling again that he’s setting me up and now it makes me feel like a terrible person. How can I worry about myself at a time like this?
“Of course, I’ll support you,” I say cautiously. “If there’s anything that you need, just let me know.”
“Will you come with me tomorrow? To the hospital?” His eyes are locked on mine now, inquisitive and demanding.
I want to tell him that I just got a new job and I can’t miss a day already but instead I find myself telling him that I will go with him. I don’t know how to refuse when Jack is facing the worst crisis of his life.
He cheers up and pulls me in for a hug. I remember about the animal shelter and my shift tonight. I’m woefully late. I have to call to let them know I’m caught in something urgent and won’t be able to make it.
It takes patience to remain in his embrace until he finally lets go. I peek at my bag on the coffee table. It’s a silly bag, I tell myself. I made it myself out of three different fabrics. I grab the bag and take out my phone, but Jack places his hand on top of mine to stop me.
“I’ve missed you, Grace,” he says. “You’ve been there for me most of my life. Maybe, if we tried, we could get back what we once had.”
In my heart of hearts, I know it’s his insecurity about the future that’s talking. He just needs time to process the unexpected blows he’s been dealt. Eventually he’ll realize how preposterous his suggestion sounds. The time in which a permanent union between us was possible has come and gone. And he was the one that put in motion the slow but unmistakable breaking of our bond.
“I see that I’ve made you speechless,” he says, faking a smile.
“You’re under shock,” I manage to say. “It will all start making sense again once you have your answers and you know what you’re facing. You need time to process. It really could be something else, something treatable, even curable.”
He gets up and starts pacing around the room. “I’ve missed holding you,” he says without looking at me. “Feeling your breath on my neck when we fell asleep at night. Nobody else has loved me the way you did. I was a fool to fuck it up, Grace.”
My whole body gets in alert mode as he returns to the loveseat. I spring up as if hit by a strong electric current and grab my silly looking bag.
“I’m late,” I say. “Unfashionably late. What time do you want to meet up tomorrow at the hospital?”
“I’ll pick you up,” he says with a deflated voice.
“No, I’ll meet you there. Just tell me the time.”
He walks to me, pats down his short auburn hair. “Nine o’clock. Main gate.”
I nod and walk around him to open the door. As I turn the doorknob, he wraps his arms around me from behind. I jump out of my skin and quickly wriggle myself out of his embrace.
“Don’t, Jack,” I say. “Just don’t.”
“All right,” he says. “I won’t push.”
“I want to be there for you, but you have to respect my boundaries. We’re not together anymore.”
He steps out of the apartment to the small patch of grass that separates my entrance from that of the apartment next door. A silent rain has started to fall. He turns back to face me. “Is there someone in your life?” he says.
“Lots of people.” I roll my eyes in exasperation before I close the door.
*
I lie on the couch clutching my legs to my chest watching the local nine o’clock news, listening to the rain outside, pausing and rewinding unable to concentrate. I feel numb and lacking purpose. There’s a gnawing emptiness inside me. I cannot fill it up with any of my normal habits or routines.
If I were a better person, I would put aside all my personal feelings and concentrate on how to help Jack get through his ordeal. I would not panic about his sudden display of affection and I would not worry about how it might affect my life. But I’m not a better person. I’m the girl who threw all the clothes and things he kept at my apartment out of the window when I discovered his repeated transgressions. I’m the girl who would not listen to his explanations.
I knew that my love for the boy had not transferred completely into the same level of love for the young man Jack had become. He knew my love had dwindled and it hurt him. I refused then to admit that Jack was not the man I wanted to spend my life with anymore.
There are things you know in your bones but are not ready to accept in your mind. And yet I blamed him for everything because he dared to be unfaithful physically while I struggled to admit my desire to separate. There were times when I was in his arms that I felt so alone and dishonest.
It is not my place to pass judgment. I should cut him some slack and hope for the best possible outcome. I will hold out hope that his doctor’s concerns are unfounded. Jack could be healthy. That would end any misguided attempt of his to get us back together.
But if he really is sick and begins to fade away from the man he was and yearns to be again, my heart will break as his heart breaks. Memories of us together in love are like melancholy ghosts in my mind. I don’t want Jack to walk the Earth now as a ghostlike shadow of his former self.
My mind numbs thinking of the beautiful boy I loved in high school, the sweaty, sexy basketball star and guitar player, the fearless boy with the perfect stride who might end up in a wheelchair or worse. Could I really make the ultimate sacrifice and give him the comfort he desires? A familiar face and body to be there for him, loving him unconditionally, cherishing him as we travel down the dark tunnels of his strange future?
A cure will be procured one day and we will rejoice. He even said so himself. There are cures for everything these days. The ringing phone cuts through me like lightning. I am startled by the reminder there is still a world outside my sad thoughts.
“I’m outside your door,” the voice says when I pick up the phone.
“My door?” I say and then in a flash of sudden recognition add, “Nate?”
I bounce up and run to peek through the peephole. It’s him, hi
s hair messy and wet with the rain, seemingly barely able to stand.
I open the door in a frenzy trying to understand what it is about this night that draws desperate men to my doorstep. His nose has been bloodied and an ugly shiner forms around his left eye.
“I waited for you,” he says, catching his breath, “down at the shelter.”
I help him limp his way into my apartment.
Chapter 3
Nate lies on my old Persian rug with its faded green and crimson patterns in the middle of the living room. I’ve asked him repeatedly to let me help him get up on the loveseat but he has refused every single time.
“I’m not going to ruin your couch,” he says when I ask him one more time. This is frustrating. I don’t feel comfortable having an injured man lie on the hardwood floor, albeit it with an on old beautiful Persian rug underneath him.
“Ruin my couch?” I say. “How would you even do that?”
He lowers his gaze to his stomach. “I’m bleeding,” he says.
“You idiot,” I say. “Why didn’t you say so? The rug’s more expensive than the couch.” The words come out before I have a chance to think them over. I can’t believe I’m almost snapping at someone bleeding on my rug.
Nate doesn’t seem to mind. He stares at me for a second before a smile forms on his lips. “That’s much better,” he says. “Tell me what you really feel. I don’t like it when people bullshit me.”
“Good,” I say. “Now shut up and let me check you out.”
I carefully open up his damp jacket and run my fingers over his shirt cautiously, searching for a wound in his abdominal area.
My probing fingers cause him discomfort. “Are you qualified to do this?”
I glare into his dark blue eyes. “I can give you a Google map to the nearest ER if you like.”
He smiles and moans. “I’m not going to die,” he says.
“And are you qualified to say that?”
It’s pointless. I can’t locate the source of the small sprinkling of blood on his shirt. He’s not exactly bleeding. There’s no flow of blood and no holes in the shirt. The staining was caused by a small cut or a deep scratch at best, not a gunshot or knife wound or anything potentially fatal.
Perplexed, I decide to pull the front of his shirt over his body until it covers his face. It’s a good thing, too, or I would have blushed right in front of his teasing eyes.
Nate’s body is incredibly sculpted and ripped, his strong pectorals rising and falling with each breath he takes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so impressive on an actual, live human being before. I thought you needed oils or Hollywood lighting or at least Photoshop to achieve such perfection.
Nate would have been the last guy I suspected to be concealing all this manly goodness underneath his baggy pants and loose jackets. He’s lean, but powerfully built and tanned. I count his ab muscles in my mind.
“Well?” he mutters from underneath the shirt.
“You’re fine,” I say, not meaning to sound excited. “I mean, it looks good, you know, no gunshots or anything.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” I say as I finally concentrate on the long but superficial cut I’ve located across his abs. “It’s not a deep cut. I’ll just clean and bandage it along with the cuts on your face. You’ll be fine.”
“All that time caring for hurt animals at the shelter is finally paying off,” I hear him say as I rush to the bathroom to get the first-aid kit.
When I get back to the living room with the kit and a towel, I find him sitting with his back against the loveseat. His long hair covers half his face. His hands rest on his stomach – the only part of his body that is now uncovered. He flashes a relaxed smile with his perfect teeth. He’s not bad looking, I have to admit to myself.
I’m hating Taylor right now for planting that idea in my head. I never wanted to think about Nate that way.
“Okay, let’s hear it. How did this happen?” I say as I put the towel around his shoulders and I start to clean his cuts and bruises gently.
“I’d rather not tell you,” he says. I expect his face to reveal he’s joking. Nope. He’s totally serious. He’s not going to tell me. It’s probably best I don’t know.
“Have it your way,” I say letting him off the hook. The guy could obviously use a break after his night.
He glances around my crammed living room while I bandage the cut on his abs. His eyes stop at my bookshelves, jammed with the endless paperbacks I’ve assembled over the seven years of my adult life.
“You’re a reader,” he says.
“Gee, don’t say it like it’s some kind of crime. This isn’t Fahrenheit 451.”
“You’re weird, Grace,” he says with a grin.
“Said the kettle.”
I finish bandaging him and start putting everything back into the kit: bandages, scissors, antibiotic creams.
“I was wondering if I could borrow a book or two,” he says as he pulls his shirt down over his stomach.
“Seriously?”
Nate chuckles. “What? You think I’m not the reading type?”
My cheeks go red. “I didn’t–”
“You didn’t mean anything, I know,” he says, “but you’re not completely wrong either. I need to read more.”
“You can pick any book you want,” I say as I get off the floor. “Just make sure you return it. My books are my children.”
In the bathroom, I take a deep breath in when I put the first-aid kit back in the cabinet. I’ve never been attracted to Nate before nor has he ever even remotely hit on me.
I have to keep my head on straight here. Knowing this is all Taylor’s fault helps me feel better about telling her I need tomorrow morning off. I just hope she won’t ask for details.
Nate has two books in his hands when I come back to the living room. “That’ll keep me company,” he says as he puts one of the books back onto a shelf and then shows me the one he has decided to keep – a psychological thriller by Patricia Highsmith.
“I see you enjoy some light reading after a good beating,” I say as I watch him suspiciously. He settles down on my couch. He doesn’t intend to read the book here and now, does he?
“I don’t read all that much anymore,” he says. “And I didn’t get a beating.”
“None of my business.”
He leafs through the book as I straighten the rug and put the coffee table back where it belongs. He reaches the last page of the book and immediately starts reading it.
“Oh, my god, what are you doing?” I say, feeling the urge to slap him on the back of his head.
“I’m reading,” he says rolling his eyes.
“Starting at the last page? This is a thriller, Nate!”
“So?”
“So have you ever read a thriller before?”
He grins as he shuts the book and studies my face.
“Do I amuse you?” I ask.
“No, it’s just funny that after all this commotion we end up arguing about how a thriller is best read.”
“Do you want to know what I find funny? In the last thirty minutes you have spoken more than you have in the previous six months combined. Are you a spy or something? This is not the Nate I know.”
“Six months? Is this how long we’ve known each other?”
“It’s how long I’ve known the other Nate.”
“My talking is your fault entirely,” he says in a strange voice, almost as if he’s serious.
“You’re right. I should have let you die from your cat scratch so you could keep your paws off my books.”
“Don’t be mad, Grace. I like your books. They’re like heirlooms from the past. It’s cool. You’re cool.”
A memory of my mother emerges out of the blue. Her eyes, always dreamy and not quite looking at you. You must have books, Grace. Houses need books to feel alive.
“I’d have more on the shelves but I mostly read digital now,” I say.
His face becomes
serious. “I waited all night at the shelter until they closed it down,” he says. “Denise said you didn’t even call.”
“Fuck, I forgot to call, didn’t I?”
He just about chokes on his spit.
“What?” I say.
“I’ve never heard you curse before. It sounds so un-Grace-ful.”
“That’s clever, but there’s no excuse. I should have called the moment I realized I wasn’t going to make it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
His gaze falls on me, curious and inquisitive. I realize that I can’t – no, scratch that – I don’t want to explain. “Long story,” I say. “One that I’m not willing to share.”
He has no room to judge. He seems to understand that. He lowers his eyes to the book that’s in his lap. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.”
“The book?” I say, confused.
“Me coming here.”
A shiver runs through my body. It bothers me that he feels uncomfortable in my presence. He’s alone and I know all too well how that feels. As he stretches his arms behind his head, I realize I barely know anything about him.
“Help me understand this. You went to the shelter, waited for me and when they closed up, you left to come and find me? When did all this happen then?” I say pointing at his battered face.
He relents to my questioning to some degree. “On my way here.”
That much is obvious. I still don’t get it, though, and something tells me he’s not going to be any more revealing about it. Not tonight.
My eyes fly from him to the clock on the wall. It’s almost midnight and I don’t know how to send him away. I have no idea if he has somewhere to go.
A thought enters my mind. “You don’t do drugs, do you?”
He puts his right hand on his chest with his palm open. “No, I swear. That’s not what this is about.”
I consider his words. “I guess you have to stay here tonight.”
“I don’t have to but it would be helpful, yes.”
It seems like the only logical thing to do is have him sleep out here while I go get some rest so I can be ready in the morning to meet Jack at the hospital.
Beautiful Ruin Page 2