An Unexpected Hunger

by Rosa, C.

  “What?” he yelled. “What do you mean? Why would you ask that?” His tone was guarded, as if the he found the question totally offensive and off the wall.

  “It’s a simple question, Danny,” I said. “Are. You. Still. Married?”

  “I told you…Rachel and I are not together anymore.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  He scoffed. “What’s going on?”

  “Someone came up to me in the bathroom and told me that you were still married.”

  “Fuck!” he said, hitting the steering wheel. “I knew when I sat that bitch she would cause trouble.”

  I finally realized why the woman seemed so familiar. I remembered her coming to eat at Danny’s restaurant, a friend of his wife’s who always asked for things off the menu.

  “So, it’s true?” I yelled. “I can’t believe this. I can’t fucking believe this!”

  “It’s not true!” he said, turning the wind shield wipers on when it started to pour. “Technically…the divorce isn’t final yet. BUT, we’ve been separated for months.”

  “You lied to me! You told me that you were divorced…as in NOT married anymore!”

  “I didn’t think you would see me if I told you the truth! What’s the difference? In a few months, it will be all over, and I’ll have the paperwork to prove it!”

  I had nothing more to say, too angry to express what I was feeling in any verbal fashion.

  “Please, Lexy. Don’t let someone ruin our whole night.”

  I looked to him, totally disgusted that he lied. He lied to his wife all those months we were together and now here he was lying to me about his wife. It was so fucked up I almost started to laugh.

  “Just take me home,” I muttered, looking out of the window.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t of lied. I just needed to be with you again.”

  “We are not together,” I reminded him. “I thought we could be friends, but you obviously cannot handle that.”

  He kept looking over at me, and when he tried to grab my hand I swatted him away. “Please, don’t touch me,” I said. “Just drive.”

  “Come on, Lexy,” he pleaded. “Don’t be mad.”

  He reached for my hand again, this time grabbing my wrist so I couldn’t tear away.

  “I mean it, Danny!” I cried. “Stop messing around before-”

  But it was too late, the last few words were never able to leave my lips. Something had run into the middle of the road. When Danny slammed on the breaks, I felt the wheels slide on the water. The rain came down so hard that all I could see were the faint lines of the headlights cutting through the dark road, illuminating the drops of water.

  The car spun around as I grabbed the handle above my head. Danny gripped the steering wheel, trying to regain control of the car. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, Ricky’s face flashing through my mind. I braced myself just before we slammed into the telephone pole.

  Chapter 32

  Waking Up

  I WOKE UP to the sound of beeping and the worst hang over of my life. I blinked my eyes a few times, trying to bring them back into focus.

  When my vision cleared, I found myself staring at a white ceiling. I thought it was strange that my ceiling fan had disappeared. My nose itched, and when I went to scratch it, I noticed the IV and wires that were attached to my hand.

  I gazed at it for a few minutes, trying to figure out if I was still dreaming. What I thought was the beeping of my alarm clock was the sound of the heart monitor stuck to my chest. I tried to sit up, but every muscle in my body felt like I had done a thousand hours of cardio. I moaned as a pain radiated from one of my legs.

  “Oh my God...Lexy?” I heard a voice, deep and soothing.

  Someone hovered over me, and when I saw who it was looking back at me I knew for sure I must have been dreaming.

  “Ricky?” I mumbled, my voice barely audible.

  “She’s awake!” he shouted to someone else. “I’m here beautiful.” He smiled bright and wide, and I swore he eyes were beading with water.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, still not able to move. My head throbbed with every beat of my heart, and the pain in my leg worsened with every minute that passed.

  “You’re at the hospital. You were in an accident.”

  He called to the nurse who came over to check my vitals and the bag to my IV.

  My eyes flickered towards the door as I saw another familiar face.

  “Mom?” I asked.

  She ran to my side, pushing back the hair off my face.

  “Honey,” she said. “I’m so happy to hear your voice.”

  “How long have I been out?” I asked

  “Two days,” Ricky said.

  After the reality of what happened set in and a couple of pain killers that the friendly nurse gave me, I was able to sit up with the help of the adjustable bed. Turned out I came out of the accident with a skull fracture and a broken leg. Ricky and my mom took turns doting on me until I reassured them that I was comfortable and relatively pain free.

  “So, do you remember what happened?” mom asked.

  I shook my bandaged head gently, trying to think back. “I remember just before the car hit the pole and then after that…I-I can’t remember.”

  I thought about Danny and whether or not he was okay.

  “I was with someone else,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully. “A friend…he was the one driving. Is he okay?”

  The nurse came in to make sure the pills were working, and then took my blood pressure. When she left, Ricky and my mom exchanged looks.

  “What?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  I panicked, thinking the worst about Danny. I was beyond pissed at him, but didn’t want our last conversation to have been an argument.

  “I’m going to go to the cafeteria,” mom said. “Get us something to eat.”

  She kissed me on the forehead and left.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” I said to Ricky. He pulled one of the chairs close to my bed and sat down, grabbing my hand. It felt so good to touch him, the heart monitor giving away my quickening pulse.

  “I took a flight with your mom when she called Nick with the news. I was so afraid…” He looked away.

  “Thank you,” I said. “It means a lot to me that you’re here.”

  “He’s okay,” he continued, his eyes meeting mine again. “The driver…he made it out of the accident with just a few scratches. They released him yesterday.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s good to hear.”

  I closed my eyes, the dull throbbing in my head waning down. I felt my eyes become droopy, and I tried to keep them open. The harder I tried the less resolved I became until I surrendered to sleep.

  * * *

  When I woke again it was the next day. Ricky was asleep on the recliner perched in the corner of the room. I smiled, watching him sleep soundly in what had to be the most uncomfortable position.

  The nurse came in and gave me some medicine for the pain. Ricky woke up and helped me hobble to the bathroom.

  “Where’d my mom go?” I asked as he helped me back in the bed.

  “Hotel across the street,” he said. “She left late last night.”

  “Maybe you should go and get some rest,” I said. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he replied, kissing me on the forehead.

  Soon after breakfast, my mom walked in followed by the doctor. He told me a little about my injuries and what was to be expected over the next few weeks. I would be in a cast for at least a month. Thankfully, the injury to my head sounded scarier than it actually was.

  “You can leave tomorrow,” he said, tucking his pen back in the pocket of his white coat. “By the way, you’re very lucky that this wasn’t worse. The driver admitted to having a few glasses of wine before he got behind the wheel. He really shouldn’t have been driving.”

  My mom and Ricky thanked the docto
r who gave them a few more instructions about my care after I left the hospital. I thought back to the night at the winery. I had been so mad about what had happened in the bathroom that I didn’t think twice about whether or not Danny was in any condition to drive.

  “Well,” mom said. “I’ll have to stay with you at your apartment until you can handle being on your own again. I’ll have to call your brother and make sure he can look after the house.”

  “Thanks, mom,” I said. “But, I’ll be fine.”

  “You’re going to need help, Alexa. You can barely move!”

  “I’ll stay with her,” Ricky said.

  “Really?” mom asked.

  “Yeah… really?” I repeated. “What about the bar?”

  Ricky shrugged. “Mia can handle it for a while.”

  It took some convincing my mom, but she agreed to leave me in Ricky’s care. I laid back in my bed, feeling a little giddy about having Ricky all to myself for the next couple of weeks.

  Chapter 33

  Together

  I HEARD THE front door open. My stomach rumbled with happy anticipation of the cheesy pepperoni pizza Ricky ordered us for dinner. I managed to get out of bed, with the help of my crutches, and hobbled to the kitchen. I felt clean for the first time in three days thanks to the shower I took as soon as we got home for the hospital.

  “What are you doing?” Ricky asked as he plopped a slice of pizza on a paper plate.

  I stopped at the folding table and slid into a chair. “I’m hungry.”

  “I was going to bring you something to eat in bed.”

  I chuckled, amused by Ricky’s overly protective tendencies…and I thought my mother was bad. “I still have my legs, Ricky.”

  He sat across from me, and I inhaled two slices before he barely finished one. Three days of eating hospital food was worse than the cast weighing down my leg.

  “Yikes,” Ricky teased as I inhaled a third slice. “Hungry are we?”

  After dinner, Ricky helped me hobble to the couch, even though I insisted that I could do it myself. He plopped down on the other end, elevating my legs on his lap. I flicked through the channels.

  “I guess I should call work tomorrow and let them know I won’t be coming in for a while,” I said.

  “Your boss called the hospital room,” Ricky said. “He wanted to see how you were doing. He said to call him when you get a chance.”

  I sighed. “There goes my job.”

  I swear I caught a hint of a smile on Ricky’s face.

  * * *

  By the end of the week, I was so sick of having the cast on my leg that I was half tempted to cut if off with the meat cleaver in my kitchen. Ricky talked me out of it, and instead lead me back to bed and gave me something for the pain.

  I woke up in the middle of the night sometimes, screaming at the top of my lungs. I kept having this reoccurring dream about the few moments right before the accident. Ricky usually came running in my room, and I was thankful to have him there. He cradled me in bed until I fell asleep, and then always returned back to sleep on the couch.

  “So, how long are you planning on staying?” I asked one morning during breakfast.

  Ricky peered over his bowl of cereal. For the last week and a half he had done nothing but wait on me hand and foot, even carting me to the doctor’s appointments in his rental car. I knew that he was nervous about being away from the bar so much, even though he swore up and down that everything was fine.

  “Why?” he asked. “Are you getting tired of me already?”

  “No…of course not. I just…don’t want to take you away from anything important.”

  “You’re important,” he said, putting both of our bowls in the sink.

  “Aren’t you going crazy being cooped us in this apartment with me?”

  He smiled and sat next to me on the couch. “I do miss my kitten,” he teased.

  “I’m serious,” I said, playfully smacking him. “You don’t have to be here.”

  “I know,” he replied. “But I want to be. I told you that I would be there for you…no matter what.”

  I smiled, and laid my head down in his lap as he brushed my hair back. “I’m happy you’re hear with me.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  I blinked back tears. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.”

  I got up, feeling a little light headed from the pain killers. “Have you?”

  He raised his brows. “Of course. Everyday I didn’t see you made me miss you even more.”

  “How come you sleep on the couch?”

  “What do you mean?” Ricky smirked. “Where am I supposed to sleep?”

  “In the bed…with me.”

  “I didn’t know that was an option.”

  I nestled in close to his chest, feeling his arm wrap around my shoulders. “It’s always an option,” I reassured him.

  * * *

  That night Ricky slept with me in the bed. I slept through the whole night, and didn’t once wake with a nightmare.

  The next morning, I finally called my boss after Ricky practically dialed the number for me. I was reluctant to make the call, knowing almost for certain that it would mean loosing my job. There would be no way I could cook in this condition, and I still had at least another four weeks in the cast.

  Even though Josh assured me that I would have a job at the restaurant when I was healed, I could tell I had lost my position in the line.

  “How’d it go?” Ricky asked when I hung up. He had just returned from the grocery store and planned to cook dinner. We ate take out for almost every meal, and we were starting to run out of places to order from.

  “Fine, I guess. Who knows what will happen in a month though.”

  “Mia called me today to see how you were doing. She wanted to know if her and Nick should still plan on visiting.”

  I hobbled over to the kitchen and helped with the groceries. “Yeah, that’d be great. My schedule’s pretty open.”

  “Good…cause I figured we could all do something for your birthday together.”

  “But my birthday isn’t for another two weeks.”

  “I know,” Ricky said.

  I smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “What a great birthday present.”

  * * *

  Ricky was in the shower when Danny called. I ignored it, hoping he didn’t leave a voicemail. He didn’t, but he texted shortly after. It was the first time since the accident that he tried to contact me. I didn’t call him. It didn’t seem necessary, knowing that he made it out of the accident okay.

  I read the text, saying that he wanted to talk to me to see how I was doing, and then deleted it. Ricky hadn’t asked any questions about who I was with the night of the accident, and I was relieved when Danny didn’t try to come visit me at the hospital.

  Ricky walked into my room, a towel notched around his waist. He rummaged through his suitcase for something to wear as I openly stared, enjoying the view.

  “What are you looking at?” he said, glancing behind him.

  “You. You’re beautiful. I don’t think I ever told you that.”

  He smiled, slipped on a pair of boxer briefs, and then some sweats. He sat down next to me on the bed, and we stared at each other, a quite calmness settling in the room.

  Ricky leaned in closer, hovering his head just a lips distance from mine. “I want to kiss you right now.”

  “I want to kiss you, too.”

  He placed his lips on mine, and the feeling sent a flutter throughout my whole body. I no longer felt the pain in my leg, and I could barely feel the cast. It was as if I became weightless, the only thing holding me to the bed was Ricky’s hand on my cheek.

  We kissed and kissed, neither one of us quite getting enough. We had months to make up for, and when we finally broke away from each other, I was out of breath.

  Ricky’s hand traveled down my chest, landing around my waist. He pulled me in closer, my broken leg dragging
along.

  “This is going to be tricky,” I laughed as I tried to inch myself closer. “This leg is going to make things very complicated.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I just want you as close as possible.”

  “What am I going to do without you…when you go back home?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking over at me. “It’s going to be rough.”

  “I wish you could stay here with me.”

  “What if I could?” he replied.

  I paused, trying to read the expression on his face. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “Yeah…aren’t you miserable without me?”

  “Completely,” I said, laying my head on his chest. “Unbelievably miserable.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “So it’s only fair that I do what I can to alleviate that for you.”

  “You would do that? Move here for me?”

  “If it was okay with you,” he replied.

  “But how? What about the bar?”

  “I’ll sell it.”

  “You wouldn’t…”

  “Then why did I put if up for sale?”

  I shot up in the bed, the quick movement sending a shooting pain down my leg. “You put the bar up for sale? Since when?”

  Ricky readjusted himself, leaning his head against the headboard. “About a month ago. I…I just can’t be without you.”

  His eyes fluttered away from my face, his gaze now directed at the space behind me.

  “Ricky…selling the bar is-”

  “I want to make a life with you,” he said, interrupting me. “And if that means selling the bar, or my soul, to come here and be with you, than it’s what I’m going to do.”

  “But…what about Mia?” I whispered, completely stunned.

  “She’ll be done school at the end of this year. She’s not interested in working for me much longer.”

  I never thought about the possibility of Ricky leaving everything he knew to come follow me across the country. He seemed so settled where he was that I never brought the idea up. The more I thought about it, the less I was sure that I wanted to stay in California myself. I seem to find myself in some kind of trouble whenever I’m here. Back home, it was so much easier for me, and I had to admit that being close to home was nice, too. As much as mom and Nick drove me up the wall, it felt good having family around again. Here, Ricky would only have me, and I wasn’t so sure I could let him leave everything and everyone he knew and loved, just for me.